Just before the pandemic, Christopher Michael Sanchez was killed on Feb. 21 at a local bar and police ruled his death was a justifiable homicide. Eight months later, his father requested — through the Inspection of Public Records Act — all videos and records relating to his son’s death. 

By 2023, however, the city still hadn’t completely fulfilled his request. So he filed a lawsuit — and won his case — receiving a $90,000 settlement. 

He isn’t the only one who filed a lawsuit against the city for an IPRA violation after not receiving responsive records. 

Public records show the city dolled out a total of $1,449,088.05 for 27 lawsuits related to IPRA violations from the first quarter of fiscal year 2023 (beginning July 1, 2022) through the first quarter of 2024 (ending Sept. 31, 2023). Three of those settlements — two which totaled over $200,000 — also included other claims. 

Albuquerque City Clerk Ethan Watson told City Desk ABQ that less than 1% of requesters file IPRA related lawsuits. He has recently begun taking steps to address the issue.

The Inspection of Public Records Act is a New Mexico law that requires city, state and county governments to produce records regarding their operations. Its purpose is to promote transparency in the government and to embrace scrutiny of official’s acts and representations by office holders. Public entities have 15 days to respond or provide a written denial unless they say the request is broad and burdensome. If a request is proved to be broad and burdensome, the city clerk’s office has a longer period of time in which they can fulfill it.  

Even so, Watson told City Desk ABQ that some of the requests take a long time to fulfill and specialized personnel need to work on them. 

“It’s not unusual to have over 100 lapel cameras to look at in an OIS, (officer involved shooting),” he said. 

Shane Maier, the attorney representing Sanchez’s father, said there’s been a massive delay in the city releasing videos to people who have filed IPRA requests. 

“I think they just were kind of putting some situations or claims and requests on the backburner and not thinking about what might happen from that,” he said. 

For much of his work, Maier said he relies on public records for evidence. Although in the past, he said he has had difficulties obtaining some of these records in the allotted time frame, he said recently he has noticed the city was improving. 

“In the last year plus the response rates have increased dramatically in the City of Albuquerque,” he said. 

Maier said he believes part of the reason for the increase in response times is due to the number of IPRA related lawsuits the city has incurred. 

Requests last year more than doubled  

At a City Council meeting on Feb. 21, Watson told councilors that his office received over 12,000 IPRA requests last year, which is more than double the amount they received five years ago and could be 100% more from a decade ago.

This isn’t unique to Albuquerque.

“Most entities in New Mexico are experiencing more and more requests each year, and more and more litigation each year,” Watson told the councilors.  

Most of the requests the city receives are related to the Albuquerque Police Department and 50% of those request information about traffic accidents.  

A public records hub

Currently, IPRA requests are processed through the Next Request system, which acts as a sort of hub for the information. Watson said that system was implemented in 2015 before he became the city clerk. 

Thomas Grover, an attorney who has filed many, many IPRA lawsuits, said this system presents two problems. 

“I’m not convinced that the hub, if you will, is sufficiently staffed with enough records techs to be able to manage the volume of requests that come in,” he said. “Then of course, you’ve got the issue of whether or not people at the various departments, or those who the techs are communicating with are actually responding to them.”

This new system leaves lots of opportunities for there to be a breakdown, Grover said. 

There are currently 20 full-time city employees working on IPRA requests, with two vacancies. Watson said his office is looking to hire five more temporary staff members to work on these cases. Their caseloads range from 100 to 150 at any given time. 

“While staffing is part of the puzzle, it alone will not resolve the challenges public bodies face under IPRA as it is currently drafted,” Watson said. 

The staff pay range is between $20 – $25 per hour. 

Grover said the real question is why is the city receiving so many records requests? 

“The number of IPRA requests a given entity receives reflects or is a byproduct of the amount of trust people have that entity, and obviously with the city, there’s an incredible amount of distrust,” he said. 

When records aren’t picked up – a cost to the city 

Depending on what the request is, it can take hours for custodians to review and redact pertinent information from requested files, and sometimes requesters don’t pick up their records requests once they’re completed. 

At Wednesday’s meeting City Councilor Renée Grout said she asked the council office how many records hadn’t been picked up since 2021. 

“I was told there are 25 IPRA requests from folks that have not been picked up, which equates to over 400 hours, and that’s just in council services,” she said. 

Watson said for his office it’s been all over the place. Some years are higher, and some are lower. Watson told the council that he recently did an initial review of some of these requests. 

“I looked at just 20 of them, because that was all I was able to accomplish, and in those 20 requests, we had spent almost 40 hours of time processing the records that were never collected,” he said.

Chronic violators 

The City of Albuquerque is a chronic violator of IPRA, especially when it comes to controversial subjects, Grover said. 

“You can pretty much guarantee that it’s going to end up in a lawsuit because the city won’t respond to it or they’ll improperly deny aspects of the request,” Grover said. “So whether it’s communications by the city’s former risk manager and Mayor Keller about how the Gateway Center or the rail yards are uninsurable because of the environmental hazards they pose — that’s an IPRA request that’s going to get denied by inaction by the city.”. 

Hot button issues, Grover said are the ones that get denied, but he doesn’t believe this is entirely the city clerk’s fault. 

“They’re relying on people and those other departments to put IPRA records to him or his office so that they can be produced to the requester, and if he’s not getting them from them, (the departments), there’s nothing he can do,” Grover said.  

Finding solutions 

Watson told the council that his office is working on five aspects to make the IPRA process easier. 

First, they’re working on digitizing records. 

“The city has a large number of paper records. Last year we digitized over a million records including in the last two years. This is all of the city’s HR files, but on a day-to-day basis, we’re still working with a ton of paper records,” he said. 

Digitizing paper records, Watson said, will help decrease the response time to IPRA requests. 

His office is also trying to make certain records available online. 

“Another key component to our backlog plan is requester outreach,” he said. “We have basically a group of around 40 requesters who submit over 100 requests a year. Some submit as many as 500 requests a year, and we’ve been working with them basically to streamline what they ask for.” 

That outreach, Watson said, has been extremely successful. 

Finally, they’re looking at other ways to streamline the process, he said. 

“I want to squeeze every ounce of inefficiency out of our process. I think the challenge is twofold,” he said. “We’re doing that amidst a huge incoming daily deluge of requests and we’re trying to balance also getting requests out the door, but we are really reexamining every aspect of our process and trying to reduce the number of requests that are uncollected on every given month, and also reduce our overall response.” 

Public records for everyone

Watson said only 4% of public records requests in Albuquerque come from the media. Most requests, he said, are from lawyers, banks and insurance firms.

However, Maier — the attorney — pointed out that anyone can ask for public records.

“A lot of people are not aware that they can ask for these documents, including lapel videos, including 911 call data,” he said. 

Public records especially can be important in determining the outcome of legal proceedings, he said, because police are human and sometimes make mistakes on reports, and video evidence can make a difference.  

Grover said without outside accountability, government, especially in New Mexico, is prone to abuse and corruption, but having the availability of public records through IPRA counterbalances that.  

“IPRA’s are for anybody and everybody in the state,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story updated to correct the reason Sanchez filed a lawsuit and the percentage of IPRA requests that end in a lawsuit.