Eye on the Grapevine: Perlman on the Way Out?

There's a rumor going around city hall that Albuquerque Chief Administrative Officer Bruce Perlman is on his way out. Our Eyes have yet to confirm the report, but at the very least it's interesting timing.

If you'll remember, Mr. Perlman was hip deep in Marty's ABQPAC. In fact, the city's current CAO was the head of the infamous mayoral slush fund (read it here). Marty originally appointed Mr. Perlman back in 2005 - safely and conveniently after the last mayoral election (read it here).

At the time, the Almighty Alcalde was just past what was thought to be his third and last election to the office of mayor. There were calls for him to run for congress (read our take here) and his own announced ambition to run for governor... again. After jumping from the gubernatorial derby and stumbling out of the gate in an aborted senate run, the mayor took the city charter's term limits to court and had them struck down. At the time he claimed that he was just keeping his options open... rrrrriiiight.

It will be interesting to see if there's any substance to the rumor of Perlman's departure. If the CAO does hit the highway, is it a move by the Almighty One to jettison some ABQPAC baggage that is sure to come up in next year's mayoral contest?

We'd think so. After all, it took some serious testicular fortitude for Marty to put the man in charge of his disgraced slush fund in charge of the city. Can you say payback? But then again, stranger things have happened around here.

So... Who to replace a departed Perlman with? Perhaps the Captain (AKA Transportation Director Greg Payne) would like a change of pace. Or since former Chief of Staff Barry Bitzer won't be serving in the state senate after being trounced by Senator Komadina in the primaries, Bitzer's sure to be looking for a new gig. Who knows? Maybe the Almighty One owes someone else a $100,000 a year job. Don't you just love city intrigue?

----- Correction -----
We want to apologize to Mr. Perlman for misspelling his name in our original post. We originally spelled it Pearlman and we were rightly chastised for the mistake. It has been corrected above.

If You Can't Block'em - Track'em

Last month we told you about the city's attempt to block EyeOnAlbuquerque.com and MarioBurgos.com (read it here). Now our Eyes tell us that the city is taking another approach. Apparently, too much of the city's behind the scenes dirty laundry is showing up on our lovable little website in the form of anonymous posts. So, the city has decided to install tracking software that will allow them to determine who's posting what using city owned computers and gateways.

First of all, we don't see anything illegal about the city installing and using tracking software on computers owned by the city in order to track what employees are doing using city equipment and presumably on city time. In our opinion, it's really no different than placing tracking devices on city vehicles; it may be creepy and Orwellian, but not illegal.

However, (you knew this was coming) since the city is essentially recording the content being generated by their computers and subsequently being posted on EyeOnAlbuquerque.com, they are creating an electronic record of that employee's activities; that record would be no different than any other electronic correspondence.

Emails the most popular type of computer generated correspondence, are considered part of the public record and can be the target of a Freedom of Information Request. Therefore, if the city is recording data that indicates what Internet sites an employee is visiting and the comments being posted by that employee on a specific Internet site, those records should be public and subject to a FOIR.

We'd love to get our Eyes on where the boys on the 5th and 11th floors are spending their time and our money. But, we'd wager that those computers would be conveniently left off the list of computers to be tracked; similar to the recent email system "crash" that wiped out a number of emails shortly after Marty's Minions Barry Bitzer and Greg Payne got caught with their hand in the electronic cookie jar (Heath Haussamen - read it here). These yahoos ought to learn that getting rid of computer records is really not an easy thing to do and creating even more just to try and ferret out dissenters is probably an unwise course of action.