Investigative reporters a dying breed, PIOs breeding like rabbits.

There are those would would gather and tell the truth, and
there are those who would spin the truth.

One is a dying breed, not from lack of need, but rather from
lack of resources.

The other is breeding like rabbits, not from a need, but from
virtually unlimited funding by means of unwitting taxpayer
support.

We should not lose sight of the fact, spinning the truth
amounts to lying.

If we cannot increase the numbers of investigative reporters,
perhaps we can at least limit the number of "spinners" and
the amount of spin they are allowed to impart.

No worries; there will be an "internal investigation".

The Public Regulation Commission, might turn out to be the most corrupt and incompetent agency in state government.

Never the less, PRC Chairman Sandy Jones intends to get out "in front of the problem" by means of an "internal investigation".

Heads will roll; trust him.

You have no choice but to trust him, because the results of their
little "internal investigation" will be kept secret.

They will claim they have to do with "personnel issues" and
are therefore excepted from public records law.

If this has a familiar ring to it, think of Locksley Gate.

Or think about the "internal investigation" that followed the
Meyners Audit revelations about APS' Finance Division;

• inadequate policies, and
• inadequate accountability, and
• inadequate record keeping.

They did their own" internal investigation" and will not answer
questions about any criminal misconduct they might have found.

They did an "internal investigation" of felony criminal misconduct
by APS senior administrators, link, three years ago. He records
are still secret because they are still "investigating", long after
statutes of limitation have expired.

The N.M. Educational Retirement Board investigated internally.
The State Investment Council investigated internally.
We're out millions and the whole truth is still hidden.

And now. the PRC will investigate itself.

And this is alright with everybody?


Only bad can come from allowing the people who negligently
allowed and/or knowingly permitted corruption and incompetence, to conduct "internal investigations" of the corruption and incompetence they enabled.

It is rather like allowing a bank robber to investigate the robbery.

The number of banks being robbed increases exponentially.



It is at times like these, I find myself wondering wtf?

Krebs headed for confidence vote.

According the Journal this morning, link, UNM Athletics Director Paul Krebs is headed for a confidence vote by UNM students. The vote will be entirely symbolic as students have no actual seat at any table where decisions are made.

According to the Journal;

Graduate student leaders at the University of New Mexico are laying the groundwork for a no-confidence vote in Athletics Vice President Paul Krebs over his handling of the Mike Locksley altercation.

No mention of;
UNM Regents President Raymond Sanchez' handling of,
UNM President David Schmidly's handling of,
Paul Krebs handling of,
Locksley Gate.

Apparently Krebs is to be the scapegoat for mishandling of the situation from top to bottom.

Journal reporter Martin Salazar wrote;

"The recent coverup of the Locksley-Gerald incident coupled with the egregious lack of sportsmanship displayed by Lambert exemplifies a lack of leadership within the UNM Athletics Department. ..." association President Lissa Knudsen said in the release. "It's time for the students to weigh in on this."

Students should be allowed the opportunity to weigh in at every level, not just at the level of the UNM A D.

Students should reconsider the scope of their proposed voting, and weigh in on the refusal by the leadership of the UNM to begin an cleansing audit of the whole chain of command.

Berry's support of Ed Adams is disappointing.

When Ed Adams was the head of the Department of Municipal Development, he demonstrated his inability to deal with egregious incompetence and corruption among his subordinates, link, and link.

Now, he just seems to get promotion after promotion.

wtf?

Is there really no one else on the face of the planet,
who Mayor-elect Richard Berry could have tapped for
his new Chief Operating Officer?




photo Mark Bralley

Senator Dede Feldman spoke at a Bernalillo County Commission public meeting last night.

Bernalillo County Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins is fronting an effort to rewrite the Bernalillo County Ethics Ordinance.

It is time. The existing ordinance was written in the last century and has not been reviewed since.

The attendance at the meeting was disappointingly small.

State Senator Dede Feldman introduced herself to me before the meeting began. I told her my name and identified myself as the writer of Diogenes' six.

It didn't seem to ring a bell;
it was crushed I was.

We discussed briefly, ethics reform in state government. She has a long record of efforts to pass ethics reform legislation.

I expressed my hope that this would be the year that meaningful ethics reform would take place.

I offered that what we really needed to do in that regard,
was to elect Rep Janice Arnold-Jones as governor.

Oops.

Senator Feldman is apparently a Denish supporter,
a fact that would not have been lost on me,
had I thought it through a little further.

Commissioner Hart Stebbins listened attentively to those
who chose to speak at the forum. You can tell that her heart is in reform.

She, like others carrying ethics reform legislation, will find
it a hard row to hoe. And, a rather lonely one as well.

Sometimes I wonder at the lack of public involvement and
support for ethics reform.

