A piece in the Trib about Public Information Officers.
It is worth a read. link
In the piece, a quote from APS spokesman Rigo Chavez.
"You have to balance the institution ...Two problems; last first;
with the public's right to know, (and)
you'll have people within the institution who
don't understand the public's right to know,"
- "... people within the institution
who don't understand the public's right to know ..." and - balancing the institution against the public right to know.
Rigo Chavez refused a public records request for a list
of the names of people trained by the NMAGO on
open government laws.
They pretend not to understand the law,
as a tool to obfuscate the surrender of public records.
The "balance" between institutions and the public right
to know, implies a relationship between the power and
importance of an institution and their obligation
to surrender public records.
APS/Modrall for instance, considers itself too powerful and
too important to be accountable to open government laws.
The truth is that there is no "balancing" of anything.
The law is clear on its face. The least and the most powerful
institutions have an exactly equal obligation to obey the law.
In truth, APS' exception to the law exists in the minds
of the leadership of the APS and the lawyers of Modrall;
and nowhere else.
1 comment:
I asked Rigo if he considered the APS Web Information Request as an IPRA request, but he would not give me a straight answer.
You know I have tried getting them to post a sign per the IPRA law too, with no luck. Unless they have posted one lately in Community Relations/Communications or on the web, they are in violation of the posting section of the IPRA law still.
I wrote a memo to Rigo in 2004 detailing the obvious lack of law compliance...to deaf ears and blind eyes, apparently.
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