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.
A draft opinion from the Albuquerque City Attorney’s office says a controversial proposal to place stricter regulations on election-year activity during city elections would be redundant and might just limit Albuquerque’s power to regulate organizations.
According to a memo from Assistant City Attorney Robert Kidd to the city’s Charter Review Task Force, the proposal “would not capture any activities or groups not already contemplated in the Election Code as constituting” a measure finance committee, the city’s equivalent of a political action committee.
A member of the city’s Charter Review Task Force, Chuck Gara, suggested earlier this month that the panel recommend amending the city’s charter to require entities that communicate anything in defense of or opposed to a candidate during the four months leading up to an election to register as a measure finance committee.
Gara’s proposal appears to be the latest salvo in an ongoing war between nonprofits and elected officials that began last summer and peaked in December, when several nonprofits sued the state of New Mexico in federal court. The suit came in response to the state’s order requiring the nonprofits to register as political committees and list their donors.
The state’s order was sparked by mailers sent out in the months leading up to the state’s primary and general elections that targeted incumbent state lawmakers. The mailers told constituents about campaign contributions the lawmakers had received and how they had voted on certain issues.
Mayor Martin Chavez, quoted by the Albuquerque Journal on Sunday, is expecting similar activity during the city election cycle.
“We expect they’ll be coming very shortly. It’s going to be really nasty — it’s the way they operate,” Chavez said of the Center for Civic Policy, which is one of the nonprofits at the center of the controversy.
Kidd would not discuss his memo to the city’s Charter Review Task Force Wednesday.
“That’s an attorney-client privilege. I think I need to talk to the city attorney,” Kidd said.
A call to Gara was not immediately returned.
Under Gara’s proposal, an organization — be it a corporation, limited liability corporation, nonprofit or “any person or combination of two or more persons acting jointly” — would trigger the requirement to register as a committee if it communicated such information via newspaper, TV, radio, Internet, on a billboard, or by direct mail or in door-to-door within 120 days of an election.
In addition to saying Gara’s proposal is redundant, Kidd says in his one-page memo that “the inclusion of the 120-day period prior to a municipal election” might actually restrict the number of groups that would be required to register as a measure finance committee.
The nonprofits and elected officials have battled over whether last year’s mailers constituted educational or political speech.
The nonprofits that paid for the mailers have maintained that they met IRS guidelines to be considered educational: The mailers were sent out well before the state’s primary or general elections and they did not tell constituents how to vote.
Attorney General Gary King and Secretary of State Mary Herrera, as well as scores of state lawmakers, have disagreed, arguing that the mailers constituted “campaign intervention” and “electioneering” by the nonprofits.
State lawmakers tried to restrict nonprofits activity during this year’s 60-day legislative session.
One bill that had the backing of some legislative leaders would have required nonprofits to list donors who give more than $1,000 if the nonprofits participated in “electioneering.” Electioneering in that bill was defined as the naming of a political candidate in a piece of literature or a broadcast ad that targets the candidate’s constituency in the months prior to a primary election and general election. The nonprofits would have had to provide a list of donors to the secretary of state’s office.
That bill died in the Legislature.
