Oma on Board: June 2012

Lujan Grisham odds on favorite?

Blogger Joe Monahan reported this morning that betting odds have been established in the race between Rep Janice Arnold-Jones and County Commissioner Michelle Lujan Grisham. He reports that they favor Lujan Grisham.

If it were my job to set the odds, I would want to see a debate or two before I did. Debates can be game changers; that's why there are so few of them.

When Arnold-Jones and Lujan Grisham sit down and talk about;

Ethics, honesty, and gov’t corruption
The budget deficit and national debt
Jobs and the economy
National security
Social security
Gay marriage
Immigration
Health care, and
Energy

voters will see which is the more knowledgeable, more articulate
and ultimately more persuasive candidate.

The one with the most to hide, will hide the most
from open and honest public discussions
of important issues in this election.

FOG Director joins Emailgate cast

Offered as an illustrative example of the NM Foundation for Open Government's Jekyll and Hyde, wikilink, nature.

Modrall Attorney Pat Rogers has been implicated in emailgate, link.

Rogers still sits on the board of the FOG. In the relevant past, he sat on their Executive Board, serving as Treasurer.

If anyone understood how wrong it is, for so many important reasons, that public business not be done in private emails, you would think it would be the leadership of the FOG.

Let's look at the leadership of the FOG.

Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce President Terrie Cole is the President of the FOG. I knew her as an outspoken advocate of APS and Character Counts!. Then I asked her to help hold the leadership of the APS honestly accountable as the senior most role models of APS' student standards of conduct.

The record is, she did not.

The new FOG Vice President Mary Lynn Roper is the President and General Manager of KOAT TV. KOAT is covering up the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

She is tied to the leadership of the APS through her Chairmanship of the Executive Board of the NM Broadcasters Association.

The President and CEO of the NMBA is APS School Board President Paula Maes.

Maes also sat on the FOG's Board of Directors.

Maes, the board, and APS Supt Winston Brooks benefit greatly from Roper and her KOAT's refusal to investigate and report upon credible allegations and evidence of an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS, link.

The (perpetual) FOG Secretary is Journal Editor Kent Walz. He is covering up the cover up of felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators, a story the Journal first broke, link, and then abandoned when the cover up trail led to the most senior administrators and the Board.

Walz is seen here telling FOG members why APS Supt Winston Brooks deserves a Dixon Award as a hero of Transparency, while at the same time, he and Brooks were hiding public records of findings of independent investigations of the corruption.

Walz couldn't do that by himself; he has a crony, School Board enforcer Marty Esquivel. Esquivel also sits on the Board of Directors of the FOG. So well respected is he in the FOG, that he nearly became their President.

As the Board's enforcer, Esquivel has written what amounts to an unlawful restraining order, link.

The order prevents me from peacefully assembling, speaking freely, and petitioning my government at School Board Meetings.

It is enforced, link, by a publicly funded, private police force, a Praetorian Guard; the APS Police, upon the unlawful orders of its Chief Steve Tellez. Tellez co-signed the unlawful order.

Iain Munro sits in the FOG. He is the News Director at KRQE. They won't investigate and report upon the APS ethics and accountability scandal either.

KOB doesn't appear to sit in the FOG leadership. Their refusal to investigate credible evidence and testimony can be assigned perhaps, to their loyalty to APS' Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta and Board President Paula Maes.

photos and Walz frame grab, Mark Bralley

How do we compel them to debate?

I was listening to the Eric Strauss show on KKOB, link.

The gist was, Strauss would love to have political candidates on his show. He said he doesn't have them on because election law requires equal time and not all candidates were willing to appear on his show.

He said he would like, for example, to have candidates Rep Janice Arnold-Jones and County Commissioner Michelle Lujan Grisham on the show to debate energy.

Moving from specifics to generalities; there is a possibility for candidates to get on radio shows and debate election issues. Strauss claimed Lujan Grisham wouldn't come on his show because he and KKOB share a political philosophy contrary to her own. I wonder why that makes any difference.

In the first place, we need another word to use beside "debate". The debates we've seen and heard are not debates at all, wikilink. Which is not to say the debating under the formal rules would be any more useful than what we are seeing now.

The primary focus of "debates" should be the needs of voters, the need for information and perspectives on issues, and knowledge of the candidates relative abilities to defend their positions in debates with politicians representing contrary interests.

The most fundamental question is; who decides how candidates present themselves before the people? Do candidates get to decide whether to hide behind campaign ads or stand on a stump somewhere, or do the people get to decide?

The obvious answer is the candidates decide and that's why the people will never see them standing up and defending their positions, intentions, and qualifications.

"Emailgate" it is then

There is some uncertainty about the name for the current scandal in Santa Fe. There are manifest essential elements of ____-gateness, and the obvious choice is "emailgate".

Unless someone has a better name, why not?

