New Mexico’s Department of Justice will convene a task force to review the Sunshine Law in response to House Joint Memorial 2, passed by the state legislature in the final hours of its 30-day session last week.
HJM 2 directs the DOJ to convene a task force to determine the “workability and effectiveness” of the state’s public records law.
The move comes amid mounting complaints from records custodians in local and state agencies who are struggling to keep up with an increase in public records requests.
A response to growing pressure
The Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA), which guarantees public access to government documents, is the center of the review.
Custodians across the state have reported a sharp surge in requests. Some local governments described the workloads as having strained staff capacity and budgets. In Carlsbad, officials have noted a 200 percent spike in records requests in recent years, according to transparency advocates.
The task force will explore solutions to address the heavy workload without sacrificing public access — a balance that has been proven politically fraught in past sessions.
The initiative follows failed attempts of the legislature to overhaul IPRA. Critics, including the Foundation for Open Government, warned that those proposals could have significantly weakened transparency and accountability.
In a lawsuit filed last year, FOG called for “a remedy beyond fees, costs, and fines.”
Why review the law matters
The task force will include representatives from a broad range of public and private stakeholders, namely: DOJ, New Mexico Municipal League, New Mexico Counties, FOG, American Civil Liberties Union, and New Mexico Press Association.
The DOJ will convene the group, which is expected to submit recommendations to a legislative committee by October. Participation is key to the success of the initiative, according to media and transparency advocates.
“Any process like this must be grounded in IPRA’s core principle that public records belong to the public,” Press Association President Belinda Mills said in a statement. She stressed that journalists and transparency advocates must have a voice to ensure that the task force reinforces, rather than erodes, the law’s intent.
Mills said her organization supported the memorial to ensure representation in discussions across the state about the growing burden on records custodians.
A reset after failed reforms
FOG executive director Christine Barber described the task force as a chance to recalibrate the conversation.
“After last year, when we had three different bills that looked to kind of completely gut IPRA, we decided to look at the problem and say, ‘Why are they asking for these changes?’” Barber said. “They are asking for these changes because the records custodians have a huge workload.”
The FOG official wants an open dialogue to focus on practical fixes that do not weaken the law’s protections. Some of the ideas the task force could examine include increasing the number of records custodians, proactively posting more documents online to reduce individual requests, and investing in better records management software.
What happens next
The panel will evaluate how effectively IPRA functions and whether it remains feasible under the present conditions. Its recommendations could help shape future legislation in the next session.
Lawmakers considered the unanimous vote as a signal of bipartisan recognition that the issue requires careful study. The legislature did not approve two measures in last year’s regular legislative session aimed at addressing the issue.
One bill sought to revamp IPRA by creating new exemptions to the law. It also sought to grant broader authority to state and local governments to refuse public records requests.
Another measure also sought to impose fees on public records requests, extend the response time, and make it more difficult to obtain penalty fees for violations of the law.
DOJ spokesperson Chelsea Pitvorec did not respond to queries about when the department is going to convene the panel. She merely stated that the DOJ “stands willing to spearhead this initiative.”