Lt. Gov. Diane Denish (Photo by Heath Haussamen
Lt. Gov. Diane Denish’s government Web site used to contain news releases that had been sent out by her office during her tenure, but the releases were deleted from the Web site earlier this month and are no longer available on the Internet.
In fact, if you click on Denish news release links that Google has archived based on where the releases used to be located, you now get error messages.
Denish’s chief of staff, Joshua Rosen, wrote in an e-mail that the news releases were removed from the Web site on July 3 because they were “old news” and “archived.” He said it’s the first time during his tenure – which began in December 2007 – that news releases have been removed from the Web site, but he didn’t know if it had been done before that. Denish has been lieutenant governor since 2003.
Rosen said there was no political reason for removing the news releases.
“…just web site maintenance,” Rosen wrote.
The state GOP has another idea about why the news releases were removed. From GOP spokeswoman Janel Causey:
“Old news, meaning we don’t want the public to know where she stood during the last seven years? Old news, meaning we don’t want our words to come back and haunt us? Old news, meaning our past words and positions can’t stand up to scrutiny?”
Denish has touted work on transparency and accessibility
Denish is, of course, the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor. And she has repeatedly touted on the campaign trail the fact that she pushed for and then signed into law earlier this year a bill that will create a publicly accessible, online database of financial and other information from government agencies in New Mexico.
Here’s what Denish said the day she signed the Sunshine Portal into law:
“By signing this bill we are not just creating a Web site; we are giving the public – the people of New Mexico – information they should have had all along. In this day and age – with technology at our fingertips – there is no excuse. The time has come for complete transparency in government. When the Sunshine Portal goes live next year, the public will finally have the ability to scrutinize the state’s checkbook in an easy-to-navigate, online format.”
The news releases haven’t been destroyed and are still available in the lieutenant governor’s office. Rosen offered, if I was looking for a specific release, to find it and send it to me. But that’s a more cumbersome process than a Web search, especially for a member of the public, so the news releases are less accessible than they were before.
Gov. Bill Richardson’s Web site contains archives of news releases his office has sent out since he took office in 2003. So does Land Commissioner Pat Lyons’ Web site. The attorney general’s Web site has archived news releases going back to 1999 – through the tenures of the current and previous attorneys general.
The secretary of state’s web site doesn’t include news release archives. The state auditor rarely sends out news releases, but a handful are located at this link on the auditor’s Web site. I can’t recall the state treasurer’s office ever sending me a news release – and there are none archived on its Web site.