Gov's video project irks Democrats

SANTA FE (KRQE) - Though New Mexico just wrapped what will likely go down as the nastiest race for the Roundhouse in state history, another simmering partisan fight is sure rise when lawmakers meet again in January.

It’s about the historically contentious issue of cameras in the Roundhouse and an initiative by Republican Gov. Susana Martinez that Democrats don’t trust.

“We’re suspect as to how they want to use those recordings,” said Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez.

Since she took office in January 2011, Martinez – who campaigned on a platform of transparency – has sent out interns armed with video cameras to record legislative floor sessions and committee meetings. The administration later posts the videos to the governor’s Web site.

"This is a very large state, so people can't go to Santa Fe for 30 straight days," Martinez said. "To make sure to bring the people to the process, allow them to have access from their homes as to what's happening in Santa Fe during these meetings, hearings, etcetera."

After a bitter fight, the House and Senate began offering Internet audio streams of floor sessions in 2009. The next year, legislators added a video stream.

Finally, in 2011, the House began webcasting committee meetings. The Senate is set to follow suit this year.

But Martinez said that doesn’t go far enough. That’s because people can only watch the web streams in real time, and they are not archived on the Legislature’s website or anywhere else, so they can’t be viewed later.

"Unless you're at a computer and you know the time and day that a particular bill is going to be heard, you cannot access it," Martinez said. "A legislature of record lets you go back 10 years from now and say, ‘The reason this law was implemented was because X, Y, Z.’ "

Martinez – who spent $10,000 on cameras and other equipment for the project – now sends interns to record and archive the state’s eight policy-making boards and commissions including the New Mexico Finance Authority, the State Investment Council and the State Fair Commission. The entire project costs $40,000 a year.

But Democrats view the video project with a jaundiced eye.

In a Jan. 27 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a governor's staffer captured Sanchez using his iPod to video one of the governor’s camera-wielding interns.

"You got to smile,” Sanchez urges the intern. “What, you don't smile? Well we just want to make sure we got you the same way you got us.”