The work of a task force dedicated to examining New Mexico’s public records law came to an end Friday, but it’s only the beginning for a spate of recommendations the group hopes state lawmakers will consider.
The newly released final report by the Inspection of Public Records Act Task Force sheds more light on the 11 proposals summarized in a letter to legislative committees earlier this month. The 344-page report also details a handful of recommendations the task force’s eight members considered but shot down, and provides a lengthy look at the hundreds of public comments the group heard during its cross-state listening tour beginning in April.
“It’s an amazing report,” said New Mexico Foundation for Open Government Executive Director Christine Barber. “The attorney general’s office put so much time and effort into this — and not only that, in organizing more than 30 meetings over six months. That is a lot of work.”
Still, Barber remains apprehensive about the report’s outcome and cautiously hopeful going into the legislative session in January. She hopes, specifically, that any bills introduced based on the report “keep in mind that cooperative spirit of the task force, and that they won’t suggest anything that would limit the public’s right to access records.”
“We know for a fact that there will be legislation about changing IPRA,” Barber said. “We hope, and we are hopeful, that that legislation will not be something that we will have to vehemently oppose because it hurts the public.”
A balancing act
The New Mexico Department of Justice convened the IPRA Task Force earlier this year after the state Legislature approved House Joint Memorial 2, a bipartisan request fronted by Republican Rep. Cathrynn Brown that a group gather and examine the public records law. The task force was charged with a balancing act: suggesting solutions for a climbing number of records requests while protecting the public transparency IPRA affords.
IPRA, a key sunshine law that has existed in its current form since 1993, enshrines the public’s right to inspect public records held by government agencies, officers and employees. This includes emails, permits, contracts and police body camera footage, for example.
In recent years, records custodians and government agencies have sounded the alarm about what they describe as an overwhelming surge in requests — including from out-of-state data brokers, bots and YouTubers. Simultaneously, requestors have called out delays in the fulfillment of requests, heavy redactions or total denials, which can lead to lawsuits and taxpayer-funded payouts for violations.
Of the task force’s 11 recommendations, one stands out to Barber as crucial: the potential creation of a public-facing portal for traffic accident reports — something the city of Santa Fe already does. A police report related to a traffic accident can yield eight separate records requests, Barber said.
“That is the one thing that would not limit access to anything for anybody, but it would take so much work off of records custodians, and that was the job of the task force,” she said.
The New Mexico branch of the American Civil Liberties Union opposes a recommendation that would require out-of-state requestors pay for the review and redaction of body camera footage.
Lalita Moskowitz, a staff attorney for the New Mexico ACLU who sat on the task force, noted the organization supported the 2020 passage of a state law that requires law enforcement officers to wear and use body cameras.
“The goal of that is to be a tool for transparency and to shed light on the conduct of law enforcement officers, to be able to watch for violations of New Mexicans’ civil liberties,” Moskowitz said. “So we, as an organization, really believe that any restriction on public access to camera footage that comes from that needs to be considered very carefully because the Legislature passed that law for a reason.”
The ACLU also opposes a recommendation the Legislature give the courts some guidance to consider when IPRA cases get to court.
Moskowitz described the proposal as a “solution in search of a problem.”
“We didn’t really see it as addressing any problem that was brought before the task force, and instead, it would just serve to limit the evidence that a court can look at,” she said.
Every public comment provided to the task force — either in person at a meeting or in writing — is included in the appendix of the final report. The task force’s recommendations did not cover some common-theme concerns including the privacy of women and children in video footage, the state’s enforcement of IPRA against public bodies that violate the law and mental pressure on records custodians, according to the report.
“It is recommended that the Legislature fully consider these raised areas of concern alongside the recommendations of this Task Force,” the report reads.
To view the final report, visit nmdoj.gov/get-help/ipra-task-force/.
Lily Alexander is a state accountability reporter for The New Mexican and Searchlight New Mexico, focusing on equity and transparency. Her position is part of the New Mexican Public Service Journalism Fund, and her stories are available to all readers without a paywall.
