A public policy organization has sued the City of Albuquerque and its City Clerk for not complying with a public records access request originally submitted in December of 2022.
“That is the only mechanism available to us to compel compliance is legal action like this. So we hope that the City corrects its posture, corrects its stance, produces the requested documentation that we requested over almost two years ago now,” Patrick Brenner, President of the Southwest Public Policy Institute (SPPI), told New Mexico Sun in reference to the litigation.
“This request was asking for the database, if you will, of all of the public records requests that have been submitted to the City of Albuquerque. We received a tip that the City of Albuquerque was mishandling public records requests. The only way to definitively determine whether or not the City was or was not mishandling these public records requests, was by requesting to access the database that contains all of the information of all of the public records requests,” Brenner said.
According to Brenner, when someone submits a request to inspect any public records, whether it be emails from the mayor, text messages between the mayor and the chief of police or police records, or utility billing records or anything like that, those requests all get managed through the City of Albuquerque’s open government database or transparency database.
In December 2022, SPPI made its request to access the City’s CivicPlus NextRequest database, in order to examine how City officials process public records requests and whether or not they are complying with New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act.
“The NextRequest database itself is a matter of public record. So when somebody submits a public records request using the portal, that data, all that information, the time it was sent, the records that were requested, all the communication between the city and the requester, all of that data gets stored in the NextRequest database. And we know how that’s stored because we obtained a copy of NextRequest’s technical review toolkit,” Brenner stated.
“In New Mexico, under the Inspection of Public Records Act, public records requests themselves are a matter of public record. And all we’re doing is requesting a list of all of the public records requests that have been submitted for the last couple of years, so that we could conduct a quantitative analysis of all of the records requests to determine whether or not the city was intentionally targeting certain requesters for intentional delay.”
However, the SPPI said City Clerk Ethan Watson and other officials responded by saying they could not locate the requested information, and are refusing to provide the database without any valid legal basis for withholding the information.
Brenner alluded to the SPPI having previous legal run-ins with Watson.
“This is not the first time that Ethan Watson has been the recipient of litigation from the Institute. He is a known quantity and has consistently put up obstacles for the public in requesting access to public records. There was a City Desk article that came out earlier this year discussing how the City of Albuquerque has paid out over a million dollars in fines and fees associated with public records requests and they’re in the City’s mishandling thereof,” Brenner told New Mexico Sun.
“The Inspection of Public Records Act is very clear governing the disclosure of databases. And this case is no different. We requested access to a database. The City did not produce the required documentation, the required database. And that is what necessitated the lawsuit. That is the only mechanism available to us to compel compliance is legal action like this. So we hope that the City corrects its posture, corrects its stance, produces the requested documentation that we requested over almost two years ago now.”