Public’s right to know at center of debate

Lawmakers consider numerous changes to state’s transparency laws

SANTA FE — Secrecy is the exception under New Mexico’s open records law.

The Inspection of Public Records Act makes it clear that lawyers, journalists and all other members of the public are entitled to the greatest amount of information possible about the work of their government, with just a few exceptions.

But state lawmakers this session are debating whether the law goes too far.

They’ve heard proposals to keep secret the identities of applicants for government jobs, remove information that identifies victims and witnesses listed in certain police reports and shield some university research from disclosure, among others.

One measure — a proposal

to limit the public disclosure of checks issued by a government but not yet cashed — has already cleared the Senate and is under review in the House.

Gregory Williams, board president of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, a nonpartisan advocacy group, said the efforts to carve new exemptions into the Inspection of Public Records Act are nothing new.

“This is, unfortunately, normal,” Williams said in an interview. “Basically, every session we deal with several attempts to roll back public access to public records.”

So far, the public records act, passed in the 1970s, has remained intact.

But records kept by public universities, in particular, are often a point of debate. Just this year, current or former university officials have testified in favor of bills to restrict disclosure of job applicants, parts of police records and research.

During a recent floor debate, Sen. Jacob Candelaria, D-Albuquerque, said lawmaking often requires an effort to balance competing interests. He is pushing to exempt from public disclosure identifying information regarding witnesses to and victims of certain crimes, such as rape and stalking.

“It’s not an attempt to live in darkness,” he said, just because a lawmaker wants to discuss policy goals that would change the public records act.

“I don’t think that’s healthy for democracy — to hide behind some kind of smokescreen” every time a transparency question comes up, Candelaria told his colleagues in a recent meeting of the Senate.

Uncashed checks

Each proposal, nonetheless, is generating robust debate.

Sen. Bill Tallman, D-Albuquerque, didn’t expect much controversy this session when he asked the Senate to support Senate Bill 158, which would prohibit disclosure of “outstanding warrants” on government checks that haven’t been cleared by the bank.

Tallman described the documents as essentially uncashed checks, and he said “unscrupulous” people were requesting the warrants, then altering them so they could cash the check themselves. He said he sponsored the bill at the request of state Treasurer Tim Eichenberg.

The measure passed on a 32-7 vote after significant debate.

Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, was among the dissenters. Government agencies can almost always find an excuse for why they shouldn’t have to disclose information, he said, but sunshine is the better policy.

“Democracy is very inefficient and messy,” Cervantes said. “I think we have to embrace that sometimes.”

Protection vs. transparency

As the Legislature enters its last two weeks, debate over open records may intensify. Besides potential changes to the records law itself, there are other transparency debates before lawmakers this session, such as proposals to create a Public Accountability Board that wouldn’t release ethics complaints unless there’s a finding of misconduct and a measure that would keep customer information confidential at the spaceport.

Rep. Jim Dines, an Albuquerque Republican, spent decades working in open-records law before retiring from his legal practice. He doesn’t believe the Inspection of Public Records Act is too broad.

“I think it’s one of the best protections for our citizens to learn what’s going on in the government,” he said in an interview.

Candelaria said the consideration of public-records bills doesn’t mean a lawmaker is anti-transparency. There are good reasons that a taxpayer’s private information is kept confidential, he said.

“We all believe very firmly that transparency and openness are important in government,” Candelaria said as the Senate debated Tallman’s bill recently.

Meanwhile, Candelaria’s proposal on witness and victim confidentiality is ready for action on the Senate floor, though it isn’t clear when it will be voted on.

Williams, the FOG president, said he understands that the sponsors of bills to scale back IPRA mean well and are trying to solve a specific problem. But their solutions are often too broad, he said, going beyond the problem they want to address.

The open records law as it stands now is a strong one, Williams said.

“Our Legislature has found it important to keep our government as open as possible,” he said, “and that’s a good thing.”