We celebrate National Sunshine Week March 15 to 21 this year. We know some readers tire of open records stories and reports of public boards violating the Open Meetings Act. It’s not sexy and readers have a hard time seeing how such violations directly affect them.
Open government laws have been established in every state in the country. The intent has always been to keep the public’s business conducted in a public setting.
For obvious reasons there are some politicians who simply insist on trying to skirt the laws, weaken the laws and fight strengthening any laws that would give the public more access. One reason is greed and we have it at many levels of government in New Mexico evidenced by state level people going to jail, the governor under a grand jury investigation and former city leaders shooting down new businesses deals because proper ring kissing didn’t take place.
Another reason to restrict public access is simple ignorance of the laws. This is common with new people coming onto boards, councils and commissions. That’s because we tend to elect people by their political connections, not experience, education or knowledge.
In these cases, a firm telephone call or letter to a public official usually suffices and an incorrect action is not repeated or the withheld document gets released.
Probably the biggest offender to the Inspection of Public Records Act and Open Meetings Act is a group that has to make an unpopular decision or isn’t sure what action it should take. They’re going to look a little dim-witted in the public’s eye so they feel it’s better have this conversation in private.
Some senators in Santa Fe actually came out and admitted this publicly recently during the web cast fight. If committee hearings were web cast live they feared they would say something stupid or something their opponents could use next election cycle.
Another common offender to the public access laws are people or whole bodies trying to pull a fast one on the public. It may not be for financial gain. More often the offender is trying to move some money from one fund to another, or make a hiring decision, try to figure out how to attack a problem and they just don’t want their written or vocalized thoughts made public.
The house and senate of the state legislature just shot down almost every attempt by many different groups to open public access, make meetings more public friendly and speed turn-around time on records requests. There were about a dozen bills introduced by senators and representatives, republicans and democrats alike. None of them have any traction right now.
At this writing a bill has passed almost unanimously through both house and senate to allow school districts to not account to taxpayers how the district is doing. This comes at a time when school districts are at their worst. Why would anyone want to loosen the accountability of a system failing miserably? Politics, pure and simple.
There was a lot of talk about ethics reform going into this session. It was all talk. Neither body actually did anything to help public access. It’s difficult to celebrate sunshine week in a state where politicians who claim to be leaders insist on keeping the public in the dark as much as possible.
However, we live in the dark because we so choose. We make that choice by continuing to elect the same people who keep us in the dark.