Journal reporter Jeff Jones spins quite a tale; link.
House Majority Leader W. Ken Martinez, D-Grants,
introduced a bill that would have shortened the time that state
agencies could take to comply with public records requests;
from 15 days down to 10.
The bill also settled the question of whether or not emails and
faxes were acceptable means of submitting requests.
Incredibly, there is a record of public servants refusing
to accept public records requests if the requests were emailed
or faxed to them.
The original bill was replaced by another, by a process
which was not made clear in the Journal report.
An allegagator tells me that Martinez had grown tired of a discussion and said something like; OK, you write something then.
So "they" did. "They" wrote a substitute bill that would
effectively gut the Inspection of Public Records Act.
According to the Journal,
Kip Purcell of the Foundation for Open Government said;
"The bill would almost define 'public records' out of existence,"And no one seems to know, or will admit,
"In short, it would be a disaster for the cause of open and honest government."
whose bright idea it was;
to put an end to public records access.
If this does not build a case for transparent government,
what does?
photo Mark Bralley
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