Scandal after scandal is rocking the state. You would think that as a result public officials would go out of their way to make sure that government is operating as transparently as humanly possible. But, when it comes to the Albuquerque Public Schools, that doesn’t seem to be the case:
School board president Marty Esquivel said APS is in compliance with open records laws, which do not require postings on the Internet.
“This is probably a case where open government laws have not caught up with the technology of today,” said Esquivel, an attorney who works with the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government.
The auditor said APS was violating the state Open Meetings Act by failing to post updated board and committee meeting minutes on the Web site.
Esquivel said state law requires only that minutes be made available upon request.
State law may only require that minutes be made available upon request, but the current level of corruption investigations mandates that if a public organization wants to appear on the up and up, then they should go out of their way to provide open government. And, to be perfectly honest, posting minutes on a website wouldn’t take someone more than 15 minutes.