Where are the Pillars of Character Counts! in this discussion?

I don't know when I have ever heard the words "role model" uttered so many times by so many people.  Most of them disappointed in APS Supt Winston Brooks as a role model for students, teachers and community members.

Among those disappointed with the reprehensible behavior Winston Brooks is modeling,  Governor Susana Martinez and Public Education Secretary Hanna Skandera.

Winston Brooks is the senior-most role administrative role model of student standards of conduct: second only to the members of the school board.

Student standards of conduct are actual standards. They are written down clearly and unequivocally, link.  They are called the Pillars of Character Counts!; a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct.

It doesn't make a whit of difference if anyone thinks the Pillars should or should not be APS' student standards of conduct.  They simply are.
  They were adopted by a unanimous school board resolution; a resolution which has never been rescinded or amended and it is as binding today as the night it was passed.

Every year, school board policy is reiterated to students. in the Student Behavior Handbook.  They are told, they are expected to model (honest accountability to) and promote the Pillars of Character Counts!

Every year the leadership of the APS establishes and enforces standards on students, and in so doing, inexorably become role models of accountability to those same standards.  Else is hypocrisy.  Someone has to show them what honest accountability to those standards looks like.

So why is no one asking Brooks about his abandonment of honest accountability to the Pillars of Character Counts!?


Why is no one asking School Board President Marty Esquivel about his abandonment of his obligations as senior most role model in the entire school district, of honest accountability to the Pillars of Character Counts!?

It is because the people who should be asking, won't.
They are in cahoots.

The Journal won't ask.  KRQE won't ask. KOAT won't ask.
And KOB TV won't ask.

Why won't they ask, except that they are complicit in
the cover up of an ethics and accountability scandal
in the leadership of the APS?




photos Mark Bralley

It is not so much that Brooks tweeted what he was thinking ...

... as it is that, what he tweeted was running around in his mind in the first place.
(a caller on KKOB this morning)

Winston Brooks has a record.

It is a public record of repeated complaints alleging his misogyny and bullying.

There is no record, nor any reason to believe that the school board considered Brooks' record when deciding what consequences he deserves.

There is no record, nor any reason to believe that the Journal will investigate and report upon Winston Brooks' record as it relates to the circumstances of his latest predicament and the consequences he was served.

The two conditions are not entirely unrelated. 

Winston Brooks and role modeling

APS Supt Winston Brooks has been role modeling for students and staff; badly.

He has an opportunity to role model morally courageous behavior. He has the opportunity to impose upon himself (as long as no one else is) consequences that are appropriate to his misconduct.

Brooks is the senior-most administrative role model of the standards of conduct that he and the board establish and enforce upon students; the Pillars of Character Counts!; a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct.

Like George Washington and the cherry tree, Brooks has the opportunity to show students what it looks like to hold oneself honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct.

Every generation expects the next generation to be the first generation to hold itself honestly accountable to meaningful standard of conduct.

If we really want students to grow into adults who embrace character and courage and honor, someone has to show them what those look like.

Heretofore, the leadership of the APS has steadfastly refused to even acknowledge their obligations as the senior-most role models of student standards of conduct.

It seems unlikely, that leadership will now demonstrate honest accountability as role models of higher standards of conduct than the law; the standards of conduct that every higher standards are higher than.

Brooks will skate.

Is this where Brooks' $750K golden parachute gets tested?

Parachutes have a history of dual use; as a parachute of course, but also as a cushion.  The parachute the school board has provided for Winston Brooks is a comfortable seat from which to watch the school board decide what they want to do about firing him.  If they do, it will be employed in the more usual way.

If APS School Board fires
APS Supt Winston Brooks
over his abusive behavior,
will taxpayers have to pony up
the $750K Marty Esquivel and
rest of the board have promised him?

It's a reasonable question.




photo Mark Bralley

This isn't Brooks' first rodeo

I think we can all agree that APS Supt Winston Brooks has earned some unpleasantness over his latest social media faux pas.  There those calling for his head, link.

Logically, the consequences should reflect the circumstances, not the least of which is; is there a pattern of misconduct or was this a one-offer.

