“And perhaps why Mr. Martin quickly responded to me? I didn’t know – and I still don’t know but I’m hoping to find out soon enough. How?”
Inquiring minds want to know. Well, at least my mind wants to know: beside DCYF Investigative Specialist Amy Fortin and her lawyer Amanda Knifeton, there was also DHHS Deputy Chief Legal Counsel John Martin (who was put into the unenviable position of cleaning up the mess that the prior two folks created).
To recap: my initial Right To Know was simply to ask for the Standard DCFY Operating Procedure manual that all investigators are supposed to follow. First she just blew me off by not answering at all. Upon reminding her that she was now out of compliance as she missed the mandatory five biz day response period, Fortin basically stated that her lawyer, Amanda Knifeton, said that it was a public document and that it could be found on the Internet. Translated to the vernacular, she told me to do that anatomically impossible thing to do (especially at my age where “flexible” is now an unknown term). Not cool and I told her such (in reasonable language, if you read that link).
However, out of the blue, DHHS Deputy Chief Legal Counsel John Martin popped in and not only gave me the responsive records requested but apologies as well.
But it got me to wondering – how did it get from Fortin to Martin and do it so quickly after I correctly let her know “not cool”? Perhaps it was this that I wrote as part of my “not cool” email:
I will also forward this to <redacted> to bring this matter to the Judge at <redacted> hearing as to how DCYF handles such legal requests as it is germane to there case.
Maybe that’s one reason why I was told I couldn’t go into said courtroom? And perhaps why Mr. Martin quickly responded to me? I didn’t know – and I still don’t know but I’m hoping to find out soon enough. How?
This (just the “payload” without the normal boilerplate that’s used for those that have no idea, like Amy Fortin, what their responsibilities are):
This request is for certain DYCF emails messages with the time frame starting May 25, 2023 to June 17, 2023 inclusive based on the email from Skip@GraniteGrok.com to Amy.Fortin@dhhs.nh.gov concerning my previous Right To Know demand, which she “blew off” and the situation had to be rectified by DHHS Deputy Chief Legal Counsel John B. Martin.
The demanded email responsive records will include the following information:
- Email Header info (origination, routing, destination, sender, all recipients, et al)
- TO fields – all addresses
- FROM fields – all addresses
- CC fields – – all addresses
- BCC fields – all addresses
- DATE fields
- SUBJECT field
- The BODY of the email itself
- Attachments for each email (as applicable)
NOTE: While an individual email client (e.g., web based, local application) may not show any associated BCC email addresses directly, the email server has such information as discreet data fields in its database associated with a given email message. These BCC email addresses, on a per email message as applicable, are mandatory to be human readable for this request to be lawfully fulfilled. This is the main concern for this Right To Know in obtaining, per NH Constitution Article 8, full transparency in this matter.
Filters:
- Subject field: The initial Subject was “RSA 91:A Right To Know demand”. It is highly likely there are other SUBJECT variants depending on the main email thread and any such subthreads my RTK demand went through from initial sending to Amy Fortin through from Mr. Martin sending both his apology and the Responsive Record URLs to me to “cure” the disaster Ms. Fortin created. I’m betting there were subsequent emails after that last subthread between myself and Mr. Martin that should be part of the Responsive Record set as well with “other” Subject field data.
- TO or FROM or BCC fields to include one or more of the following:
- Amy.Fortin@dhhs.nh.gov
- Christy.L.Lavigne@dhhs.nh.gov
- The NH Government assigned email address for Amanda Knifeton (unknown to me at this writing, being unable to find her in any State of NH staff directories)
- John.B.Martin@dhhs.nh.gov
- Skip@GraniteGrok.com
Knowing that there is most likely “Privileged Communications” (per RSA 91-A:5, XII) contained within some of the email bodies, please know those portions of an email body are not being requested (in fact, not desired) so redaction of just those small portions (unless Confidentiality is waived) is acceptable. The above email header information, however, is still demanded as they are not subject to such exclusion.
Now, I didn’t send this to Mr. Martin or Fortin (or her boss). Instead, because of the desire to see any and all BCC email addresses (which I expect happened), I sent it this morning to Commissioner Denis Goulet of the NH IT department. It wouldn’t be far to send to the “line folks” when the IT folks know EXACTLY what kind of information can be found in the email header information that most people have never looked at. I also know that email servers also track BCC information – the heart of my RTK – I want to construct that directed digraph of all those that ended up in this.
So we’ll see how this goes.
Oh, and I put in another RTK this morning as well…
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