I think that most people have given up the cause as hopeless,

... a self fulfilling prophecy.




photo Mark Bralley

So far behind, they're actually far out ahead.

The 39th most corrupt state government in the United States, link, has a poster child agency; the Public Regulation Commission.

A recent survey of PRC employees revealed an agency in big trouble, Terrel, link and link, and Nash, link, are way ahead in the coverage.

Employees paint the agency as a roosting place for a bunch of "incompetent political flunkies". The most damning statistic is the number of employees who believe that they cannot even report unethical behavior without becoming victims of retribution and retaliation.

Public Regulation Commission Chairman, Sandy Jones, reports, KOB TV link, that the surveys are the "starting point" to turn things around. He goes on to say, he wants to be on the "front end" of the problem not the tail end.

News flash Sparky, is too late to get on the front end of this scandal.

Jones promises an "internal investigation".

Should anyone be delusional enough to suppose that this means "heads will roll" as the mess gets cleaned up, I would remind them that the parts of the survey that named the names of the corrupt and the incompetent are still blacked out.

Stakeholder interests would be protected by an independent review; an investigation by an impartial third party who will go in and do a formal investigation, and then report the findings to the public record.

But, as we all know, there will be no independent review.

The good ol' boys at the UNM have just proved that they can
and will ignore any calls for any independent fact finding of
their individual character and competence.

It's just not the way they roll.

APS School Board heavy hitter, Paula Maes
called a spade a bloody shovel, wikilink, when she boasted
in a public meeting and on the record;

I will never agree to any audit that individually identifies
any corrupt or incompetent good ol' boys in the leadership of the APS.

None of them will. Ever.

And there you have it, in a nutshell.
We didn't get to "39th most corrupt" by accident.

We will never rise in that ranking for as long as the people who
get to decide whether there will be independent reviews are the
ones with the most to lose, if the reviews ever get done.

Locksley to get mentoring.

According to KOB TV, link, UNM Head Football Coach Michael Locksley has a mentor.

No word yet on whether mentors are being sought for Schmidly, Krebs, and Gonzales, who are every bit in need of mentoring as their coach.

The upset over the UNM leadership's decision to not allow
an independent review of their handling of the Locksley Gate
has died down. They made it through the news cycle unscathed.

They will get away with their incompetence and likely corruption, scot free, wikilink.

APS Board Meeting minutes not posted, again.

The APS Board of Education is meeting tonight. They will approve the minutes of the last meeting. The minutes are supposed to be posted, on the district's website for public viewing, for 24 hours before they are voted upon. They are not. This is a violation of the Open Meetings Act.

Also being approved tonight, the minutes for the October 21st meeting. By law, they were required to have been approved at the November 4th meeting, but were not.

So here you have it, not one, but two blatant violations of the law.

Don't like it? So what?
What are you going to do, sue them?

... good luck on that one.

"Redaction" rears its ugly head again.

Corey Pein, SFReeper points to some questionable redaction of public records, link.

The stink of it is; a government agency did a self survey.

Some of the survey answers are difficult to deal with, so
they decided to redact them all.

There in lies the problem; allowing people to redact their own
records, rather than submitting all public records to an impartial
process of ethical redaction.

It creates the appearance of a conflict of interest, and
the appearance of impropriety.

All public records belong to the public.

Some public records are excepted from surrender to public knowledge for good and ethical reasons.

Some are excepted for ass covering reasons.

We ought not to allow that.

Esquivel resents personal attacks.

In a recent letter to me,
APS School Board President
Marty Esquivel wrote that
I have "unfairly questioned
his integrity".

I will let readers be the judge.

The leadership of the APS, Esquivel being foremost, refuses to discuss executive and administrative role modeling of the student standards of conduct, in public, openly and honestly.

I have argued there are only two reasons that explain their ongoing refusal;

1. a lack of personal courage and/or
2. a lack of character.

Neither Esquivel, nor anyone else in the leadership of the APS has been able to offer any alternative explanation. In short, because there really is none.

Two weeks ago, Esquivel was asked to tell the truth about who it was that ordered my arrest at the last public forum, link.

He offered one response which did not address the question
at all. Now he is ignoring the question entirely.

That refusal, to step up and admit the truth and then accept
the consequences, speaks to his (lack of) integrity
far more loudly than I ever have.


"All wounds to honor are self inflicted." Andrew Carnegie

"A man is not dishonored, except by himself." unk




photo Mark Bralley

The APS AVID boondoggle.

I can report that my previous post, link, has been read in
APS' City Center, and in AVID headquarters in San Diego.

Not one of them apparently, could post a comment that would
controvert the argument that AVID is a boondoggle; the same
funding could have gone directly to students with real needs
and not to good ol' boys who need to travel on the tax payers'
dime.

