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City clerk warns of surging public‑records requests and staffing strain in Las Cruces
Summary
City Clerk Christina Verra told council the city has seen a sharp rise in IPRA requests — from 3,000 in 2024 to over 7,000 last year and a projection of ~15,000 in 2026 — and said video redaction requirements and staffing gaps are creating a backlog and potential civil‑liability exposure.
City Clerk Christina Verra told the Las Cruces City Council at a March 23 work session that the municipal public‑records office is experiencing a surge in IPRA requests that is straining staff and increasing processing time.
Verra said the city handled more than 3,000 requests in 2024, over 7,000 requests last year, and already had more than 3,000 requests in 2026 with a projection to reach roughly 15,000 by year‑end. She described the multi‑step process for fulfilling a request — intake into the GovQA portal, a statutorily required 3‑day acknowledgement and up to 15 days for an initial substantive response, coordination with departments (including police redaction work), review for exemptions and rolling disclosures — and said staff currently spend approximately 500 total hours collectively researching, reviewing, redacting and releasing documents.
Verra highlighted that police body‑worn‑camera footage is especially time‑consuming: "for every one hour of video, it takes staff approximately three hours to redact," she said. She added the clerk's office currently has three FTEs assigned to IPRA work and that the police department has roughly five staff doing redactions; councilors observed that the workload is approximately the equivalent of several full‑time employees and flagged civil‑liability risk if response deadlines are missed.
Council members asked whether the city has duplicate requests or a public portal for already published material; Verra said the city does not maintain a consolidated portal of previously released videos and that staff must respond to each request even if it asks for the same footage, creating repetitive work. Brad (a senior staff member addressed by name in the transcript) told council that the backlog will require additional staff and that "people power" is the only realistic way to reduce the queue at scale.
Councilors discussed whether to prioritize additional FTEs or other operational adjustments; the clerk's office asked for governing‑body support to address resourcing needs and reiterated that statutory deadlines and the rise of social‑media creators requesting footage are increasing pressure on limited staff.
No formal action was taken; council members asked staff to return with options to address backlog and civil‑liability exposure.
