There was a potentially important gathering in early December at the Embassy Suites in Albuquerque, a gathering that could have significant impact on the future of education in New Mexico. But mere tax-paying citizens of the state did not know it was scheduled.

Nor would they have read about it after the fact in the newspapers or heard about it on television news because journalists were denied entry. The event, "New Media, New Needs: Serving the Developing Film and Digital Arts Industry in New Mexico," was organized by our state's Higher Education Department.

The ostensible objective was to bring together representatives from education and business from around the state "... to create an inventory and a gap analysis of current educational programs, curricula and courses that are available in the state to prepare students for jobs in Digital Media and Animation Creation."

The meeting was organized by Dr. William Flores, deputy secretary of the Higher Education Department; Eric Witt, Office of the Governor, and Trish López, Office of the Governor. Speakers included representatives from Sony Imageworks, Sandia National Laboratories, The University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University and the digital-game production industry.

Reportedly, about 50 others — but we don't know who — were invited to participate in the discussion and, ultimately, contribute the insights and data that are the feedstock of policymaking.

As a professor for 30 years, who happens to have a long and deep interest in the topics of the digital revolution and education, I sent an e-mail to Trish López asking to attend the session "as an observer."

The first line of her response took me aback: "I'm sorry, but can you let me know how you were invited to this event?" She demanded to know.

Now that's odd, I thought. What could be going on at this meeting of 50-plus people — supposedly to discuss higher education — that triggered such suspicion on the part of our state employees? A message a few minutes later compounded my curiosity. López wrote that because I was not on some list, I would be " ... unable to attend this event." Furthermore, "We will have no journalistic institutions there." and in yet another message, she said the meeting was "limited in capacity."

Yes, I have been a journalist and journalism professor, but my interests here were simply those of a citizen of New Mexico who wished to sit in on what should be — in a truly democratic society — a public meeting.

I eventually learned that this "special session" was something of a rump gathering tacked on to the widely publicized "Governor Richardson's Higher Education Summit 2007." Anyone who paid the registration fee could attend the summit, at the same hotel, but not this restricted planning session.

I also learned that the room in which the meeting was held easily could have handled 75 to 100 people.

Gov. Bill Richardson has called for the opening of any U.S. government records related to UFOs in Roswell and for open conference meetings in our state's legislature. I should hope he would demand similar transparency in New Mexico's Higher Education Department. I would like to believe that back-room dealings between politicians, bureaucrats and "other interested parties" were a thing of the past. I would like to hope that we had seen the last of the winks and nods that are all-too-often found in the political vernacular or sessions where no-bid or one-bid contracts are agreed to, where power brokers mutually decide that what's good for them must be good for the state.

There is no reason to think that's what went on in the Embassy Suites session this month. But then we really can't say for sure because the event's organizers decided that respecting our state's all-too elastic open meeting laws was just a bother.

Democracy is often messy, and it takes a long time. But democracy can only begin to reach its potential if transparency in all government matters is the starting point, not some trivial nonsense to be ignored.

J.T. Johnson is the managing director of the Institute for Analytic Journalism in Santa Fe, and a member of New Mexico's Foundation for Open Government.