The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government held its annual Dixon lunch Oct. 3 in Albuquerque. The group honored four people who represent what is good in government, journalism, politics and the legal world. Additionally we honored Jim Dines, a recently retired lawyer who spent much of his career fighting for the cause of open government.
Jeff Proctor, a cops and courts reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, received the Dixon Award for journalism. He earned the nomination (from a reader) by following the many shootings by the Albuquerque Police Department. He investigated and wrote about the spate of shootings over the past few years via a relentless search and fight for documents.
Several of the people who nominated the winners spoke about the difference between working in the newspaper business 30 years ago and today. Albuquerque Journal editor Kent Walz spoke of politicians and public officials just ignoring the media because they could. With no Inspection of Public Records Act, reporters had few tools to get solid information regarding anything from bids to police reports to simple minutes from meetings.
The Act has been strengthened in the past few years by a few big wins by open records and meetings advocates. But most elected officials and administrators don’t know that. We’re currently trying to go through the many hoops with the state attorney general to get someone in that office to elucidate our city council regarding going into executive session. They never provide proper public notice and rarely follow proper Open Meetings Act procedures to go into a closed session.
There’s good news for those interested in learning how to lead an open meeting and provide true access to public documents. The Foundation will be presenting one of its “road shows” at the Espanola Middle School Oct. 16. Executive Director Gwyneth Doland is being brought here by Espanola School District’s union. The union is fortunate in that its liaison, Charles Goodmacher is on the Foundation’s Board and is a big believer in openness.
That’s nice that the union wants to educate the school Board in how meetings should be conducted and documents handled but we’re not going to hold our breath thinking things will get better in the District. It’s not necessarily that the Board needs education in the ways of openness. It’s that they need to apply that knowledge. The same is true with the city council and Rio Arriba County Commission.
It’s always baffling for the commissioners to come to a public meeting and vote on a consent agenda that’s never been discussed in public. How did they all arrive at the same decision? Was it telepathy or magic?
There’s more good news in that the meeting is open to the public. That means the Española city council could attend, as could city department heads, Rio Arriba County officials, maybe even some document handlers at the city police and our sheriff’s department.
This sort of free training in how to be a better elected or public official doesn’t come to town very often. Normally, public officials would have to travel to Albuquerque. We encourage anyone interested in being a better elected official, administrator or department head to attend.
If you’re just an interested citizen, please attend. You can carry a torch of openness to future meetings and educate some secretaries and clerks on your own.