Commentary: Public Business Belongs to the Public and We're Going to Court to Prove It

On June 2, 2026, Chris Edwards — on behalf of himself and Concerned Citizens of Alamogordo — walked into the Twelfth Judicial District Court and filed a Petition for Enforcement of the New Mexico Open Meetings Act, along with an Emergency Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order (Case No. D-1215-CV-2026-00514).

This is not a step anyone took lightly. It is a step that should never have been necessary. But when a city government decides that the public's business is no longer the public's to see, someone has to say enough — out loud, on the record, in front of a judge.

We are saying it.

What Happened Behind Closed Doors

Strip away the legal language and the timeline is simple, and it is damning.

The Commission cast a clear, unanimous public vote directing contract negotiations with Dr. Hernandez. The people watched it happen. The decision was made in the open, exactly as the law intends.

Then it was undone — not in front of the public, but across more than ten closed executive sessions. A unanimous, public commitment was quietly reversed in rooms residents were never allowed to enter.

Along the way, a significant financial settlement was negotiated and approved using taxpayer dollars — money that belongs to every resident of this city — entirely outside public view. To this day, no public explanation, no debate, and no disclosure of the financial terms has been offered to the people who paid for it.

This was not an oversight. On May 5, 2026, formal written notice of the alleged Open Meetings Act violations was submitted to the city. The city acknowledged receiving it. What followed was not correction. It was another closed session on May 18 — the door shut again, after the city had been warned in writing that shutting it was unlawful.

And here is the detail no official spin can erase: Commissioner Warren Robinson walked out of the April 28 executive session and stated publicly that he believed the process was unethical. When a sitting commissioner refuses to stay in the room because of what is happening inside it, that is not a policy disagreement. That is an alarm.

Why This Is Bigger Than One Contract

New Mexico law is not ambiguous. The formation of public policy and the conduct of public business must happen in open meetings. The Open Meetings Act exists for one reason: so that the people who live under a government's decisions can watch those decisions being made, understand the reasoning behind them, and know where their money goes.

When a unanimous public vote on a major city leadership decision can be overturned in secret — and when hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds can change hands without a word of explanation — the law's entire purpose collapses. What's left is a government that performs transparency in public and conducts the real business in private.

That is not how a city is supposed to run. And it is not a precedent any resident of Alamogordo should be willing to accept, no matter which officials happen to benefit from the silence today. The closed door doesn't care who's standing behind it. Once a community tolerates secrecy on one decision, it has invited it on every decision that follows.

Why 2nd Life Media Alamogordo Town News and KALHRadio.org Filed — And Why It's Core to Who We Are

2nd Life Media Alamogordo Town News & KALHRadio.org exists to make sure the people of Alamogordo are informed with newsworthy information and can see how their government and organizations work and hold it accountable when it doesn't. That is not a slogan. It is a job — and lately it has become a fight.

We have done the ordinary work first. We have reported. We have asked the questions. We have requested the records the law says we are entitled to. Each time, the response has been the same: another closed session, another silence, another door pulled shut. When the ordinary tools of accountability are met with a wall, the responsible next step is to ask a court to do what the city refuses to do on its own — enforce the law.

That is exactly what this lawsuit does. The petition, and the request for a temporary restraining order, are not about winning a feud with local officials. They are about restoring a process the public can actually trust — one where residents can see their leaders debate, know how their money is spent, and understand why a decision they watched get made was later unmade in the dark.

Accountability journalism only matters if it has teeth. We can report on closed doors all day long, but reporting alone cannot reopen them. So we are doing what a community-rooted news organization is supposed to do when transparency breaks down: we are standing with the residents of this city and demanding that decisions affecting all of us be made where all of us can see them.

What We're Asking For

We are not asking for anything radical. We are asking for the law to be followed.

We are asking that the public's business be done in public. That a settlement paid for with taxpayer money be explained to the taxpayers. That a unanimous vote not be erasable in a room no one is allowed to enter. And that the next time this Commission acts on something that matters to this city, it does so in the open — because that is not a courtesy officials extend when it suits them. It is the law.

The doors were shut. We intend to open them. Stay tuned...

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