There has been only one comment so far, from someone who
is apparently "in the know";

Follow the money trail....
There's funding from feds for these programs, there's local funding, mainly from CNM for this program, CNM gets state funding for this program, the kids only have to go to APS 1/2 day, but APS gets full payment for them in the per capita.
The program does have some good things for high-achieving students, but I believe the money that comes in legal kickbacks are the main driver for this program.

Any money spent on students who want to succeed and
who are willing to work hard in order to do so, is well spent.

Any money spent trying to prove that point, is wasted.

The best reason for opposing any tax hikes at all;

the number of tax dollars wasted or stolen, link.

Most people, I assume, would support taxes that actually do
some good, individually or collectively.

But how does one support those and that which really need
support, without as the same time funding waste and corruption?

The short answer is, one can't.
And that is why even worthwhile taxes are mightily resisted.

Somehow,
we need to end the culture of corruption and incompetence.

Clearly, it cannot be ended by those who will not even admit
that it exists; people like Candidate Diane Denish.

Scour her website, link. I defy you to find anywhere on her site,
any admission at all, of the existence of the culture of corruption
and incompetence in state government.

It would appear her intention is not to derail the gravy train,
but rather, just a change of engineer and riders.

Unacceptable; without qualification, exception or condition,
clearly, patently, categorically, absolutely unacceptable.

File under "C", for clueless.

Terri Cole, President and CEO of the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, told a task force Monday that food tax breaks haven't helped the very poor, link.

Perhaps "very poor" provides her some cover. If someone is so poor that they can't afford even to buy food or medical care, then yes, lower taxes on food and medical care won't affect them. Although, food has to be bought somewhere, even if it is later given away. Less food can be bought if seven cents out of every dollar is lost to taxes.

What about the "ordinary" poor, the ones who spend their entire income on food, shelter, and if they have anything left over, medical care?

Is AVID just another APS boondoggle?

Journal editors are on board the APS AVID train, link.
APS is spending a lot of money and intends to spend a whole
lot more, on a program called AVID, link, and link.

They are spending so much money, in these hard times, that
they haven't told us how much they've spent, or intend to spend
in implementing the program in the APS.

AVID, Advancement Via Individual Determination, has proved pretty conclusively that, if you can identify students who are willing to work really hard and make a number of other important sacrifices in order to graduate high school and go to college, and then give them a whole bunch of resources and individual attention, they will succeed.

It is roughly the same kind to straightforward approach that APS used to raise its graduation rate; they took those least likely to graduate (students who had already failed the first year of high school) and dropped them out of their sample.

The good news, a lot of folks from AVID get to travel all over the country at taxpayer expense, and lot of APS administrators (and some teachers, I suppose) also get to travel on the taxpayer's dime, to "trainings" in different fun to visit locales.

Don't get me wrong. If you can identify students who really want to succeed, and who are willing to work hard in order to do so, by all means spend some money on them.

Just don't spend a bunch of money trying to make it look like
rocket science.

"... announced crowd of 24,344 - many dressed as empty benches ..."

Journal reporter Greg Archuleta, link, seems to not believe
UNM about the number of people who attended the UNM/BYU
football game last Saturday.

Not surprising, nobody believes UNM about anything anymore.

Attendance at Lobo football games is down. Again, not surprising in so far as they have yet to win a game. Though, also at play, Schmidly, Krebs, Gonzales, Locksley Gate.

A number of fans have spoken out in on-line forums, saying that they were boycotting Lobo games in protest over the incompetence and apparent corruption brought to light in the Locksley Gate scandal.

The refusal to begin an immediate independent investigation of Locksley Gate by Richardson good ol' boy, Raymond Sanchez, President of the UNM Board of Regents, brought things to a head.

My dad would say, if there isn't a cover-up here, I'm a
Chinese sea cook.

The independent review, the one which UNM President Schmidly assures us would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Schmidly, Krebs, Gonzales, and Locksley, are not part of a cover up, won't be done. The only explanation; "no new information has surfaced" which would compel the review. Never mind that, the "old" information was more than enough to justify the review.

It's a shame, because the independent review would likely have saved taxpayers a whole lot of money.

The review results would likely have provided evidence enough to fire some of these people for cause. Now, if they are going to be tossed off the train in order to restore confidence and get fans back in the bleachers, (real ones, not the ones dressed like empty bleachers), they will get huge buyouts of their contracts, as is the custom when good ol' boys in New Mexico, are finally given the boot.

No. We would not.

Would care to explain to us, why you will not
swear that you will tell us the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth about the public interests
and about your public service?

No. I would not.


No. I would not.

No. I would not.


No. I would not.


No. I would not.

No. I would not.

photos
Mark Bralley

It's really too bad that UNM President David Schmidly isn't answering any more questions.

