DA investigates possible Sunland open meetings violation
Amy Orlando
The attorney general has also been asked to consider whether the city violated the Open Meetings Act by appointing Javier Perea to be mayor without letting everyone who sought to attend – including two others who wanted the job – into its meeting.
The Doña Ana County district attorney says her office is investigating the possibility that the Sunland Park City Council violated the N.M. Open Meetings Act last week when it selected a new mayor.
District Attorney Amy Orlando confirmed that her office is investigating, and said she’s also checking with Attorney General Gary King to see whether his office plans to investigate. The Open Meetings Act can be enforced by either agency.
The city council appointed 24-year-old Javier Perea to the mayor’s job last week after postponing a previous meeting that got rowdy because there were too many people to fit in the room. But the crowd was still too big to fit into the larger venue chosen for the new meeting, and many people – including at least two who wanted to ask for the appointment to the mayor’s job – were kept by police from entering.
The Open Meetings Act requires that anyone who tries to attend a public meeting of a government body be allowed in. Actions taken in violation of the law can be invalidated by a court. In addition, a violation is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $500 fine.
The act has rarely been enforced with criminal charges. The only time I’ve ever seen such enforcement involved the Las Cruces Public Schools Board of Education. In 2002, then-Attorney General Patricia Madrid prosecuted five board members for secretly giving the former superintendent almost $1 million in incentives to try to keep him in Las Cruces. All five were convicted.
Orlando or King could file criminal charges against members of the Sunland Park City Council if they believe they find justification, or they could sue to ask a judge to rescind Perea’s appointment, or both.
Attorney general also asked to investigate
Gary King
Gwyneth Doland, executive director of the N.M. Foundation for Open Government, told me for a commentary I published Monday that if she were one of the people who wanted to be considered for the appointment but wasn’t allowed in the meeting, “I’d be talking to my lawyer right now.”
At least one of those two is challenging Perea’s appointment. Jesse Grajeda was quoted today by the Albuquerque Journal as saying he’s asked King to get involved. From the Journal:
“By Monday afternoon, however, another prospect for the mayor’s office, Jesse Grajeda, said he was preparing to file a formal complaint alleging the City Council violated the state Open Meetings Act when Perea was appointed because members of the overflow crowd were prevented from entering the Senior Center hall where the meeting was held.”
Grajeda, Orlando disclosed, used to work with her in the district attorney’s office. But Orlando told NMPolitics.net her investigation isn’t about giving him another chance to be mayor – it’s about ensuring the law is enforced.
Grajeda isn’t the only one filing a complaint. From the Las Cruces Sun-News:
“Sun-News Editor Jim Lawitz faxed a letter Monday to King, requesting that the likely open meetings act violation in Sunland Park be investigated.
“‘It is our belief that city council broke the law,’ Lawitz said. ‘Now it’s up to the Attorney General’s Office to decide.’”
From Lawitz’s letter:
“The Sun-News several times in recent years has reported about likely violations of state open meetings act laws by Sunland Park officials. And residents have long complained of other violations, including of the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act. We believe a strong part of what has cultivated an environment for public corruption to thrive in Sunland Park is the fact that city officials have not been held legally liable for violating state open government laws. … Sunland Park officials must learn that the state’s sunshine laws indeed must be taken seriously.”
You should all know by now that the legal process is a complicate one and as much as we depend on it to protect the innocent, we can sometimes despise it for protecting the guilty. The situation in Sunland Park has been going on for quite awhile and the trenches of the bad guys were dug deep, long before Amy was around. It takes a lot of time, patience and sometimes luck to break into a situation like Sunland Park. If you go storming in shining the light of Justice the roaches run for cover and hide but the fear they instill remains among the innocent and you get nothing of substance that will stand up in court. It was a combination of things that have led to the unraveling of the criminal web in Sunland Park. The vigilance of the law enforcement community which includes the DA’s office, the support of the DA’s office for the officers who investigated anonymous tips, many that hit dead ends, and the continued willingness of investigators to follow any lead brought to their attention and brave members of that community. In the end the former combined with the arrogance of the criminals involved led to their demise opening a door into their activities which opened another and another. Now that’s how it happens in the real world and this is not a Tom Cruise movie, we don’t have a Pre-Crime division – you saw how that ended, right? And we certainly don’t want Big Brother with a camera in every room do we? Laloba, you hit it on the head with pre-election jab. The truth is this thing broke and broke big, thanks to the combined efforts of our Law Enforcement community.
Ashes: Please describe how this incident could have been prevented?
