Heath Haussamen
The attorney general knows that state employee resignation letters are public documents. The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government knows it too.
That’s because this is pretty basic stuff, as far as the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act goes. Government employee resignation letters are public records in New Mexico. As a journalist, I’ve requested and received copies of such resignation letters before.
So why won’t Secretary of State Mary Herrera’s office release the scathing letter A.J. Salazar provided when he resigned more than a week ago from his job as elections director?
“We consider that to be a personnel issue, and it does not fall under (the public records act), so we are not going to be providing that,” Deputy Secretary of State Don Francisco Trujillo told me Thursday.
Nonsense. Come on. Did he really think that answer was going to stand?
Maybe he did. After all, Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration has gotten away – at least thus far – with ignoring the public records act and refusing to release information about the 59 exempt employees he supposedly laid off in January.
Richardson’s flagrant disregard of the public’s right to know creates the appearance that he has something to hide – like maybe he didn’t really lay that many people off after all. That suspicion was bolstered last week by an investigative journalist’s TV report on the situation.
Creating suspicion
Similarly, there’s an obvious suspicion created when Herrera refuses to release Salazar’s resignation letter. Because the Albuquerque Journal has obtained the letter and quoted from it, we know a lot about it: In the letter, Salazar accuses Herrera of running “a crooked organization” that inappropriately mixes politics and government business, and of soliciting money from firms that do business with the Secretary of State’s Office.
Salazar’s letter is an embarrassment to Herrera, and I’m sure she would rather the public not know about it. But as Sarah Welsh, executive director of the open government foundation, pointed out, the public records act is “not meant to protect the government agency from embarrassment, which is what (the secretary of state’s refusal to release the letter) seems to be.”
Trujillo’s rejection of requests for the letter resulted in a few quotes like Welsh’s making it into news articles late last week. Then late Friday, Herrera’s office began backing off its refusal to release the letter with this statement:
“If the document qualifies for release under IPRA it will be released. Secretary of State Herrera has nothing to hide.”
The statement also claims that the letter “mentions other state employees by name and includes matters of opinion.” Matters of opinion relating to personnel issues is one of the exemptions to the public records act.
There’s a simple answer to that one, folks. If the letter contains confidential personnel information about other employees in the office, Herrera might – might – try to make a case for redacting that information before releasing the letter. But the inclusion of such information in the letter is absolutely not grounds to keep the entire letter secret.
The public has a right to see it
Salazar trashing his bosses – Trujillo and Herrera – does not count as confidential personnel information that can be redacted. Whatever Salazar wrote about them is public, and the public has a right to see it.
It’s highly concerning that, less than three months before the June primary, the secretary of state – New Mexico’s chief elections officer – is dogged by allegations of mixing politics with the business of the office she runs. The allegations are especially concerning because they come from the man who was her elections director.
To avoid making matters worse for herself, Herrera should have immediately released the letter when first asked for it. Instead, she’s created the appearance that she has something to hide, or at least that there’s something she wants to hide to spare herself additional embarrassment.
The Journal has already shown us part of Salazar’s resignation letter. Herrera should immediately show us the rest.