Thoughts about the NH Supreme Court case - Granite Grok

Thoughts about the NH Supreme Court case

Our motto here at the ‘Grok "We spank ’em when they’re wrong, and thank ’em when they’re right."  Regardless of the Party affiliation, sex, religion, national heritage, et al, and especially one’s lack of intelligence or common sense, this one rule applies here at the ‘Grok.  And remember, we can spank you today for one thing and thank you tomorrow for something else tomorrow.  Just don’t let the latter go to your head and please learn from the former (though in this case, the former seems to have been a hard row to hoe for the Belknap County Convention – some still have not yet learned the lesson).  I’m going to catch a lot of flack for this, but I am one who expects politicians to behave well.  When Democrats don’t, I just figure they are living up to low expectations (as seen by the decision to seat the banned delegates at their national convention – Rules?  What rules?  We just make them up as we go along – you don’t actually expect us to live up to them, do you?). 

Republicans, on the other hand, I hold much more to account – the bar is much higher and I expect them be even better and to absolutely follow the law even if they don’t like it.  Thus….

I am enormously proud of my blogging partner, Doug, for winning his NH Supreme Court case against the NH Belknap County Convention.  And I would be remiss to mention Tom Tardif, his partner in the suit.  Both are to be commended for their stick-to-itiveness for making sure that the law was followed.  I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that this whole deal helped Tom decide to run to become one of the Commissioners (his campaign site is here).

Anyways, the point of this post is to point out that the whining has begun in a huge CYA mode in an attempt to make themselves blameless…

From the Laconia Citizen:

Reps. eye correcting Wiggin foul-up

Members of the Belknap County Legislative Delegation are hoping that the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s decision to overturn its hiring of County Sheriff Craig Wiggin will not keep Wiggin from ultimately keeping the job.

And why not?  The Convention appointed (not hired) him, albeit in a flawed manner as decreed by the NH Supreme Court.  Their ruling has NOTHING to do with how to proceed in filling that appointment.

Delegation Chairman Steve Nedeau of Meredith said Monday a public meeting has been posted for Wednesday, June 25, at noon at the County Complex in Laconia to take up the issue of how to proceed with filling the position.

At noon….sure, a real public time for Joe and Jane Sixpack to be able to come and watch the proceedings….

"We made a mistake by taking a secret ballot and the court told us that. Come June 25 hopefully we’ll get it right," Nedeau said, "I feel bad for Craig, he’s done absolutely nothing to deserve this."

Again, our motto is "We spank ’em when they’re wrong, and thank ’em when they’re right."


Even though, as Chair, he could be seen as the prime mover to fight the advice to "do it right" and costing the County taxpayers 10s of 1,000s of dollars, at least he is man enough to finally say "we messed up".  Yes, late and costly, but I’ll take it.

State Rep. Jim Pilliod of Belmont stressed that the error had nothing to do with Wiggin and that he believed Wiggin was the candidate best-suited for the position. Pilliod said he hoped the convention would be able to correct the situation so Wiggin could be rehired.

I’ll agree – I place no blame on Craig Wiggin, the Sheriff. He was looking for a job and he got it.  Some may argue that he should have refused it after the Convention continued on their faulty path, but I’m going to leave that one alone.  In this case, there are other fish that should be frying.

On the other hand, we have this priceless piece of nonsense in this next statement from Republican State Rep Jim Pilliod (you know, the Republican that started the fight to use the force of government to distort what was a free market for the sake of those who could not compete on the merits). A threefer here – let’s weasel out of our culpability (even when proven wrong), let’s distort history, and let’s play stoopid. 

First the wind up (like celebrity guest "first pitch" pitchers of middle or old age, you know where this ball is going)…

"This is a tempest in a teapot created by the court who didn’t want the job in the first place," he said Monday.

Back story: it used to be the Judicial branch that would have made the appointment.  Then the law was changed so that the Legislative branch would. Let the crocodile tears and fisking begin as he tries the story line of "we should not have been put into this position in the first place, they MADE us do this!"

…and the pitch!  Watch carefully now, as it slowly dribbles from the mound towards home plate:

"We followed the (lower) court’s suggestion.

And rolls to a dead stop a few feet from the pitcher’s spot. One more time:

"We followed the (lower) court’s suggestion. 

No, you didn’t!  This is a bald face lie and attempt to obfuscate actual history.  Remember, before Judge Mohl could make his ruling, FIRST the Convention had to refuse to do a public vote and then refused to ante up documents from valid Right To Know requests. 

There was a reason why the lower court was involved – and you, sir, help cause that by not standing up for the ordinary citizen’s right to an open and transparent government.  Doug and Tom then had to take you all to court for not following the law (as affirmed by the High Court).

It made us look guilty of something and I deny that we are.

Such buffoonery on display!  Er, Rep. Pilliod, you ARE guilty -> you can deny anything you want but the NH Supreme Court just said that you were guilty.  Do you really believe that the General Public is really that un-intelligent?  You were a very well respected pediatrician working with children – please don’t treat adults the same as your former patients.

