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2025 Op. N.M. Att'y Gen. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.sag/sagnm0110 and id is 1 raw text is: New Mexico Department of Justice January 10, 2025 OPINION OF Opinion No. 2025-01 RAUL TORREZ Attorney General To: The Honorable William F. Lang, New Mexico State Ethics Commission Re: Attorney General Opinion - Open Meetings Act Requirements for State Ethics Commission Meetings Questions If, during closed session, the State Ethics Commission discusses whether to authorize a civil action against a person-in circumstances where the Commission does not believe that alerting the person to the action would be likely to induce the alteration or destruction of evidence-does the Open Meetings Act's reasonable specificity requirement, NMSA 1978 Section 10-15-1(I)(1), require that the Commission specify the target defendant's name in the meeting agenda? If yes, does Section 10-16G-13's confidentiality-of-records provisions create an exception to Section 10-15-1(I)(1)'s requirement that the Commission specify the target defendant's name in the meeting agenda? Answers No, the Open Meetings Act's reasonable specificity requirement for meeting agendas does not necessarily require the State Ethics Commission to specify the target defendant's name. Section 10-16G-13 does not represent an exception to the Open Meetings Act's reasonable specificity requirement for meeting agendas but is nevertheless relevant to the question of what level of specificity is reasonable for the purposes of meeting agendas. Background The issues presented by this opinion request arise out of the language of two separate statutes: the Open Meetings Act (OMA), NMSA 1978, Sections 10-15-1 to -4 (1974, as amended through 2013), and the State Ethics Commission Act, NMSA 1978, Sections 10-16G-1 to -16 (2019, as amended through 2021). In interpreting each of these statutes, we begin with the basic principles of statutory interpretation. The principal command of statutory construction is that the court should determine and effectuate the intent of the legislature. State v. Ogden, 1994-NMSC-029, ¶ New Mexico Department of Justice 408 Galisteo Street I Santa Fe, NM 87501 1(505) 490-4060 | NMDOJ.GOV