Belknap County Delegation – A Right To Know to Sherm Packard and Jason Osborne (NH Speaker of the House & NH House Majority Leader)

Trust – such an ephemeral thing.  Now, I did include Speaker Packard on a previous email concerning a Right To Know.  Didn’t hear back.  So I’m making it more explicit in now both of the Republican Leaders are now responsible for Following The Law act accordingly. After all, they can instruct the proper IT people who take care of NH House of Representatives emails to fork them over.

—— Original Message ——
From “Skip” <[email protected]>
To “Sherman Packard” <[email protected]>; “Jason Osborne” <[email protected]>; [email protected]
Date 3/18/2023 1:26:38 PM
Subject Right To Know Demand for the Legislative emails of the NH House Representatives from Belknap County

Good afternoon NH House Speaker Packard and NH House Majority Leader Osborne,

Please find attached (and replicated below), an RSA 91-A demand for all of the official NH Legislative emails either sent to or sent by Belknap County Representatives using the leg.state.nh.us email domain. The period of time is from 1/1/23 to 3/20/23, inclusive.

Partial deliveries of the Responsive Records will be accepted.

-Skip

Skip Murphy
Founder, co-owner
GraniteGrok.com | [email protected] |
Dominating the political Bandwidth in New Hampshire

Pursuant to the Right to Know Law (RSA. 91-A:4 (I) ), I am demanding access, within 5 business days, to the below enumerated governmental records for the period starting January 1, 2023 to March 20, 2023, inclusive. Otherwise, if this cannot be fulfilled within that mandated window per RSA 91-A:4 IV b, please advise when the Responsive Records will be made available.

New Hampshire has made it clear that information held by the Government is the Peoples’ information with very few exceptions:

[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 …
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

From RSA 91-A (excerpted, emphasis mine):

91-A:4 Minutes and Records Available for Public Inspection. –
I. Every citizen during the regular or business hours of all public bodies or agencies, and on the regular business premises of such public bodies or agencies, has the right to inspect all governmental records in the possession, custody, or control of such public bodies or agencies, including minutes of meetings of the public bodies, and to copy and make memoranda or abstracts of the records or minutes so inspected, except as otherwise prohibited by statute or RSA 91-A:5. In this section, ” to copy ” means the reproduction of original records by whatever method, including but not limited to photography, photostatic copy, printing, or electronic or tape recording.

I am demanding any and all emails (with any such attachments) for the enumerated period above from the NH Legislative email addresses associated with the following NH State Representatives from Belknap County:

• Harry Bean
• Richard Beaudoin
• Steven Boger t
• Mike Bordes
• Matthew Coker
• Barbara Comtois
• Russell Dumais
• Juliet Harvey-Bolia
• David Huot
• Nikki McCarter
• David Nagel
• Travis O’Hara
• Tom Ploszaj
• Lisa Smart
• Charlie St. Clair
• Paul Terry
• Douglas Trottier
• Peter Varney

Per RSA 91-A:4 IV(c) If you deny any portion of this request, please cite the specific exemption used to justify the denial to make each record, or part thereof, unavailable for inspection along with a brief explanation of how the exemption applies to the information withheld.

As you are aware, in 2016, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that a governmental body in possession of records is required to produce them in electronic media using standard common file formats: Green v. SAU #55, 168 N.H. 796, 801 (2016) . Unless there is some reason that it is not reasonably practical to produce such, explain why it is not practical to comply.

Please also note, per RSA 91-A:4 III, III-a, and III-b, you are required to maintain the safety and accessibility of such responsive records. This also includes such responsive records (e.g., emails, query files, data files, et al) which may have been deleted from respective Inboxes but are still available on the applicable email server(s) or in your / email host backup system(s).

Please let me know when these records will be sent to me for inspection. You may email the responsive records to me at [email protected]. If the volume turns out to be substantial, I have already set up a Dropbox folder to use in uploading those responsive records.

Thank you for your lawful attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Skip Murphy
GraniteGrok.com

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