You can thank Las Cruces City Attorney Brad Douglas for prompting me to write this blog. His comments in last week’s The Bulletin, discussed below, are an example of corruption in the conduct of ranking officials. "Corruption" is a word usually associated with the transfer of money or favors for nefarious purposes in government or business. Most people think of bribes. The word also applies to whoever or whatever erodes principles, standards, or values. People, especially public officials, who lie corrupt truth or who break promises corrupt trust. Such people usually justify lies or broken promises on the basis of their commitment to a cause—ends justifying means.
My example of dishonesty for cause is Douglas’s response to the settlement of an IPRA case which I brought against the City. As reported on The Bulletin website on 22 August (but unknown to me until after my 23 August blog appeared), Douglas offered the paper the assurance—in context, an empty one—that the City is "committed to transparency." He added, "This case included a small number of documents that were arguably overly redacted per IPRA guidelines. When we discovered this, the City voluntarily produced those documents and came to a resolution of this case."
Everything which Douglas says in these few words is an assault on truth by a lawyer’s spin. Bluntly, if there were any truth to what he says, there would have been no lawsuit, no City admission of violating multiple IPRA requirements, and no $150,000 in costs, including $21,845 in penalties, paid by the City. The "small number of documents" were some three dozen documents withheld or redacted, not including nearly 500 emails secretly retained. The documents were not "arguably overly redacted" (Douglas did much or all of the redacting); after my lawyer and I challenged the redactions, the City agreed that two-thirds of them were unjustifiable. The City "discovered" nothing, 'voluntarily produced' nothing, and failed to describe the documents withheld or redacted as IPRA requires; the court directed the City either to provide the documents or to provide IPRA-compliant descriptions and justifications for withholding or redacting them. The City preferred a resolution rather than a court decision, which would have been public and embarrassing, and thus made what my lawyer says is an unprecedented offer of $85 out of $100 dollars per diem in penalties for the delay in compliance.
If his spin on the truth is any indication, the word of this City Attorney is not worth much. The cause by which he rationalizes his assault on truth is his desire to mitigate the reputational damage to the City because City officials deliberately violated the law, the Inspection of Public Records Act, at great cost to its citizens. The City is entitled to defend itself, but the City Attorney is not entitled to misrepresent the truth to the public. In more cases than mine, the desire to avoid adverse publicity about their corruption is a major prompt of corruption in City officials.
The corruption of City officials reflects on City governance, particularly by the members of City Council, who become complicit by indifference or tolerance. In my experience, City officials have not been honest or insisted on honesty in others. That experience includes my complaint about five false code violations tainting the integrity of ACO officers, IA officers, and three police chiefs; the dishonesty of a City Manager and various Public Works personnel; and employees in the Law Office and the City Clerk’s office involved in my IPRA case. And I am only one citizen in Las Cruces.
I recall Police Chief Miguel Dominguez’s testimony before City Council in which he stated that Las Cruces citizens do not trust the police; to my point, not one Council asked why. Issues associated with corruption in Las Cruces are pervasive. My hope is that there are some citizens concerned with good government who will undertake an anti-corruption campaign against current office-holders and ranking officials to replace them with a public-serving government well managed, technically competent, and fiscally responsible.
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