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but it seems to work pretty well anyway

The most powerful elected official in New Mexico State Government and her minions have run afoul of the law. She, and they, will not be punished for so doing.

The New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act defines the term "public record" thus;

A “public record” is defined to include any document, tape or other material, regardless of form, that is used, created, received, maintained or held by or on behalf of a public body, and is related to public business.

Governor Susana Martinez, by and through her spokesperson Scott Darnell, has a different idea about what public records are, link;

“There is no law that prohibits the use of personal emails, but there are regulations that govern which email messages are public record and which are not,” Darnell said.

Darnell's statement implies that he has some actual knowledge of the state law; if he knows what the law doesn't say, it's reasonable to assume that he knows the law does say.

“Like the majority of legislators and other officials throughout the state, we occasionally communicate on personal emails when those communications are not considered public records.”

“... types of conversations that are in lieu of oral conversations ... would not be recorded and preserved, and that’s why state regulations do not require that these emails be maintained.”

Public business was done in private. Their excuse, that private emails are the equivalent of oral conversations, and that records of public business conducted orally, needn't be recorded or preserved is nonsense.

Martinez must have given some thought to that logic before running it out as their excuse.

It won't hold up in a court of law, but the point is moot, as they won't end up in a court of law to argue it.

Their excuse; their ignorance of the letter of the law, the spirit of the law, and the expressed will of the people, is serving its function; red herring. The discourse is about their lame excuse and not about the fact that the very best case scenario is; they managed to get around the law without breaking it, all in order to keep the public out of the loop on the spending of their power and resources.

photo Mark Bralley

Liberty and public meetings

Liberty is a manifestation of freedom. As much as human beings have a right to be free, they have a right to liberty; the right to do whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want; subject to limitations imposed by legitimate government. The process by which those limitations are imposed, is the passage of laws. There is no contrary provision in the Constitution.

The government can impose no other legitimate limits on personal freedom and liberty, than the due passage of laws.

There are politicians and public servants who think they can limit the personal freedom and liberty of citizens by writing and enforcing "Rules of decorum". They are not laws and they limit personal freedom and liberty. As such, they are not sanctioned by the Constitution. It amounts to outlawing behavior that is manifestly legal.

The 10th Amendment requires that powers not delegated to government are reserved to the people. The power to impose limits beyond the law, on personal liberty, has not been delegated to the government, and therefore resides with the people, even when they are standing at a public forum in a public meeting.

The government cannot limit personal freedom and liberty except according to the law.

Whatever personal expression that is not against the law, can be done legally as an expression of personal liberty, without fear of arrest or intimidation by the government.

Politicians and public servants find that the people can do things that make them uncomfortable, but aren't against the law, like asking them inconvenient questions; why will they not hold themselves honestly accountable as a role models of student standards of conduct?

It's not against the law, but it makes them feel uncomfortable.

So they write of a "rule of decorum" prohibiting personal expressions that make them feel uncomfortable.

There's a big difference between breaking the law and breaking a rule of decorum. Under the law, there is a promise of due process. A citizen accused of breaking the law is protected by a system that protects both the accuser and the accused.

There is no due process under rules of decorum.

If the government, a la APS School Board enforcer Marty Esquivel accuses a citizen of breaking a "rule of decorum" there is no justice; there is no due process. There is no balance of power.

There is no place to appeal his decision. There is no place to protest his unlawful use of a publicly funded, private police force, link,to curtail personal liberty beyond the law. No place where he will not be protected by the government, using all ts power, resources, and influence to stand between him and any personal accountability.

It isn't just Esquivel; it isn't just Torrance County Commissioner Lonnie Freyburger, link, it's petty politicians and public servants everywhere, who think they can invent and enforce "rules of decorum" and in so doing limit the free exercise of Constitutionally protected human rights to assemble peacefully and speak freely in the effort to petition the government.

Rules of decorum and the enforcement of those rules by the government, are as unconstitutional as they are unlawful.

And yet, they get away with it.

In Esquivel's case, it helps to have Journal editor Kent Walz covering his trail.

photos Mark Bralley

Why not cut the waste?

The spending of public resources by the government can be represented by means of a pie chart.

This chart, from the Wikipedia, link, is presented for illustration, not information purposes.

There is a missing slice. The slice you don't see, "waste", is actually a slice of every slice. In every agency of government, some amount of our resources are "wasted".

The proportion of the waste slice varies from agency to agency, but I would bet there is no agency with no waste. I would hope there is no agency that is all waste, but if someone found one somewhere, would you be surprised?

I believe that 25% is a reasonably accurate estimate of the number of taxed and borrowed dollars lost to waste every year. If waste were eliminated, the cost of government would be cut by 25%. Never mind the benefits of increased efficiency from qualified public servants.