This is not his first rodeo.  He is a named respondent in a number of ongoing lawsuits over alleged misogyny, bulling and anger management issues.  He has been sued before.  He has a record.

If the Journal does not investigate
and report upon Winston Brooks'
record; similar misconduct, similar
allegations and similar complaints,
including ongoing complaints and
litigation over allegations of his
ongoing misogyny and bullying,
as part of their coverage of this story,
it will be for one of two reasons;

1.  some ethically defensible reason or,

2.  some ethically indefensible reason.

Something like ongoing complicity in a conspiracy to cover up the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

photo Mark Bralley

Brooks will be "evaluated" in secret

Brooks is about to sit in front of the board and be scolded, link.  The scolding, or the everyone sitting around having a good laugh over what a dumb ass he is, will take place in secret so you will never know which for certain.  The people whose power and resources are being spent, will not be privy to the truth about the public service of the APS administration and board.

They will not be held accountable for anything they do when they meet in secret.

As is their past and practice, they will not make a recording of the in secret session.  They will not because if a judge at some later time orders the record to be produced, it will produced against their interests.

The law allows them to meet and make decisions that affect our interests, in meetings in secret from us.  The law does not prevent them from recording them.

All you have, to protect your interests, is their assurance that they will not violate the Open Meetings Act in any of its specific protection of your rights to know how your power and resources are being spent.

They have demonstrated their unworthiness of your trust.

At an audit committee meeting in August 2010, they made a decision in secret.  The decision was not on their agenda and was not added to their closing statement.  They all swore, by roll call vote, that they had discussed and decided no other issue.

Videotape evidence and sworn statements prove otherwise.

The record shows them breaking the law and then perjuring themselves.

You really don't know what will happen in this meeting.  You really won't know how the board member who represents you at that meeting, performs.  You have only to trust them behind closed doors.

You cannot trust them.  They are manifestly untrustworthy.

They are willing to break the law in order to continue to hide the findings of investigations of public corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS.

And not because the law requires them to,
but because the law allows them to.
The law, legal weaselry, and the Journal.




photo Mark Bralley

Bad Winston! No more tweeting for you!

Despite hiring an expert to guide him through the mine field of social media and tweak his tweeting, APS Supt Winston Brooks has managed to tweet himself in the foot, again.

First he (re)tweeted a photograph of the NM Secretary of Education with fangs, link.  In contrition he indicated they would "certainly discuss guidelines for social media use".

Well, either the discussion never took place or Winston Brooks forgot what they discussed, because now he has all but called the Secretary of Education a pig in a tweet.  "Moo Moo Oink Oink".

Brooks says his comment was meant to be funny.

I'll bet if anyone asks him about telling School Board Member Robert Lucero to "get a pistol to take me out", link he will claim he was just trying to be funny then too.

He isn't, it wasn't.




photo Mark Bralley

Walz and Esquivel off of the FOG Board of Directors

According to the NM FOG website, link, a new 2014 Board of Directors has been unanimously approved.

The new executive committee consists of
President: Kathi Bearden, Hobbs News - Sun (retired)
President Elect: Greg Williams, Peifer, Hanson and Mullins PA
Secretary: Martin Salazar, Las Vegas Optic
Treasurer: Robert B. Trapp, Rio Grande Sun
Immediate Past President: Terri Cole, GACC

Walz has been replaced on the Board of Directors by Journal editor Karen Moses.  She has shown no more interest in investigating and reporting upon the problems in the leadership of the APS than Walz.

UPDATE -- I have been informed by FOG that Walz, and presumably Esquivel remain on the Executive Board until new officers take over January 1st.

If memory serves, Moses is the editor who told me if I could get six hundred signatures of people who gave a crap about what is going on in the leadership of the APS, she would consider looking into it.  I never gathered the signatures, she never caused an investigation and report upon the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

Why is it ok to glue your shoes to a classroom floor?

My information and experience lead me to believe that this wasn't this kid's first rodeo.  He has disrupted many other classes, many other times.  (I will bow of course, to controverting evidence.)

