Bosque Farms mayor secretly recorded; avoiding Inspection of Public Records Act

BOSQUE FARMS — Snippets of secret recordings of a local mayor posted anonymously to a Facebook group late last month have raised the question of whether he directed municipal staff to communicate with him in a way to avoid creating public records.

A post made to the Bosque Farms/Peralta Community Outreach page, a private Facebook group with 710 members, on Oct. 30, by an anonymous member contained two brief videos with audio of Bosque Farms Mayor Chris Gillespie talking about the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act.

The camera is obscured in both videos and there’s no indication as to when or where the videos were taken. Gillespie’s voice is the only one heard. It’s unclear whether he’s speaking to someone in person or is having a phone conversation. Each video lasts only a few seconds.

“ ... I’m gonna do as much of this on phone as I can cause I’m trying to keep it out of the damn IPRA (unintelligible),” the mayor said in the first video.

In the second video, Gillespie says, “... (unintelligible) are too, so the police department are, we are. I’d said keep this damn stuff on voice and they can’t, they can’t IPRA those.”

Part of the anonymous post in the Facebook group indicates there is a “formal investigation by the New Mexico State Ethics Committee based on reports of a phone conversation in which Gillespie instructed village staff to stop emailing or texting him, and advised them to only call him in order to prevent public access to communications through the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA). An official investigation into these allegations is now underway.”

The News-Bulletin called two village employees — Bosque Farms Police Chief Andrew Owen and Treasurer Yvonne Maes — and asked if they had received that direction from Gillespie. Both said “no.”

Village Councilor Erica De Smet is the administrator for the Facebook group and said she allowed the anonymous post with the recordings and other images of screenshots of emails between Gillespie and Bosque Farms Fire Chief Jason Schneider about the location of a hydraulic ambulance gurney for the village’s ambulance.

“As you know, the fire department has been asking for a seat at the table. When I saw the post, I was completely shocked,” De Smet said in a phone interview. “I am all for transparency. I allowed it to post.”

When asked, De Smet said she wasn’t going to comment on the identity of the person who made the post.

Administrators for groups can see the real identity of people posting anonymously in groups, according to Facebook’s online help center.

“... It’s not shocking news the mayor would go about something like this,” De Smet said. “The mayor can say whatever he wants. It’s up to his discretion. I can tell my constituents the same thing. It’s not an illegal statement to say.”

When asked if she was concerned the video and audio might have been edited, De Smet said, “to try to convince the public it’s edited is a stretch. It’s disheartening.”

The News-Bulletin asked if she found the person who made the anonymous post trustworthy.

“I posted it,” she replied.

On Nov. 7, village resident Eric Granzberg filed a public records request with the village which included an attached video lasting a minute and 28 seconds. That video seems to be the origin of the shorter clips posted anonymously in the Facebook group.

Granzberg told the News-Bulletin several different people sent him the video and what he attached to his IPRA request was the entirety of what he received.

In the recording, Gillespie is speaking to another man, who has been identified as Bosque Farms Fire Department Assistant Chief Jason Goar.

The mayor seems to reference a conversation with Schneider in which he told the fire chief he was going to “do as much of this on phone cause I’m trying to keep it out of the damn IRPA realm. For the time being, let’s try to get some collaboration going here and at that point we can then start doing everything back and forth where people can ask for those documents and all that ...”

“You guys are getting hammered with those,” Goar says, presumably referring to IPRA requests.

Gillespie says he doesn’t want “you guys to wind up getting hammered with a bunch of them, too. Police department are, we are. I say keep this damn stuff on voice and they can’t IPRA those.”

The mayor continues, saying, “We’ll just get some things going and start talking to each other and make sure something gets squared away. That’s my intent.”

The two briefly discuss what is most likely the return of the village’s hydraulic gurney for its ambulance, although it’s not specifically said. The conversation ends and Goar mutters, “(Obscenity) idiot.”

Both men acknowledge the conversation happened and Goar said he did record the exchange.

“To an extent I regret (making the recording), to an extent I don’t,” Goar said.

The assistant fire chief said he took a dim view of the mayor “threatening” the fire department about the gurney, when “he very well knew where it was. I let my emotions get the best of me and sent out the recording.”

In mid-September, Gillespie emailed Schneider about the location of the gurney since the Bosque Farms ambulance was nearly ready to return to service and needed the piece of equipment. In an email the mayor missed, Schneider told him Peralta was using the gurney since it was answering emergency calls in the village.

Thinking he didn’t get a response, Gillespie escalated the situation a month later, telling Schneider in an email that due to the value of the gurney — about $28,000 — the person who “loaned out” or removed the gurney committed larceny. The mayor said he would get law enforcement involved to investigate and a replacement gurney would be paid for out of fire funds if it wasn’t returned.

“It’s never been like this,” Goar said about the department. “We’ve never been under a microscope like this. It makes it hard to run the department. We aren’t a paid department but our standards are very high. It’s like we’re the enemy. People have no idea how much work we put into the department, for free. It’s really sad.”

Gillespie said the subject of IPRA came up in his conversation with Goar because of the large number of records requests being sent to the village in recent months.

“They had not been hit with a bunch of IPRAs yet and they’re all volunteers. My thought was, ‘Let’s not get in the position where that happens. Stop this crap and start talking to each other ... quit infighting.’ I thought Jason was an ally, but apparently not,” Gillespie said. “They are all volunteers and I was trying to keep a load off of them, but now they are having to reply to (records requests) as well. I guess it was inevitable. We don’t have a choice. It doesn’t matter if they are volunteer or not.”

The mayor continued, saying the “entire situation” needs to be reworked, referring to what he called “incessant IPRA-ing” by Granzberg.

Since July 3, the News-Bulletin has been blind copied on nearly 200 emails from Granzberg to the village, requesting public records as well as “non-compliance” notices he’s issued when he feels the village hasn’t complied fully with IPRA.

In May 2023, Granzberg settled a civil lawsuit against the village for $98,288 after it withheld public records from him and another village resident. The co-plaintiff in the case, Michael Burnell, received $24,695.

“Now he is asking for things he absolutely cannot have, including what I’m doing to set up security for village hall. Door locks, cameras. He wants to know everything being done and that is exempt from IPRA, period,” Gillespie said. “He is doing this over and over ... and it is costing us tremendous amounts of time. I think our legislators need to change something (in the Inspection of Public Records Act.) Things like this are costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a day all across government answering IPRAs.”

The News-Bulletin asked Amanda Lavin, the attorney for New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, if a public official choosing to only communicate verbally was in violation of IPRA.

Lavin said it was not a violation for an elected official or any public employee to choose to keep their communications verbal.

“However, it’s pretty revealing that this person would say that he or she is doing this specifically to avoid having their communications be available to the public under IPRA,” Lavin responded via email. “I think taxpayers and constituents should be concerned that their elected official is making such an effort to keep his or her official communications about public business from being revealed to the public. It’s definitely not in the spirit of transparency, and makes it look like they have something to hide.”