Budget deficits are cured by one of two methods; reducing spending or raising taxes. Reducing spending is complicated by the fact that, no matter which slice of the pie you want to trim, there are people (powerful enough to have a slice in the first place) who will vigorously defend their slice.

No one stands in defense of the waste slice. If a meeting were held, the purpose of which was to eliminate governmental waste, there would be no one who would stand up in favor of maintaining and enabling it. If a meeting were held, the waste slice would be eliminated.

Can waste really be eliminated, at once and for all?

Waste flows from two founts; incompetence and corruption.
If incompetence and corruption were eliminated, the waste
they generate would end as well.

Can incompetence and corruption be eliminated, at once and for all?

The are two factors that can enable or eliminate incompetence and corruption; standards, and accountability to those standards. Clearly high standards and honest accountability will tend to eliminate them, while lower standards and less accountability exacerbate both.

It is possible to write meaningful standards of conduct and competence for politicians and public servants within their public service. It is possible to hold pols and public servants honestly accountable to those standards; accountable under a system over which they have no undue influence, and powerful enough to hold even the most powerful, accountable, even against their will.

Meaningful standards and honest accountability are fatal
to public corruption and incompetence.

It is is possible, in the first few weeks of the legislature,
when we're paying them $50K a day to do nothing else,
to pass legislation creating transparent accountability
in politics and public service.

They won't of course. Not unless we the people, can make transparent accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence in politics and public service, an issue in the next election.

How do we do that exactly; how do we make political candidates talk about the things we want them to talk about?

Time to call the outcome of our shadow government scandal

The final outcome of the shadow government scandal in Santa Fe is as obvious as it is inevitable; high ranking politicians and public servants will have admitted they used private email accounts to conduct government business, our business, without creating a public record, and they will not be held "accountable" for their misconduct. They will promise never to do it again and walk away otherwise, scot free.

There is no good and ethical reason for them to have used private emails to conduct government business. In truth, there is only one reason to have done it at all; to prevent the creation of a public record of their public service. It isn't about, did they violate "the law". Rather, it is about did they do something they knew, or should have known, was wrong, and did they do it deliberately, with forethought.

There are two reasons why these politicians and public servants used private emails to conduct public business; they are incompetent, corrupt, or both.

Ignorance is incompetence; enabling ignorance is corruption.
Deliberate violation of agreed upon standards of conduct, is corruption.

Supposedly, they all now understand that it is wrong to conduct public business off the record, except as required by the law. Those of them who did not honestly understand that until they were caught doing it, are manifestly incompetent. They should know the standards of conduct that we the people, hold for them within their public service.

If Jay McCleskey, Governor Susana Martinez/Jay McCleskey, Chief of Staff Keith Gardner, Economic Development Secretary Jon Barela, Public Safety chief Gorden Eden, and NM PED PIO Larry Behrens, were aware of the standard before they were caught violating it, then their decision to violate it anyway is manifest public corruption.

The establishment's media has apparently lost interest, and has moved on.

There is one ray of hope; attorney Sam Bregman. He will keep this in the media for as long as it takes to compel the government to settle enough of our money on him and his client, to make them go away without creating a stink.

At that point, it all goes away and no one of them is going to have been punished for betraying the public trust, and we will have more conclusive evidence that, there is no honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence in politics or public service.

Records of the cabinet meeting in question?

A former Cabinet Secretary has alleged that Governor Susana Martinez's Chief of Staff Keith Gardner told attendees at a cabinet meeting, to use private email accounts to do government business in order to avoid a paper trail. The Governor's spokesperson Scott Darnell, all but calls her a liar;

"Her statement is simply false, and she knows it."And it's being peddled by a partisan attorney ...

What, partisan attorneys can't peddle the truth? The truth lies in the records of that meeting, and in the testimony of those who were there. Accordingly, I have asked the Governor's Office Constituent Services to answer a few legitimate questions;

There have been reports that Keith Gardner encouraged the use of private rather than state emails, during a cabinet meeting.
Is there a list of those who attended that meeting? Was there an agenda? Are there minutes? Were any recordings made, of that meeting?

We will see how candid, forthright and honest, is the response.

Good ol' boy accountability

When good ol' boys get caught, take for example Governor Susana Martinez and her shadow government, if they talk about it at all, it is only to point out that it was all "legal". Martinez has offered some quasi-law of her own, a la Joe Monahan, link;

This includes discussions preliminary in nature to final decisions or actions that have occasionally been sent via personal email because they are not required to be maintained under state law.

Her thinking is now clarified; the expectation that the people's power and resources be spent transparently, now includes the discussions that lead to final votes. Apparently, they hadn't thought of that before.

We the people, have no choice but to entrust the spending of our power and resources to politicians and public servants. If we the people, want to hold a politician or public servant accountable under the law, on the issue of their trustworthiness, we cannot. On this issue in particular, Martinez reminds us;

"There is no state law that requires this to be done ..."

