Bill that would create task force to re-examine, streamline public records requests moves to NM House

SANTA FE — The majority of government agencies in New Mexico have a deep backlog of public information requests, impeding the public's right to know, according to the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government.

The watchdog group, which advocates for transparency and offers legal representation when public records are unlawfully withheld, is supporting legislation in the 30-day session to create a task force that would analyze the causes of the bottleneck and help record custodians clear their queues more quickly.

Reps. Cathrynn Brown, R-Carlsbad, and Matthew McQueen, D-Galisteo, along with Sen. Natalie Figueroa, D-Albuquerque, sponsored House Joint Memorial 2, which calls for a diverse consortium of legal experts and stakeholders to examine the application of the Inspection of Public Records Act, the 1978 law governing the timely release of public information in New Mexico.

"The Inspection of Public Records Act is essential to achieving transparency and accountability in government," Brown told the Journal in a statement. "The sheer volume of records requests, however, has overwhelmed many state agencies and local governments, and records custodians are struggling to keep up."

The memorial is next set to be heard on the House floor, and the legislation that would fund it, House Bill 201, cleared its first hurdle in the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. The bill was scheduled for review in the House Appropriations and Finance Committee on Friday.

NMFOG Executive Director Christine Barber said the effort to form the task force grew out of three failed legislative proposals to address the IPRA backlog during last year's 60-day session and a meeting that included more than 50 IPRA stakeholders last spring.

"If you take a step back and look at those bills, they were all about getting records custodians released from this dramatic increase in the number of requests they've gotten," Barber said, estimating that "records custodians in New Mexico conservatively process about 150,000 records requests per year."

If passed, this year's legislation would bring together representatives from the New Mexico Attorney General's Office, Administrative Office of the Courts, Higher Education Department, Municipal League, Association of Counties, NMFOG, American Civil Liberties Union, New Mexico Press Association, as well as legal counsel specializing in IPRA. Together, they would work with custodians to determine how they might process requests more quickly.

Several public agencies in New Mexico have attempted to streamline their records fulfillment processes on their own in response to the spike in requests. The city of Santa Fe last fall, for example, debuted a new records requests platform that now publishes reports on all car crashes within city limits, an approach Barber said has likely helped the city reduce the demand on records custodians.

"The most common requests cities get is for traffic accidents," she said in a phone interview on Friday. "There can be six to eight different groups at a time — individuals and insurance companies, for example — all filing requests for one traffic report."

She said the task force could help pursue software solutions to replace outdated systems still in place at many public agencies. Seeking amendments to the state statute itself would be a last resort, Barber added.

"It isn't our intention to necessarily immediately go to changing the Inspection of Public Records Act," she said. "What needs to happen first is we need to actually ask the records custodians about what is happening. We need to do that data analysis to find what might actually be the actual solutions to their issues."

Beyond the backlog in requests reported at many public agencies, Barber and the legislators she's supporting also say IPRA continues to be exploited in too many cases.

NMFOG has filed multiple lawsuits in recent years against public agencies it has accused of abusing IPRA. A case the watchdog filed against the New Mexico Department of Public Safety in October accuses the agency's records department of demonstrating a "pattern and practice" of illegally delaying or denying requests without legal grounds.

"The Inspection of Public Records Act is a bedrock governmental transparency statute, but in some contexts it has also proven unwieldy and subject to abuse," McQueen told the Journal in a statement. "The IPRA task force will seek to preserve the public's right to know while also curtailing burdensome public records requests."

John Miller is the Albuquerque Journal’s northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at jmiller@abqjournal.com.