At its Dec. 2 Española School Board meeting, the Board blatantly failed to fulfill the conditions of a determination issued by Assistant Attorney General Lesley Lowe in response to a complaint from the Rio Grande SUN that the Board violated the state Open Meetings Act last year.
The determination called for the Board to re-enact in public a closed session it held Nov. 1, 2008. Lowe deemed that session was in violation of the Act because it included extensive discussions of District operations in an executive session closed to the public supposedly to discuss then-Superintendent David Cockerham’s job performance.
“Please advise the Board to cure the above violation at its next meeting or within sixty days of this letter, whichever occurs first, and provide our office with the minutes of the meeting reflecting the corrective action,” Lowe wrote Nov, 19, 2009, to the Board’s lawyer C. Emery Cuddy, of the Albuquerque firm Cuddy and McCarthy.
However, the Board’s next meeting Dec. 2, 2009, came and went with no mention whatsoever of the improper closed session or Lowe’s determination.
“We will comply 100 percent with whatever the Attorney General determined,” Board member Leonard Valerio said the day after the Board failed to comply with Lowe’s determination. “But we haven’t gotten the (determination) letter. They’ve got to communicate with us what we’ve done wrong and what we have to do to make things right with the public.”
The Attorney General’s spokesman Phil Sisneros said the fact that the determination is posted on the Attorney General’s web site is evidence that at least the District’s attorney had confirmed receipt of the determination letter in mid-November.
“I can tell you that if the letter is already up on our web site, it usually means they have confirmed receipt by all the parties involved,” Sisneros said.
Cuddy did not return calls seeking comment.
The Act requires public bodies like the Board to conduct all business, save for a few exceptions like employee evaluations, in meetings that are open to the public. Matt Hoyt, the SUN’s Albuquerque-based attorney, filed a complaint Feb. 9, 2009, on behalf of the SUN arguing the Board discussed public business, such as plans for a bond election and a ninth-grade school, at a Nov. 1, 2008, meeting during an executive session purportedly to evaluate Cockerham.
Lowe’s determination called that discussion improper but did not levy a $500 fine against the Board as provided for in the Act. Lowe refused to comment on the investigation that preceded her determination or the reasons for her decision.
“I do so many of these (determinations) that I don’t really remember it, to tell you the truth,” she said. “I’ve done a lot for Española’s Board, but I don’t remember the one you’re talking about.”
A search of the Attorney General’s web site shows four Open Meetings Act complaints against the Board dating back to 2007.
Lowe also declined to comment on the Board’s failure to fulfill the re-enactment requirement in her determination.
“Oh, that’s interesting,” she said.
Lowe referred further questions to Sisneros.
Sisneros suggested the SUN file an additional or amended complaint to include the Board’s latest violation. Even so, he defended Lowe’s decision not to levy a fine against the Board. He said there is no set number of opportunities a public body may be given to “cure” a violation of the Act before a fine is imposed.
“It generally hardly ever goes to (a fine),” Sisneros said. “I think there has been one time in the last four years that I can think of where that happened. There can be any number of reasons something hasn’t been fixed. Usually something just got by them one way or another. I’ve found most public bodies do want to follow the rules.”