{"id":39333,"date":"2012-04-27T06:21:37","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T12:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=39333"},"modified":"2012-04-30T06:00:41","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T12:00:41","slug":"ag-tells-sunland-park-to-fix-open-meetings-act-violation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2012\/04\/ag-tells-sunland-park-to-fix-open-meetings-act-violation\/","title":{"rendered":"AG tells Sunland Park to fix Open Meetings Act violation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Attorney<\/a>

Attorney General Gary King (Photo by Heath Haussamen)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Attorney General\u2019s Office asks for confirmation by May 4 that the Sunland Park City Council has met to re-deliberate the appointment of a mayor \u2013 unless the council wants to instead argue that it didn\u2019t violate the law.<\/h4>\n

The Attorney General\u2019s Office said Thursday that, assuming its understanding of the facts was correct, the Sunland Park City Council violated the state\u2019s Open Meetings Act<\/a> when it selected a new mayor last week.<\/p>\n

To make the selection of a new mayor legal, the council needs to meet again, accommodate all people who want to attend and re-deliberate the matter, Assistant Attorney General Mark Reynolds wrote in a letter<\/a> to Isabel Santos, the city\u2019s mayor pro tem.<\/p>\n

Reynolds asked that the council provide confirmation that it had remedied the violation by May 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Council takes these actions and provides confirmation that it has done so, then no further action on this matter by this Office may be necessary,\u201d Reynolds\u2019 letter states.<\/p>\n

In the alternative, Reynolds wrote, if the council believes it complied with the law, it should explain why to the AG.<\/p>\n

The city council appointed 24-year-old Javier Perea to the mayor\u2019s job\u00a0last week<\/a>\u00a0after postponing a previous meeting that\u00a0got rowdy<\/a>\u00a0because there were too many people to fit in the room. But the crowd was still too big to fit into the larger venue chosen for the new meeting, and many people \u2013 including at least two who wanted to ask for the appointment to the mayor\u2019s job \u2013 were kept by police from entering.<\/p>\n

The Open Meetings Act requires that anyone who tries to attend a public meeting of a government body be allowed in. Actions taken in violation of the law can be invalidated by a court. In addition, a violation is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $500 fine, though the act has rarely been enforced with criminal charges.<\/p>\n

The AG\u2019s letter came in response to a formal complaint filed by the Las Cruces Sun-News<\/a>. The newspaper wrote in its story about the AG\u2019s letter that it was unable to reach Sunland Park officials, including Perea, for comment.<\/p>\n

What happens next is up to those Sunland Park officials. If they meet and re-deliberate the issue, they might once again opt to appoint Perea. Or someone else might get the job.<\/p>\n

Reynolds\u2019 reference to no further action being necessary if Sunland Park corrects the violation may indicate a willingness by the AG to take further action if needed. The AG could take the city to court to try to invalidate Perea\u2019s appointment, or file misdemeanor charges against councilors, or both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Attorney General\u2019s Office asks for confirmation by May 4 that the Sunland Park City Council has met to re-deliberate the appointment of a mayor \u2013 unless the council wants to instead argue that it didn\u2019t violate the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[111,167],"class_list":["post-39333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-open-government","tag-sunland-park"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39333","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=39333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}