I believe he would not have glued his shoes to the floor if believed for one instant, that the punishment would feel bad, more than basking in the adulation of some of his classmates would feel good.

There are no meaningful consequences for chronically disruptive behavior.  If there were, there would be no chronic disruptions of classrooms and schools.  

Let's not lose sight of the other students in the room who would rather have been learning than watching the clown.  Students who would rather this behavior were not tolerated; wishing along with their teacher that there was something, anything, they had the power to do anything at all about it.

Why are teachers expected to tolerate chronically disruptive students in their classrooms?  In particular when they are denied as a matter of course, the power and resources to deal with them?

This teacher invested six years learning and practicing teaching, and instead of being allowed to practice her craft, she is expected to deal with kids who would rather glue their shoes to the floor than learn.  Over and over and over again.  Teachers are not the problem, the circumstances that create this level of frustration for teachers, are the problem.

Chronically disruptive students are not reasonably the problem of teachers.

Would you rather pay teachers to educate the students who want to learn, or to try to keep chronically disruptive students from destroying the learning environment?  They can't do both.

There are no statistics available on APS' award winning website that will help you understand the effects on education of student misconduct in general, and chronically disruptive students in especially.

By contract and reason, APS administrators are charged with enforcing discipline in schools.  If schools are out of control, it is an administrative failure.  If a classroom is out of control, it is an administrative failure.  It is not for no reason that there are no records to inspect.

There will be no open public discussion of discipline in schools and in classrooms.  There will be no PowerPoint presentation of the candid, forthright and honest record.

There will be no Journal investigation and report on discipline in schools.

Which is precisely why there will be no open and honest public discussion of student behavior at school and in classrooms.




photo Mark Bralley

APS' Fall Conference of the Council of the Great City Schools was a huge hit! Best ever!

Never, according to a letter from the Executive Director of the Council of the Great City Schools Michael Casserly and published on APS' award winning website, link, in the 57 year history of the Council, link, has there ever been a better conference than the one he just left.

In a letter addressed to
"Mr. Brooks, Albuquerque School 
Board, and (the) APS team"
personally, Executive Director
Casserly sang high praise of their
highly successful fall conference,
a conference which drew the second
highest attendance of any gathering
in the organization’s history.



I cannot wait to hear what Mr. Brooks, School Board Members and (the) APS team learned.

I cannot wait to hear how teachers and students have a more hopeful future in the APS tomorrow than they had one week, so very much effort and so very many resources ago.

What did they learn
that they should not already have known?

It's a fair question.
Maybe the Journal will ask, and then tell us what they say.

Let's see what the Magic 8 Ball wikilink has to say.
... shake ... shake ... shake

"Don't count on it."

photo Mark Bralley

APS dual standards utterly unacceptable

The leadership of the Albuquerque Public Schools; school board and senior administrators, are accountable only to the law.  The law is the standard of conduct that every single higher standard of conduct, is higher than.

They make no bones about it.  They spend more than a million dollars a year on lawyers proving they cannot be held accountable even to the law.

Students on the other hand, and according to school board policy, are expected to "model and promote the Pillars of Character Counts."  The Pillars are a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct.  They are among the highest standards there are.

There is something wrong with adults expecting students to hold themselves accountable to higher standards of conduct than adults will hold themselves.

Every generation expects the next generation to be the first generation to hold themselves honesty accountable to meaningful standards conduct and competence.

In no case shall the standards of conduct for adults
be lower than the standards of conduct for students.

So read the role modeling clause in school board and administrative standards of conduct until the school board deliberately and unanimously removed the role modeling clause from their own standards of conduct.

With that and subsequent acts and omissions, they have eliminated every shred of doubt about their willingness to be held accountable as role models of accountability to the same standards of conduct they establish and enforce upon students.

We don't need no stinkin' standards.

School Board Member David Peercy, if you ask, will tell you he and the rest of the adult role models in the leadership of the APS, are accountable to the "highest standards" of conduct.  Even higher he argues, than student standards; the Pillars of Character Counts!.

He cannot actually point to any such standard; unlike the Pillars, the standards to which he refers are imaginary.  The Pillars are only a mouse click away, link.

