A reasonable person listens to a District Court judge when he issues an order from the bench. Once you’ve been dragged through depositions, examinations, records searches and arguments, the judge has the final say.
Our local electric cooperative isn’t that quick on the take-up. While we celebrated the departure of John Tapia, who was a clear roadblock to public access, the remaining staff and lack of oversight by the Board of Trustees has Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative on a path that will lead back to District Court Judge Jason Lidyard.
Lidyard made no bones about his decision on our records fight that ended in a Nov. 20, 2020 decision by Lidyard that the Co-op must produce all the documents requested by the Rio Grande SUN, including vouchers for payments to vendors, board books, supporting financial information, among other things.
Since the decision, the SUN has asked for:
Dec. 2 – Names of applicants for the member-at-large position.
Dec. 2 – Names of applicants for the general manager position.
After a Jan. 29, 2021 letter to General Manager Ernesto Gonzales reminding him of the judge’s ruling, he denied the request for the general manager applications, calling it a personnel issue, which is not applicable to applicants. They’re not yet personnel.
He did provide in early February names of applicants for the member-at-large position.
Jan. 29 – Inventory of all light poles inside the city limits and costs associated with maintaining said poles. After a Feb. 26 letter prompting Gonzales to get off the dime he said no such document exists.
This is entirely possible. Jemez has been notorious for its poor maintenance of light poles. The City of Española is trying to pry the same information from the Co-op with a similar outcome. City residents, who are also members of Jemez Co-op rightly deserve functioning city streetlights. Not half of them, all of them.
Feb. 26 – Invoices for February. On April 1 we wrongly assumed Gonzales was gone and a new general manager was in place. So we sent an email to Co-op Executive Assistant Laura Rendon prodding her to produce the documents. She responded April 5 that Gonzales was indeed still on the payroll and he would produce a check register.
We responded great, we’ll take a look at that too, but we asked for the invoices. Rendon said she would pass the request on to Gonzales. One would assume (wrongly again) that two general managers would be able to handle some requests or at least respond in a timely manner as to the disposition of said requests, especially after a District Court Judge spanked them so recently.
April 1 – At the same time we followed up on the invoice request, we asked for all costs associated with our brand new shiny headquarters in Hernandez. Surely members have a right to know how much this monstrosity finally cost. Many are pushing us to get just the cost of the conference table.
Alas, to date, no documents, no answers from either of the general managers nor Ms. Rendon.
This is quite simple. The Board of Trustees and everyone in that shiny nw building work for the member-owners. Laws reaching back to late 1800s state members have a right to know what their corporation is doing. Lidyard cited several cases subsequent to early corporate law, including our own Schein versus NORA (1997) and Robert Trapp versus Jemez (1987).
We seriously doubt Judge Lidyard will have changed his mind on how Jemez should behave when faced with simple records requests. Why would the Co-op waste members’ money defending yet another losing case?