This past Friday, 5/26, was my hearing(s) at the NH Legislative Ethics Committee. I had brought NH State Reps Harry Bean and Travis O’Hara to the Committee as they willfully and knowingly broke NH RSA 91-A (NH’s Right To Know law) and NH RSA 24:9-c & D (which governs how County Delegations (all of the NH State Reps from a given county) how to act. Both laws make it mandatory that all meetings of such public bodies MUST be publicly noticed (ad in the local paper, noticed on their website, et al) with specific “days ahead of the meeting” announcements. Each of those laws has different specifications and in Harry Bean’s case, he tried to mash them both together in order to get a specific political outcome. This was ethical?
While I had sent in my complaint earlier (“Just the facts, ma’am” – who gets THAT reference??) that listed the fact of my complaint, I decided to go philosophical with what I wanted to say – that written testimony is here. Here is how it went along with some of the questions that the Committee asked:
And it’s quite clear that Harry Bean is not liking this at all (10:48). Questions from the Committee start at 13:44
- I do dryly note that former Speaker of the House, Donna Sytek, Vice Chair, held up a book (14:31) and asked me if my complaint about the Reps should have gone to the Right To Know Ombudsman. Well, given that the meetings were well over, what would the RTK Ombudsman do? No Power to do a redo as a budget was voted on. Even if a redo was ordered, State statute rules that if a Delegation doesn’t perform its duties, the County Delegation’s proposed budget is automatically adopted.
- I also found out that the lawyer that Belknap County hired, Paul Fitzgerald (who is also Harry Bean’s personal attorney – no conflict of interest there, eh?), had responded to my complaint. This, I found out AFTER I returned home and TMEW handed me this envelope. I’ve glanced at it but haven’t studied it yet – I’ll have my opinions even though, as Bean exclaimed several times (“I’m not a lawyer – but either is he!” as if that clears him of knowing a necessary law being Chair of the Delegation)., I told the Committee what I am – a retired software engineer, a political blogger, and a former elected budget committee member that upon being elected, did my due diligence and studied the applicable law. So why didn’t they?
- There was a legitimate question from the Chair as to who was the Chair of the Budget subcommittee (27:35) – “Who Chaired the subcommittee?”. I didn’t take the bait.
Never said I was a lawyer – just that I read NH Law on a frequent basis as being a political blogger and prior elected official, I had/have to know it. Sadly, all of the Reps made it clear that they didn’t – yeah, that “ignorance of the Law” bit. If we violated a law of theirs, how well would it go with us if we tried that same tactic?
But those videos will come later.
