Susana Martinez
Gubernatorial candidate and district attorney says her office has worked hard to provide documents in response to the Democratic Party’s records requests
The Democratic Party of New Mexico is accusing Republican gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez, Doña Ana County’s district attorney, of “hiding” public records.
Martinez, on the other hand, maintains that the district attorney office she runs has worked hard to comply with two massive records requests the party filed in January.
There may not be a violation of the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act, but Martinez’s office should have standard polices for dealing with requests, Sarah Welsh, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, said of the situation.
“We want to see a consistent policy and good communication. (In general, that) would solve maybe 80 percent of the problems that arise,” Welsh said. “The burden is on both parties to keep those lines of communication open.”
Since the party has already been allowed to inspect the records, Welsh said it’s difficult to accuse Martinez’s office of hiding documents, even if the party has yet to receive copies.
As things stand now, the party is trying to decide whether it wants copies of some or all of the more than 2,000 pages it flagged when it inspected the records. Once the party decides, Chief Deputy District Attorney Susan Riedel, Martinez’s records custodian, will send an invoice.
Once payment is received, Martinez said, her office will make the copies and mail them.
Dems: ‘Hurdles’ have hampered process
The situation began Jan. 4 when the party filed two records requests (click here and here) with the Third Judicial District Attorney’s Office seeking to inspect tens of thousands of pages of documents including budgets, contracts, invoices, travel and expense reports and information about cases from the time Martinez took office in 1997 to present.
That’s a pretty standard request from the opposing political party when a public official is seeking higher office. It’s commonly called “opposition research.”
Riedel responded in a Jan. 11 letter that the request was “excessively burdensome” and included “documents kept in approximately 48,000 separate files.”
State Democratic Party Executive Director Scott Forrester claims that, during a series of phone calls over the next few weeks, Riedel said she would allow only two hours to inspect the records, then revised the time to four, then six hours, with a “possible extension” if that wasn’t enough time.
In the end the party was provided 6.5 hours to inspect the records on Feb. 17, and another 6.5 hours last Monday. Though that was enough time to inspect all the records the party had requested, Forrester complained about several issues:
• Riedel didn’t allow the party to bring a scanner or camera to make its own copies.
• He claims Riedel hasn’t been courteous. As an example, he said she told the party’s representative who inspected the records the he was “a pain in the ass” because Martinez had Riedel sit with him while he looked through the documents.
• After the party’s representative inspected the first half of the records on Feb. 17 and marked pages for copying, Forrester claims Riedel told the party she would copy and mail the documents to the party along with an invoice – but that hasn’t yet happened. Martinez told this reporter the intent all along has been to invoice the party after all documents were inspected and only make copies after payment was received.
“It’s a totally different story now that you’re asking questions,” Forrester said. “They’re stalling.”
Forrester said he believes the party will eventually obtain the documents, but Martinez’s office is going out of its way to make the process difficult by placing “hurdles” in front of inspection and copying.
“It personally sounds to me like they’re hiding something,” he said.
Martinez says her office is working to comply
Martinez, on the other hand, says her office is working to comply with the request – the second massive records request her office has received during her tenure as district attorney. She said her office had just completed its annual audit when the request came in, and many documents had not yet been replaced in their normal files.
That, coupled with recent budget cuts, meant gathering the documents the party requested took longer than normal.
Martinez said her office didn’t allow the party to bring its own scanner or camera because she wanted to ensure the documents were in their entire and true form when they left her office.
And she says her office didn’t make copies after the first round of inspection on Feb. 17 because the party had, in its records requests, indicated a maximum budget of $200, but had flagged enough pages for the copying fee to go well over that. She said she wanted to be able to provide a full cost to the party and receive full payment before making any copies.
Riedel initially told the Democrats she didn’t know to whom they would have to make out the check. That’s because, Martinez said, her office has never received payment for documents during her tenure. When asked by journalists for copies of public case records, her office generally provides them without charge.
And the only other requests her office has received – other than the one for which payment was never received – involved case information that wasn’t public record at the time, so those requests were denied.
Because of that, Welsh said it is understandable that some issues would come up in this instance – such as Riedel’s not knowing whether the check should be made out to the district attorney’s office or their fiscal agent, the state Department of Finance and Administration in Santa Fe.
“If they don’t get a lot of requests then this is kind of new ground. It sounds like they’re aware of the law and they’re trying to work it out as best as they can,” Welsh said. “If this was a regular practice I’d be more concerned, but it sounds like it’s a special case.”
Riedel initially told the party the cost for documents would be $1 per page – the maximum the law allows – but later chopped the fee in half. Welsh said that’s indicative of the office’s lack of a standardized policy for the inspection and copying process. She said such a policy should be instituted, and it should include a uniform fee for copies of documents.
Martinez said she doesn’t believe a policy is necessary because the office is complying with the requirements in the public records law.
AG says requesters can bring cameras and scanners
Welsh said it sounds like the Democrats have “run into problems with attitude more than legal compliance” from the district attorney’s office, but she does take issue with Martinez’s not allowing the party to bring a scanner or camera to copy records.
Phil Sisneros, spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, said scanners and cameras should be allowed. The public records act, he said, “requires the custodian of public records for a public body to ‘provide reasonable facilities to make or furnish copies of public records during usual business hours.’”
“This office’s position is that this provision permits a requester to use his or her own equipment to make copies of public records,” Sisneros said.
Martinez said the AG’s office doesn’t make that clear in literature it provides to government agencies to help them comply with the public records act.
The AG’s opinion is not legally binding. No court has ever ruled on whether the act requires that requesters be allowed to bring their own copying equipment.