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...
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...
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...
"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 n...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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 iron...
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...
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...
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...
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