{"id":14977,"date":"2010-03-24T08:28:11","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T14:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=14977"},"modified":"2010-03-24T14:16:47","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T20:16:47","slug":"herrera%e2%80%99s-office-is-playing-fast-and-loose-with-public-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/03\/herrera%e2%80%99s-office-is-playing-fast-and-loose-with-public-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Herrera\u2019s office is playing fast and loose with public records"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

The question is why: Is the secretary of state\u2019s skirting of the law a sign of incompetence or something more nefarious?<\/h4>\n

Now we learn that Secretary of State Mary Herrera\u2019s<\/a> office thinks it has a right to conceal from the public an e-mail from a county official requesting additional voter registration forms and another from a nonprofit inquiring about a possible endorsement of a piece of legislation.<\/p>\n

This appears to be either a flagrant disregard for the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act<\/a> or a sign of incompetence. Such e-mails are, without question, public records.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m talking about the more than 400 pages of e-mails the Secretary of State\u2019s Office released last week that were full of redactions. KOB-TV<\/a> in Albuquerque and The Santa Fe New Mexican<\/a> reported Tuesday that at least some of the information that was redacted appears to be, in the words of The New Mexican, \u201cinnocuous.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the e-mails that was almost entirely redacted before being provided to the news outlets turned out to be an e-mail exchange in which the Santa Fe County elections director requested more Spanish-language voter registration forms from Herrera\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Another e-mail exchange mentioned by the newspaper involved a discussion about a bill introduced in the regular legislative session earlier this year. In the e-mail exchange, the director of Think New Mexico informed then-Elections Director A.J. Salazar that a committee had approved the bill. He also asked about a possible endorsement of the legislation by Herrera.<\/p>\n

Also blacked out, according to The New Mexican, was an e-mail a Think New Mexico staffer sent later in the day to Salazar. The e-mail simply stated that the bill in question was attached.<\/p>\n

None of that information is exempt from release under the public records act, which provides very few reasons that information can be redacted from government documents before they\u2019re released to the public. Those reasons include \u201cmatters of opinion\u201d in personnel files, but there is no exemption, for example, for a county\u2019s request for more voter registration forms.<\/p>\n

Put simply: It appears to me that the redactions highlighted by The New Mexican and KOB violate the public records act.<\/p>\n

Confusion or smoke and mirrors?<\/h3>\n

KOB\u2019s Gadi Schwartz reported that the Secretary of State\u2019s Office said it redacted what the Attorney General\u2019s Office specifically told it to black out. But the AG\u2019s Office told Schwartz that\u2019s \u201cabsolutely untrue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New Mexican\u2019s Steve Terrell reported that Deputy Secretary of State Francisco Trujillo told him the redactions were made on advice from state risk management attorneys.<\/p>\n

\u201cAsked Monday who made the decision regarding each of the e-mails and what exception to the Inspection of Public Records Act he was citing, Trujillo said, \u2018I\u2019ll work on that request,\u2019\u201d Terrell wrote.<\/p>\n

Is this confusion or smoke and mirrors? It seems to me there\u2019s either a lack of competence and understanding of very simple truths about the public records act, or there\u2019s something more nefarious going on.<\/p>\n

Consider the other public-information controversy Herrera\u2019s office has been in recently:<\/p>\n

Trujillo initially denied<\/a> requests from me and others for a copy Salazar\u2019s resignation letter \u2013 a letter that was damaging to Herrera because it made a number of allegations<\/a> of violations of state law and unethical behavior.<\/p>\n

After the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government said the letter was a public record \u2013 and the Rio Grande Sun released an un-redacted version of it<\/a> \u2013 the office shifted gears and released a redacted version<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope this is incompetence<\/h3>\n

The bottom line: Herrera\u2019s office violated the public records act when it initially refused to release Salazar\u2019s resignation letter. It apparently violated the public records act again with at least some of the redactions in the most recent release of e-mails.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not unreasonable to suspect, because of the initial refusal to release Salazar\u2019s resignation letter, that Herrera and her office have been making decisions about what information to release based on what\u2019s good for her re-election chances.<\/p>\n

But I fail to see how e-mails about legislation being pushed by Think New Mexico would damage Herrera\u2019s political career. The seeming randomness of some redactions in the latest e-mail release could point to incompetence.<\/p>\n

Making decisions about whether to release public records based on political considerations would be a gross violation of the law and Herrera\u2019s oath of office. Let\u2019s hope this isn\u2019t a matter of putting politics above the law, but is instead a problem of incompetence.<\/p>\n

Haussamen bio<\/a> \u2502 Commentary archives<\/a> \u2502 Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Secretary of State Mary Herrera\u2019s latest public-records controversy \u2013 the one involving redacted e-mails that should not have been redacted \u2013 appears to be either a flagrant disregard for state law or a sign of incompetence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[108,111,107],"class_list":["post-14977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-2010-election","tag-open-government","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14977","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=14977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}