GraniteGrok

Another Republican acting REALLY BADLY - she got her nose out of joint as a group of reform minded people used the laws contrary to what she wants - and now she wants to punish the entire State for her losses!

For those of you outside of NH, Senate Bill 2 (as it is known) allows people to vote for the Town and School budgets in the privacy of the voting booth instead of at a traditional Town Meeting (where people discuss the issues and vote on them at the same time with generally either a voice or hand vote.  Sounds good until one realizes that your very public vote, for instance, against town employee raises might give you a few "kind" words and looks from your neighbors.  While the Town Meeting has been praised as the "purest form of democracy", it also can have the worst of "majority rule" as millions of dollars of budget projects can be put into place by a relatively few people in town during a marathon session (e.g., a meeting that ends at midnight generally has seen those with small children with babysitters already go home; a meeting might start out with 10% of the town voters and dwindle down to a relative handful).   In SB2 based towns, the "talking" is split into the Deliberative Session and the actual ballot box vote is taken a few weeks later.

Betsey Patten also seems to be part of that "good ole boy" network that sometimes exists in places that is used to "doing the running" as she is vehemently against SB2 being put in place in Moultonborough.  Not only is she a Moultonborough Selectman (town website here) but she is also a NH House Representative (R-Moultonborough).  , here's her email address ( 

Lord help clique outsider that wants reform, and there is one the Moultonboro Citizens Alliance that is trying to open up and make their local government more transparent (full disclosure - Doug and I have helped this group in the past).

She has filed two bills:  HB114 that will gut the ability of SB2 townfolks to change warrants at the Deliberative Sessions.  I believe that this is her part to do a pre-emptive strike on the effectiveness of SB2, as Moultonborough may well vote in SB2 this year.  The problem is that this takes away CHOICE from those town that already have it; her poison pill bill affects us all.

Her second bill, HB72, makes it harder to allow citizens to ask for secret ballot voting on certain items during a Town Meeting / Deliberative Session by raising the number of citizens needed to request this from five (5) to fifty (50).  If you have EVER been at a Town Meeting, this will effectively eliminate the ability citizens to cast their votes privately.  It also forces a change for a request for a recount from five (5) to twenty-five (25) voters - go ahead, try to get that number of people to quickly sign up for a recount before the time slides by to request such.

These bills are nothing less that to provide a ramrod of what's on the agenda without allowing citizens to have their concerns heard.  For a Republican (and a high sitting Republican as well), this is nothing more than a petty pay-back against reform minded folks that beat her at her own game this past summer.

Oh yeah, forgot this - a third pro-government bill:  she is also sponsoring HB71 which will allow town officials to bond TEN TIMES the amount before (from 100,000 to 1,000,000) without having a public meeting.  So much for the Republican ideal of open and transparent government!!

Help us kill these bills!  She can be contacted here (From the NH House Rep database):

blpatten@hotmail.com and phone number ( (603)253-6927)

Those that will be voting on the bill in committee: 

House MUNICIPAL AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT

Just great - add this to the fire - another Republican acting badly:

"Rep. Patten is chairman of the Carroll County Republican Committee and is also the Area One vice chairman for the Carroll, Coos and Grafton County Republican committees. She is a member of the state??? Executive Committee and in 1998 was a member of the state Republican Platform Committee."