Cantu: 'This is absolutely untrue'
In a meeting of the town council that lasted only three minutes, Councilor Judi Cantu was censured by her peers for a litany of complaints that ranged from harassing staff to clogging up town government with unnecessary and cumbersome records requests.
The censure was the only item on the agenda of the Jan. 30 special meeting, which was attended by about 30 people, including at least eight law enforcement officers.
“I am objecting to this illegal meeting. I defer the gentlemen [council members] to my attorney and I am leaving,” said Cantu before walking out of the council chambers. Her attorney was not invited to speak and the motion to censure Cantu was immediately passed by the rest of the council.
The four-page “resolution of censure” amounts to a public declaration of “disappointment” in Cantu’s performance as a town councilor. According to Steve Ross, a contracted attorney for the town of Taos who was present via speakerphone during the meeting, the resolution “speaks for itself.”
First among the complaints listed in the resolution was a “pattern of harassment and defamation of town staff and disparaging characterization of members of the town council.” Other complaints include Cantu using her authority as an elected official to conduct an unauthorized investigation of town employees and using the phone and email services provided by the town to send “tirades to staff.”
Taos Mayor Dan Barrone told The Taos News that “threatened litigation” — not actual lawsuits — has been on the rise in the last year because of Cantu’s behavior as a council member, echoing some of the complaints in the resolution.
For her part, Cantu told The Taos News soon after the meeting that she was “in shock,” especially that “the entire council allowed this.”
“This is absolutely untrue,” Cantu said.
The town councilor argues the censure was retaliation, primarily for trying to inform the council about her reservations concerning Taos Town Manager Rick Bellis including “red flags” with his previous employment and the current implications for the transparency of town government.
Cantu told The Taos News she requested a spot on the regularly scheduled Jan. 24 town council meeting to discuss these issues. But instead of being able to fully present her case during a closed executive session, she was “severely and instantly attacked” by members of the council and senior administration with the town, Cantu said.
According to documents Cantu provided to The Taos News, she filed Criminal Investigation Complaint for Government Corruption online with the Attorney General Office Jan. 24.
Notice of the special meeting was posted Jan. 27. Over the weekend, Cantu submitted a letter of “dispute and protest” to Barrone and her fellow council members, though the Jan. 30 meeting went on as scheduled.
Records requests
The censure resolution specifically calls out Cantu’s reliance on records requests for the time and money it takes to respond.
The Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA), known as a “sunshine law,” gives anyone (residents and public officials alike) the right to inspect almost any record of any government in the state.
For example, Cantu requested the following documents in early January (based on documents she provided to The Taos News): all vouchers received by the procurement or finance departments that were submitted by Bellis since March 2014, all funding and payments made to the Arts and Cultural District, receipts and reports submitted by the Cultural District, documents pertaining to a recent firework display and documents showing payments the town made to several marketing contractors.
According to the censure resolution, Cantu has made at least 285 separate IPRA requests, “some of which would require the production of hundreds or even thousands of documents.”
The resolution states that in many cases, Cantu already had the documents she requested from information provided to the council in routine meetings or from previous requests for records, which resulted in the “unnecessary expenditure of hundreds of hours of staff time and thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money.”
The resolution calls Cantu’s requests for records a “habit” that is “time consuming and disruptive to the functioning of town government.”
Cantu defended her right to request documents from the government she was elected to serve.
“It amazes me the rest of the council doesn’t request public documents. They are very informative. I don’t take people at their word and I think it’s necessary to question everything,” Cantu told The Taos News.
Furthermore, Cantu says she was forced to make these requests because of ongoing issues with her town email service — namely, that emails containing these documents would appear and disappear. Cantu says the issues were never properly resolved by the town’s IT department and posits that her account may have been tampered with.
The censure resolution states that “the only problems [Cantu] has either occur on her own personal computer (to which the town has no access) or are in her inability to work the viewing settings on the equipment.”
While the censure is only a public statement, it does direct Cantu to cease and desist from all the activities listed in the resolution. She says that when it comes to requesting records, the censure is just an attempt to block her from the lawful practice and the information she has and could uncover.
“I wasn’t elected to sit on my hands,” she said.
Open Meetings Act
Cantu argues the meeting and the censure were illegal because they did not conform the state’s Open Meetings Act (OMA), another sunshine law that requires advanced notice of meetings of a public body. Generally speaking, the public must be notified of special meetings at least 36 hours beforehand.
According to Barrone, notice of the meeting was physically posted at the town offices before 10 a.m. Jan. 27. The Taos News received a standard email notice of the meeting just before that time.
Since the majority of the lead time for the special meeting was over the course of the weekend, the meeting was conducted in violation of the law, Cantu argues. “It’s a low blow to use the weekend” as the official notice period, she said.
“In most circumstances, the attorney general will consider reasonable a notice procedure providing 10 days advance notice for regular meetings, three days prior notice for special meetings and 24 hours advance notice for emergency meetings,” reads the OMA compliance guide produced by the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office.
The guide gives a hypothetical situation in which the mayor of a village calls for a special meeting to happen on a Monday at 8:30 a.m., but posts notice of it the preceding Friday, one half-hour before the village offices close. “The meeting notice is not reasonable for purposes of the [OMA] because members of the public interested in attending the meeting have no meaningful opportunity to see the notice before the meeting,” the guide states.
Cantu told The Taos News Feb. 1 that she had not yet filed a formal complaint with the state’s attorney general, but is “moving on it.”
