SCROLL DOWN FOR PED EMAILS, HIGH-RANKING SALARIES, AND FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE
HIGH-RANKING PUBLIC EMPLOYEE SALARIES (Sunshine Portal)
Hanna Skandera Secretary-designate, PED $ 125,000.00
Larry Behrens Public Information Officer, PED $ 74,999.00
Christine Stavem Chief of Staff, PED $ 92,999.00
Keith Gardner Chief of Staff, Governor’s Office $ 134,999.00
Scott Darnell Dir. of Comm., Governor’s Office $ 79,999.00
PED Breaks NM Law Doing Political Work for Susana Martinez's Political Advisor and Susana PAC.
June 12, 2012
ISPAC has received a copy of an email that could implicate the highest levels of the Martinez administration in serious violations of the Governmental Conduct Act and a serious abuse of authority. (read the email here)
Steve Terrell’s piece in the Santa Fe New Mexican exposes even more problems created by Larry Behrens and Jay McCleskey and for Hanna Skandera in how they tried to justify their actions. (Read Steve’s piece here)
They are claiming that they gave the list of names to McCleskey as part of an IPRA. (Inspection of Public Records Act) Their claim of an IPRA cannot be the truth FOR THESE REASONS:
PED employees combed non-PED websites to collect the information. (PED is required to forward requests on to the custodian of records for the other entities.)
They used all private email addresses for their correspondence. (IRPA must be responded to on Agency email or letterhead.)
3) PED DOES NOT CREATE LISTS IN RESPONSE TO IPRA REQUESTS—PED INFORMED ISPAC OF THAT THEMSELVES IN RESPONSE TO ONE OF OUR IPRA’s. (Read that email here).
They are also claiming to have set up Susana PAC email addresses during the transition period before Susana Martinez took over as governor. However, the timing is completely off. The Martinez transition period was from election day November - December 31, 2010. Susana Martinez did not make the first contribution of $5,000 to Susana PAC UNTIL THE SPRING of 2011. How did they pay for the email addresses and server if they didn’t receive any money until months later?
The Governmental Conduct Act prohibits public officers and employees from using government property and workers for other than authorized governmental purposes.
The email specifically involves the Public Education Department and PED Secretary- Designate Hanna Skandera. However, the message appears to have been forwarded by Skandera via her IPhone to Governor Susana Martinez using an unofficial, or non-government (.gov) email address
The email in question, dated 5/2/12, was sent by Skandera’s Public Information Officer Larry Behrens using a Gmail address to the following recipients:
Jay McCleskey - McCleskey’s media email address (Martinez’s political advisor)
Keith Gardner - Susana PAC email address (Martinez’s Chief of Staff)
Scott Darnell - Susana PAC email address (Martinez’s Dir. of Communications)
Hanna Skandera - cc’d to yahoo email address (Secretary-designate, PED)
Christine Stavem - cc’ed to yahoo email address (Skandera’s Chief of Staff)
In fact, all of the people involved are state government employees with only one exception, yet not one of them used their official “.gov” email address in this communication.
(click here for their current government salaries)
This raises the serious concern that high-ranking public officials in the Martinez administration, Keith Gardner and Scott Darnell, are using private email addresses to escape an Inspection of Public Records Act request to produce their email records.
What is also disturbing is that these same high-ranking public officials are using Susan PAC email addresses. A search through Susan PAC expenditures show that neither Gardner or Darnell received any payments and are not mentioned at all.
Why then, do they have Susana PAC email accounts? They either work for the government of State of New Mexico or Susana PAC (PAC = Political Action Committee). They cannot be doing both at the same time.
Behrens admits to directing IT staff to go through “websites school-by-school” (not PED) to copy all publicly available staff emails. Behrens then asked the “budget division which districts have unions or agreements and they provided me with a list”.
Both IT and budget division appear to be PED entities. Thus Behrens directed public employees to compile lists of names and email addresses. Is this use of government property and workers an authorized purpose or is it political? It does not appear to be an authorized use, especially when PED is supposed to maintain neutrality concerning unions. Therefore, it can only be political.
Behrens cannot claim that this was in response to an IPRA request as IT personnel spent their time culling through school district lists, not PED lists. None of those shown on the email used their “.gov” email addresses which are supposed to be used for all government business.
Behrens then states that he used internal PED district codes to “pull out the non-union districts and the e-mails collected from each. So ‘FinalEmailListA’ should be all the non-union teachers from the e-mails we’ve been able to gather.”
We can only guess at what McCleskey et al wanted with the email addresses of all non-union teachers in New Mexico. Perhaps the purpose is to push even harder for the Martinez education agenda by further attempts to make unions look like the bad guys. Perhaps they intend to skew surveys of teachers about Teacher Evaluations and other education reforms in order to turn around and blame the unions.
