The Española Public Works Committee may have violated the state Open Meetings Act when its members unanimously declared an executive session without providing reasonably specific justification for the closed session.
At the Committee’s meeting Sept. 10, Committee Chairman Alfred Herrera asked that a motion be made to go into executive session under the limited personnel exception in the Act.
The executive session, he indicated, had been requested by Public Works Director Ben Ortega just prior to the meeting, but it was not mentioned when the Committee made amendments to the meeting’s agenda.
By law, a public body may close a public meeting to discuss limited personnel matters, provided that body states with “reasonable specificity” what the matter pertains to, and provided that discussion relates only to a short list of situations involving a specific employee.
However, in the motion to close the meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Alice Lucero stated only that the Committee was calling the session under the limited personnel matters exception, without providing any other explanation. Neither she, nor any of the other members of the Committee, stated which employee would be discussed, or which of the short list of situations allowed in executive session would be covered.
Ortega has indicated plans to hold an executive session at the meeting since Aug. 27, according to an e-mail sent that day to Acting City Manager Veronica Albin.
“We may want to have an executive session in PW committee (like NCSWA does) and have the press leave the room — when frank and needed discussion on personnel matters are held with Committee members,” the e-mail states.
The e-mail was sent following a Committee meeting in which Ortega made several statements questioning the competency of Water Department employees, which the e-mail indicates he believed to be solely between himself and the Committee members. Such comments would not have been legal cause for an executive session.
All three Committee members present have been active in city and state government for several years, and have experience holding public meetings, but all three voted to go into executive session after Lucero’s non-specific motion to close the meeting.
District 3 Councilor Cecilia Lujan has been on the City Council since 2006. Lucero was Española city manager before becoming a Councilor in 2004. Herrera worked in state government before his retirement, and currently sits on two public boards as well as the Council.
According to state law, any person who violates the Act can be found guilty of a misdemeanor and be fined up to $500 for each offense.