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APS Board member will start using public e-mail account
Martin Esquivel
‘I think transparency trumps convenience in this regard and hope others follow my lead,’ Martin Esquivel says.
Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education Member Martin Esquivel has decided to use an official APS e-mail account for communication with constituents.
Esquivel decided to make the change earlier this week, after I published a column about the issue and reported that he used a private e-mail address as his official APS contact.
“After much thought, I have instructed the APS Board office to list my official APS e-mail address for constituent contacts off the website,” Esquivel, who is also a N.M. Foundation for Open Government (FOG) Board member, wrote in an e-mail earlier this week. “I think transparency trumps convenience in this regard and hope others follow my lead.”
There are other APS board members and local-government officials around the state who use personal e-mail for official business, in addition to a number of legislators and others, though many others use government e-mail. A debate has been raging lately about public officials’ use of personal e-mail accounts and whether such e-mails, when they relate to public business, are subject to the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA).
When I asked Esquivel about the issue last week, he told me he had no problem turning over constituent e-mails sent to his personal address.
“I don’t consider myself a records custodian, but the way I look at it, if Mr. and Mrs. Smith send me an e-mail complaining about the operations at a middle school, is there any expectation of privacy there? I don’t think so,” he said, though he added that one person who feared retaliation was recently upset with him for passing on a complaint to an APS administrator.
In addition to listing a personal e-mail address for constituent contact, Esquivel had been using a personal account for contact with APS administration and staff. He said he will continue using the personal account for the latter purpose, adding that those communications are with officials who are using government accounts, so such e-mails are still obtainable through an IPRA request to APS.
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Ched Macquigg states his case correctly. APS is a joke and everyone involved with APS is a joke. Transparency is completely nonexistant at APS. The only thing that is transparent there is the rug everyone is hiding under….
… follow Esquivel’s lead?
Esquivel measures transparency by the pound; the more “stuff” APS has on its website, the more transparent they are. It doesn’t make any difference that it amounts only to spin; all the good stuff, all the mostly useless stuff ( for weight), and none of the records that make them look bad. Non financial Audit findings for example, the ones the find inadequate standards and accountability, are nowhere to be found.
The real measure of transparency is the difficulty with which “inconvenient” are obtained.
As an example, findings of investigations into public corruption and incompetence in the leadership of APS’ publicly funded, private police force, link. Those findings are public records. APS refuses to produce even redactions, in blatant violation of the law. They will spend operation funds (dollars that otherwise could be spent in classroom) to keep the records secret from public knowledge.
Why? because they name names; names that cannot be redacted according to the law. They show evidence of felony criminal misconduct, evidence that was never given to the District Attorney for prosecution.
If Esquivel and fellow Dixon Award winner APS Supt Winston Brooks were transparent as they would have you believe;
it would be easy to find out how much money they spent on their board room and remodeling at 6400 Uptown Blvd. or
how many operational dollars flow through APS to their favorite local law firms.
Esquivel has written an unlawful restraining order, link, restricting my liberty and my Constitutionally protected human rights to assemble peacefully, speak freely, and petition my government, to keep me from asking these questions at a public forum. He enforces it by means of a Praetorian Guard; a publicly funded, private police force, accountable to no one except the leadership of the APS.
Follow his lead? I think not.
Nice start … but I don’t understand why he will continue to use his personal email for communication with administrators. That doesn’t make sense.