We don’t know. What we do know is if this email is as accurate as it appears to be, these Martinez Administration officials likely have all broken the law, authorized the breaking of the law, or have knowledge that the law was broken. If Hanna Skandera and Governor Martinez indeed had full knowledge of these actions, then they must face the full consequences for their actions.
June 12, 2012
ISPAC has received a copy of an email that could implicate the highest levels of the Martinez administration in serious violations of the Governmental Conduct Act and a serious abuse of authority. (read the email here)
Steve Terrell’s piece in the Santa Fe New Mexican exposes even more problems created by Larry Behrens and Jay McCleskey and for Hanna Skandera in how they tried to justify their actions. (Read Steve’s piece here)
They are claiming that they gave the list of names to McCleskey as part of an IPRA. (Inspection of Public Records Act) Their claim of an IPRA cannot be the truth FOR THESE REASONS:
PED employees combed non-PED websites to collect the information. (PED is required to forward requests on to the custodian of records for the other entities.)
They used all private email addresses for their correspondence. (IRPA must be responded to on Agency email or letterhead.)
3) PED DOES NOT CREATE LISTS IN RESPONSE TO IPRA REQUESTS—PED INFORMED ISPAC OF THAT THEMSELVES IN RESPONSE TO ONE OF OUR IPRA’s. (Read that email here).
They are also claiming to have set up Susana PAC email addresses during the transition period before Susana Martinez took over as governor. However, the timing is completely off. The Martinez transition period was from election day November - December 31, 2010. Susana Martinez did not make the first contribution of $5,000 to Susana PAC UNTIL THE SPRING of 2011. How did they pay for the email addresses and server if they didn’t receive any money until months later?
The Governmental Conduct Act prohibits public officers and employees from using government property and workers for other than authorized governmental purposes.
The email specifically involves the Public Education Department and PED Secretary- Designate Hanna Skandera. However, the message appears to have been forwarded by Skandera via her IPhone to Governor Susana Martinez using an unofficial, or non-government (.gov) email address
The email in question, dated 5/2/12, was sent by Skandera’s Public Information Officer Larry Behrens using a Gmail address to the following recipients:
Jay McCleskey - McCleskey’s media email address (Martinez’s political advisor)
Keith Gardner - Susana PAC email address (Martinez’s Chief of Staff)
Scott Darnell - Susana PAC email address (Martinez’s Dir. of Communications)
Hanna Skandera - cc’d to yahoo email address (Secretary-designate, PED)
Christine Stavem - cc’ed to yahoo email address (Skandera’s Chief of Staff)
In fact, all of the people involved are state government employees with only one exception, yet not one of them used their official “.gov” email address in this communication.
(click here for their current government salaries)
This raises the serious concern that high-ranking public officials in the Martinez administration, Keith Gardner and Scott Darnell, are using private email addresses to escape an Inspection of Public Records Act request to produce their email records.
What is also disturbing is that these same high-ranking public officials are using Susan PAC email addresses. A search through Susan PAC expenditures show that neither Gardner or Darnell received any payments and are not mentioned at all.
Why then, do they have Susana PAC email accounts? They either work for the government of State of New Mexico or Susana PAC (PAC = Political Action Committee). They cannot be doing both at the same time.
Behrens admits to directing IT staff to go through “websites school-by-school” (not PED) to copy all publicly available staff emails. Behrens then asked the “budget division which districts have unions or agreements and they provided me with a list”.
Both IT and budget division appear to be PED entities. Thus Behrens directed public employees to compile lists of names and email addresses. Is this use of government property and workers an authorized purpose or is it political? It does not appear to be an authorized use, especially when PED is supposed to maintain neutrality concerning unions. Therefore, it can only be political.
Behrens cannot claim that this was in response to an IPRA request as IT personnel spent their time culling through school district lists, not PED lists. None of those shown on the email used their “.gov” email addresses which are supposed to be used for all government business.
Behrens then states that he used internal PED district codes to “pull out the non-union districts and the e-mails collected from each. So ‘FinalEmailListA’ should be all the non-union teachers from the e-mails we’ve been able to gather.”
We can only guess at what McCleskey et al wanted with the email addresses of all non-union teachers in New Mexico. Perhaps the purpose is to push even harder for the Martinez education agenda by further attempts to make unions look like the bad guys. Perhaps they intend to skew surveys of teachers about Teacher Evaluations and other education reforms in order to turn around and blame the unions.
We don’t know. What we do know is if this email is as accurate as it appears to be, these Martinez Administration officials likely have all broken the law, authorized the breaking of the law, or have knowledge that the law was broken. If Hanna Skandera and Governor Martinez indeed had full knowledge of these actions, then they must face the full consequences for their actions.