Monday, March 10, 2008

Paula Maes; "Shame, shame on us and how are we going to fix it."

This in response to another yet another audit of a major
APS department in trouble; Accounting. link

"As it turns out, the department is in such chaos,
reports documenting how the district spent its money
in 2006 and 2007
still haven’t been turned in."
The problem in the accounting department didn't pop up
last Thursday. It didn't even pop up last year.
It didn't even pop up in last two decades.

When I started teaching in the APS in the
early 80's,
I had a great deal of trouble finding vendors who would take
APS Purchase Orders because APS was so slow to pay their
bills.


It was a problem almost three decades ago, and
it still is
because the good ol' boys never say;
"Shame, shame on us ,
who is responsible,
and how to we hold them accountable?"

It's not the way that
good ol' boys roll.

Administrators of over a billion tax dollars a year, have
met no objective test of their skill set in administrating
anything.

It is what the
Council of the Great City Schools
auditors meant when they wrote;
"... APS administrative evaluations are subjective
and unrelated to promotion or step placement ..."
When I was running for the school board, a year ago,
I advocated for a full scale audit
before voters
elected board members,
voted for a mill levy of over a hundred million dollars, and
voted on a bond issue of over three hundred million dollars.

Maes and the media knew about the accountability issues
and
kept them secret from voters during voting on three
school board seats and almost
a half a billion dollars.

Were she accountable to
the student standard of conduct;
she, and they, would not have been able to get away with
deliberately deceiving stakeholders.

It isn't
just about role modeling;
It's about transparent and honest accountability to

meaningful standards
of conduct and
competence.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Monday, March 10, 2008

AG Plans Update To Open Records Law

By Barry Massey/
Associated Press

SANTA FE — Attorney General Gary King plans to ask the Legislature next year to update a New Mexico sunshine law providing access to public records.
One change proposed by King will require governmental bodies to accept e-mail requests for documents under the Inspection of Public Records Act. Currently, the law is unclear whether e-mail are the same as a written request for public records, according to the attorney general's office.
"So what we're going to be working on is a total revamp of that part of the law so that it meets 21st century standards,'' King said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
Last year, King's office issued an advisory opinion on the issue after New Mexico State University decided not to treat e-mail as a valid request for public records.
"I think that agencies, if they want to, can accept e-mail requests because you can print them out and turn them into a written request basically. But we just didn't think that the law required it,'' King said.
The attorney general's office and some other agencies accept e-mailed requests for public records.
"What we would like to do ... is be able to say that if you get an e-mail request for documents that you can also provide the documents by electronic means too,'' said King. "Frankly, for a lot of requesters, they might really like that. We might make it to a point where you don't have to show up at the door of a government agency to get your documents.''
Another proposal by King is to add criminal penalties for some violations of the Inspection of Public Records Act. Currently, a court can award damages, costs and attorneys' fees to individuals for successful lawsuits to enforce the law after a public records request has been wrongly denied.
King said the proposed penalties would mirror those for a violation of the Open Meeting Act — making it a misdemeanor and punishable by a fine of up to $500 for each offense.
The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government supports King's proposed revisions to the public records law, according to Leonard DeLayo, the foundation's executive director.
But he said, "We have constantly taken the position that e-mail is in fact a written request'' under current law.
The attorney general also will ask the Legislature to require public disclosure of certain donors to university fundraising foundations. King's proposal would require donors who are soliciting contracts or doing business with the university to disclose their contributions. Those disclosures would be public records and could be obtained from the university. However, the nonprofit foundation would not be required to make a disclosure of its donors.
The issue arose last year and King's office issued a nonbinding legal opinion concluding that the nonprofit NMSU Foundation was not obligated under the open records law to release the name of its donors.
Lawmakers, the Las Cruces Sun-News and blogger Heath Haussamen, a former Sun-News reporter, had asked the attorney general's office whether the foundation was required to provide a list of its donors.
"Instead of putting the onus on the foundation ... we're going to try to put some onus on the donor to do a disclosure if they're doing business with the public body that is related,'' King said.
King said he had hoped that lawmakers could consider the sunshine law changes during this year's 30-day session of the Legislature, but Gov. Bill Richardson did not put the proposals on the legislative agenda. The governor narrowed the session's agenda this year to focus legislators on health care proposals.