NM FOG elects Executive Committee - badly

Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce President and Chief Executive Officer Terri Cole has been elected FOG's (interim?) President.

The election of the Executive Committee normally takes place in October.  This one took place "earlier this month".  Another election is scheduled for the fall. 

"Administrator 2" informed me that "there were some delays and the board had not met since October", and, "there was a vote for a slate of board members and executive committee and both were approved unanimously".

Cole and I have history, link. She, and the Chamber of Commerce, were huge supporters of Character Counts! in the APS.  Huge.

Naturally, when I found the leadership of the APS had abdicated as the senior most role models of the Pillars of Characters Counts! which were and are still, the APS student standards of conduct, I went to Cole and Chamber.  When I asked Cole for help in exposing the abdication of the entire leadership of the APS as role models of the Pillars of Character Counts!, she sided with Paula Maes and the rest of her cronies in the leadership of the APS.

A disappointing pick for President if you ask me.

But then, at least she was willing to serve.  My impression was that people weren't exactly lining up for the opportunity to serve, if you know what I mean.  Cole may well have just picked the short straw.

More disappointing still;

APS School Board President Marty Esquivel received the Board's unanimous approval as FOG Vice President.   It's a step down in his aspirations, Esquivel was once on tap to be FOG's President.  At least that's what he was telling people when he interviewed them for their Dixon Awards in 2010; that he was interviewing them in the capacity of the next FOG President.

A wrench was thrown in the works when I stood in front of the FOG Board of Directors and told them about Esquivel's complicity in a cover up of felony criminal misconduct in the leadership of APS' publicly funded private police force.

I told them Esquivel was giving at least tacit approval to hiding public records of findings of at least three investigations into public corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS.

I told the Board how ridiculous it was for Marty Esquivel and the newly unanimously re-elected, apparently perpetual NM FOG Secretary, Journal Managing Editor Kent Walz, to have bamboozled them into giving APS Supt Winston Brooks a Dixon Award, link, in the middle of his fight to hide public records of public corruption and incompetence in blatant violation of the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act; records the FOG itself had argued belong to the people.

So here we are;

• the players are largely the same, (link), 
• the facts are the same, and
• those facts have not been refuted, rebutted or even acknowledged by Esquivel or Walz, and
• they are both still covering up the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

And Cole, who was at that meeting in 2010, Esquivel, and Walz have all been selected "unanimously" to "lead" the FOG.

Wow, what do you do with that?





 photos Mark Bralley

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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

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