Nor can Peercy point to an venue where he or anyone else in the leadership of the APS can actually be held accountable to any standards at all, by due process.

There is not one whit of difference between the highest standards of conduct and the lowest, if neither is being enforced.

There are two paths out of the hypocrisy;

1. The senior most role models of student standards of conduct can hold themselves honestly accountable to the Pillars of Character Counts! or,
2. student standards can be lowered to a point where the leadership of the APS is actually willing to be held accountable to them.

Dean Inge wrote;

The proper time to influence the character of a child
is about a hundred years before he is born.

If we really want students to grow into adults who embrace character and courage and honor, someone has to be willing to show them what it looks like.

It is hard to imagine a standard that is low enough that school board members and senior administrators would be willing to be held actually and honestly accountable to them.  Their record is of spending enormous amounts of money to avoid honest accountability to any standards at all, in especially the law.

Do we have to meet in the middle? ... raise the adult standards to actual accountability to the law; the lowest standards of conduct acceptable to civilized human beings and then,
lower our expectation for students from some of the highest standards to the absolute lowest.

Is there any standard so low that the leadership of the APS is willing to prove to students, as their role models, honest accountability to them?

The argument is moot; the leadership of the APS is willing to take neither path; they won't raise their own standards and they won't subject themselves to the public shame of lowering student standards to far enough to accommodate their own lack of character and courage.

Instead, they will just avoid the discussion.  There will be no open and honest public discussion of student, adult, administrative and executive standards of conduct and accountability in the APS.

Kent Walz,  co-conspirator?

If the Journal editors wanted to hear that discussion, they would write an editorial calling out the leadership of the APS for stonewalling questions about the issues of standards and accountability.  They would demand a public discussion.

They haven't written the editorial; they do not intend to write the editorial.  Nor will they investigate and report upon credible evidence of public corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS.

Is it because as Journalists, they don't see the point?  Are they afraid?  Or are they willing co-conspirators in the cover up of the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS?

Does the cover up enjoy the aid and abet of the Journal?

What other explanation is there?




Peercy photo Mark Bralley
Walz by ched macquigg

Does public education hold back better students?

There are two approaches to educating millions of students; deal with them in groups or deal with them individually.

It is tradition to deal with them in groups; of up to thirty or more children with nothing in common but the year of their birth and their zip code.

It is tradition to spend significant energy and resources in an effort to form them into thought choirs that will learn together for twelve years.  They all will learn the same things, at the same time, by the same methods and references, and at the same speed for twelve years.  Even if it were possible, why would you want to?

I think it's fair to say that public education will continue to try apply group solutions to individual learning problems.  The approach flies in the face of the mission; creating independent lifelong learners.

If creating independent learners is the ultimate goal, why is it not the immediate objective?

Why isn't the first priority of public education to create independent learners at the earliest opportunity?

I have looked at the agenda, link, for the fall conference of the Council of the Great City Schools.  I don't see where any of the education experts are discussing individual educational pathways for every student.

They are content apparently, with cemetery seating as the setting for the bulk of the work they do.  This despite the self-evident constraints cemetery seating and learning "choirs" place on independent learning for "different" learners.




photo Mark Bralley 

Is the Council of the Great City Schools Fall Conference a boondoggle?

When I was a student in the APS, there was a week in the fall that students eagerly anticipated.  It was the week of Teacher Convention and students got a couple of days off.

Likely there were teachers who looked forward to that week as well; an opportunity to get together with other practitioners and improve their individual and collective practice.

Teachers no longer have conventions, but administrators do.
In town this week the Council of the Great City Schools convention.

The leadership of the APS is deeply involved, link.  A great deal of energy and resources are being invested, link.  They've even hired a social media expert, link, to help them tweak their tweeting, link, about all the important stuff they're doing.

A fair question;

To what advantage are these resources being spent insofar as the average student is concerned?

Every time the leadership of the APS go on one of their little adventures, I dare them come back and tell us what they learned in exchange for the energy and resources they spent.  I dare them to come back and tell stakeholders what they learned of any consequence at all, that they should not have already known.

