{"id":16289,"date":"2010-04-21T06:55:59","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T12:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=16289"},"modified":"2010-04-21T11:59:38","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T17:59:38","slug":"da-provides-thousands-of-pages-of-records-to-dems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/04\/da-provides-thousands-of-pages-of-records-to-dems\/","title":{"rendered":"DA provides thousands of pages of records to Dems"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Susana<\/a>

Susana Martinez<\/p><\/div>\n

Democratic Party says it\u2019s still waiting for a few dozen additional pages of documents<\/h4>\n

The Third Judicial District Attorney\u2019s Office<\/a> believes it resolved an outstanding records request from the Democratic Party of New Mexico<\/a> at the end of March when it provided, free of charge, thousands of pages of records the party sought.<\/p>\n

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, says it\u2019s still waiting for a few dozen pages of records.<\/p>\n

Specifically, the party says it\u2019s waiting for copies of the oaths of office taken by every attorney the DA\u2019s office in Las Cruces has employed since Susana Martinez<\/a>, now a Republican candidate for governor, became district attorney in 1997.<\/p>\n

Chief Deputy District Attorney Susan Riedel, the office\u2019s records custodian, sent a letter to the party at the end of March, along with a CD containing thousands of pages of records a party representative had previously inspected and flagged for copying. The letter stated that the CD contained \u201call requested documents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe this CD contained all the documents they were going to pursue,\u201d Riedel said in an interview. Once she sent the CD, she considered the matter closed.<\/p>\n

The Democratic Party doesn\u2019t think so. Spokesman James Hallinan said it\u2019s still waiting for Riedel to make the oaths of office available.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have heard nothing further form Martinez\u2019s office regarding when, if ever, we will receive the rest of the responsive records,\u201d Hallinan said in an interview. \u201cGiven her silence, we have no reason to believe Martinez intends on disclosing these public documents.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on the oaths of office<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

The oaths of office were part of the party\u2019s two massive records requests (click\u00a0here<\/a> and\u00a0here<\/a>) filed in early January. In her Jan. 11 reply<\/a>, Riedel wrote that the oaths \u201care maintained in individual files related to the employees. There have probably been seventy five (75) attorneys working for this office since 1997. A charge of $1.00 per page paid in advance will be assessed for each of these documents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTherefore, we were under the impression that these documents were at the very least being compiled,\u201d Hallinan said.<\/p>\n

He claims the two times the party\u2019s representative traveled to Las Cruces to view records in the DA\u2019s office, Riedel said the oaths were in personnel files and would be \u201cdifficult to compile.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riedel, on the other hand, said the party\u2019s request shifted during inspection of the records to primarily inspecting financial documents, and she focused on providing those. She said she wasn\u2019t aware that the party still wants to inspect anything else.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey haven\u2019t told me that something was missing from the documents we disclosed,\u201d Riedel said.<\/p>\n

The history<\/h3>\n

In March, the Democratic Party accused Martinez of \u201chiding\u201d public records<\/a> because, even though it had been allowed to inspect most of the tens of thousands of pages it requested, it had not yet been provided copies.<\/p>\n

In addition, the party was upset that Riedel didn\u2019t allow its representative to bring a digital camera or scanner to the district attorney\u2019s office to make his own copies. The Attorney General\u2019s Office said state law allows requesters of public records to do that.<\/p>\n

It was after the party again asked, based on the AG\u2019s assertion, to bring its own scanner or camera to copy records that Martinez\u2019s office instead decided to digitize the records and provide copies to the party free of charge.<\/p>\n

The Democratic Party is doing opposition research on Martinez, one of five Republicans seeking the right to take on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Diane Denish<\/a> in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

District Attorney Susana Martinez\u2019s office has turned over, free of charge, thousands of pages of public records to the state Democratic Party, but the party says it\u2019s still waiting for a few dozen pages of documents.<\/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-16289","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\/16289","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=16289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}