Co-op meetings called into question

Socorro Electric Cooperative’s board of trustees held its first meeting since the co-op lost its lawsuit against its member-owners on Tuesday. Or did it?
Soon after Co-op President Paul Bustamante called the meeting to order, District 5 trustee Charlie Wagner told his colleagues that any action they take would be null and void.

“Because notice was faulty under the Open Meetings Act, nothing we do at this meeting is going to be valid,” Wagner said.
Bustamante disagreed and moved on with the agenda.
The first item to be voted on was a resolution to change the date of that night’s meeting from Wednesday, when the board usually meets, to Tuesday. Wagner cast the lone “no” vote on the item, and he continued to vote against subsequent motions.
“I’m not going to approve this because I’m protesting,” he announced when Bustamante called for a vote to update signature cards. “This is not a legal meeting.”
The New Mexico Open Meetings Act, which normally applies only to government entities, outlines requirements for providing public notice of meetings.
As the New Mexico Tech board of regents found out last year, when proper notice is not given, any action taken at the meeting is invalid and must be remedied.
Last week, a New Mexico Supreme Court-appointed judge ruled that the co-op must follow the Open Meetings and Inspection of Public Records acts — and should have been following them since member-owners of the democratically controlled co-op passed the measures at last year’s annual meeting.
The ruling upheld what Wagner has been saying all along. But the majority of the board voted last year to challenge the validity of the bylaws in district court. In order to do so, the co-op took the unprecedented step of filing a lawsuit against all of its approximately 10,000 member-owners.

Opposing Opinions
At Tuesday’s meeting, Bustamante contended the co-op has been abiding by OMA requirements.
“Right after the April 17 meeting, we were trying to follow the Open Meetings Act, and we have,” he said. “We were being proactive about it. We weren’t going against the members’ wishes.”
Wagner disagreed.
“We’ve held several meetings over the past 13 months, some of which did not meet the requirements of the Open Meetings Act, and during those meetings any action we took is null and void,” Wagner said.
“That’s your opinion,” Bustamante repsonded.
“No, it’s not. It’s the judge’s opinion,” Wagner shot back.
“I think we heard clearly what the judge said. I’m not going to have you reiterate what the judge said,” Bustamante said.
Dennis Francish, the attorney who represented the co-op at last week’s hearing, was absent from the meeting, so was unavailable to offer an opinion.
Wagner was critical of Bustamante’s handling of another aspect of the opening meetings law when the president called for an executive session to discuss a personnel matter.
“Saying ‘personnel’ is not enough, he said. “You have to give the public and the press an idea of what it’s about.”
The Open Meetings Act calls for “reasonable specificity” of what is to be discussed to be announced before going into executive session.
The Open Meetings Act compliance guide published by the Attorney General’s Office states that the reasonable specificity requirement is to provide “sufficient information to give the public a general idea about what will be discussed without compromising the confidentiality conferred by the exception. For example, a motion might be stated: ‘I move that the commission convene in closed session as authorized by the limited personnel matters exception to discuss possible disciplinary action against an employee.’”
Bustamante felt “personnel” was enough of an explanation and closed the meeting to the public.

 

 

IPRA Issues
District 3 trustee Luis Aguilar of Socorro brought up the other part of the judge’s ruling — that the co-op must comply with the Inspection of Public Records Act.
General Manager Joseph Herrera said he had started studying the law.
“There’s a lot of information; I’m getting familiar with it,” he said.
Aguilar wanted to know who would be the co-op’s designated records custodian, and Herrera said he would serve that role.
IPRA requires that a records custodian be selected through whom all records requests are made.
Wagner chimed in on that issue too. He reminded the board that several members have requested information but had been denied, and that the judge noted that the bylaw was never suspended and the co-op should have been following IPRA for the past 13 months.