{"id":4066,"date":"2008-12-12T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T21:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/12\/senator-says-ag-is-stalling-legal-opinion\/"},"modified":"2008-12-12T15:30:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T21:30:00","slug":"senator-says-ag-is-stalling-legal-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/12\/senator-says-ag-is-stalling-legal-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"Senator says AG is stalling legal opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

McSorley wants King to explain interpretation of state\u2019s definition of political committee; AG\u2019s office says it\u2019s working on it<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost three months have passed since state Sen. Cisco McSorley<\/a> asked Attorney General Gary King<\/a> for an official opinion on how New Mexico defines political activity. Now McSorley says the AG is stalling.<\/p>\n

Although the attorney general still hasn\u2019t responded to McSorley\u2019s request, King\u2019s office says any charges of stalling are unfounded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe McSorley opinion is still being researched and drafted. No completion date has been set,\u201d AG spokesman Phil Sisneros said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>McSorely, D-Albuquerque, first made the request after King refused to explain why he believes two nonprofits\u2019 activities have crossed the line between issue advocacy and political campaigning.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, King advised the secretary of state that the Center for Civic Policy\u2019s<\/a> New Mexico Youth Organized (NMYO) and another nonprofit, SouthWest Organizing Project<\/a>, <\/span>had resorted to political campaigning in mailers like this one<\/a> sent two to three months before the June primary targeting several lawmakers, including some who had primary opponents.<\/p>\n

The secretary of state ordered both groups to register as political committees and comply with the state\u2019s Campaign Reporting Act<\/a> by regularly reporting contributions and expenditures publicly, just like candidates, campaigns and political action committees. The groups say their mailers were related to a coming special session of the Legislature, not the election, and they shouldn\u2019t have to register.<\/p>\n

King hasn\u2019t shared the reasoning behind his advice beyond saying the key issue is the meaning of the phrase \u201cpolitical purpose\u201d in the act. Attorneys for NMYO, on the other hand, have laid out their legal arguments publicly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Both sides agree the dispute has far-reaching implications for nonprofits in New Mexico, and the secretary of state and AG have agreed to withhold taking any action against the nonprofits so the dispute can be resolved in court.<\/p>\n

In his request for an opinion from King\u2019s office, which you can read by clicking here<\/a>, McSorley didn\u2019t mention the battle between the state agencies and the nonprofits. But he did tell King he anticipated an \u201cimmediate response\u201d to the request, which the AG\u2019s office says was received on Sept. 23. <\/span>McSorley asked several questions in the letter, all of them geared toward obtaining King\u2019s interpretation of the state\u2019s definition of \u201cpolitical committee\u201d and the core issue of how King interprets the campaign reporting act\u2019s use of the phrase \u201cpolitical purpose\u201d to define what groups must register as political committees.<\/p>\n

Some quick responses, but lots of requests<\/span><\/p>\n

King has often acted quickly on politically hot requests for legal opinions from lawmakers. He said in February 2007<\/a> that he wanted to respond more quickly to such requests than his predecessor because it was an important way he could help reduce gridlock in state government.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the attorney general\u2019s office can have a lot more impact on the policy in the state through our opinions,\u201d King said at the time. \u201cThe more quickly we can address those issues, the less disruption there is in government.\u201d<\/p>\n

That comment came after King responded within days to a request for legal advice on the governor\u2019s fundraising for his presidential campaign during the legislative session. McSorley noted that King also acted within days earlier this year on a separate request that started the current nonprofit dispute — from a lawmaker who was targeted by the mailers, Sen. Shannon Robinson<\/a> of Albuquerque. But, McSorley pointed out, King has already stated his desire to have this matter resolved in court.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt appears that the strategy is to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal action rather pursue this through legislative enactment,\u201d McSorley said.<\/p>\n

Sisneros pointed out that the AG received six requests for legal opinions in July, four in August, five in September and eight in October. He said each is thoroughly researched by an attorney and then an opinion is written \u201cbased on mountains of research and legal analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis matter is being acted upon, just not on your timeline,\u201d Sisneros said in response to a question about why this request is taking longer than some others.<\/p>\n

Waiting for an answer<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, SWOP\u2019s director said the organization still doesn\u2019t understand the position of the secretary of state and attorney general.<\/p>\n

\u201cSWOP was instructed by the secretary of state to register as a political action committee four months ago without any explanation for how our work constitutes political activity,\u201d Robby Rodriguez, SWOP executive director, said in a prepared statement. \u201cWe still do not know what this decision is based on so we would like to know, along with Sen. McSorley apparently, and, we suspect, the rest of the nonprofit community, how the state defines political activity when it comes to our legitimate efforts to educate the public about the job their elected officials are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matt Brix, policy director for the Center for Civic Policy, said his organization had no comment.<\/p>\n

The New Mexico Independent\u2019s<\/a> Trip Jennings contributed to this report. By way of disclosure, I also write for the Independent, which is owned by the Center for Independent Media<\/a> in Washington. When the group was starting up its New Mexico news site earlier this year, the Center for Civic Policy helped it locate funding sources. The Center for Civic Policy has never tried to use that fact to influence anything I have written.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McSorley wants King to explain interpretation of state\u2019s definition of political committee; AG\u2019s office says it\u2019s working on it Almost three months have passed since state Sen. Cisco McSorley asked Attorney General Gary King for an official opinion on how New Mexico defines political activity. Now McSorley says the AG is stalling. Although the attorney […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4066","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=4066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}