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Friday, June 18, 2010
Journal Sues Gov. in Bid To Obtain Records
Journal Staff and Wire
The Albuquerque Journal has filed a lawsuit alleging that Gov. Bill Richardson's office violated the state's open records law by failing to produce documents about 59 appointive state workers who he said were let go to save money.
The June 3 lawsuit filed in state District Court in Albuquerque seeks a court order forcing the Governor's Office to provide requested records, including those that identify the workers and relate to how decisions were made about which positions should be eliminated and how much would be saved.
The appointive workers are "exempt" from state hiring requirements and work at the pleasure of the governor.
The lawsuit said only a handful of the workers were identified in materials released by the Governor's Office. Numerous media outlets, including the Journal, made formal requests for the records, but were told by the Governor's Office they didn't exist.
By violating the open records law, the Governor's Office has "successfully thwarted the plaintiffs' efforts to verify the claimed job eliminations or the claimed taxpayer savings," the lawsuit says.
Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said Wednesday that the lawsuit "appears to be nothing more than a vendetta" against the governor.
"It's unfortunate that the governor's spokesman doesn't take more seriously his obligation to comply with the law and either to produce the documents that support the governor's press release or send the records request to the agencies that do have the records," said Charles Peifer, an attorney for the Journal.
Sarah Welsh, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, said the situation is "indicative of how difficult it is to get information from the government. If it's hard for the Journal, how difficult would it be for ordinary citizens to get information about important things, like health care, education — any of the million things the government is doing?"
The Foundation for Open Government's complaint about the records request refusals led Attorney General Gary King to express concern about potential violations of the state public records law. King called on the Governor's Office to "re-evaluate" its response.
"It seems implausible that your office would make a formal announcement when it had no set of records to support its numerical assertion," said an April 12 letter from the attorney general's staff.
The Governor's Office had announced in January that it was firing 59 exempt employees at a savings of $8.3 million.
In May, Richardson's office released the job titles but not the names of 69 exempt employees who have left state government since December. The lawsuit, filed under the state's Inspection of Public Records Act, asks a court to order the Governor's Office to produce all relevant documents in its possession.
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