There is no magic.  There are no secrets.

If there were really magic and secrets to be shared, we would be sharing them with teachers at teacher conventions; not with a bunch of high paid administrators and board members none of whom have any impact whatsoever on students in classrooms.

APS leadership can go long and hard on the benefits of this latest adventure.  For one, they're claiming the conference is bringing $5M to our cash strapped local economy.

But that begs another fair question;

While the economic impact may be all well and good for the city, is that really what we where we want the leadership of the APS spending their energy and our resources?  

Improving education for 89,000 of this community's sons and daughters is well and good for the city too; arguably, even more so.

What these conventions really are, are opportunities for "important" people to pat each other on the back and tell each other how important they are. If these conventions were of real value, the board members and senior administrators who attend could take a minute during matters of importance at the next school board meeting, and tell us

1. what they learned,
2. how what they learned will improve the lot of students, and
3. why they didn't already know about it.

They will not.  They never have.  They never will.

Just watch.

Brooks Tweets! Journal covers it?

In the Journal this morning, link, we find that the leadership of the APS attended a rally and while there tweeted and re-tweeted photographs of posters with uncomplimentary depictions of the governor and public education secretary.

Apparently, the Journal reporter questioned the propriety of the tweets and was told, no offense intended.

With respect to the likelihood of anymore disrespectful tweets in future, the highly paid APS Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta said Winston Brooks said,

“we can certainly discuss the guidelines of social media use ...."

The ed sec's spokesman, Larry Behrens said sec ed said, the tweeting represented a disappointing use of tax dollars.

The governor's spokesman, Enrique Knell said the governor said, she’s disappointed that APS is playing politics with taxpayer funds.”

The Journal devoted 17 column inches to the exposé.

The total inches of exposé of the cover up of the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS
... still zero.




photo Mark Bralley

Peercy to be honored, but not for his moral courage

The Journal reports, link, APS School Board Member David Peercy is apparently in consideration for a prestigious award from the Council of the Great City Schools. He is in the running for the

Richard R. Green Award, which APS Superintendent Winston Brooks described as “the most important award a superintendent, administrator or school board member can receive.

Whatever the award is for, it is not for moral courage.

David Peercy runs APS Policy and Instruction Committee.  He is as responsible as anyone in APS for the fact that the Policy Committee will not hold an open and honest public discussion of whether school board standards of conduct should include a role modeling clause.

The question is simple enough, should the standards of conduct that apply to board members and senior administrators include language which reads;

In no case shall the standards of conduct for adults
be lower than the standards for students.

The role modeling clause was removed by unanimous school board approval in 2005.  The refusal to reinstate it, and more over, the refusal to openly and honestly discuss whether it should be reinstated, flows from one or both of two sources; a lack of character and or a lack of courage.

Either David Peercy and the rest of the leadership of the APS don't have character enough to hold themselves honestly accountable to a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct, or they don't have courage enough.

If there is a third reason, if there is anything beside a lack of character and courage that keeps David Peercy and the rest of the leadership of the APS from stepping up to honest accountability to student standards of conduct,  it is yet to be articulated or imagined.

David Peercy getting an award for anything beside moral cowardice and corruption, is like APS Supt Winston Brooks getting a Dixon Award as a hero of transparency.

Who dreams up this crap?




photo Mark Bralley

Journal education reporter moves on

Unless I missed it, Journal education reporter left without so much as a peep in print.  In a tweet to her followers, she indicates that she works now for UNM's Center for Ed Policy Research.

Hailey Heinz,  Board Member David Peercy and APS COO Brad Winter

She is but the latest in a line of education reporters who no longer do. Heinz distinguished herself in my mind as the only Journal reporter who flat out refused to listen to my side of the story, even when her professional responsibilities demanded that she do just that, link.

I have no idea why Heinz has left the Journal.  I would like to hope that it was because she found being part and parcel to covering up an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS, personally revolting.

In my surmise, reporters come out of Journalism school aching to write some Pulitzer winning expose of something or another. It must be difficult to get out in the real world, to be sitting on the facts of a monumental scandal, and then being told to ignore them.

