{"id":48826,"date":"2026-03-20T19:30:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T02:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/?p=48826"},"modified":"2026-03-20T19:30:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T02:30:58","slug":"shine-a-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/shine-a-light\/","title":{"rendered":"\ufeffShine a Light"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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James Madison was born 275 years and three days ago\u00a0as I sit here now, wrestling with the tyranny of the blank page that confronts me.\u00a0That was March 16, 1751, for those disinclined to do\u00a0the math.
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Madison\u2019s resume is stout: primary instigator of\u00a01787\u2019s Constitutional Convention,\u00a0OG Bill of Rights scribe,\u00a0fourth US president \u2014 you get the picture.\u00a0But it was his attitude toward how government should function that lands him at the top of this column. Madison summed it up thusly:\u00a0\u201cA popular government, without popular information, or the means of\u00a0acquiring\u00a0it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy;\u00a0or,\u00a0perhaps both.\u201d
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That come-from inspired the\u00a0Florida Society of News Editors to peg the first \u201cSunshine Sunday<\/a>\u201d to Madison\u2019s birthday back in 2002.\u00a0The event \u2014 a response to the largest assault\u00a0(to that point)\u00a0on government transparency and civil liberties in our nation\u2019s history\u00a0following the terrorist attacks of\u00a0Sept. 11, 2001 \u2014 grew quickly.\u00a0
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By 2005, seven days, still calendared around Madison\u2019s\u00a0birthday, were\u00a0required\u00a0to\u00a0accommodate appetites for defying secrecy in the halls of power.\u00a0And so,\u00a0Sunshine Week<\/a>\u00a0was born.\u00a0\u00a0

The occasion invites us to celebrate flashlights trained on the dark corners where graft and corruption congeal \u2014 and to shame\u00a0those who cling steadfastly to\u00a0governance\u00a0pockmarked with restrictions.\u00a0This recognition comes in myriad forms, from speaker events to conferences to perhaps my favorite annual Sunshine Week tradition: publication of \u201cThe\u00a0Foilies,\u201d\u00a0a joint venture from the\u00a0Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0MuckRock<\/a>\u00a0that takes a delightfully cynical approach to dragging egregious and serial offenders of the public\u2019s right to know from the shadows and onto newspaper and online front pages all over the country. (I am pleased to report that the\u00a0Santa Fe Reporter<\/em>, one of my old journalism homes, still runs\u00a0The Foilies<\/a>\u00a0on the cover of its print edition every Sunshine Week.)\u00a0

I\u2019ve\u00a0penned my share of Sunshine Week screeds through the years \u2014 for the\u00a0aforementioned\u00a0SFR<\/a>, for the\u00a0Rio Grande chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists<\/a>, for\u00a0The Paper<\/a>., and elsewhere.\u00a0Reading back through them left me feeling a bit less than sunny.\u00a0They\u00a0reminded\u00a0me of how much we\u00a0lose with each flip of the calendar in the push for more information about the fashion in which\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0governed.\u00a0
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But last week, as I looked ahead to Sunshine Week, I remembered that I am the executive producer for news and public affairs here at NMPBS. That means I have some agency in all of this: an hour of public television each week to\u00a0nail down\u00a0issues\u00a0others\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0seem to get a line on, and that\u00a0my team and I believe are important to\u00a0our\u00a0audience.\u00a0\u00a0

Transparency! Sunshine Week!\u00a0

I asked Greg Williams, a longtime fellow-\u00a0combatant in the\u00a0anti-secrecy\u00a0wars and a board member with the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, to come in for a\u00a0transparency state of the union of sorts. \u201cIt\u2019s 2026, I\u2019ve had this job nearly three years to the day, and I haven\u2019t done a Sunshine\u00a0Week segment yet,\u201d I told Greg. \u201cLet\u2019s\u00a0take stock.\u201d\u00a0

He agreed and, as we began our interview, Greg\u2019s reminder that New Mexico has one of the best sunshine laws in the country\u00a0buoyed me instantly. That would be the Inspection of\u00a0Public\u00a0Records Act, known as\u00a0IPRA.\u00a0But the law is like a muscle \u2014 without exercise, it atrophies. And each year, efforts begin in the dark to weaken it, then reach the Legislature as\u00a0IPRA\u00a0amendments\u00a0or other, insidious statutes with bright, smiley names that are in fact meant to cloak\u00a0the actions of government.\u00a0\u00a0

Greg and I discussed at length the driving force behind recent efforts: a\u00a0narrative that the growing volume of IPRA requests has made the law unworkable and, so, it must be reined in. NMFOG is sympathetic to the argument;\u00a0the number of requests for records has, indeed, exploded (We\u2019re\u00a0seeing some\u00a0novel\u00a0explanations\u00a0for the increase<\/a>, including the specter of data-scraping tools and artificial intelligence bots from overseas.)\u00a0

But Greg cautions against trying to address the problem by monkeying with the law. Why not, instead, dedicate more resources to the\u00a0records\u00a0custodians whose legal responsibility it is to fulfill requests in\u00a0a timely\u00a0fashion?\u00a0 There\u2019s\u00a0an idea.\u00a0

We also got into\u00a0House Joint Memorial 2<\/a>, which the Legislature passed last month to set\u00a0up a \u201ctask force\u201d to \u201cstudy IPRA implementation.\u201d\u00a0Many of the leading voices in the \u201cIPRA is out of control and must be stopped!\u201d crowd will populate this \u201ctask force.\u201d And for my money, anytime the Legislature gets near IPRA, there is\u00a0cause\u00a0for alarm. This is, after all, the same governing body that exempted its own emails from the sunshine law years ago.\u00a0

But guess who else will be on the \u201ctask force?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0

NMFOG.\u00a0

Much of what the foundation does in terms of legislative advocacy amounts to playing defense, Greg explained.\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0been aligned with\u00a0NMFOG\u00a0my whole career\u00a0and was honored in 2012 to accept the group\u2019s William S Dixon First Amendment Freedom Award for Advancing Transparency through journalism So,\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0seen the foundation\u2019s goal-line\u00a0stands\u00a0up close many times.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m so glad\u00a0NMFOG will\u00a0be in the room for this latest round of what surely will amount\u00a0to\u00a0another effort to act out the farce, tragedy \u2014 or both \u2014 Madison warned against two-and-a-half centuries ago: a popular government, without popular information of the means of acquiring it.
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Happy Sunshine Week to those, like Greg and me, who celebrate.\u00a0

– Jeff Proctor, NMiF Executive Producer<\/p>\n\n\n\n