Heath Haussamen
The Sunshine Portal was intended to be a venue for making already-public information more accessible. If there’s one fix lawmakers and the governor need to implement, clarifying that nonpartisan and narrow mission is it.
The New Mexico Sunshine Portal should be a venue for making already-public information more accessible. Nothing more, nothing less.
That narrow mission is what led at its genesis to bipartisan support, and keeping the mission narrowly focused is necessary for the Sunshine Portal to survive in these hyper-partisan times.
All the amendments to the Sunshine Portal being discussed in this session don’t address that issue. If there’s one fix lawmakers and the governor need to implement, clarifying that narrow mission is it.
A battle over authority
Currently, the Legislature can decide to add information to the portal. So can the governor, because the law that created the portal allows it. So Gov. Susana Martinez added all employees’ names to the Sunshine Portal earlier this year without first asking the Legislature.
The problem? There are some legislators who don’t like having the names of “rank-and-file” employees’ names online for the public to easily find. House Majority Leader Ken Martinez said as much during a committee hearing the other day, calling it voyeurism and an attack on public employees to want to see the names.
With that as the backdrop, the House Judiciary Committee on Monday killed a proposed amendment to the Sunshine Portal I’ve already opposed that would have required disclosure of the names, salaries and titles of all employees of businesses that contract with the state.
Kudos to them for killing that amendment; and, as I wrote in that previous column, I hope lawmakers consider legislation next year that will increase contractor transparency.
But the House Judiciary Committee added another amendment that’s problematic. It would strip the executive branch of the authority to add already-public information to the Sunshine Portal, instead leaving it to the Legislature to decide whether that’s OK.
So a venue for disseminating public information that’s designed to be accessible, nimble and as up-to-date as possible could only be changed once a year.
Rep. Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe and the sponsor of the amendment, said during Monday’s hearing that the issue isn’t transparency, but is instead a question of authority. The Legislature created the portal and should decide what information gets added to it.
As an example of why lawmakers need to take control, Egolf said, home addresses of employees shouldn’t be online but he worries that some governor might put them there. He essentially said the Legislature needs to consider who would be accessing such information and why before deciding to put it online.
The sentiment may be well-intentioned, but it’s ultimately wrong. Public information is public information regardless of who wants it and why. Government agencies aren’t allowed to ask people requesting public information why they want it. Similarly, the Legislature shouldn’t ask why someone wants information before deciding whether to give him or her easier access to it.
One of the biggest victories of the last few years
The fact that the Sunshine Portal has generated so much discussion about what information should be online points to how cumbersome the process of filing a public records request can be. Many records are maintained in one location that most people in the state live far from, and they aren’t digitized. The process takes time. It costs money. And if a government agency doesn’t want to give you records, it can usually find a way to stonewall you.
For that reason, many lawmakers have apparently not felt threatened by the potential dissemination of information that state law makes public, such as the names of rank-and-file employees, until the Sunshine Portal made that information available to the public in a practical way.
That’s also why convincing lawmakers and the governor to create the Sunshine Portal was one of the biggest victories of the last few years (actually, then-Lt. Gov. Diane Denish signed it into law). Between the Sunshine Portal and webcasting, in the span of a couple of years state government took a huge leap into a new era of transparency and accessibility.
In fact, it may be the largest leap forward in the history of the state.
Public information should be online
Lawmakers need to understand that this is the 21st Century. Information the law makes public should be online. In other words, there shouldn’t be debate about what should and should not be on the Sunshine Portal. The legislation that creates the portal should be amended to clarify that all public information should be online, and that should be the end of it.
Implementing a policy of putting all public information online would be quite a process. So lawmakers could set up an independent commission, or require some sort of online voting or crowdsourcing, to decide the order in which to tackle various projects related to putting public information online.
That way, there would be no question about whether the decision is in the hands of the Legislature or governor. There would be no partisan battle. There would simply be a continual process toward greater accessibility.
If lawmakers want to debate whether rank-and-file employees’ names or home addresses or other currently-public information should remain public, fine. But that should be a discussion about amending other laws, such as the Inspection of Public Records Act, not the Sunshine Portal law.
I’m not surprised that a new level of accessibility has created a new discussion about what information should be public. And I welcome that discussion. There’s already agreement that names of undercover law enforcement officers and employees who have temporary restraining orders against someone should be withheld for safety reasons. Let’s get those exemptions into IPRA.
But for the Sunshine Portal to work, it needs nonpartisan support, which is why it needs to be narrowly focused on the nonpartisan mission of accessibility. Debates about what information is on the Sunshine Portal and who should decide what’s on the Sunshine Portal threaten its integrity and possibly even its existence.
In the 21st Century, public information should be accessible online. If you’re queasy about putting information online that the law currently makes public, have the discussion about whether that information should be public. But don’t poison the Sunshine Portal by using it as the venue for that debate.