There is no reporter to whom I have spoken at any length, who couldn't see a story. Then they go back to the newsroom, someone says you're not going to write about that and I never hear from them again.

For example; the story about the cover up of corruption and felony criminal misconduct in the leadership of the APS Police Force.  All any reporter has to do to blow the thing wide open  is to ask for

1. the public records including the findings of the investigations, and then
2. report on APS' response. 

APS will not produce them because they include truths that will "leave no senior APS administrator left standing."  (That according to APS Modrall lawyer Art Melendres after hearing from Sam Bregman and his client disgraced APS Chief of Police Gil Lovato.)

It could not be simpler.

I blame Journal Managing Editor Kent Walz
and those of his ilk at KRQE, KOAT, and KOB TV.




photo Mark Bralley

"Winston Brooks: misleading the public ..."

So begins the flip side of a flier sent to River City residents this week.  The flier was  the product of New Mexico Competes.

According to blogger Joe Monahan, link, New Mexico Competes primarily for more power consolidated in the hands of Governor Susana Martinez and shadow governor Jay McCleskey.

The self evident purpose of the flier is to dishonestly manipulate public opinion regarding APS Supt Winston Brooks and education reform.

I write "dishonestly" deliberately and cite as an example, their "fact";

Fact: 99,9% of all APS teachers are currently rated at the highest level, because student progress is not part of the evaluation process.

The truth is; if that many teachers are rated that highly, it is because of a lot things, not just because student progress is not part of the evaluation process.

No one wants to talk about it, but teacher evaluations aren't the only problem.  A recent audit of APS' administration found that administrative evaluations are subjective and unrelated to promotion or step placement.  That and, there is a culture of fear of retaliation against whistleblowers.

In any event, the flier is manifestly dishonest; it is New Mexico Competes that is misleading the public. It is so dishonest that the people who paid to have it published, have to do so anonymously.

The sitting and shadow governors would have you believe;

Winston is misleading the public to block education reform.

That particular statement may or may not be true, nobody has actually asked Brooks "why" he is misleading the public in this particular case.

What is true is, 

Winston Brooks is misleading
the public about a whole bunch 
of things and education reform 
is the least of them.

Why New Mexico Competes 
has limited its attack on Brooks
to simply his "misleading the public"
on the one issue is perplexing.

Brooks is misleading the public about;

• student discipline issues and the problems with chronically disruptive students and,
• the lack of due process for complaints filed against senior administrators and school board members, and
• the lack of an honest accounting of spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd, and,
• the cover up of corruption in the leadership of the APS Police Force including felony criminal misconduct involving APS senior administrators and
• the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS including the abject abandonment of any responsibility and accountability at all, as the senior-most role models of APS' student standards of conduct; a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct; the Pillars of Character Counts!.

New Mexico Competes is misleading the public because they have the money.

Winston Brooks is misleading the public because he has Kent Walz.  

Walz, the Journal, and the rest of the establishment's media; KRQE, KOAT, and KOB TV.




photo Mark Bralley

Esquivel and Walz should resign from NM FOG leadership

New Mexico in Depth and Heath Haussamen, link, come with a piece  on problems in the leadership of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, to whit;

FOG Pres Terri Cole

a President wanting to give unearned accolades to deliberate obstructionists and,

a Vice President who is self evidently conflicted in his roles as an elected and public servant and, as a watchdog over electeds and public servants.

NM FOG VP Marty Esquivel's appearance of a conflict of interests isn't his only disqualification and nowhere near his greatest.

The leadership of the APS has in their immediate possession, a fistful of public records. The records are the findings of several investigations of corruption in the leadership of the APS police force, including felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators.  The records name names and according to APS Modrall lawyer Art Melendres, have the capability to lay waste the entire senior leadership of the APS.

They claim for entirely "personnel" reasons, they would rather that you not see them, ever.  Read that personal reasons. They are covering up an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

In their defense, they prefer to be held accountable to the law; the standard of conduct that every "higher standard" is higher than. The law does not require them to hide the records from you, the law allows them to hide the records from you.

