Gunstock Mountain Resort – Right to Know: Budget. All of it. At the General Ledger Account Level

At the end of the Public Comment section, last night, I made a bit of a stir, having previously submitted an RSA 91:A Right To Know demand for the entire budget, at the General Ledger line/account level.

Tom Day, President and General Manager of Gunstock Mountain Resort (“GMR”) told me that he was not going to do that. Period, end of story. He made it clear that he was “protecting the Business.”

I capitalized Business but he had it in lower case. Claimed that because of competition and financial information: RSA 91-A:3

(j) Consideration of confidential, commercial, or financial information that is exempt from public disclosure under RSA 91-A:5, IV in an adjudicative proceeding pursuant to RSA 541 or RSA 541-A.

There’s a reason why I capitalized it and it has become increasingly evident that the former Commissioners, the GMR Senior Staff, and employees (as I found out last night at the regularly scheduled meeting of the GMR’s Gunstock Area Commission (GAC)) all believe that it is THEIR business and just not a wholly-owned entity of Belknap County, New Hampshire.

Which, by definition, makes it a political subdivision of the County which, in turn, is a subdivision of the State of New Hampshire.

Thus, not a business.

But that’s how it is being run and decidedly acting as if the normal rules, regulations, and laws that bind subdivisions of the State, don’t apply to them.

And now there’s a battle going on:  business or a mere government agency whose product is just snow. Oh, it is a product that people want if it provides a downslope. Before my knees, hips, and back did their own downslope, I used to ski at Gunstock.

My kids learned to ski there. TMEW ran the childcare center there for a while.

But in this case, there are a number of things I want to know. As I’ve said before, I spent almost 10 years on our Budget Committee and as a Grokster, I’ve helped numerous others around NH with theirs; this is not unknown territory. So, here’s the demand:

Pursuant to the Right to Know Law (RSA. 91-A), I am demanding access, within 5 business days, to the following governmental records: For the current fiscal year, the overall budgets for all operational entities commonly known, in the aggregate, as Gunstock Ski Area / Gunstock Mountain Resort / et al:

• The complete budget(s) for each official entity to be presented at the General Ledger (“GL”) Account / line number with each line item to contain:
  • The GL account number / identifier for each line item
  • The GL textual description for each line item
  • The starting amount for each line item set at the beginning of the current fiscal year
  • Current balance / amount for each GL line item as of end of day March 13, 2022

Per RSA 91-A:4 IV(c) If you deny any portion of this request, please cite the specific exemption used to justify the denial to make each record, or part thereof, available for inspection along with a brief explanation of how the exemption applies to the information withheld.

As you are aware, in 2016, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that a governmental body in possession of records is required to produce them in electronic media using standard of common file formats: Green v. SAU #55, 168 N.H. 796, 801 (2016). Unless there is some reason that it is not reasonably practicable for you to produce these records in the requested format, I ask that you either do so or explain why it is not practicable for you to comply.

Please also note, per RSA 91-A:4 III, III-a, and III-b, you are required to maintain the safety and accessibility of such responsive records.

Thus, knowing that all current accounting systems can output their General Ledger to spreadsheet files at the push of a button, I am requesting the above information be presented in either an EXCEL xls file or OpenOffice ods formats. Given that most budget processes include spreadsheets from the lowest level departments to the highest, this is not a out-of-bounds Right To Know demand (well within the abilities of a competent Accounting or IT department).

Please let me know when these responsive records are available for inspection.

You may email the responsive records (the spreadsheet files) to me at Skip@GraniteGrok.com. If the volume is turns out to be substantial, I have already set up a Dropbox folder for all of your responsive records.

Thank you for your lawful attention to this matter. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me by email.

Sincerely,

Skip Murphy
GraniteGrok.com

So he and I engaged in an email back-and-forth which I’ll post up later. The video of last night’s meeting will be available as well (the entire almost-4-hour long video is still uploading).  It came to a head, however, when I dropped this at the end of the Public Comment section in front of each Commissioner – a GMR Operational Budget that was deliberately let loose “into the wild” as GMR was looking to Belknap County to give it cash just as intensely as teen-aged Johnny asking Dad for the keys to the family car:

Developing – more coming.