{"id":15857,"date":"2010-04-14T08:09:41","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T14:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=15857"},"modified":"2010-04-14T21:20:41","modified_gmt":"2010-04-15T03:20:41","slug":"sunshine-group-shares-weh%e2%80%99s-concern-about-redacted-docs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/04\/sunshine-group-shares-weh%e2%80%99s-concern-about-redacted-docs\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunshine group shares Weh\u2019s concern about redacted docs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Allen Weh<\/p><\/div>\n

Republican gubernatorial candidate has sued to try to stop agencies from redacting documents<\/h4>\n

The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government<\/a> shares Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh\u2019s<\/a> concern that a state agency is going overboard in redacting public records before providing copies to Weh.<\/p>\n

Weh recently filed a lawsuit related to his longstanding request to obtain public records from the office of Lt. Gov. Diane Denish<\/a>, the Democratic Party\u2019s candidate for governor. Some of those records were in the possession of the state Department of Finance and Administration<\/a> (DFA), and Weh\u2019s lawsuit asks a district judge to issue a restraining order prohibiting any altering or redacting of records by DFA or Denish\u2019s office before they are provided to the Weh campaign.<\/p>\n

Sarah Welsh, executive director of the Foundation for Open Government (FOG), says the redactions that have been made by DFA \u201ccertainly raise questions for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The finance department has redacted information from a number of documents before providing them to Weh. According to a March 8 letter<\/a> to Weh from Nicole Gillespie, DFA\u2019s records custodian, \u201cDFA is only redacting information that is either not a \u2018public record\u2019 under the Inspection of Public Records Act<\/a>\u2026 or information that was not requested by Mr. Weh.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latter is not a valid reason to redact information from public records before providing them for inspection, Welsh said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no reason to redact that information,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

FOG has made its own request for some of the records DFA provided to Weh with redactions to see how DFA responds. Welsh said it appears, based on the sort of hand-written notations that are often contained on government financial records, that many of the redactions could be of handwritten notes that simply state things like \u201cOK to pay\u201d on invoices.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just curious about what they redacted and why they think that\u2019s exempt,\u201d Welsh said of FOG\u2019s request for the records.<\/p>\n

DFA says it has \u2018worked diligently\u2019 to provide docs<\/h3>\n

DFA hasn\u2019t yet provided all documents responsive to Weh\u2019s request, which was first filed in Novebmer with Denish\u2019s office. Since deeming the massive request \u201coverly burdensome,\u201d Denish\u2019s office has provided some, but not all of the records in its possession.<\/p>\n

DFA got a late start in responding to Weh\u2019s request because Denish\u2019s office initially failed to forward the request to DFA, which it was required by law to do. Denish\u2019s office corrected that violation and forwarded the request in February<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since then, Gillespie wrote in an e-mail to NMPolitics.net, \u201cDFA has worked diligently to make hundreds of documents available for inspection in compliance with IPRA guidelines, and will continue working until the request has been fully satisfied.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Weh campaign lost patience with a process that had taken more than four months by the time Weh filed his lawsuit on March 23. Among the spending revealed so far by the documents Denish and DFA have provided to Weh is that the lieutenant governor spent some federal stimulus money on political news releases<\/a>. Denish\u2019s campaign has since reimbursed her office for those costs.<\/p>\n

Given that type of spending, Weh Campaign Manager Whitney Cheshire said, \u201cwe believe it is very likely that the notes they are hiding and destroying are the honest comments of non-partisan state workers who are outraged at the proposed expenditures by the Denish office. Why else would they redact them?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe there is nothing in state law that allows the lieutenant governor to hide this public information, or the redaction of information in these documents, and therefore believe the lieutenant governor and the Department of Finance and Administration are in violation of the law,\u201d said Cheshire (who is also a former columnist for NMPolitics.net).<\/p>\n

Asked if Denish\u2019s office has also redacted information from documents it\u2019s provided to the Weh campaign, Cheshire said, \u201cThere are no visible black-out marks on the documents given to us by Denish\u2019s office, but there is no way of knowing if Wite-Out redactions occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018How difficult is it to locate receipts?\u2019<\/h3>\n

The Weh campaign has shown no evidence to back up its claim that Denish\u2019s office or DFA may have altered the original public records \u2013 rather than making redactions on copies provided to the Weh campaign. But Welsh said that would be \u201ca huge issue\u201d if they do have evidence.<\/p>\n

As for the records Denish\u2019s office hasn\u2019t yet provided to Weh, Denish\u2019s Record Custodian Carmela Casados sent a letter<\/a> to Weh on Feb. 23 \u2013 more than 90 days after Weh\u2019s Nov. 11 request \u2013 asking for clarification on what Weh meant when he requested \u201call contracts entered into between the Lt. Governor\u2019s office and any vendor of any nature that provided her office either a service or product between January 2003 and present\u201d plus other documents including supporting invoices, purchases orders and correspondence.<\/p>\n

The letter asked whether Weh wanted all such records, including contracts and vendor agreements related to \u201cpaper clips, staplers and Xerox machine leases\u201d or wanted to narrow its request.<\/p>\n

Weh never responded. Cheshire said the Feb. 23 letter \u201cwas an effort to fuzz up their several violations of the public records law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Denish people were very late to identify the need for additional time,\u201d she said. \u201cHow difficult is it to locate receipts? The law requires much more timely responses, and the letter is an attempt to dig out of that hole and pretend they didn\u2019t understand the request.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Diane Denish<\/p><\/div>\n

Denish calls lawsuit \u2018frivolous\u2019<\/h3>\n

Weh filed his lawsuit on March 23, the same day that Denish unveiled a plan to cut state government spending<\/a>. Her campaign referenced that in response to Weh\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s ironic that on a day when Diane Denish announced a plan to save\u00a0taxpayers $450 million, Alan Weh announced a frivolous lawsuit and political stunt that\u00a0will likely cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars,\u201d Denish campaign spokesman Chris Cervini said.<\/p>\n

That was followed the next day by an e-mail from Denish Campaign Chair Ted Martinez to supporters calling Weh\u2019s lawsuit \u201cone of the most shameful political stunts in recent memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

The case, which was filed in district court in Albuquerque, has not yet been scheduled for a hearing because several judges have recused themselves or been excused from hearing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government shares Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh\u2019s concern that a state agency is going overboard in redacting public records before providing copies to Weh.<\/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-15857","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\/15857","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=15857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}