I would like to ask him at least one more.

Would you care to explain the exact circumstances under which important evidence remained "inadvertently un-copied" only to be "advertently copied", long after the original was supposedly destroyed?

What else could he say but,

No. I would not.

photo Mark Bralley

Doing the math on missing records in Locksley Gate.

From the editorial in the Journal this morning, link.

A new piece of evidence has turned up in the Locksley Gate investigation.

The "new" evidence points to a pattern of (implied) violence in the relationship between UNM Head Football Coach Michael Locksley and his Assistant Coach JP Gerald.

(UNM Regents President) Sanchez, meanwhile, says no new information has surfaced to warrant an outside probe — that despite the emergence of new notes from an interview with an assistant coach who said Locksley had threatened Gerald with physical violence in an earlier incident and that players felt responsible for Gerald being mistreated.

"The new information turned up around 5 p.m. Friday after UNM officials said they had inadvertently failed to turn over the back side of one of the witness accounts. They blamed it on a copying error."

Do the math;

"The new information turned up around 5 p.m. Friday ..."

A coincidence as unlikely as it is convenient; the evidence turned up at 5 pm on a Friday; a time and day widely recognized as the single best time to make bad news available to the press.

The "just found" document is the one they would most want to hide; proving not only a previous record of (implied) violence, but also that students had been folded into the scandal.

The missing evidence was on the back side of a sheet of paper that Schmidly, Krebs, and Gonzales, claim was destroyed long since. How could they now be able to surrender a copy of an "inadvertently not copied" sheet of paper that they claim doesn't exist? Or did Shannon Garbiso make back to back copies of her notes? this one backside somehow separated from the stack and remaining conveniently undiscovered by everyone until 5 pm last Friday?

This whole thing stinks to high heaven.

It is well past time to begin the independent fact finding that reports to the public record.

It is well past time to tell the truth.

It is well past time to hold Raymond Sanchez, David Schmidly, Paul Krebs, Helen Gonzales, and Michael Locksley, honestly accountable for their conduct and for their competence, even if they are good ol' boys.

... especially if they are good ol' boys.

Locksley, Schmidly, Krebs, and Gonzales "got to the result that they were looking for."

Everyday, I watch the furor over the Locksley Gate subside.
My fear is, like every other "gate", UNM leadership will simply
wait out the upset until no one cares anymore and then,
back to business as usual.

The Journal editors this morning, link, note;

(Schmidly and Krebs) seem to think silence will make it go away. Not likely.

The first point is on point, the second remains to be seen.

Good ol' boy logic is, everyday you don't lose, you win.
And the good ol' boys are winning; their silence likely will
make it go away. It has always worked before.

At the very least, it is unbelievably optimistic to suppose
it might play out differently this time.

The good ol' boys haven't lost. They will not lose until the
moment they knuckle under and begin an independent review
of their handling of the investigation of the "alleged" assault
by their Head Football Coach Micheal Locksley on a subordinate employee.

They will fight the first ever independent review of good ol' boy competence and character, tooth and nail.

There is no reason at all, to not begin the independent review,
one that reports to the public record, immediately, except to
protect the corrupt and the incompetent.

The reputation of the leadership of the UNM is in the toilet
according to any reasonable measure. That reputation, the
part where the community believes there is a cover-up afoot,
would be rehabilitated completely if the independent review
reveals what UNM President Schmidly has promised it would;
no cover-up.

If I were Schmidly, and I were telling the truth when I made
that promise, I would be fighting for the review that would
validate my claim.

It's fair to ask then, why is he obstructing the investigation
he would have us believe would clear his name,

except that it would not?

Teachers way behind in teacher evaluation.

In a Journal report this morning, the topic of evaluating teachers is broached, link. The report quotes a local teachers union president.

Albuquerque Teachers Federation President Ellen Bernstein said the union would be willing to tie evaluations to student performance if the policy is carefully written and if teachers are involved in writing it.

Why haven't they written a fair and honest evaluation plan already?

Isn't at least part of the idea of any professional organization; to police your profession?

And since I have the floor; why not think of every possible measure of teacher performance, not just student performance? Why aren't student evaluations of their teachers on the table?

Right away I suppose, someone is going to write; you're an idiot. How could you tie a teacher's career to the opinions of a bunch of kids?

I am not suggesting it as the only measure. Again, I would suggest measuring in every way possible, reflecting on every measure, balancing them appropriately, and then coming to a conclusion.

If a majority of a teacher's students have any complaint about a teacher, someone should look at that complaint and do something about it, even if that means negating that complaint for some good and ethical reason.

The teachers union should have figured this one out long ago.

If they had, perhaps they would not be perceived, inaccurately imho, as "protecting bad teachers" from the consequences of their "badness".