{"id":14149,"date":"2010-03-04T16:29:43","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T23:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=14149"},"modified":"2010-03-11T18:17:42","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T01:17:42","slug":"sos-refuses-to-release-salazar%e2%80%99s-resignation-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/03\/sos-refuses-to-release-salazar%e2%80%99s-resignation-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"SOS refuses to release Salazar\u2019s resignation letter"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Secretary of State Mary Herrera<\/p><\/div>\n

Foundation for Open Government says the letter is public and should be released<\/h4>\n

The Secretary of State\u2019s Office<\/a> is refusing to release the scathing letter A.J. Salazar provided when he resigned Friday from his job as elections director, but the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government<\/a> says the document is a public record that should be released.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe consider that to be a personnel issue, and it does not fall under (the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act<\/a>), so we are not going to be providing that,\u201d Deputy Secretary of State Don Francisco Trujillo<\/a> said this afternoon.<\/p>\n

This reporter has received employee resignation letters from government agencies in the past in response to records requests. Asked if he was certain that Salazar\u2019s letter was exempt from the public records act, Trujillo said he was \u201cfairly certain that\u2019s right\u201d but would check with the office\u2019s legal counsel and, if he learns otherwise, will \u201cfollow through accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarah Welsh, executive director of the open government foundation, said the letter is a public record.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe personnel matters exception in IPRA only applies to matters of opinion and letters of reference, and this is neither,\u201d Welsh said. \u201cAnything that documents factual information or personnel action is a public document.\u201d<\/p>\n

Personnel documents that are exempt from release under the public records act are, according to relevant portions in the act, \u201cletters of reference concerning employment, licensing or permits,\u201d and \u201cletters or memorandums which are matters of opinion in personnel files or students\u2019 cumulative files.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cmatters of opinion\u201d exemption, Welsh said, applies to \u201cthings that a supervisor says in particular about an employee, employee\u2019s performance, whether they should be promoted or not, things that could be damaging to the employee.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s not meant to protect the government agency from embarrassment, which is what this seems to be,\u201d Welsh said.<\/p>\n

Portions of letter already made public<\/h3>\n

Portions of Salazar\u2019s letter were already revealed publicly today when the Albuquerque Journal, which obtained a copy of the letter, reported on its contents<\/a>. The Journal did not release a copy of the entire letter or make clear how it obtained it.<\/p>\n

In the letter, Salazar accused Secretary of State Mary Herrera<\/a> of violating the\u00a0Governmental Conduct Act<\/a> and election laws and said he has turned over his allegations to the attorney general, according to the Journal.<\/p>\n

Salazar accused Herrera of soliciting money from firms that do business with the Secretary of State\u2019s Office and ordering exempt employees to gather petition signatures for her re-election campaign. Salazar was quoted by the Journal as saying he \u201chas never worked in such a crooked organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herrera was quoted as saying she has \u201cdone nothing wrong\u201d and Salazar\u2019s \u201cunfounded allegations\u201d are based on \u201ctwisted information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salazar has not returned a call seeking comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Secretary of State\u2019s Office is refusing to release the scathing letter A.J. Salazar provided when he resigned Friday from his job as elections director, but the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government says the document is a public record that should be released.<\/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":[108,169,111,107],"class_list":["post-14149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-2010-election","tag-mary-herrera","tag-open-government","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14149"}],"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=14149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}