We want to congratulate ‘Grok author Laurie Ortolano. The Nackey Loeb School has chosen to honor her with its First Amendment Award on October 26th at the NH Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
Laurie has been writing for us for several years, documenting her travails with the City of Nashua and its obsession with claiming to be above the law.
A Gate City resident who has been fighting city hall for public records for nearly a decade will be celebrated later this month in Manchester.
Laurie Ortolano of Nashua will receive the Nackey S. Loeb School’s 2023 First Amendment Award at an event on Oct. 26 at the NH Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. The guest speaker is Maggie Haberman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from the New York Times and CNN.
And I can assure you that the Mayor (Donchess), his legal Igor (Bolton), and the rest down there at City Hall are steaming, stewing, and pissed off that she’s earned this recognition. But they should have seen it coming. Another sometime contributor who also got a lot of coverage on GraniteGrok, Donna Greene, also won the award after years of struggling to get the Timberlane School District to follow the same law.
More from Tony Schinella at Patch.
Ortolano was awarded this year due to her unwavering commitment to open government since her first encounter with right-to-know requests as a member of the Litchfield School Board more than two decades ago. The org said her move to Nashua in 2014 began a different journey.
“City officials in Nashua have met Ortolano’s numerous right-to-know requests for tax assessment, finance, and development information with denials, court battles, and even an arrest for criminal trespassing when she visited city hall during the pandemic without an appointment (the arrest was later annulled),” the org said. “Undeterred by these challenges, she has consistently taken her fight to court, accumulating legal fees and costs totaling $270,000.”
And after all of this, I bet you the current Democrat rouges gallery at Nashua City Hall hasn’t learned a damn thing. Despite the mandatory 91a training and all the trouble they themselves caused, they are likely spending more time and energy looking for a new way to keep public documents away from the public.
There is a cure: a New Mayor, new leadership, and new management in the Cty of Nashua.
And look at that: you’ve got an election coming up in a few weeks.
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