In a previous addendum (2 June) and a previous blog (6 July), I provided a little information about the Las Cruces City Council’s Public Safety Select Committee. Now I provide the results thus far of my investigation of this Committee so that readers, many of them Progressives, can see how some senior city officials, many of them Progressives, may operate behind closed doors.
The Committee included as members Mayor Ken Miyagishima, Mayor Pro Tem and District 1 Councilor Kasandra Gandara, District 2 Councilor Tessa Abeyta, City Manager Ifo Pili, then City Attorney Jennifer Vega, then Police Chiefs Patrick Gallagher and Miguel Dominguez, Fire Chief Jason Smith, and others on an ad-hoc basis, including City Clerk Christine Rivera.
Despite its charter, the three Council members withheld knowledge of the Committee and their membership on it from the four other Council members. If I were one of those Councilors kept in the dark by three colleagues, I would have good reason to regard them as untrustworthy. Despite its charter, the Committee provided no information or recommendations about public safety to Council.
On 26 June, I made an Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) request:
for all documents in whatever media or format related to the Public Safety Select Committee since 6 January 2020. Such documents include, but are not limited to, meeting emails and other social media messages among committee members, announcements, agendas, notes, minutes, memorandums, reports, and recommendations.
On 29 June I received a response:
The City of Las Cruces has reviewed its files and has provided thirteen (13) documents responsive to your request. Some of the documents were redacted, please see redaction log at the end of each redacted document for details….We need additional time to respond to this request. You will have a response from our office on or before July 11, 2023.
On 11 July, I received another response:
We believe that this request is excessively burdensome or broad and we need additional time to respond as the Information Technology Department searches for responsive emails or other electronic records. There are also six (6) additional documents under Legal review. You will have a response from our office on or before August 11, 2023.
On that date, I made two replies (hurriedly written):
[1] I want to register my disagreement that my request is excessively burdensome or broad. It merely requests documents which exist as part of the Select Committee’s work, and it is quite specific in identifying them. Some of the documents, as per your previous distribution, are readily available. Others, like emails, may require more work to recover them. But any difficulties should not be an excuse to avoid disclosure under IPRA. The fact that there are many redactions on the basis of “attorney-client” privilege suggests that the committee has misrepresented its work, that it has engaged in impermissible executive actions, and that it has thereby operated in defiance of the Public Meetings Act.
Moreover, after seeking a 10-day delay, you now seek an additional 30-day delay. In view of the membership of this committee and the candidacy of two of members for election in November [Gandara and Abeyta], this additional delay looks like a stall or prevent to keep potentially damaging information from the public in further defiance of the letter and spirit of IPRA.
[2] In addition, I want to note that the City Clerk has been a member of or participant in this Select Committee. That fact means that Christine Rivera may be in a conflict of interest in having to deal with my IPRA request. Assigning staff to operate independently seems not to be a credible means to avoid that conflict. And it is an interesting question why the City Clerk would be a member or participant.
Some of the thirteen documents already released have been imperfectly reproduced, with words cut off at the head or end of lines. (Apparently, no others will be released in increments as they are cleared until all others are cleared for release.) Those released have numerous and extensive redactions, most justified by attorney-client privilege, an allowed basis of exemption from IPRA requirements for disclosure. Although I know nothing about the discussions redacted, I am suspicious of this claimed basis for the redactions. I do not know whether the discussions involved attorneys and clients, who those attorneys and clients are, and whether the exemption applies if they occurred in the presence of those who are not attorneys or clients. I do know that the former City Attorney and a Senior Assistant City Attorney lied not only to me, but also to an Assistant Attorney General of New Mexico about their claimed basis for redacting or withholding documents covered by my IPRA request regarding the LCPD investigation of five phony allegations of code violations. So it is easy for me to suspect dishonest claims of exemptions to conceal possibly far more nefarious conduct by public officials.
One inevitable question is, what has this Select Committee, operating in secret, claiming attorney-client privilege, and neither providing information nor making recommendations to Council, been doing. One obvious question is, has it been making decisions then executed by department officials, without the authority under its charter to make them but with the secrecy necessary to get away with making them.
A tentative conclusion: In matters of public safety, some Progressives on City Council are as prone as politicians in other parties to prefer secrecy, to oppose transparency and accountability, and to hinder police reform.
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