{"id":725964,"date":"2019-10-17T09:05:48","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T15:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=725964"},"modified":"2019-10-22T08:21:15","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T14:21:15","slug":"after-spaceport-leases-released-nmpolitics-net-settles-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2019\/10\/after-spaceport-leases-released-nmpolitics-net-settles-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"After spaceport leases released, NMPolitics.net settles lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
A replica of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo at Spaceport America. (Heath Haussamen\/NMPolitics.net)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

COMMENTARY: <\/strong>As a teen I photographed the moon through a telescope with my dad. I almost minored in astronomy in college. As someone who hopes to watch Virgin Galactic\u2019s SpaceShipTwo fly into space<\/a> with my kids, and who desperately wants my kids to have the option to find quality jobs in our community, I want Spaceport America to succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The spaceport is a state government agency that\u2019s funded with our money. Our ability to scrutinize the project is essential to its need to earn public trust and continued funding. So transparency is critical<\/a> to the spaceport\u2019s success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why I sued the N.M. Spaceport Authority, the state agency that runs the spaceport, in August 2018<\/a>. I had sought financial records the year before as part of a journalistic investigation<\/a> into whether the spaceport was having a positive impact on our economy. The agency put up walls around public information by, among other things, redacting portions of four lease agreements with tenants and blocking some people, including me<\/a>, from accessing its Twitter feed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, as one article in that investigative series concluded, transparency problems plagued Spaceport America<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My lawsuit has led to some significant victories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 The spaceport recently released fully unredacted copies of the leases. We finally have a clear picture of the sort of agreements the spaceport is making with tenants other than Virgin Galactic (whose full lease agreement has always been public<\/a>). You can browse the unredacted leases by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 We essentially got confirmation that the spaceport scrubbed the list of accounts it had blocked from seeing or responding to its tweets after I made a stink about the agency blocking me. When I discovered I had been blocked, I asked who else was on the list. The agency denied my request for the list. I warned them to preserve it as it existed at the time of my request, but they did not. By the time the spaceport provided the list more than a year later<\/a>, there were no blocked accounts, mine included. While the list they were required to release is lost, I hope the negative publicity pressures the agency to act better in the future and serves as a warning to other government agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 The spaceport\u2019s chief financial officer, Zach De Gregorio, said during a deposition<\/a> that he factored no documents into an analysis<\/a> that claimed the spaceport was having a positive economic impact in New Mexico<\/a>. The spaceport contended all along that there were no documents responsive to my request. I was skeptical, but under questioning by my attorney, C.J. McElhinney of Las Cruces, De Gregorio said under oath that there was nothing to provide. He said he took no notes while interviewing business owners and didn\u2019t look at any documents to gather data. He characterized the analysis as his \u201cbest guess\u201d of the impact based on his \u201cprofessional judgment,\u201d saying, \u201cI think there\u2019s value in that.\u201d I\u2019m glad we got that clarified for the public to consider when weighing the validity of the spaceport\u2019s economic claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that in mind, I\u2019m writing to tell you I\u2019ve settled my lawsuit<\/a> against Spaceport America. The state agreed to pay $60,000 in exchange for me dropping the lawsuit<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Settlement talks got serious just before we were scheduled to go to trial in September. I believe we would have proved the violations we alleged in court, and there\u2019s a good chance the state would have been ordered to pay a much higher amount in damages and attorney fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, I considered what I summed up above. The primary documents I was seeking were the lease agreements, and they finally released them in August of this year \u2014 almost 2.5 years after I requested them, but at least we now have them. Going to trial wasn\u2019t going to win the release of documents that factored into the economic analysis if there were none. And the list of blocked Twitter accounts is lost forever, so trial wouldn\u2019t lead to its disclosure either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only legal recourse for the delay in releasing unredacted leases and hiding the list of blocked Twitter accounts was to make the spaceport pay, and we accomplished that. Going to trial could have forced them to pay more, but this was never about money for me. It was about getting public information to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, as part of the settlement the spaceport didn\u2019t admit any wrongdoing. But I\u2019m hopeful the negative publicity the spaceport earned will deter future shenanigans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there\u2019s a hiccup in what this means for spaceport transparency going forward. In 2018, the state Legislature and former Gov. Susana Martinez gave the spaceport a new law allowing additional secrecy. How much secrecy could end up being decided by the courts<\/a>, because there are differing interpretations of the law. It may give the spaceport leeway to redact information from lease agreements again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I believe it\u2019s clear that the spaceport acted illegally by redacting information from lease agreements when I requested them in 2017, it\u2019s not clear that such redactions would be illegal today. My case had no chance of influencing that reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still find it incredible that even though the spaceport was playing fast and loose with the law \u2014 the attorney general found four violations<\/a> of open government laws in the agency\u2019s dealings with me \u2014 the state\u2019s policymakers rewarded the spaceport with more secrecy. But it happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So in the end I decided my one-person news organization had taken this fight as far as it could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m grateful to my attorney for his help with my lawsuit, and to the office of Attorney General Hector Balderas for pushing the spaceport to release some information it had withheld. I\u2019m glad we won the release of the unredacted lease agreements and grateful I was able to publish an investigative series about the spaceport that is still relevant. If you missed it, you can read it by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today there\u2019s a lot more spaceport-related activity in Southern New Mexico. Virgin Galactic has moved lots of employees from California to Las Cruces. The company\u2019s vehicles overflow the parking lot at its offices. We\u2019re expecting testing on SpaceShipTwo at Spaceport America to begin soon. I\u2019m excited to take my daughters to see history made when commercial spaceflights begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remain steadfast in my belief that transparency and public scrutiny are critical to the spaceport\u2019s success. It\u2019s your turn to pick up that torch and carry it. File a public records request under the new law for all leases the spaceport has with clients. See if the agency redacts any information. I\u2019ll be curious to know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Spaceport Authority admitted no wrongdoing in its handling of my public records requests but agreed to pay $60,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":725970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[137,141,706],"class_list":["post-725964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-news-about-this-site","tag-spaceport-america","tag-transparency","series-spaceport-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725964","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=725964"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":726298,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725964\/revisions\/726298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}