More than the law requires; less than the law allows.

Any standard of conduct higher than the law require more
than the law requires, and allow less than the law allows,
or it isn't a higher standard at all.

Martinez has finally realized;

"... utilizing only state email to conduct state business in connection with public employees' duties is another important step to ensure continued confidence in government...".

If not using private email to conduct government business is an important step in the right direction today, why was it not yesterday and the days before? Had no one thought of it?

The foundation of trustworthiness is truth telling.

Is Susana Martinez trust worthy; can she be trusted to be candid, forthright and honest with interest holders?

A former Cabinet Secretary, Lupe Martinez, testified in a deposition that, Chief of Staff Keith Gardner told cabinet secretaries and others, ...

to, whenever possible, use our private emails when communicating because by doing such would prevent them from being discovered through public records requests."

Governor Susana Martinez is alleged to have witnessed that act, and given it her tacit approval.

Every person who attended that meeting should be asked under oath and under threat of perjury, whether that instruction was given.

Governor Susana Martinez could arrange for those statements to be taken and made public, and rather immediately.

Whether she does or not is a measure of her willingness to do more than the law requires in truth telling, and less than the law allows, in an effort to hide it.

photos Mark Bralley

Governor and NM FOG meet in private to discuss open government.

It is reported, link, that a team led by Governor Susana Martinez met Saturday, with a team from the NM Foundation for Open Government, to talk about governmental transparency, in private.

To be filed under I, for ironic.

APD leadership; penalty for insolence and lying not high enough to deter it.

The Albuquerque Police Department has a unit called the Repeat Offender Project. Until very recently, a wall mural in their unit office included a hangman's noose. Not the most politically sensitive move. It has been there a long time. A lot of very high ranking police officers walked by it.

A Journal reporter; link, called APS Commander Doug West.
West, who oversees the unit, responded to the reporter's questions in a manner I find profoundly disturbing.

When asked whether they were using a hangman's noose as an icon, West said, he

"wasn't a knot expert."

"I don't know a whole lot about knots."

The knee jerk response from a police supervisor to a question about the public interests and his public service, was to be a wise-ass.

He is a wise-ass because he knows he can get away with it. If he was afraid of any consequences, he wouldn't shoot off his mouth.

And that was after he initially lied to the reporter about the noose.

When asked about the image in a telephone interview, West said he was not familiar with it, had never seen it on any document and didn’t know whether it had anything to do with the ROP team.

After putting the reporter on hold for several minutes, West came back on the line and said it has been the ROP team’s “symbol” for 20 years and that APD now plans to change it.

He lied for the same reason; no fear of consequences, no accountability.

photo Mark Bralley

There is a tone in the leadership of the APD, and apparently it doesn't include a whole lot of respect for some very important values.

There needs to be an independent investigation and fact finding on the leadership Albuquerque Police Department.

One done by someone beside Chief Ray Schultz.

Open government, the NMPED email brouhaha, and the CEO

Governor Susana Martinez, through spokesman Scott Darnell, argues that politicians and public servants can spend public power and resources, on or off the record, at their discretion.

It is politicians and public servants, she argues, who will decide when politicians and public servants will be within or out of our sight and hearing, when they spend power and resources that belong fundamentally, to we the people.

There are those who disagree, I among them.

Establishing the terms of public service, in this case the transparency with which they conduct our business, is the prerogative of we the people, not of public servants.

What business they do outside of our sight and hearing, is ours to decide, not theirs.

The time has come to revisit the issue of open government.
There is no more important nor pressing issue.

It is time to make government as transparently accountable as it will ever be. It is time for the people to tell public servants, that the terms of their employment include candor, forthrightness and honesty, in response to our every question about the public interests or about their public service.

It is time to make transparent accountability in government
an election issue, and the subject of political discourse.

I'm no expert on knots ...

There is a unit of the Albuquerque Police Department called the Repeat Offender Project; aka the ROP team. On the their internal documents, wanted posters and apparently even on the wall in the unit's office, the unit icon; a noose.

Or is it "just a piece of rope"

According to the Journal, link, when APD Cmdr. Doug West was asked about the image, his initial reaction was to question whether it was really a noose, adding, he was “not a knot expert.”

A local attorney, Shannon Kennedy, said "It’s culturally insensitive at best.” For them to say that it’s just a rope shows willful ignorance. It speaks directly to the cultural problem within this police department and encourages a gang-like, us-vs.-them mentality instead of service to the public.”

Initially, according to the Journal, West, who oversees the Repeat Offender Project, first claimed he was not familiar with it, had never seen it on any document and didn’t know whether it had anything to do with the ROP team.

Except that it was painted on the wall in the Unit's office.

Worse than having a noose for an icon, is lying about having a noose for an icon. Much worse.