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Well well. It took a few tries, but the Belknap County Convention, currently involved in two Right-To-Know Law suits before the NH Supreme Court, faced with the prospect of selecting another appointee to fill the term of a resigned Constitutional Officer, in this case, the Registrar of Deeds, will do so in an open process. Getting to this point was much like watching someone make sausage…
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As reported on the front page of Tuesday’s Laconia Daily Sun by reporter Michael Kitch, the Executive Committee of the Belknap County Convention
“voted five to one to advise that the Convention, which consists of the 18 members of the House of Representatives elected from the county, conduct its entire proceedings—culling the applicants, interviewing the finalists, and making the selection – in non-public session.”
They based their decision on rulings by Judge Mohl in the Right-to-Know lawsuits filed by former Laconia Mayor Thomas A. Tardif and me, where he wrote that such an appointment can be made in non public session due to the rights of an employee to privacy in the hiring process. This is, of course, the very crux of our cases and the pending NH Supreme Court appeal— they are appointing a Constitutional Officer, not an employee.
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In response to the recommendation, Tom and I filed an injunction with the Court requesting that it stop the appointment until a ruling is reached by the state’s Supreme Court. We absolutely believe that elected representatives should not be making secret votes, especially when it comes to filling normally elected Constitutional Officer positions. As some local people might already know, the Convention, faced with this injunction, surely combined with a reaction to the negative publicity generated by their past actions as noted within the ongoing suit, ultimately decided to override the Executive Committee’s recommendation and will choose the new Registrar in an open meeting.
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As a result of this turn of events, Mr. Tardif and I have withdrawn our request for injunctive relief against appointing someone to fill the position. After all, the only thing that we have ever asked for is that the Convention to simply comply with the law and do the right thing by conducting a fully open process. As representatives in our republican form of government, the 18 Convention members stand in for the electorate in this situation—how can we not know how they act on the peoples’ behalf?
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While we are pleased with the way things turned out, there are many questions that remain unanswered. One wonders, given the difficulty the Convention has shown in complying with the letter and spirit of NH’s Right-to-Know, how much more they need to learn as the public asks adherence to the very laws that they, as lawmakers, created. It is never good when the lawmakers become lawbreakers.
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And all was not peaches and cream as the legislative “leaders” reached their conclusion. During the course of Monday’s meeting, Mr. Tardif put a stop to the Convention’s desire to discuss what turned out to be, in fact, our motion for injunctive relief, in a closed- door session. Again, from the Daily Sun, Kitch reported,
“Tardif challenged Nedeau to specify the grounds for the non-public session, prompting members of the Convention to recess.”
Apparently, that proved difficult for the chair of the Convention to answer, because when they reconvened, they voted to proceed in public session instead. Following much discussion about the petitioned injunction, they voted to follow the open door route. One wonders how things might have gone, had the group made their decision behind closed doors, as initially planned.
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There were two other unfortunate events taking place during Monday’s meeting…
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First was Representative Fran Wendleboe choosing to characterize the actions taken by Tom Tardif and me as “wasting taxpayer time and money.” With all due respect to Ms. Wendleboe, if she and her comrades in these matters would have simply complied with the letter and spirit of the Right-to-Know laws in the first place, none of this would have happened. To suggest citizens that are simply asking for their elected representatives to act in a fully open way, according to proscribed law, as being wasteful is simply not true. It was they who chose to lawyer up and defend their secret process in the first place. Had they admitted their mistake and taken action to correct it, there would have been no need for legal action.
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The second happened during the recess. As people exited the meeting room with the announcement of the closed door meeting, and Tom drilled down on the specific lawful exclusion used to call the session, I was followed into the hall by the mastermind of the whole business, state representative John Thomas, a Republican. In front of the County Sheriff, the reporter from this newspaper, and a handful of other people, Mr. Thomas announced that I was in need of “a good smack.” The split second pause following these rather shocking words by such an “esteemed” lawmaker was palpable. Those that heard it looked at each other in stunned amazement. When I openly asked this elected official, sworn by an oath to defend the state and federal Constitutions, if he had just threatened me, he repeated his statement again. A split second later, a light bulb turned on deep in the interior regions of his brain, and, instead of making the threat a third time, he passed it off as some sort of joke, suggesting my “wife simply forgot to give me a big smack in the head that morning, as I deserved each and every day.”
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This is how elitists like him and his ilk view the people they are elected to serve. The Right-to Know laws were written specifically for politicians like Representative Thomas of Belmont. Can you imagine what unchecked power in the hands of a person like this could lead to down the road? It is my understanding that he has filed an LSR with legislative services that has to do with altering the existing Right-to Know laws as they are presently written. We’ll have to keep a sharp eye, because coming from this guy, you can be sure its not favorable to the citizens at large.
