Herschlag: Your Right to Know Under Attack

New Hampshire House Bill 1002 (HB1002) will allow municipalities to charge you up to $25.00 per hour for Right to Know requests that take longer than 10 hours.

The past few legislative sessions have seen attempts to limit your access to public documents. Fortunately in the past those attempts have failed. But now HB1002 would severely limit access to only those with the financial wherewithal.

The NH Constitution says access to public records are rightfully ours.

[Art.] 8. [Accountability of Magistrates and Officers; Public’s Right to Know.] All power residing originally in, and being derived from, the people, all the magistrates and officers of government are their substitutes and agents, and at all times accountable to them. Government, therefore, should be open, accessible, accountable and responsive. To that end, the public’s right of access to governmental proceedings and records shall not be unreasonably restricted. The public also has a right to an orderly, lawful, and accountable government. Therefore, any individual taxpayer eligible to vote in the State, shall have standing to petition the Superior Court to declare whether the State or political subdivision in which the taxpayer resides has spent, or has approved spending, public funds in violation of a law, ordinance, or constitutional provision. In such a case, the taxpayer shall not have to demonstrate that his or her personal rights were impaired or prejudiced beyond his or her status as a taxpayer. However, this right shall not apply when the challenged governmental action is the subject of a judicial or administrative decision from which there is a right of appeal by statute or otherwise by the parties to that proceeding.

June 2, 1784

Amended 1976 by providing right of access to governmental proceedings and records.

Amended 2018 by providing that taxpayers have standing to bring actions against the government

The House vote on February 1, on HB1002 was 193 voting yea to 179 nay votes. For Concord, five of our state representatives voted for the bill, six voted against and two aren’t recorded as voting.

Voting to take away your rights to access public records (unless you have deep pockets) were: Meryl Gibbs, Matt Hicks, Jim McKay, Kristin Schultz and Timothy Soucy.

Voting to preserve your rights to public records regardless of how rich you are were: Eric Gallagher, Connie Lane, Rebecca McWilliams, James Roesner, Steven Shurtleff and Mary Jane Wallner.

Not voting were: Art Ellison and Beth Richards.

Annmarie Timmins writing for the New Hampshire Bulletin has an excellent article. She provides a number of examples on how charging for access to public records would have allowed for government, in one instance, to over tax residents and in another, without access to public records it would have allowed a town and town officer to complete an illegal land deal to go unchecked. The article can be found here: https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2024/02/01/house-passes-bill-that-could-make-public-records-requests-costly/

While there are circumstances when government records may not be available to the public, those occurrences are defined in RSA 91A, the States Right to Know law.

Recently HB1461 was proposed. “This bill requires all meetings and hearings conducted by all elected and appointed municipal bodies to be live-streamed or recorded.” HB1461 is the type of legislation that makes government more accessible.

In the past, meeting minutes were verbatim. But now they are only required to provide a vague outline of what occurred at a meeting. If one was not physically present at the meeting and the meeting wasn’t recorded, the odds of having a complete understanding of what transpired at the meeting is zero.

Compare the two bills. HB1461, wants to require government to be accessible and accountable, while HB1002, attempts to circumvent our State’s Constitution making it more difficult for you to access public documents.

How do you think you representative should vote on HB1002?