{"id":18418,"date":"2010-06-16T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2010-06-16T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=18418"},"modified":"2010-06-16T23:13:05","modified_gmt":"2010-06-17T05:13:05","slug":"denish-releases-docs-related-to-her-schedule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/06\/denish-releases-docs-related-to-her-schedule\/","title":{"rendered":"Denish releases docs related to her schedule"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Lt. Gov. Diane Denish (Photo by Heath Haussamen)<\/p><\/div>\n

Lt. Gov.\u00a0Diane Denish<\/a> has released 60 pages of documents related to her schedule for a 30-day period.<\/p>\n

The release of documents comes after Denish\u2019s office responded to a request for a copy of her schedule for that 30-day period by saying it doesn\u2019t maintain a schedule or calendar<\/a> for Denish. The office also refused to say who \u2013 if anyone \u2013 does keep such a document.<\/p>\n

You can get a good sense of the public events in which Denish took part from the documents her office released, which you can view by clicking here<\/a>. Most are invitations to public events that have a \u201cYes\u201d or \u201cNo\u201d handwritten on them to indicate whether Denish attended the event.<\/p>\n

For example, Denish accepted an invitation to speak at the New Mexico Rural Water Association\u2019s annual conference in early April in Albuquerque. But she did not attend a March 29 meeting of the New Mexico Chapter of the Commercial Real Estate Development Association at which Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry presented his economic development plan for the city.<\/p>\n

But the documents Denish\u2019s office released tell us nothing about time Denish spent in her official capacity meeting with constituents or doing things other than appearing at public events.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As was the case when the Third Judicial District Attorney\u2019s Office\u00a0in Las Cruces announced that it is\u00a0not maintaining a calendar or schedule<\/a> for District Attorney\u00a0Susana Martinez<\/a>, the question is whether Denish or someone else outside her government office is maintaining a calendar of her appointments or whether no one is keeping a schedule of her work-related appointments.<\/p>\n

Denish and Martinez are both running for governor and have campaign staffs. Neither is saying who, if anyone, maintains calendars related to their public jobs.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve already reported, the\u00a0Attorney General\u2019s Office<\/a> and the head of the\u00a0New Mexico Foundation for Open Government<\/a> (FOG) disagree about whether, should such hypothetical calendars or schedules exist somewhere other than in public officials\u2019 government offices, they are public records.<\/p>\n

Phil Sisneros, the AG\u2019s spokesman, says the AG believes \u201cpersonal calendars and schedules are more like notes a public employee keeps for his or her own use, even if they include business appointments,\u201d and are not public records.<\/p>\n

But Sarah Welsh, FOG\u2019s executive director, says the public records act \u201capplies to all documents regardless of physical form or characteristics that are used, created, etc. by any public body and relate to public business.\u201d She says if public officials are keeping personal calendars and those are the primary way they keep track of appointments related to their public jobs, \u201cthat\u2019s clearly a public record.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lt. Gov. Diane Denish has released 60 pages of documents related to her schedule. The records tell us about the public events in which Denish took part but nothing about time Denish spent in her official capacity meeting with constituents or doing things other than appearing at public events.<\/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-18418","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\/18418","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=18418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}