SPJ Rio Grande Chapter president Julie Ann Grimm and New Mexico Foundation for Open Government Director Gwyneth Doland (also an SPJ board member) met Thursday with Al Lama, the director of the Civil Division at the New Mexico Attorney General’s office, and Phil Sisneros, the office’s communications director.
Our organizations wrote a letter to the AG this spring because of complaints from journalists who said they weren’t receiving press releases from the office. These people work for some of the biggest news organizations in the state, and several suspected they had been cut off because of unflattering coverage of the office.
While we didn’t exactly get to the bottom of that, Sisneros acknowledged that the office did take people off the list and did tell some reporters that “not everyone could be on the list.” He said that action was in an effort to minimize problems with bad e-mail addresses bouncing back. He also said the office is not doing much list maintenance right now.
Here’s the news: Sisneros said that the office is getting ready to launch a new method of issuing press releases. In a few weeks, he said, we will all be able to sign up on the AG website to be included in automated e-mails. The down side is that if you are on the press release list today, you will still have to sign up for the “new way.”
Something else to look forward to is a new edition of the AG’s compliance guide for the state Inspection of Public Records Act. (This link is to the most recent version, from 2009; see document below.)
Lama said that the office is focused right now on writing a compliance guide for the Governmental Conduct Act, but when that project wraps up, he’ll turn to IPRA. The new guide will incorporate changes to the state law in 2011 (see document below) about records being provided electronically and in their native format, and rules about personal information.
Lama also listened to us make the case for significant revisions to clarify the intent of the law with respect to draft documents and personal notes, a section of the guide that local governments have abused in an effort to withhold public documents. He didn’t make any promises, but said he would consider those ideas in the revision.
IPRA_Compliance_Guide