Susana Martinez
Democratic Party says it’s still waiting for a few dozen additional pages of documents
The Third Judicial District Attorney’s Office believes it resolved an outstanding records request from the Democratic Party of New Mexico at the end of March when it provided, free of charge, thousands of pages of records the party sought.
The Democratic Party, on the other hand, says it’s still waiting for a few dozen pages of records.
Specifically, the party says it’s waiting for copies of the oaths of office taken by every attorney the DA’s office in Las Cruces has employed since Susana Martinez, now a Republican candidate for governor, became district attorney in 1997.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Susan Riedel, the office’s records custodian, sent a letter to the party at the end of March, along with a CD containing thousands of pages of records a party representative had previously inspected and flagged for copying. The letter stated that the CD contained “all requested documents.”
“I believe this CD contained all the documents they were going to pursue,” Riedel said in an interview. Once she sent the CD, she considered the matter closed.
The Democratic Party doesn’t think so. Spokesman James Hallinan said it’s still waiting for Riedel to make the oaths of office available.
“We have heard nothing further form Martinez’s office regarding when, if ever, we will receive the rest of the responsive records,” Hallinan said in an interview. “Given her silence, we have no reason to believe Martinez intends on disclosing these public documents.”
More on the oaths of office
The oaths of office were part of the party’s two massive records requests (click here and here) filed in early January. In her Jan. 11 reply, Riedel wrote that the oaths “are maintained in individual files related to the employees. There have probably been seventy five (75) attorneys working for this office since 1997. A charge of $1.00 per page paid in advance will be assessed for each of these documents.”
“Therefore, we were under the impression that these documents were at the very least being compiled,” Hallinan said.
He claims the two times the party’s representative traveled to Las Cruces to view records in the DA’s office, Riedel said the oaths were in personnel files and would be “difficult to compile.”
Riedel, on the other hand, said the party’s request shifted during inspection of the records to primarily inspecting financial documents, and she focused on providing those. She said she wasn’t aware that the party still wants to inspect anything else.
“They haven’t told me that something was missing from the documents we disclosed,” Riedel said.
The history
In March, the Democratic Party accused Martinez of “hiding” public records because, even though it had been allowed to inspect most of the tens of thousands of pages it requested, it had not yet been provided copies.
In addition, the party was upset that Riedel didn’t allow its representative to bring a digital camera or scanner to the district attorney’s office to make his own copies. The Attorney General’s Office said state law allows requesters of public records to do that.
It was after the party again asked, based on the AG’s assertion, to bring its own scanner or camera to copy records that Martinez’s office instead decided to digitize the records and provide copies to the party free of charge.
The Democratic Party is doing opposition research on Martinez, one of five Republicans seeking the right to take on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Diane Denish in November.