Floating in the sweet summer New Mexico air is a notion that carries with it a permeating stench of government secrecy and stealth.
We report this dangerous idea in a news story reprinted from the Roswell Record on A7 in today’s paper.
IPRA, an acronym for the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act, is a device used not only by the news media but also by private citizens to get facts that, for a variety of reasons, public officials oftentimes do not want them or you to have.
The New Mexican Countieraised the issue of potentially changing the rules for release of information by public bodies and elected officials. The news report says the idea was presented by the group’s County Attorney Affiliates.
If ideas for change were formally adopted the Counties Board of Directors, it would push for new initiatives to be enacted by the state legislators.
We need more transparency in government and from public officials, not less. Public officials claim that demands for information and records take too much time. The system, they say, is being abused.
Overall, we disagree.
Getting records and reports to reporters and to members of the public should be easier and faster, not more complicated and slower.
Despite progress made on gathering data and information — records needed by the public to better understand policy and practices by government and its officials at schools, police departments, and at the county and city level — gaining that information has become more difficult.
Rio Grande SUN reporters often wait interminably long for information that we need to inform the public and to be a vigilant watchdog on government.
One example: most recently we have filed an IPRA request of the Española School District asking for data explaining why it did not pass along to police information on an alleged sexual relationship between a teacher and student.
The schools found no evidence of a problem, officials claim, yet the teacher, Makana Masacayan, was arrested several weeks ago and charged with alleged sexual abuse of a 16-year-old male student.
We have asked how and why the school district found nothing in its investigation yet a short time later police arrested and charged Masacayan. And we want to know why the rumor was not shared with police.
We’ve received some documents about the investigation. But not enough to know why the district appears to have failed in this matter. That’s why we had to file an IPRA request.
Public officials, elected officials, law enforcement, school officials and those on public boards all work for the taxpayers and the public. Their actions need to be transparent.
Arguing that answering requests for information from reporters and the public is too time-consuming and burdensome does not cut it as some suggest a tightening of IPRA laws.
The answer is to be forthright and transparent from the start. Government in the city and county and the state, public education, law enforcement is meant to be conducted in the open.
Actually, we need more of it, not less.