{"id":18629,"date":"2010-06-21T01:35:22","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T07:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=18629"},"modified":"2010-06-22T07:36:07","modified_gmt":"2010-06-22T13:36:07","slug":"holding-the-governor-accountable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/06\/holding-the-governor-accountable\/","title":{"rendered":"Holding the governor accountable"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

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

Take that, Bill Richardson<\/a>! The Albuquerque Journal<\/a> has filed a lawsuit seeking to force the governor to end his flagrant disregard of the state\u2019s Inspection of Public Records Act and release information about the 59 exempt employees he claims were laid off in January.<\/p>\n

In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, the Journal alleged that the governor\u2019s office has willfully failed to produce records it possesses and forward the Journal\u2019s request for information about the firings to other agencies that possess related records as required by law.<\/p>\n

You can read the lawsuit here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The response from the governor\u2019s office? As reported in the Journal on Friday<\/a>, Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said the lawsuit “appears to be nothing more than a vendetta” against the governor.<\/p>\n

Right. Because the Albuquerque Journal hates the governor so much that it is willing to spend its money to kick him on his way out the door.<\/p>\n

The reality<\/h3>\n

The reality is this: The attorney general has already told the governor<\/a> he found it \u201cimplausible\u201d that his office has no records about the layoffs and \u201cunlikely\u201d that he doesn\u2019t know what other agencies possess such records.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s exactly what the governor\u2019s office has claimed. When I and other journalists requested all records the governor\u2019s office possessed related to the layoffs earlier this year, all we were given were e-mails from journalists requesting copies of the records.<\/p>\n

Notably, after the AG told the governor\u2019s office to comply with the law, the governor\u2019s office forwarded the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government\u2019s request for the records to various state agencies, and the sunshine group has slowly been compiling a list<\/a> of employees who were laid off.<\/p>\n

But the governor\u2019s office has continued to flaunt the law by failing to forward the requests from me, the Journal and other news outlets, and to provide any documents it possesses to FOG or anyone else. The Journal\u2019s lawsuit is an attempt to force the governor to comply with the law, not a vendetta.<\/p>\n

Checks and balances thwarted<\/h3>\n

There\u2019s a deeper issue here than simply knowing the names of those who were laid off, and it\u2019s detailed in the Journal\u2019s lawsuit:<\/p>\n

\u201cBy means of these (Inspection of Public Records Act) violations, the (governor\u2019s office) has successfully thwarted the Plaintiff\u2019s efforts to verify the claimed job eliminations or the claimed taxpayer savings, and it has made it impossible to conduct timely reporting on the impact that the announced terminations will have on the operation of government and the ability of state agencies to provide governmental services. The IPRA violations have also thwarted media inquiries concerning (1) the potential that some of the 59 \u2018terminated\u2019 employees were in fact not terminated because they subsequently became employed at other agencies or in other positions and (2) whether or not the (governor\u2019s office) may have engaged in the creation of unnecessary patronage jobs in the early years of its administration.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notably, many lawmakers expressed frustration earlier this year that they were charged with crafting a state budget without being allowed access to detailed information about the layoffs.<\/p>\n

In keeping that information secret for months, the governor\u2019s office successfully thwarted any attempts by the Legislature or media to be a check on its power.<\/p>\n

Sending a message<\/h3>\n

The reason this is so important is highlighted by FOG\u2019s executive director, Sarah Welsh, in a blog posting<\/a> on the sunshine group\u2019s Web site:<\/p>\n

\u201cRegular citizens often can\u2019t get any response at all from state agencies, let alone timely access to records. So imagine the trickle-down effect if the state\u2019s most powerful office, the Office of the Governor, is allowed to openly flout our freedom-of-information law. For six months and counting, the Governor\u2019s Office has been doing exactly that. They\u2019re sending a strong message to the people of New Mexico that our right to know is meaningless and empty. It may be on the lawbooks, but we\u2019ll have to go to court to enforce it. It\u2019s a good thing that the Journal is willing to go there for us.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Agreed. A court needs to make the governor\u2019s office pay to deter such behavior in the future.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the Journal for standing up to the governor. I hope the court awards the Journal attorney fees and the maximum $100-a-day in damages (which adds up to quite a bit over the six months the governor\u2019s office has been in violation of the law).<\/p>\n

That would send a message that refusing to allow public scrutiny of the public\u2019s business won\u2019t be tolerated in New Mexico.<\/p>\n

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

The Albuquerque Journal is suing the governor to force him to release information about the exempt employees who were laid off earlier this year. Let\u2019s hope the court forces the governor to end his flagrant disregard of state law.<\/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":[111,107],"class_list":["post-18629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-open-government","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18629","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=18629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}