We aren’t really geared to that complexity of nonsense and that’s what it is."

The Law – "complexity of nonsense"?  You deliberately ran for and were voted in as a Law maker?  Does this mean that your skills are insufficient to manage that Law, are insufficient to create new ones?  And yet you run again.

Funny, it seems that the REST of us have to follow the laws you write or face a penalty – why is it that you feel you should be immune from doing the same thing (obeying the law)?

Leaders lead from the front, they lead by example.  This example says "

Pilliod lamented that the convention didn’t know how to handle the appointment of a new sheriff mid-term.

What a startling observation and gaffe!  Let’s see – you all are lawmakers; you all are supposed to know what came before you write your new ones that we all have to obey.  Which requires you (or should; sometimes after seeing the results, the rest of us shake our heads – this proves our assumptions right) to do as well.

Continuing on: so, are you like most husbands?  Unable to stop and ask for directions?  Even when the flag man is waving his orange/red flag to beat the band?  Yeah, you certainly were that tone deaf!  And in this day and age, you had a built in "law GPS" – a full time County Attorney – WHY did you not ask first before tromping on the gas?  

"We looked for help and no one had any help," he continued.

Can’t get help when you refuse to listen…all you had to do, in hindsight, was to listen to the newpapers and Doug and Tom.  You took flack the first time over the Commissioner and willing  stepped into it again over the Sheriff’s position.

Sometimes, not listening is costly…

Although he doesn’t have a final bill yet, Nedeau believes the lawsuit will ultimately cost the county $40,000 to $60,000 to defend.

To bad there is no real penalty for those that violated – only Sheriff Wiggin gets the shaft (another example of people doing badkly but the innocent are on the hook for it).

So, how did it finally pan out?  First, a ruling FOR and strengthening the Right To Know law:

The high court ruled Friday that Wiggin’s hiring was illegal because the vote was taken secretly instead of in public.

Lakes Region political activists Doug Lambert of Gilford and Thomas Tardif of Laconia had challenged the convention’s selection of Wiggin to replace Dan Collis, who left mid-term to take a job in private security. The pair filed a lawsuit in Belknap County Superior Court and Judge Bruce Mohl ruled that the replacement process followed by the delegation violated the state’s Right-to-Know Law by using a secret ballot, but said that the entire process could have been conducted in non-public session.

But in an 11-page opinion released on Friday, the high court found the convention was required to fill the vacancy in public session rather than via secret ballot and said Wiggin’s appointment must be "invalidated" as a result.

Second, being elected, the Sheriff is not an employee.  While seemingly a small item, it really is a huge one and is precedent setting.

Third, the Rule of Law also wins – follow the law as no one (or group, political or not) is above it.

Fourth, the Right To Know law gets another cross-member for its support:

In its opinion, the high court also ordered the superior court to review the applications and letters of recommendations of the seven candidates that originally applied for the sheriff’s position and for a judge to determine whether there is any information that should be withheld for privacy concerns.

In other words, unless specifically redacted (and probably for a REAL good purpose) everything is open for review – as it should be.

Lastly, this editor from the Concord Monitor sums it up quite well:

Law with no penalty is
not followed closely

June 18, 2008 – 7:00 am

Until New Hampshire’s relatively weak Right-to-Know Law imposes significant penalties on those who violate it, the law will be poorly understood and little respected. The recent shenanigans in Belknap County are a case in point.

Earlier this month, the state Supreme Court ruled that Belknap County Superior Court Judge Bruce Mohl was wrong to let Belknap County legislators select Craig Wiggin from a field of candidates vying to be county sheriff by secret ballot.

Mohl was wrong again, the high court ruled, when he said that the legislators did not have to reveal the names of Wiggin’s rivals, their applications and recommendations, and the score sheets used to evaluate the applicants. Mohl believed that the applicants’ privacy rights outweighed the public’s right to know their names and see their resumes. That decision was stunningly wrong.

The person selected to fill the remainder of the term of the departing county sheriff would be given great power over the region’s residents. It was vital that the public know, in real time, how the legislators’ decision was made and what factors played a role. Congratulations to Tom Tardif and Doug Lambert, the Lakes Region citizens who acted as watchdogs to guarantee that public information would indeed be public.

Sheriffs are not hired like city managers or traffic engineers. They are publicly elected. That’s a critical difference, one the court was quick to identify. "We see no reason why the candidates who apply for a vacancy in an elected office should have a greater privacy interest than candidates who run for that same office during an election year," the justices said.

The state’s Right-to-Know Law has been rewritten nearly 20 times. It will be rewritten again, and the sooner the better. When lawmakers do, they should consider what happened in Belknap County. A county convention of highly-educated, well-meaning people, one that included veteran legislators, several selectmen, a lawyer and several people who had worked in government, bungled the basics of a law that every public official by now should know inside out. Worse, a veteran judge sanctioned their errors and agreed that they could keep public information secret.

If the Right-to-Know Law had teeth – a daily fine for non-compliance and compensation for legal expenses, for example – officials couldn’t afford to be remain ignorant of the law, or cavalier about respecting it.

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