The City of Nashua employs deliberately confusing tactics to win Right-to-Know Court cases. And they work. They scramble the records, provide incomplete responses and repeatedly request citizens clarify their written request for the records sought.
They refuse to permit citizens to work with those in City Hall most familiar with the records they seek. Requests must be done in writing. Ordinary citizens with no legal background or education have great difficulty accessing records.
The City, in response to those requests, starts a rolling process of incorporating the back-and-forth communication into their response. Very quickly, the records become voluminous. The legal office is using its legalese language to deliberately create greater confusion.
Judges don’t have the time or patience to decipher many pages of muddled communications when brought into Court. The City usually wins with this approach.
I believe the Judge ruled incorrectly on several claims in one of my Right-to-Know Petitions. Nonetheless, the ruling denied opening records.
In one case, the City, by directive, began tracking and documenting my whereabouts, questions, and information requests in City Hall. References, specifically calling me out by name, were written in City agendas with orders to track. Learning this, I wrote a Right-to-Know to get all tracking records on Laurie Ortolano. The City began the dance of requesting clarification and providing partial records. A lengthy, unproductive back-and-forth ensued until I filed a lawsuit. The back-and-forth communications were incoherent. The Court ruled against my claim, thus denying me access to those records. The City has now released and disclosed many of the previously ordered tracking records.
During my property appeal to the state in 2019 and 2020, I served interrogatories to the Board of Assessors to obtain information on their involvement in my abatement When I received the responses, several questions were not answered. Attorney Bolton, very aptly, missed responses to create back-and-forth emails that he was clearly more skilled at writing than was I. He refused to answer the questions evading responding.
I filed a complaint with the State Appeal Board and sent up all the confusing communications. The Board shut down the questions and ordered the matter to come before the tribunal. I never received my information. The City won that battle, but I won the property appeal.
The City’s repeated actions to undermine the NH Constitution for an open, accountable, accessible government persists. Citizens should avoid the writing vortex the City so aptly sucks us into and file Petitions immediately into the Court for rulings on denied records. In Nashua, accept no settlements; this is a game of dirty tricks – a topic for another article.
A Lack of Information is a Symptom of Dishonesty
