News

Bill to increase electronic record fees could be changed

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A state Senator who introduced a bill to change New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA), now seems to be looking to change the language in his bill. Sen. John Sapien, D-Corrales, told the Santa Fe New Mexican Tuesday his bill to allow public bodies to charge up to $1.00 per page for electronic records was “not nefarious,” but instead was in response to public bodies being “deluged” with requests for free electronic records. But when NM Political Report reached out to Sapien for further comment, a representative from his legislative office said the Senator did not want to talk about the bill. Sisto Abeyta, on behalf of Sapien’s office, returned a call to NM Political Report and hinted Sapien’s bill may change, but he did not have specifics. “We are going to hold off on the record right now because we’re still working through some issues with the bill,” Abeyta said.

Albuquerque Newsdesk

APS faces public records suit from mother of student

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More than a year after Albuquerque Public Schools denied her public records requests related to an incident involving her autistic son, Laura Gutierrez is taking the state’s biggest public school district to court. Her lawsuit, filed last month in Albuquerque’s state district court, alleges APS wrongly withheld public records responsive to requests she made in late 2015. She is asking for the school district to release the records and pay damages for violating the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA). Under IPRA, public agencies can be fined up to $100 per day in damages for not fulfilling public records requests if the person who brings the suit can prove damages. “I have decisions I need to make as a parent, and without these records I can’t move forward,” Gutierrez said in an interview.

2017 Legislative Session

Effort to make college research secret stalls over fears it goes too far

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Angelo Artuso warns that a move by lawmakers to shield some university research from the public eye could lead to harrowing consequences. At a Wednesday morning House committee hearing, Artuso invoked some of history’s darkest state-sanctioned university research projects. For decades, researchers at Tuskegee University studied the effects of syphilis by pretending to offer infected Black men free health care. And several colleges and universities from the early 1950s until 1973 were involved in Project MKUltra, a CIA program that used drugs like LSD unknowingly on human subjects to experiment with mind control. Programs like those, involving government-funded atrocities at institutions of higher learning,  Artuso maintained, would remain hidden at New Mexico public higher education institutions under a bill sponsored by state Reps.

2017 Legislative Session

State Sen. wants parents to have access to investigations into school police

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Laura Gutierrez has been trying to get public records from Albuquerque Public Schools for more than a year. In 2014 a school law enforcement officer allegedly used force against her autistic son. APS opened an investigation and soon cleared the officer of any wrongdoing. Gutierrez wants to see all the documents from this investigation. In the fall and winter of 2015, Gutierrez filed four public records requests with APS for the district’s internal investigation of the officer, an employee of the school district.

Albuquerque Newsdesk

AG says APS violated open records law. Now they’re still denying a mother the documents

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For more than a year, Laura Gutierrez has been at standstill in a dispute with the state’s largest public school district. Gutierrez is seeking records from an internal investigation of an Albuquerque Public Schools police officer that came after she alleged the officer tased her son during the fall of 2014. While APS handed over a memo stating that the investigation cleared the officer of any wrongdoing, it also withheld releasing supporting documents like a field investigator’s supplemental report, witness statements and a forensic interview conducted with Gutierrez’s son, Michael Bruening. “I should be able to know what my son said in the interview,” Gutierrez, who formerly went by the name Laura Bruening, told NM Political Report. Gregory Williams, an Albuquerque attorney and president of the pro-transparency New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, agrees.

Axiom

Guv’s office doesn’t keep financial records of contingency fund

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The governor’s office contends a taxpayer-funded account used to host dignitaries and throw parties isn’t subject to open records laws to the same extent other public funds are. Sometimes the subject of controversy, the account catapulted into public view last winter when one of the parties its money was used for ended with police responding to noise complaints from a possibly intoxicated Martinez. Each year, the state Legislature grants $70,000 in taxpayer money to the governor for a contingency fund, which per state law she can use for “purposes connected with obligations of the office.”

The fund is unusual in that, unlike most state government accounts filled with public money, the state Legislature exempts it from required annual audits. But after NM Political Report filed an Inspection of Public Records Act request with the governor’s office this spring for six years worth of expense documents associated with the contingency fund, the office only provided broad summaries of the expenses. Missing were documentation like the checks, purchase orders, reimbursements and purchase requests associated with the fund that we asked for.