Right To Know

What Are The Amherst New Hampshire Selectman Hiding?

January 9, 2013

The Amherst New Hampshire Town Selectman are trying to use the state’s Right to Know Law to hide something.  Town Administrator Jim O’Mara has been put on administrative leave and the selectman are refusing to answer any questions. Calling it a personnel issue, selectmen refuse to comment on O’Mara’s status as a town employee. Bruce [ Read more ]

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Trust and Safety in New Hampshire

December 26, 2012

Here are two pull quotes from the New Hampshire Union Leader that I wanted to share.  One is about trust, the other about safety.  I think you’ll find them…interesting. In an article on 2013 LSR H-0451 regarding a proposed change to the right to know law, New Hampshire House Democrat Majority Leader Steve Shurtleff, D-Penacook, [ Read more ]

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A new arrow has been added to the Citizen’s quiver: make’em pay!

December 17, 2012

We here at the ‘Grok have used RTK requests( NH’s RSA 91-A, the Right To Know law which is better known elsewhere as FOIA – Freedom Of Information Act) a few times in the past (Richard De Seve, the DES employee blogging on NH taxpayer dime, getting emails from the NH Water Commission that is [ Read more ]

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Franklin NH – The Most Expensive Voter Checklists in the State?

November 26, 2012

I just got confirmation that the clerk for Franklin New Hampshire requires not just $75.00 for the complete citywide voter checklist used for the election, but another $75.00 for the updated checklist after all the new names have been added. My udder is sore just thinking about it.  Is this where I say that having [ Read more ]

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Information Intimidation in Franklin NH?

November 22, 2012

While public document fees are not unreasonable for the purpose of covering the cost of the  materials or labor required to meet a request, at what point do these sums become an obstacle for the average citizen?  When does the sum begin to limit access otherwise protected by law? In the case of voter checklists [ Read more ]

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A Note On Absentee Ballots and Right to Know

November 20, 2012

New Hampshire’s Right to know Law, often referred to as 91-a, prohibits state and local officials from hiding ‘public’ documents.  And while some parts of the bureaucratic machine are happy to give you what you request in a timely and even pleasant manner, others who can’t (or don’t want) be bothered by you pesky citizens [ Read more ]

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GrokWATCH: Right To Know Request – Water Sustainability Commission – Update 3

August 14, 2012

I ended the last dispatch with this: “Guess how long it took to get a response???” Answer:  10 days simply to have an email recognized and returned (emphasis mine): On 8/12/2012 11:11 PM, John A. Gilbert wrote: Mr. Murphy With this email I am acknowledging receipt of your August 2, 2012 Right to Know request.  [ Read more ]

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GrokWATCH: Right To Know Request – Water Sustainability Commission – Update 2

August 14, 2012

As I said yesterday, I had requested a contract between the State of NH and Water Sustainability Commission / Synchrony Advisors, LLC, but was informed that there was none.  So, on August 2, I asked for additional information from Synchrony Advisors, LLC as to the WSC’s activities, especially their financial ones.  Note the time stamp [ Read more ]

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GrokTV – Jane Cormier for NH House – Questions 11 & 12

August 9, 2012

Two issues that have been at the forefront of the present Legislative session were pension reform (where NH has among the highest per capita public pension costs in the nation going forward) and perhaps unsustainable, and whether or not having the State of New Hampshire would participate in Obamacare via setting up a health insurance [ Read more ]

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GrokTV – Jane Cormier for NH House – Questions 9 & 10

August 8, 2012

Well, it has been a wee bit of time since the last post of our interview series with Jane Cormier (running for the NH House in Belknap 8 – Alton, Barnstead, and Gilmanton) as we spent half of last week / weekend in Washington DC at the Americans for Prosperity’s Defending the American Dream event.  [ Read more ]

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BE BREITBART: DoIT Right To Know Request : Outbound Internet traffic summarizations – Update 2

April 30, 2012

Well, I would say that the response we had when Ms. Gretchen Hamel (Administrator!) emailed Letter arrived could be described amongst us “Techi Groksters” was a “really, you expect us to believe that this is difficult?”.  After all, amongst us, we have a handful of degrees and upwards of 75 years of technical experience and [ Read more ]

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BE BREITBART: DoIT Right To Know Request : Outbound Internet traffic summarizations – Update 1

