{"id":12458,"date":"2010-02-03T00:00:22","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T07:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=12458"},"modified":"2010-02-03T22:09:43","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T05:09:43","slug":"denish-corrects-public-records-violation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/02\/denish-corrects-public-records-violation\/","title":{"rendered":"Denish corrects public records violation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Lt. Gov. Diane Denish (Photo by Heath Haussamen)<\/p><\/div>\n

Lieutenant governor initially failed to forward records requests from GOP gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh to Department of Finance and Administration<\/h4>\n

The office of Lt. Gov. Diane Denish<\/a> says it inadvertently violated the state\u2019s Inspection of Public Records Act<\/a> late last year when it failed to forward two requests from Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh<\/a> to another agency that maintained some of the records that were sought.<\/p>\n

Last week, after a legal threat from Weh, Denish\u2019s office corrected those violations by forwarding both of Weh\u2019s November records requests to the Department of Finance and Administration, as required by law, and notifying Weh that it had done that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have recently learned that this office should have been aware that another state agency, the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA), had additional responsive documents at the time of our earlier response to you and should have referred your request to the custodian at DFA at the time,\u201d Denish\u2019s chief of staff, Joshua Rosen, wrote in a Friday letter<\/a> to Weh. \u201cWe inadvertently failed to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public records act requires that state agencies forward such requests to other agencies that possess documents sought by those requests. That\u2019s designed to be helpful to citizens, because agency records custodians are more familiar with who maintains records, said Sarah Welsh, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Welsh said Denish\u2019s action to correct the violation appears to be sufficient.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little frustrating for us, but the courts say, generally, that if you get the documents, no harm, no foul,\u201d Welsh said.<\/p>\n

She added that the provision in the public records act that requires agencies to forward requests is \u201coverlooked\u201d frequently. Gov. Bill Richardson\u2019s office recently refused to forward<\/a> requests for information about the 59 exempt employees his office laid off in January to the agencies that maintain such records.<\/p>\n

Weh\u2019s requests<\/h3>\n

Weh, who is battling four other Republicans for the right to take on Denish, the Democrats\u2019 candidate for governor, in the general election, filed two records requests in November. The first sought records related to about $225,000 in federal stimulus funds the governor gave to Denish\u2019s office in 2003. Denish\u2019s office provided Weh with records detailing how almost $87,000 of that was spent. Rosen told the Independent last week that just under $11,000 of the $225,000 reverted because it was unspent.<\/p>\n

That left around $127,000 unaccounted for after Denish\u2019s office initially responded to Weh\u2019s request in November.<\/p>\n

Weh\u2019s second request sought records of all contracts the lieutenant governor\u2019s office entered into that provided her office \u201ca service or product\u201d since Denish took office at the beginning of 2003. Denish\u2019s office responded on Dec. 1 that the request was \u201coverly burdensome\u201d and said it would take 90 days to fully respond. The request is pending.<\/p>\n

Other than failing to forward both requests to DFA, Welsh said it appears that Denish\u2019s office followed the law in responding \u2013 assuming it turns out that Denish\u2019s office does possess a great deal of records responsive to Weh\u2019s second request that justify the \u201coverly burdensome\u201d claim.<\/p>\n

In fact, Welsh said, many agencies don\u2019t give a specific timeline for when they\u2019ll respond to requests that are overly burdensome, though providing a timeline is recommended by the attorney general.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like to see them giving a specific timeline because then a person has an expectation and can hold them to that,\u201d Welsh said. \u201cThat\u2019s much better than what we usually see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weh still not satisfied<\/h3>\n

Weh, however, isn\u2019t satisfied with the way Denish has dealt with the situation. He sent a letter to her office on Jan. 20 threatening legal action over the \u201coverly burdensome\u201d response to his second request and the fact that Denish didn\u2019t account for all federal stimulus spending in response to his first request.<\/p>\n

And after receiving Rosen\u2019s letter admitting to and correcting the violation, Weh spokesman Christopher Sanchez said Denish has chosen \u201cto play games with the law\u201d as it relates to these records requests \u201cinstead of setting an example of transparency and coming clean on all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanchez pointed to some controversies over the way Denish spent the federal stimulus money, including a portion that was spent on political news releases<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cVoters will eventually learn about her spending priorities, whether she likes it or not,\u201d Sanchez said. \u201cLt. Gov. Diane Denish may choose to drag her feet on a simple records request, but since the custodian at the DFA is not running for governor this year, we are hopeful that the department will comply with the request in a more timely manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosen wrote in his Friday letter to Weh that his office has already provided all documents in its possession related to the stimulus spending, and is on track to respond with Weh\u2019s second request for all contracts within 90 days of Dec. 1 as promised.<\/p>\n

In an e-mail, Rosen said the initial failure to forward the requests to DFA was \u201can inadvertent oversight, and we did our best to correct it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weh isn\u2019t the only one in this political season to be digging for information using records requests. The Democratic Party of New Mexico has a request pending with the office of Do\u00f1a Ana County District Attorney Susana Martinez<\/a>, another Republican candidate for governor.<\/p>\n

A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that providing a timeline for response to requests deemed overly burdensome is required.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The office of Lt. Gov. Diane Denish says it inadvertently violated the state\u2019s Inspection of Public Records Act late last year when it failed to forward two requests from Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh to another agency that maintained some of the records that were sought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[108,111,107],"class_list":["post-12458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-2010-election","tag-open-government","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}