Records suit yields partial win for paper

Judge: Gov. failed to provide public records but didn’t violate state constitution

A state district judge this week handed a partial victory to a Santa Fe newspaper that sued Gov. Susana Martinez over access to public information, ruling that Martinez violated the state Inspection of Public Records Act by failing to produce records on time, or at all in some instances, but that she did not violate the state constitution by giving certain journalists more access than others.

District Judge Sarah Singleton’s 65-page ruling on Thursday came in response to a 2013 lawsuit in which the alternative weekly claimed the governor retaliated against the paper for critical coverage of her administration by restricting access and failed to comply with the open-records law.

Singleton awarded the Santa Fe Reporter an as yet undetermined amount of legal fees in connection with her finding that the governor did violate the Inspection of Public Records Act in three of the five cases raised by the weekly. The judge did not award any damages in connection with those violations, saying the Reporter’s claims of the “injuries” it suffered as a result of not getting the records — which included “the inability to combat tyranny” —

were too nebulous.

Reporter Editor and Publisher Julie Ann Grimm said Friday she felt “vindicated that the court found the Governor’s Office did violate the Inspection of Public Records Act,” but she said she would need more time to contemplate other parts of the ruling before providing a detailed analysis of the decision.

“Losing the constitutional clam is obviously something we have to give a lot of thought to,” Grimm said. “That’s the part I really need to contemplate because, clearly, we filed this litigation because we didn’t think it was OK [to discriminate against particular news outlets] and we continue to think it’s not OK. And journalists around the state are still dealing with this administration’s philosophy about controlling the flow of information.”

Grimm said she has until Dec. 28 to inform the court whether the Reporter will appeal Singleton’s ruling, which the governor on Friday characterized as a vindication for her.

Martinez, who campaigned on a promise to run an open and transparent administration, responded to The New Mexican’s questions about the case with an emailed statement from spokeswoman Emillee Cantrell that said: “The Santa Fe Reporter’s claims were overreaching, and the Court firmly rejected them. In fact portions of the case were dismissed prior to trial, and the Governor prevailed on virtually all of the rest of the case — including on all of the central issues before the Court.

“In particular the Court rejected the claim that SFR’s constitutional rights were ever violated. The Court also found that the Governor’s Office has adequate training and search procedures for public records requests, finding only a few minor violations related to SFR’s requests.”

Grimm noted that rather than have an attorney already on the government payroll handle the lawsuit, Martinez opted to hire private attorney Paul Kennedy — whom one state senator referred to as a “pitbull of a lawyer” — to defend her against the Reporter’s suit, and she continues to refuse to reveal how much Kennedy was paid.

“The taxpayers are paying for the governor to fight the newspaper … and she is still keeping the amount she is paying that attorney private from the New Mexican people,” Grimm said. “We have repeatedly sought information about how much the governor paid to fight us when they broke the law and have been unable to obtain that information.”

That issue is being litigated by Jeff Proctor, a journalist who filed a complaint of his own against the state General Services Department over the issue before becoming an editor and writer at the Reporter.

As part of her ruling, Singleton also ordered the Governor’s Office to conduct a search of campaign email records — which are now about 5 years old — in response to a request from the Reporter. The judge wrote that if people create public documents on private email accounts, those private accounts should be subject to Inspection of Public Records Act requests.

“To hold otherwise would make it too easy to hide from inspection the very types of public records that are most in need of disclosure,” Singleton wrote.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 505-986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com. Follow her on Twitter @phaedraann.