April 28, 2012

Last week, we sent in our second RSA 91-A Right To Know request concerning the Government records that summarized the websites that State of NH employees had gone to: We hereby request,  in electronic digital form (in order to minimize time and cost on behalf of DES and DoIT), those records bolded in the above [ Read more ]

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BE BREITBART: DoIT Right To Know Request : Outbound Internet traffic summarizations – Update 2

April 24, 2012

I almost forgot!  I got a call – last Friday.  Well, that’s what TMEW told me when I returned from an appointment on Friday afternoon.  It seems that NH DES Commish Tom Burack called to invite me / GraniteGrok to a meeting on this coming Friday at 3pm to meet with him and the Dept [ Read more ]

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BE BREITBART: DoIT Right To Know Request : Outbound Internet traffic summarizations – Update 1

April 23, 2012

Well, with all of the coming and goings of the weekend, I forgot to “note” that we had received a response to our latest Right To Know request that read, in part: As noted in that final response: When a user enters a URL or IP address for a particular web page, the outbound request [ Read more ]

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BE BREITBART: Update 10: DES Right To Know Update : DOIT and DES – a “gentle” (eh?) response

April 18, 2012

Well, my first reaction to the “final response” was this quick note fired off to the RTK Dude: Sidebar: slightly edited here as it turned out the copy outbound had a few less words than here – brain saying the words and the fingers went partially deaf. Mr. Demas, I am in receipt of your [ Read more ]

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BE BREITBART: Update 9: DES Right To Know Update : DOIT and DES – convoluted hiding

April 18, 2012

OK – still catching up here.  Late on Friday, I received the latest update from the DES RTK dude – and to be honest, my reaction was two-fold: turning on all the burners and the ovens of a commercial kitchen range had nothing on me. And as Steve posted: Game On                                                                                                                               April 13, 2012 [ Read more ]

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BE BREITBART: Update 6: Right To Know Request – IT/HR – Responses from the State of NH DES.

March 29, 2012

In our last post, we started to go over the first official response from NH’s Department of Environmental Services concerning the political blogging of Richard de Seve while on the taxpayer dime – a LOT of Lefty blogging from this staunch Democrat (sufficient enough to be a Delegate for Dennis Kucinich during his run in [ Read more ]

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The NH-D.E.S. Break Schedule, and Other Mysteries of The Known Universe

March 25, 2012

We have it on good authority that Richard de Seve, State employee over at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, only reads and comments on the articles at the Concord Monitor-online, during his breaks.  He did, after all, admit this too me, so what better authority can there be?  And who am I to [ Read more ]

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BE BREITBART: Update 1: Right To Know Request – IT and HR records for NH DES employee, Richard de Seve

March 24, 2012

To recap, we caught wind that a NH Dept. Of Environmental Services employee, Richard de Seve (former lawyer, chapter VP in the NH SEIU), was politically blogging on the taxpayer dime and time.  So, we decided to find out what the State had to say about it and found this IT policy concerning the use [ Read more ]

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BE BREITBART: Right To Know Request – IT and HR records for NH DES employee, Richard de Seve

March 19, 2012

We’ve already posted a couple of times on the State employee Rickard “Dick” de Seve’ use of taxpayer paid time and computer services (Is A NH Public Employee Using The Internet to Sell his Political Agenda On Your Time?, So, what does the State of NH say about “Using The Internet to Sell his Political [ Read more ]

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Mr. Lynch Does The Right Thing

July 24, 2010

You might have missed this. The Governor just vetoed HB 53. HB 53 was a bill proposed by Kimberly Casey (D-Rock 11) and Jim Garrity (D-Rock 6).  Both of them should be run out of the state for even proposing it. In short, it would alter 91-A (Right to know law) by redefining what a public body [ Read more ]

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Sullivan’s Manchester Problem

May 20, 2010

I must confess to a feeling of near bi-partisan enthusiasm when I glanced at the headline to Kathy Sullivan’s Tuesday morning UL Column—“Why Municipal executives records must be kept public.”  Without having yet read it thoughts of typing up one of the rarest of blog posts, one in which I can say without reservation that [ Read more ]

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Right To Ignorance

May 17, 2010

  The passage of the New and Improved New Hampshire Right To Know Law (as yet unsigned by Governor Lynch) redefines "public body" in a way that makes it more difficult for taxpayer to observe the inner workings of their government. An individual executive or administrative officer of a political subdivision shall not constitute a [ Read more ]

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