COMMENTARY:

Our County Commission cares more for Project Jupiter than for following state transparency laws or protecting our environment.

I have my doubts about the project. It’ll have a huge negative impact on our environment, and make a pathetic joke out of the state’s ambitions to cut our greenhouse gas production and help combat climate craziness. Too few of the proponents’ many promises appeared in the actual contract; and that contract is enforceable solely against the specific entity that signed it. If that goes belly-up, the real owners just laugh at those promises.

The process, though, was embarrassing and likely unlawful.

Commissioner Susana Chaparro objected to approving a contract marked “draft,” containing blank pages and material she hadn’t seen. State Senator Jeff Steinborn was appalled that the Commission approved material with missing pages. A lawsuit alleges that the County approved industrial development bonds that didn’t meet certain requirements, including environmental impact.

There were open-meetings concerns, which have now been exacerbated by an obvious violation: in approving the deal, the Commission authorized Commission Chair Christopher Schaljo-Hernandez to tinker with it. After local journalist Heath Haussamen criticized the deal, he received a “final” version of the contract that seemed to make some of the vague promises enforceable. Days later, there was a new version, apparently still not final.

The Open Meetings Act requires such decisions to be made in front of us. Sure, the Commission can delegate purely ministerial tasks such at signing it and filling in the effective date, and that sort of non-substantive change; but where changes actually alter the parties’ obligations to each other, in substantive ways, large or small, that’s not allowed.

For example, such AI data center campuses normally use huge amounts of water for cooling. In a desert suffering from serious drought, that matters. Responding to critics, proponents promised that this was not really a problem because they’d use a closed-loop cooling system that minimizes water usage. Otherwise, this thing could wipe out water supplies of poor citizens in the south county. Altering such a material provision, after the vote, can’t be consistent with the open meetings law. All commissioners must be heard, either representing their constituents or honestly own a failure to do so. We should have some theoretical chance to talk a little sense into them, unlikely as that now seems.

Huge power requirements and degradation are issues. This will be a data center campus. It will definitely use vast amounts of energy – and could possibly keep using gas-fired electricity plants for more than the next twenty years. Elsewhere, the plants have significantly increased people’s electricity costs.

Chaparro said, “There is no permanent document yet, even though we’ve already voted on it, and that is just wrong.” The plain language of the Open Meetings Act seems quite clear. The county ordinance is not to the contrary. Further, NMAG Opinion 98-01, as do guidance letters, confirms that ministerial acts (signing, executing, transmitting) are not “meetings” under the Act. The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government sees this as a clear OMA violation, and likely will tell the county so.

We’ll eventually see what a judge or the present state attorney-general thinks. Meanwhile I’d hate to be the bond attorney who has to give an unqualified opinion that the bonds were properly approved. Or a worker with a family in Santa Teresa worrying about water availability and electricity rates.

Or someone who likes to breathe.

Peter Goodman’s opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of KRWG Public Media or NMSU.