NM FOG Vice President Marty Esquivel is defending himself in federal court over his refusal to produce those records for public inspection.  The law, he and his legal team argue, allows him to do nothing in the face of corruption.

He is spending a lot of money doing it. He spends without board oversight, without signed contracts, and he spends without limit.

He spends from a pot of money called operational funds; money that if it were not being spent in an effort to protect him from the consequences of his misconduct, would be spent in classrooms instead.

Esquivel's legal team is arguing that he is not the custodian of public records, and therefore has no personal participation in the illegal withholding.  I would say turning a blind eye is personal participation.  Guilty knowledge is personal participation.

Operational dollars also underwrite the legal defense of  APS Director of Communications Rigo Chavez.  He is being sued in his capacity as the Custodian of Public Records.

Taxpayers are paying lawyers to hide the truth from them, the truth about the squandering of their trust and their treasure.

Esquivel would have you believe it isn't his job to produce public records.  He is being at best, disingenuous.

As a board member, he could at any time start the wheels rolling on a candid, forthright and honest accounting of the corruption in the leadership of the APS and their publicly funded private police force.

Moreover, he could at any time, go to his good friend Kent Walz and tell him, hey Kent, you should investigate and report on the cover up of the corruption in the leadership of the APS police force.

Kent Walz, NM FOG Secretary and co-founder, could do that.  He could order that investigation, he could publish the results.

But Esquivel won't, and Walz won't.

And we know why they won't.

The likes of Esquivel and Walz being the face of the FOG is dumbfounding.  It defies explanation.





photos Mark Bralley
Walz caught by macquigg

William Dixon must be spinning in his grave!

Turn in one's grave, wikilink.

William Dixon, in whose name the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government presents Dixon Awards to heroes of open government, was a co-founder of FOG; he and  Journal Managing Editor Kent Walz put it together together.

A Dixon Award has been given to both Marty Esquivel and Winston Brooks.  That would be unsettling enough for the founder, as both of them are up to their eyeballs in a cover up of corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS.

His real consternation flows from Walz part in the cover up.
Walz and Esquivel actually managed to bamboozle the FOG
into giving Brooks a Dixon Award while all the while,
all three were busy covering up an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

Walz could not be acting in more diametric opposition to the FOG's mission if he tried, and trying he is.





photo ched macquigg

KRQE, KOAT, and KOB TV cowardly or corrupt?

There is an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

All anyone in the media, or anyone else for that matter, has to do to investigate the allegation to their complete and utter satisfaction, is write an email to
APS Director of Communications and Custodian of Public Records Rigo Chavez.

They don't have to go anywhere, they don't have to do anything, and they don't have to believe anybody.  All they have to do is ask to see the public record.

All they have to do is request that he produce any and all ethically redacted public records of allegations and investigations of public corruption in the leadership of the APS, in particular of the investigations of corruption in the leadership of their police force.

The records are immediately available as most are currently in evidence in my lawsuit against them.  In particular if the request is made for electronic records, there is no reason why they couldn't have them right away.  It is his policy to produce records, if he in deed does produce them, "within the 15 days allowed by the law".  That's not the way the law reads, but ...

They could ask to see the public record of all of the IPRA requests for those records, and their responses.  They could ask for the records of communications by and among the leadership of the APS about how they were going to handle the scandal, (and the subsequent cover up).

The only reason the news directors or whomever in the establishment's media won't ask for a candid, forthright and honest accounting of the corruption, its investigations and its consequences, is because they are afraid of the consequences of so doing, or they are corrupt; unwilling to tell the truth, complicit in hiding the truth from interest holders.

If there is another good and ethical reason that the media won't make the request and then report upon the response, other than journalistic cowardice or corruption, someone would be doing them and me a great big favor by suggesting what that might be,

go for it _____________________________________ .


I have reason to believe that at least KRQE asked for the findings at the time of an independent investigation; the one that named the names.  And then they abandoned the request.  I suspect that their lawyer Marty Esquivel counseled them to (I will bow as always to controverting proof).

It would be interesting to know which other media outlets even bothered to ask for the findings.   And if they did, why did they stop asking?




photos Mark Bralley