It’s Sunshine Week and NMSPJ board member Joey Peters Santa Fe Reporter offers this great example of how using the Inspection of Public Records Act help him expose waste of state money. New Mexico Department of Health officials were charging taxpayers for their daily commutes from Roswell and nightly hotel stays and other expenses — on top of their lavish salaries.
“This happened after I got a tip from sources about the per diem abuse and DOH kept delaying these public records from me for maybe 2 months,” says Peters. “They didn’t release them to me until I told them that I already had some of the records leaked to me.”
Peters wrote about his IPRA issues in two articles for the Reporter:
What was the result? Eventually, the State Auditor entered the situation and one of the DOH
people voluntarily stopped charging per diem for their commutes. Read the Santa Fe New Mexican story here.
