I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
In an article NMI published yesterday, I quoted Secretary of State spokesman James Flores as saying his boss, Mary Herrera, has “issued more administrative rules and procedures than any past administration.”
That may not be true, at least as far as the administrative rules go.
Check out the New Mexico Administrative Code’s section on elections and elected officials on the code’s official Web site. In there you’ll find a list of rules. Near the top, each one indicates the year it was put in place, and that can be used to determine which secretary of state enacted it.
Herrera has, thus far in her tenure, brought forth two new rules related to elections and elected officials. By comparison, during her three terms in office, former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron enacted nine, and another former secretary of state, Stephanie Gonzales, enacted six.
It was Santa Fe County Deputy Clerk Denise Lamb, a former head of the state elections bureau under Vigil-Giron, who pointed that out to me yesterday in an e-mail. She said it shows that Flores’ assertion “doesn’t pass the barest scrutiny.”
Flores has not responded to an e-mail request for a response sent yesterday afternoon.
After checking out the information Lamb sent me, I wasn’t quite satisfied that Flores’ statement was erroneous. So I jumped on the administrative code’s Web site last night and began scrolling through the entire thing. Honestly, I don’t have the time or desire to read every administrative rule in the state — there are way too many for that — but I scrolled through most sections and clicked on any that appeared to be related to areas in which the secretary of state might be involved.
I found three other rules issued by secretaries of state that aren’t election-related: a Vigil-Giron rule related to filing provisions under the uniform commercial code, another issued by Vigil-Giron related to the “central filing of security interests for agricultural products,” and one issued by Herrera related to the ability of notaries to perform “electronic notarial acts.”
So, can I say with certainty that Flores was wrong? No. But Vigil-Giron is way ahead of Herrera by my tally, and Gonzales is also leading Herrera. It appears that most rules promulgated by the secretary of state’s office relate to elections and elected officials, and I’ve already counted those.
I’ll let you know if Flores gets back to me.
The context for all of this is that Lamb’s boss, Santa Fe County Clerk Valerie Espinosa, is considering challenging Herrera in the Democratic primary next year because, she claims, Herrera has done a poor job in her first term as secretary of state. Espinosa said for other article published yesterday that the only “saving grace” for last year’s election “was that it was not close; otherwise, the lack of administrative rules and procedures would have resulted in costly litigation and clouded the results.”
It was in response to that statement that Flores said Herrera has “issued more administrative rules and procedures than any past administration.”
