Judge: City must pay for breaking records law

Ex-employee may be owed more than $100K

A state district judge has ruled that the city of Albuquerque deliberately refused to follow the state public records law and as a result will owe a former employee an amount that could exceed $100,000.

The judge also said during a hearing that the current public records custodian admitted he occasionally would be ordered by city officials to withhold documents that had been requested through the state’s public records law, and that a former assistant city attorney misrepresented aspects of the case in court.

State District Judge Beatrice Brickhouse ruled last week that the city owes Reynaldo Chavez, the former records custodian for the police department, $100 per day dating back to when the city should have provided him with documents, which was nearly three years ago, on June 1, 2015, plus attorney’s fees.

Thomas Grover, Chavez’s attorney, has about two weeks to submit his fee application, and the city then will have 21 days to respond to it. Grover said he hasn’t received all the requested records, but has tallied up about $102,500 in fines and $30,000 in attorney’s fees.

Grover said that although most of the documents were withheld under the previous administration, the current city and police administrations haven’t provided all the records he’s requested, and have fought against paying all the fines and fees.

“We’re not screwing around with government transparency. Here you had a willful violation by the city, you had misconduct by an attorney in representations to the court, and (the judge) found no reason not to hit them with every aspect that IPRA allows,” Grover said. “I have no expectation that there will be

any change in the conduct of governments in the state. But maybe it will.”

City officials said in a statement that the records were withheld by the previous administration.

“Mayor Keller’s administration is working to comply with the Court’s order and reviewing policies and procedures to ensure that APD is transparent and making public records available and easy to access,” Gilbert Gallegos, a police spokesman, said in a statement.

Chavez, who was fired from the Police Department in 2015, has a separate whistleblower lawsuit against the city that is still pending.

After being fired from the city, Chavez, through his attorney, filed an Inspection of Public Records Act request to investigate the circumstances of his termination. In his whistleblower lawsuit, Chavez said he was fired after complaining that he was being ordered by high-ranking police officials to deliberately withhold public records that had been requested, especially in high-profile incidents, including police shootings.

The city produced some documents on June 1, 2015. In January 2017, Grover petitioned for a “writ of mandamus” that would compel the city to release additional records. Grover learned of those records during litigation in other matters, according to Brickhouse’s order.

During hearings in the case, Brickhouse said in her order that Javier Urban, who took over as the Police Department’s records custodian after Chavez was fired, admitted that documents that should have been provided to Chavez were withheld.

Urban admitted to the judge that he “unilaterally narrowed the scope of this IPRA request,” according to Brickhouse’s order.

Urban declined to comment.