Heath Haussamen
Take that, Bill Richardson! The Albuquerque Journal has filed a lawsuit seeking to force the governor to end his flagrant disregard of the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act and release information about the 59 exempt employees he claims were laid off in January.
In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, the Journal alleged that the governor’s office has willfully failed to produce records it possesses and forward the Journal’s request for information about the firings to other agencies that possess related records as required by law.
You can read the lawsuit here.
The response from the governor’s office? As reported in the Journal on Friday, Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said the lawsuit “appears to be nothing more than a vendetta” against the governor.
Right. Because the Albuquerque Journal hates the governor so much that it is willing to spend its money to kick him on his way out the door.
The reality
The reality is this: The attorney general has already told the governor he found it “implausible” that his office has no records about the layoffs and “unlikely” that he doesn’t know what other agencies possess such records.
But that’s exactly what the governor’s office has claimed. When I and other journalists requested all records the governor’s office possessed related to the layoffs earlier this year, all we were given were e-mails from journalists requesting copies of the records.
Notably, after the AG told the governor’s office to comply with the law, the governor’s office forwarded the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government’s request for the records to various state agencies, and the sunshine group has slowly been compiling a list of employees who were laid off.
But the governor’s office has continued to flaunt the law by failing to forward the requests from me, the Journal and other news outlets, and to provide any documents it possesses to FOG or anyone else. The Journal’s lawsuit is an attempt to force the governor to comply with the law, not a vendetta.
Checks and balances thwarted
There’s a deeper issue here than simply knowing the names of those who were laid off, and it’s detailed in the Journal’s lawsuit:
“By means of these (Inspection of Public Records Act) violations, the (governor’s office) has successfully thwarted the Plaintiff’s efforts to verify the claimed job eliminations or the claimed taxpayer savings, and it has made it impossible to conduct timely reporting on the impact that the announced terminations will have on the operation of government and the ability of state agencies to provide governmental services. The IPRA violations have also thwarted media inquiries concerning (1) the potential that some of the 59 ‘terminated’ employees were in fact not terminated because they subsequently became employed at other agencies or in other positions and (2) whether or not the (governor’s office) may have engaged in the creation of unnecessary patronage jobs in the early years of its administration.”
Notably, many lawmakers expressed frustration earlier this year that they were charged with crafting a state budget without being allowed access to detailed information about the layoffs.
In keeping that information secret for months, the governor’s office successfully thwarted any attempts by the Legislature or media to be a check on its power.
Sending a message
The reason this is so important is highlighted by FOG’s executive director, Sarah Welsh, in a blog posting on the sunshine group’s Web site:
“Regular citizens often can’t get any response at all from state agencies, let alone timely access to records. So imagine the trickle-down effect if the state’s most powerful office, the Office of the Governor, is allowed to openly flout our freedom-of-information law. For six months and counting, the Governor’s Office has been doing exactly that. They’re sending a strong message to the people of New Mexico that our right to know is meaningless and empty. It may be on the lawbooks, but we’ll have to go to court to enforce it. It’s a good thing that the Journal is willing to go there for us.”
Agreed. A court needs to make the governor’s office pay to deter such behavior in the future.
Thanks to the Journal for standing up to the governor. I hope the court awards the Journal attorney fees and the maximum $100-a-day in damages (which adds up to quite a bit over the six months the governor’s office has been in violation of the law).
That would send a message that refusing to allow public scrutiny of the public’s business won’t be tolerated in New Mexico.