{"id":16927,"date":"2010-05-06T09:23:02","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T15:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=16927"},"modified":"2010-05-06T16:08:53","modified_gmt":"2010-05-06T22:08:53","slug":"dems-still-awaiting-records-from-martinez%e2%80%99s-tenure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/05\/dems-still-awaiting-records-from-martinez%e2%80%99s-tenure\/","title":{"rendered":"Dems still awaiting records from Martinez\u2019s tenure"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

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

Months after filing its request for financial records with District Attorney Susana Martinez\u2019s<\/a> office, the state Democratic Party<\/a> is still working to obtain all documents that exist.<\/p>\n

The stumbling blocks: The office didn\u2019t initially provide everything it has, but it\u2019s working to remedy that. And it didn\u2019t forward the party\u2019s records request to the state finance department \u2013 which a sunshine group says it was required to do.<\/p>\n

In January, the party requested various financial records<\/a> going back to 1997, when Martinez took office. Susan Riedel, the records custodian for the Third Judicial District Attorney\u2019s Office<\/a>, originally provided the Democrats with financial records for the past three years \u2013 saying that\u2019s all the office is required to and does maintain.<\/p>\n

But NMPolitics.net checked with the state records administrator, Sandra Jaramillo, for help navigating the state\u2019s complex Records Retention and Disposition Schedules<\/a>. Jaramillo pointed to a provision that requires Martinez\u2019s office to retain contracts for six years<\/a> after the termination of those contractual agreements.<\/p>\n

Riedel was correct in telling Democrats that they were required to keep all other types of financial records for three years, according to information provided by Jaramillo.<\/p>\n

Riedel told NMPolitics.net that her January letter<\/a> to the Democrats stating that contracts were available for only three years was a mistake. She\u2019s already provided<\/a> the Democrats with three years of those and other financial records for inspection and given them copies of the documents they wanted.<\/p>\n

Now, Riedel said, she\u2019s gathering the additional three years of contract files to make available for inspection.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an ongoing process,\u201d Riedel said.<\/p>\n

A duty to forward requests<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

The other issue is that Riedel didn\u2019t forward the Democrats\u2019 January request to the state Department of Finance and Administration<\/a>. While Martinez\u2019s office only maintains financial records for 3-6 years, DFA keeps some of them as far back as 2000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The party will still be able to obtain those records from DFA \u2013 it filed a request with the agency, which is gathering the records for inspection \u2013 but Sarah Welsh, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government<\/a>, said Riedel had a duty to forward the request so the Democrats didn\u2019t have to do it on their own.<\/p>\n

Welsh pointed to a recent letter<\/a> from the attorney general to the Governor\u2019s Office about the governor\u2019s refusal to provide records<\/a> related to the layoffs of exempt employees or to forward requests to agencies that possess such records.<\/p>\n

The Inspection of Public Records Act<\/a>, the AG\u2019s letter states, \u201cobligates a public body, such as the Governor\u2019s Office, that receives a request for records not in that body\u2019s possession to forward that request to the proper custodian, if known, and notify the requester.\u201d<\/p>\n

That letter also states that if, after \u201creasonable inquiry,\u201d the office is unable to figure out who else has records responsive to a request, it can notify the requester that it doesn\u2019t have the records and explain efforts that were made to find those records.<\/p>\n

Welsh said the burden is on the agency, not the requester, to figure out where a request should go because the government is so big and unwieldy. While the Democrats were able to figure out where to send their request, the average citizen might not be able to do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen someone agrees to be a records custodian they take on the responsibility of figuring out where it needs to go,\u201d Welsh said.<\/p>\n

Riedel disagreed, saying because her office had some records responsive to the request she had no duty to forward it to other agencies under the public records act. Had her office possessed no responsive records she would have been required to forward the request, she said.<\/p>\n

Riedel said that happened recently with a request for her office\u2019s most recent audit. Her office doesn\u2019t have a copy yet, so she forwarded the request to the state auditor.<\/p>\n

In both cases, Welsh said, Riedel was required to make a \u201creasonable effort\u201d to determine if another agency possessed any of the records that were requested but that her office no longer maintains.<\/p>\n

But what does \u201creasonable effort\u201d mean? Making a phone call? Memorizing the records retention schedule? Welsh said the definition of that term is a gray area.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut not doing it at all is not reasonable,\u201d Welsh said.<\/p>\n

Dems expect Martinez to \u2018fully comply with the law\u2019<\/h3>\n

James Hallinan, spokesman for the state Democratic Party, had this to say about the ongoing situation with the office of Martinez, who is a Republican candidate for governor:<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Martinez is campaigning on ethics and running on law enforcement, so the Democratic Party would hope that she would fully comply with the law, such as IPRA, and we expect that to happen going forward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that Hallinan was the records custodian in the office of Lt. Gov. Diane Denish<\/a> \u2013 the Democrats\u2019 candidate for governor \u2013 when Denish\u2019s office failed to forward a request to DFA from one of Martinez\u2019s opponents, Allen Weh<\/a>, earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Once made aware of that, Denish\u2019s office forwarded Weh\u2019s request<\/a> to DFA and said it had inadvertently violated the public records act by initially failing to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Months after filing its request for financial records with District Attorney Susana Martinez\u2019s office, the Democratic Party is still working to obtain all documents that exist. The stumbling blocks: The office didn\u2019t initially provide everything it has, but it\u2019s working to remedy that. And it didn\u2019t forward the request to the state finance department \u2013 which a sunshine group says it was required to do.<\/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-16927","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\/16927","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=16927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}