Opinion

An Independent Attitude

Death of open-government advocate a loss to all

Sunday afternoon took a sad turn for me.

KFDA NewsChannel10's Web site moved an Associated Press story on the sudden death on Saturday of Robert “Bob" Johnson, 84.

Publisher George Schwarz

The Amarillo Independent isn't an AP member, so I can't use the story verbatim, but I can tell you that Johnson was the executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government.

Johnson retired from the AP after 42 years to join with several others to found New Mexico FOG, a deliciously ironic acronym for what the organization did. One of those who helped found FOG was Robert E. Trapp, one of the finest journalists and one of my mentors in my midlife career change.

I saw both Johnson and Trapp in October 2006 when I returned to Española to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Rio Grande SUN, which Trapp and his wife, Ruth, started and run to this day. Johnson looked better than he had in a while, with better color and fitter than when I had seen him several years prior.

I was pleased to make that observation having understood that Johnson had some health problems.

When I worked at the SUN (and I am using the all-upper-case style because it is the SUN's style and a form of respect to Trapp), Johnson helped me with a few open-meetings and public-records issues. Johnson knew as much as any lawyer about New Mexico's public-right-to-know measures and was always available to help reporters with those issues.

But his role in the battle for the public to monitor its government spanned years. He and Trapp teamed up for years and NMFOG continues today to win cases.

Some of NMFOG's wins over the years:

• FOG led the fight to keep University of New Mexico presidential searches open.

• FOG prevailed in a lawsuit filed jointly with the Valencia County News-Bulletin against the county for withholding both a Sheriff's Department record and an administrative public record.

• State Risk Management paid FOG and the News-Bulletin $4,156 in attorneys' fees and costs to settle the case against the district attorney/county attorney who wrote that he could find no written law that the public records were public.

• The city of Santa Fe conceded it discussed public policy in an improperly called executive session, settling a lawsuit with NMFOG.
"He was supposed to live forever," Trapp said Monday, adding that no one was more enthusiastic about the First Amendment than Bob Johnson.

In reading the stories about Johnson in The Albuquerque Journal and Santa Fe New Mexican, I also learned that Johnson wrote the first news bulletin for the AP when President John F. Kennedy was shot and coordinated the coverage of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

In his 42 years at AP, Johnson was a giant.

I lament the loss of a man who worked tirelessly and fearlessly for open government. And his death reminds me that Texas lacks the same passion for open government and public transparency of institutions that run — and can ruin — our lives.

In fact, as I look at what Texas has in the way of laws that provide for open government, I realize current politicians are the miscreants among us.

Up until John Cornyn, now U.S. senator, took office as Texas Attorney General, we had a body of law that let local authorities, such as city attorneys, rely on a variety of previous rulings — in other words, precedents. Those so-called “prior determinations" guided what could be made public.

But Cornyn, in 2001, issued Open Records Decision No. 673, which erased the precedents and sent local officials scurrying to the Texas AG's office for rulings on records requests.

Cornyn's ORD 673 asserted the need for change based on local officials' inconsistency in ruling what is a public record and what isn't. Attorney General Greg Abbott reaffirmed ORD 673, joining Cornyn in making sure that obtaining public records would be more cumbersome and costly should there be a disagreement between the governmental body and the requester. That's because public bodies, in what I believe to be an overabundance of caution, now ask for a new ruling with almost every records request.

I don't care if public officials think I am unfair to assert that Cornyn did not act then nor does Abbott act now in the best interests of transparent and open government.

They are complicit in making Texas law complicated and cumbersome. These acts work against the common man and further buttress the strength of those institutions and people of privilege.

I think it is shameful for Texas that I must point out that New Mexico, which in some ways remains a third-world country, does a better job than Texas does in providing a common sense path to open government.

In New Mexico, Bob Johnson led the fight to keep government open.

It is a painful day indeed to know we as journalists have lost a fellow journalist who was more dedicated to open government than public officials.

But more important, for this week, rest in peace, Bob Johnson.

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Posted: August 30, 2007