{"id":82446,"date":"2015-09-10T09:58:19","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T15:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=82446"},"modified":"2015-09-10T15:23:28","modified_gmt":"2015-09-10T21:23:28","slug":"education-department-needs-to-stop-playing-politics-with-public-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2015\/09\/education-department-needs-to-stop-playing-politics-with-public-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Education Department needs to stop playing politics with public records"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENTARY:<\/strong> Gov. Susana\u00a0Martinez’s administration likes to call itself “the most transparent”<\/a>\u00a0in the state’s history. The Public Education Department (PED) sure isn’t\u00a0living up to that standard.<\/p>\n

\"Heath<\/a>

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

A judge\u00a0ordered PED on Wednesday to pay more than $14,000 in attorney’s fees<\/a>\u00a0that a teacher’s union racked up\u00a0while suing PED. The lawsuit was necessary — PED violated the Inspection of Public Records Act<\/a> (IPRA) by failing to respond to a records request from the National Education Association (NEA)\u00a0in a timely manner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t expect an administration committed to transparency\u00a0to never screw up. Humans are in charge there just like everywhere else. We all make mistakes.<\/p>\n

But I would expect “the most transparent” to operate with a spirit of openness that includes owning up to its mistakes.<\/p>\n

Instead, we got deflection and spin\u00a0on Wednesday from PED spokesman Robert McEntyre:\u00a0“Today’s ruling shows that these special interests would rather have more money spent in courtrooms than in our classrooms, where it belongs,” the Las Cruces Sun-News quoted him as saying<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Basically, he’s\u00a0blaming the NEA for his own agency’s lawbreaking that resulted in $14,000 in public money — yours and mine — being spent on lawyers.<\/p>\n

Several weeks ago I criticized\u00a0the Martinez spin machine<\/a>\u00a0for such rhetoric. I’m really tired of it. So I’m going to call McEntyre’s quote what it is: crap.<\/p>\n

It’s crap.<\/p>\n

PED broke the law<\/h3>\n

Here’s the truth: PED and the unions have been fighting\u00a0a war over teacher evaluations. The NEA filed a public records request. It sought documents backing up Martinez’s\u00a0claim<\/a> that the old evaluation system she replaced found 99 percent of teachers effective. Martinez used that claim to argue that the system was obviously broken, saying 99 percent\u00a0couldn’t be accurate\u00a0with such poor\u00a0graduation rates.<\/p>\n

It turned out PED\u00a0didn’t have records to back up the claim. For all I know it pulled the number out of thin air.<\/p>\n

And PED\u00a0waited months to tell the NEA that it had no documents to back up the statistic. By waiting, the education department\u00a0violated IPRA, which\u00a0requires timely responses to requests.<\/p>\n

Too many\u00a0government agencies play politics with public records. Another\u00a0Martinez Administration agency, the Human Services Department, did it. I helped bring\u00a0a lawsuit that resulted in that agency having to pay thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees<\/a>. And the attorney general is looking into whether the office of\u00a0State Auditor Tim Keller, a Democrat,\u00a0illegally delayed responding\u00a0to a GOP records request<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are no criminal penalties for violating IPRA. The only recourse, the only deterrent to future violations, is a judge issuing fines and ordering an agency to pay a plaintiff’s\u00a0legal bills.<\/p>\n

The attorney general has the authority to file a civil lawsuit asking a judge to order a government agency to pay fines and attorney’s fees. That almost never happens, unfortunately. So it’s generally up to\u00a0individuals and groups\u00a0to file lawsuits on their own and hope judges later order violating government agencies to pay their legal bills.<\/p>\n

That’s what the NEA did.<\/p>\n

Glad PED has to pay<\/h3>\n

The Education Department\u00a0can spew all the deflective rhetoric it wants, but the fact is that the state agency\u00a0broke the law\u00a0and created a\u00a0mess that cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

I’m grateful the teacher’s union\u00a0aggressively pursued punishment. I’m glad PED has to pay.<\/p>\n

If the Republican Party\u00a0really believes Keller\u00a0violated IPRA,\u00a0it should also be glad for the NEA’s successful lawsuit. Hopefully, the ruling will\u00a0help deter such shenanigans\u00a0in the future.<\/p>\n

It’s never appropriate for any government agency, regardless of whether it’s controlled by Democrats or Republicans, to play politics with public records.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The N.M. Public Education Department can spew all the deflective rhetoric it wants, but the fact is that the agency broke the law and created a mess that cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[125,107,706],"class_list":["post-82446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-education","tag-roundhouse","tag-transparency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82446","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=82446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}