Public records access in Legislature spotlight

When the state Legislature meets again in January, one issue it’s expected to consider is public records access.

Eddy County officials said this month the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act will be a legislative priority for the New Mexico Association of Counties.

“We have 60 to 70 active (IPRA) requests per day,” said Eddy County Manager Roberta Gonzales. “The complexity of them is a lot. One of them could be 50 hours of video footage the staff are looking through and redacting.”

Eddy County has three full-time employees who can’t keep up, according to Eddy County Sheriff Mark Cage.

Gonzales said that in addition to the three staff in the sheriff’s office, there are up to seven people at times helping at the sheriff’s office; two to four staff at another county location; one full time; and up to four additional people in the administration office helping work on it.

“Folks are using IPRA to dig around and it serves no legitimate purpose,” Cage said. “And sometimes they want footage from five different cameras. They want every bit of footage from five deputies, and we’re required to give it to them. We should be able to bill them for our time and that would slow the volume down.”

Melanie Majors, executive director of New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, said every citizen has the right to inspect public records.

“Isn’t that the whole point (of IPRA), to provide the public information about what its government is doing?” she said.

She’s opposed to government charging additional fees for those who want to inspect government records.

“Who actually paid for that initial record? The public. Who pays the salary of the people who maintain the records? The public,” she said.

Curry County doesn’t receive as many IPRA requests as Eddy County, but County Manager Lance Pyle said they can be labor intensive.

Pyle said the county has received more than 40 IPRA requests this year, and received about 80 in 2022.

“Certain requests are labor intensive and duplicative, but we are managing,” he said.

“Curry County provides a lot of material on our website, Facebook page and we video stream our Commission meetings, which are also archived online. Curry County will continue to push material out to the general public, and we are open to posting additional material that the public would like to see available online.”

But Pyle also would like to see changes to IPRA.

“Although we work for the public, and I believe in open government, I do not feel that county staff should be pulled off of county projects and have to incur overtime in responding to IPRA requests in a 15-day period, as the law requires,” he said.

“I feel that the public entities should be able to charge a reasonable rate (for) having to search, redact and respond to requests. All requests require staff input which detracts from normal duties.”

Majors contends records requests are not a distraction, but an important part of government responsibility.

“When the fire department comes and puts out a fire at your house, they don’t say, ‘Mrs. Jones, here’s your bill.’ Fire protection is paid for in our taxes. It’s the same with public records,” she said.

“You know in the old days they used to impose a poll tax on voters. Is that what we want? Public records only for those who can afford them?”

Rebecca Hauschild of the Artesia Daily Press and The Eastern New Mexico News contributed to this report.