All you have to know about Amy Orlando and how uninterested she is in doing anything meaningful just has to read this article from the Sun News:
http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_20472190/ag-or-da-may-look-into-sunland-park
The key quote is here:
Orlando said Tuesday she’s fielded a couple of complaints about the City Council session and a possible Open Meetings Act violation. But she’s checking with King’s office about their plans. She’d likely defer to him, if he plans to investigate, mostly because the attorney general’s office has greater expertise about the New Mexico Open Meetings Act, she said.
“I don’t think it would make any sense that both of us would move forward,” she said.
This means nothing will happen. She’s not an expert onanything, much less the open meetings act.
I realize that Sunland Park could have prevented an OMA problem. GlitterGirl, is it a good use of the DA’s time to presume violations of the law? I know its a good use of your time to criticize her since you want her out.
If New Mexico communities have any hope of rooting out and correcting the perils of corruption, prosecution MUST occur. We have some of the best transparency laws on the books, and we are rated as A+ for laws by the national sunshinereview.org. However, we time and again get a D for enforcement as we don’t use these transparency laws to enforce the laws on our books. Failure to enforce our laws is also, by the way, a type of corruption.
We have an AG who has himself violated the transparency laws. In another article I read, the AG was quoted as saying his office can only look into an OMA violation if an official complaint has been received. The statute disagrees. The AGO is given direct authority to ENFORCE. In addition, since OMA violations also are misdemeanors, only the AG or DA may PROSECUTE and BOTH are given direct statutory authority to do so ON THEIR OWN.
A key component of the US judicial system is that punishment is a deterrent. I am confident that if our public officials were individually fined $500 and found guilty of a misdemeanor, public officials would read the four sections of the OMA and comply. I’ve also seem too many examples of generations and entire families that are career corrupt politicians. PROSECUTE and we’ll see a difference.
Here’s hoping DA Amy Orlando files the misdemeanor charges and prosecutes on OMA. I have no hope that AG Gary King would ever prosecute a transparency violation…he’s too busy violating them to enforce them. The individual citizen should not have to take the burden of enforcing our transparency laws as a civil matter rather than as the misdemeanor the statute allows in punishment. The City Council and Police Chief of Sunland Park are all adults; let them receive their misdemeanor punishment as adults. Then we’ll see some public officials take our transparency laws a little more seriously.
Stever, Sunland Park could have prevented the apparent OMA violation themselves by simply providing loudspeakers outside and a microphone for public comments. These kinds of overcrowding events happen frequently in small towns when a big issue crops up, and providing sound access deals with it effectively.
I know this because I’ve been involved in a couple issues (none as stupid as Sunland Park, thank God) where large numbers of taxpayers showed up that couldn’t be accomodated in the available facilities. Enforcement of OMA includes common sense and practical considerations rather than just toeing the techicality line. Letting people hear proceedings and comment during appropriate times meets the test even if they’re not in the room.
All that said, the level of ignorance and cluelessness down there is astonishing. They’d be better off with all new, inexperienced public officials.
Let me try to help here and explain this for you stever and laloba.
Everyone agrees that Sunland Park needs oversight,no? Everyone knew that the city council meeting was going to be packed and that’s why law enforcement was there. Everyone knew that they don’t have a city attorney that is providing counsel on a daily basis.
According to Jim Lawitz, the editor the Sun News, he has reported many previous cases of open meetings act violations by Sunland Park. These complaints have gone ignored by Amy Orlando.
It was safe to presume that there would be an open meetings act problem because there’s a problem every time they meet! Amy knows this to be true but apparently she’s so ignorant of the law in this area that it appears now that she’d rather have the do-nothing AG Gary King step in!
What kind of leadership is that? Gary King won’t even prosecute Rebecca Vigil-Giron!
Amy Orlando is only responding to the public pressure from good watchdogs like Heath Haussamen, Gwyenth Doland and Jim Lawitz.
Oh and it wouldn’t hurt to get one more prosecution in during an election year, now would it?
I agree with Ashes. It’s time for a new DA in this county!
Ashes: Please describe how this incident could have been prevented?
Uhhhhh….what is the District Attorney supposed to do before there is evidence that a law that is broken? Am I missing something here, or is the question just a provacative, pre election jab?
Is there anything proactive that Amy Orlando does? This incident could have been prevented if someone in the DA’s office was more concerned with preventing crime and corruption instead of sitting back and watching it happen.
It’s time for a new DA in this county! One who actually works and thinks ahead.
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