You pick a side, when you don't pick a side

Sides are being picked in the struggle between the leadership of the APS and those who want more transparent accountability in the administration of public schools and the spending of public resources.

APS has two issues with respect to transparent accountability;

1.  their relentless refusal to produce ethically public records. and

2.  their deliberate efforts to limit public participation in public meetings.

NM FOG picked a side on APS IPRA issues; link.

NM FOG did not pick a side, and in so doing picked a side, in the struggle APS, Marty Esquivel, et al, are waging against those who would expand rather than restrict public participation in public meetings.

To the extent that their silence gives consent, the NM FOG is good with;

• requiring the media, the press, and any person desiring, to record school board meetings from a particular corner of the room, though they do make exceptions for "credentialed media", link, and
• requiring groups of speakers with similar thoughts to appoint a single person to speak for all of them, but without inheriting the two minutes to which each was entitled, and
• granting board members and committee chairs unbridled authority to declare any behavior disruptive, arrest "violators" and ban them from future meetings, and
• perhaps worst of all, pretending that the Open Meeting Act actually prohibits them from allowing speakers to ask questions during public forum, when in truth, questions are only prohibited by their individual and collective lack of character and courage to respond to candidly, forthrightly and honestly to legitimate questions about the public interests and about their public service.

One wonders why? except that the indefensible policy and procedural directive are the brain child of FOG heavy hitter Marty Esquivel and his friends at Modrall.

Notables yet to pick a side;

• New Mexico Public Education Secretary Hanna Skandera and

• the Second Judicial District Court - though who, what, when, where and how remain unspecified.