So Grant Bosse, Editorial Editor for the Union Leader, first pens an editorial that a perfectly good purpose of Government is to restrict the common man’s ability to exercise his Right to Free Speech in the political realm. Here, he slaps the hand of Government when someone demands information from Government (reformatted, emphasis mine) but it was a commenter that draws my ire:
Open government in the iPhone era
EDITORIALUnion Leader columnist Mark Hayward is a good reporter. He’s also frugal. Rather than pay a $20 fee for photocopies of two accident reports, Hayward snapped a picture of the documents with his cell phone. Manchester police charged him $20 anyway. It’s the second time in six months Hayward has been improperly charged for photographing public records.
Two years ago, aldermen adopted an administrative fee for copies of public records. But Manchester’s ordinance can not trump state law, which reads “the person requesting the copy may be charged the actual cost of providing the copy.” The actual cost of letting a reporter take a picture with his phone is $0.00. Charging Hayward anything for exercising his right to inspect and photograph a public record is a violation of state law.
Mayor Ted Gatsas has asked City Solicitor Tom Clark to instruct city employees on the law. “If someone comes in with a camera or phone, and they want to take a picture, they shouldn’t be charged. The law is clear,” Gatsas says.
The law is also clear that such violations could be remedied by fining the employee responsible $250 to $2,000 per violation, plus reimbursing the city for any attorney’s fees. But that would only happen if someone denied access to public records, or improperly charged for such access, took the matter to court. Hayward got his fees refunded. But if this behavior continues, going to court may be the only way to hold municipal employees accountable.
As opposed to his other Editorial (where he was so way off base that this one doesn’t make up for it), Bosse is on point here. But the end point of each is entirely and diametrically opposed to each other – granting (pun intended) more power to The State on one hand and slapping it for the power it thinks it has; he is internally inconsistent. In each case, Government is demanding more in the way of restriction – time and money. In the first, he’s actively spurring that on – here, he’s against it. Again, what is at stake is the Proper Role of Government and the relationship of citizen to Government. We were formed at a nation of citizens that had a government, the Sovereign citizens. Europe was the opposite – the sovereign nation-state. Our forefathers fled from that governance model.
So why is Bosse so grand in reversing that back to a “Mommy, may I?” model?
But it was commentor Chris Herbert (usually called out as a Leftist, Statist Socialist) that brings out a “class” argument:
The issue is that some folks will abuse the right to access public documents and require a lot of employee time as a result. This isn’t free. Hayward is a registered journalist, which puts him in a special category. But fishing expeditions by individuals with an axe to grind, or people who just have a lot of documents that they need for legitimate reasons, costs taxpayers money. It is not free.
Sure, some might abuse it but Herbert fails to note that there was a reason why RSA 91-A had to be written in the first place – that Government was certainly abusing its Power in the first place by making it near impossible in cases to get ANY information from our Governmental employees (as Steve’s post on the Earl of Metzler is doing RIGHT NOW).
But it is the notion that a “registered journalist” is in a “special category“? “Legitimate reasons“?
Let’s take the latter first; if I think that I want, as a citizen, information from either my local, county, or State level government, it is not up to ANYOne else to determine if it is legit or not. What is important is that I have already paid for that information to have been collected by Government via my taxes – therefore, it is public record – WHY should I have to pay for it again?
It is the former, however, that sets me off – there is NO difference between someone that works as a journalist, is a part time citizen journalist (like we are here at GraniteGrok), or any ordinary citizen when it comes to getting info from Government. For Herbert to even THINK that a journalist should get special privileges is to not properly understand (or wish to) the correct relationship between ANY citizen and the Government that works for US.
And another note to Herbert – it is because there are those in government, like Superintendent Earl Metler, who have either forgotten that they are our employees or are seriously trying to turn that relationship upside down that RSA 91-A exists. But then again, he’s kissing cousins with the ilk of Metzler – the epitome of the thinking that Government is the one thing that we all belong to (with the nuance that we actually are possessions of Government) and thus, we need to be on our knees when requesting breadcrumbs from it – and count our blessings for any that might be dropped our way.
No, Herbert is wrong every way to Sunday on this.
