Commentary The Table Is the Point: Transparency, Dialogue and Why a Small Town Still Needs Independent Press

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. — On the first day of September, roughly sixty people filled a room at Otero Arts and more than 700 hundred more have watched online as City Manager Robert Stockwell explained, to a public that had not been asked, why the city was considering up to a million dollars in fencing at Bonito Lake and an end to public fishing access. Sitting on the same panel or in the same room were the mayor, three commissioners, a former mayor, a former city manager, the mayors of Ruidoso and Ruidoso Downs, the county's chief executive and the Department of Game and Fish and more. 

At the event the proposal had changed. Mr. Stockwell put forward a five-point plan that keeps fishing access, fences only the dam and its ancillary structures, and opens a six-month review with the state, both counties and the Village of Ruidoso. The Commission votes on September 22, 2026.

I want to dwell on that for a moment, because it is the whole argument for a small-town press in one evening. Nobody sued anyone. Nobody filed a records request seeking answers. A conversation and a decision that was drifting toward a consent agenda was pulled into a room with the people it affected, and it got better. 

That is what transparency is actually for. It is not a procedural hobby. It is the difference between a policy made about a community and a policy made with one.

The oddest guest at the table

Readers have noticed, and some have asked pointedly, why Mr. Stockwell keeps showing up to our platforms. He gave this outlet via the radio edition with Anthony Lucero his first interview after his appointment. He sat on our Bonito Lake panel and has others. Meanwhile I am the petitioner in Edwards v. Alamogordo City Commission, a case that argues the process that put him in the job violated the Open Meetings Act.

Both things are true, and neither one embarrasses me. The lawsuit has never been about Mr. Stockwell's résumé or his character. It is about how a unanimous 7–0 vote in March to negotiate a contract with Dr. Stephanie Hernandez became, within weeks and with little public explanation, a $485,340 taxpayer-funded separation, and a 5–2 appointment of a man who told KALH listeners, he was first approached about the job "probably last July 2025" — nearly a year before the vote. Those are questions about certain Commissioners conduct, not about the manager's competence.

Mr. Stockwell, for his part, could have stonewalled the loudest critic of the process that hired him. Plenty of officials would have. Instead he walked into our microphones, took the questions and, at Bonito Lake, listened to a room that disagreed with him. That is what professional administration looks like, and residents deserve to see it regardless of what I think about the meeting that produced his contract.

The coziness question

The criticism that arrives in my inbox from the other direction deserves an honest answer too. It goes like this: Edwards runs a segment with the former city manager, publishes a sworn statement from the former mayor, has a working relationship with the sitting mayor, and now hosts the current city manager. Isn't that just an insiders' club with a website?

Here is the record. Alamogordo Town News was sharply critical of Susan Payne's administration when she held the gavel especially early in her administration.  Dr. Hernandez's new segment, "The Doctor Is In," which debuted last week, is labeled as commentary and analysis from a former administrator, not as news reporting, and readers can weigh it accordingly. Mayor McDonald's votes and statements are covered the same way everyone else's are; when she is right on process, we say so, and when the record says otherwise, we say that too.

What ties these people together is not friendship. It is that each of them has been willing to put a name and, in some cases, a signature under oath behind what they know about how this city is run. That is the only currency this newsroom accepts. Commissioners Stephen Burnett and Al Hernandez, both of whom voted for the Stockwell contract, were in the audience at Otero Arts on September 1, alongside Mayor McDonald and Commissioner Warren Robinson, who voted against it. That is to their credit — all of them. The standing invitation to every commissioner is to do the same thing on the microphone, on the record, about the process itself. That invitation remains open.

Why the small-town press still matters

There is a reason cities the size of Alamogordo are where local journalism died first. The economics are brutal. Government is close, personal and quick to retaliate. And it is genuinely uncomfortable to report on people you will see at the grocery store.

But it is also where a press is most necessary, because the substitutes do not exist. There is no statehouse bureau watching the Alamogordo City Commission. There is no wire service at the executive session door. When the Commission's own outside counsel, in a filing to a federal agency, acknowledged that a round of city manager interviews had been conducted in a manner inconsistent with the Open Meetings Act, that fact did not surface through a press release. It surfaced through an Inspection of Public Records Act request that took months to be released into the public domain.

The Murillo recall petition against Commissioner Burnett was dismissed on September 9, and the City has now asked the court to throw out the Open Meetings Act case as well. Those are the courts doing their job, and I will argue my side in the proper forum as my case continues. 

But no ruling on probable cause or on a motion to dismiss changes what the documents already show: that a decision was made, then unmade, and that the public was told little in between. 

A community's right to know how its money and its leadership were disposed of does not depend on whether a judge finds a statutory violation, it depends on a free and vibrant press.

What we ask, and what we offer

So here is the compact this outlet operates under to officials and readers alike.

To the Commission: come to the table. Not to our table specifically — any table with the public at it. Hold the discussion in the open before the vote, not the press conference after it, or hiding behind executive sessions. The Bonito Lake episode proved that daylight improves decisions. It did not weaken the city manager; it strengthened his plan.

To readers: hold us to the same standard. When this newsroom gets a fact wrong, prove it with documentation and we will correct it in print. We had an error in a story earlier today, the city manager corrected us and we posted his response to correct immediately.  Most every affidavit, IPRA response, or contract or source we cite is posted so you can read the source rather than take our word for it.

A small town does not need a press that is neutral about transparency. It needs one that is relentless about it, and that applies that relentlessness to its own allies. 

The measure of whether we succeed is not who sits at the table. It is whether the door was open when they sat down.

Chris Edwards is editor in chief of Alamogordo Town News and 2nd Life Media and hosts on KALH Radio. He is the petitioner in Edwards v. Alamogordo City Commission, No. D-1215-CV-2026-00514, Twelfth Judicial District Court. Commentary reflects the opinion of the author.

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