Is Esquivel the new FOG President?

I have reason to believe that APS School Board President Marty Esquivel is representing that he is the new President of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government.

The Executive Director of the FOG Sarah Welsh writes that the actual election of the new president will not happen until the FOG Board of Directors meeting next Friday night.

Does Esquivel know something we don't know?
Has there already been a secret vote?

The NM FOG is making a laughing stock of itself by awarding the Dixon Award to APS Supt Winston Brooks while at the same time, their champion of transparency, is using legal weaselry to exploit the weakness in the NM Inspection of Public Records Act; of which, the NM FOG is supposed to be the leading defender.

Brooks is hiding an independent investigation of public corruption and incompetence in his own administration, and the NM FOG is handing him an award for transparency. What a joke.

Now they are about to compound their foolishness by anointing as their President a foe of open government, Marty Esquivel.

Esquivel is as responsible as any one in the APS, for the fact that hundreds of whistle blowers are being denied due process.

Brooks by the way, is apparently intending to pass up the opportunity to join the other Dixon Award winners at a banquet in their honor.

I suppose that he will point to some scheduling conflict as the justification for missing the banquet.

The banquet cannot be rescheduled, having already been rescheduled once to avoid Rep Janice Arnold-Jones; a true Champion of Transparency, being honored at a Dixon Award banquet that was originally scheduled to be held in May, immediately before the June Republican Primary.

Such recognition at that point in the Republican Primary race, would have been a game changer, and therefore not OK with the good ol' boys who had other people in mind to be their gubernatorial candidate in November.

Brooks will instead, accept the award at a APS board meeting, where his Praetorian Guard can protect him from anyone who might want to point out the hypocrisy taking place as he accepts the formerly prestigious award.





photos Mark Bralley