Shine on: NMFOG celebrates Sunshine Week and its own efforts to ensure open government

Mar. 13—In 1977, when Melanie Majors started work as a reporter at the Grants Daily Beacon, her fellow newsroom denizens chain-smoked and drank coffee by the gallon.

It was a different time. And in more ways than the amount of nicotine and caffeine consumed.

"We used to go into a police station and look at the police blotter," Majors said. "You could ask to see the police report. You could go into the county clerk's office and ask about records, and they'd show you where to look.

"Now that we have computer records, you'd think access would be easier. But that doesn't seem to be the case."

Now, Majors said, roadblocks to public records include officials who want people requesting records to prove they are public, those who want to charge fees for public records and those who attempt to limit what records are public.

She said there are agencies that do not have sufficient staff to process records in a timely fashion and elected officials who want to discuss the public's business in closed meetings.

"These are public records that should be available to the public and public business that should not be conducted behind closed doors," she said.

Today, Majors is executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, or NMFOG, a nonprofit, nonpartisan agency dedicated to ensuring the public's right to know, primarily by insisting on the enforcement of two New Mexico Sunshine Laws — the Inspection of Public Records Act, known as IPRA, and the Open Meetings Act. NMFOG's actions may range from writing letters to agencies to request compliance to suing an agency if it refuses to abide by the law.

Majors said NMFOG gets 300 to 400 calls or e-mails a year from people who believe their rights to know are being violated.

"We are not here for just reporters," Majors said. "I have a lot of government officials who call me. Lawyers, business people."

Celebrating the light

This week (March 10-16) is Sunshine Week, which is devoted to shining a light on public records and open government.

NMFOG, founded in 1989, celebrated the week with a gathering Tuesday at the Albuquerque Press Club to discuss progress made and work yet to be done. Those attending included NMFOG board members and staff, journalists and individuals and groups concerned about open government.

Molly Swank, executive director of Common Cause New Mexico, an organization that works for open, honest and accountable government, was there.

So was Dede Feldman, a New Mexico state senator from 1997 to 2012 and a former member of NMFOG's board of directors. From the 1970s into the 1980s, Feldman worked as a reporter for Seer's Catalogue, an Albuquerque underground paper; a stringer for the Navajo Times; and as a freelance writer covering environmental and women's issues. She has seen the open government issue from all angles.

"I know the importance of freedom of information," she said. "People can't make good decisions without all the information. People have the right to know if there is a polluting industry in the neighborhood, or if their next-door neighbor is a sex offender."

She said she got involved in NMFOG when she was a senator working to make conference committee sessions at the New Mexico Legislature open to the public. Conference committees are temporary panels, made up of members of the House and Senate, whose purpose is to resolve differences in a bill that has passed both the House and Senate.

"Bob Johnson (NMFOG's first executive director) was seated by me on the Senate floor as an expert witness for two years," Feldman said. It was a yearslong battle, but Feldman said the open conference committee bill eventually passed in 2009 on a bipartisan vote.

Pushing back

NMFOG's stated mission is to advocate, educate and litigate on the behalf of transparency. The organization does boot camps to inform people — journalists, legislators, government employees, concerned citizens — about laws related to open government. And when it needs to it takes offending agencies or government bodies to court.

For most of its existence, NMFOG has depended on the legal minds among its board members and other supporters for advice and court action. But in January, NMFOG hired Amanda Lavin as its first full-time legal director.

Lavin is a graduate of the University of New Mexico law school who worked most recently as a trial lawyer with the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Albuquerque. She has also worked as a public defender at the local level in Taos and Albuquerque and in private practice.

Her hiring comes after a fundraising campaign and wide-ranging search.

"We've had an amazing legal panel that put in hours and hours of work," said Karen Moses, former Albuquerque Journal editor and immediate past president of NMFOG. "We've only lost a few cases over the years. But we have never been as proactive as we needed or wanted to be to make sure open-record laws are enforced. Hiring Amanda strengthens the future of FOG."

Lavin said she had to hit the ground running in her new position.

"It's been busy from the get-go," she said. "There's no shortage of issues to work on. There are a lot of people — especially the media — who reach out from all over the state. The recurring theme is agencies trying to find reasons for not producing records, or not doing so in a timely matter."

She said she is already considering litigation against a couple of agencies that have not responded to or have denied requests for public records.

"The past six years, I have been a federal public defender," she said. "It's kind of fun to be working again on a more local level. I have always appreciated the democratic process. I like pushing back against government trying to hide things."