Unless he’s already signed HB1002, the new tax on access to public records in New Hampshire is still waiting to become law. If it becomes law, many towns will consider it, but the most grotesque government offenders will implement it with extreme prejudice as soon as they are able.
Sixty days after passage.
Nashua, Londonderry, and Dover are drooling in anticipation.HB1002 is their baby—a foot in the door, that camel’s nose, incrementalism to further undermining transparency. The goal is to be like New Jersey. NJ is a few iterations further along; their updated public records law makes fewer records public, and the ones that still are increasingly unaffordable.
The new legislation overhauls New Jersey’s existing Open Public Records Act and could make it harder for media outlets and the public to access some documents, The Hill reported.
It would also continue to limit access to government text and email correspondence and allow agencies to charge more for releasing information — even if the evidence is not in complete form.
Also, the law makes it harder on lawyers to get back fees in cases where requests are wrongfully denied by agencies, The Hill reported.
It is not an extreme possibility. It is the goal.
Nashua doesn’t give a shit about your right to know, and they aren’t even secretive about that, so Jim the Douche Donchess must be jealous of what Gov. Phil Murphy just did. Given the freedom and power, Donchess would sign on to that in a heartbeat because he doesn’t want you to know and likely thinks you are too stupid to understand why. If he were Prometheus, he would steal the fire and keep it for himself because the peasants are too clumsy to grasp how good or great his uses for it are, even when he burns them with it repeatedly.
You are not worthy of such knowledge and entitled only to what Donchess deems to share when he decides to share it. It means what he says and nothing more. That is the state of Nashua City governance, which is not improving while he is in command.
And no, New Jersey did not get here from there overnight, but just like property taxes in the Garden State, it started with a lie on the slightest whisper of a breeze. We want to reduce property taxes with a statewide tax. If you do not know how that worked out, NJ has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation (state and property and the rest of it), while New Hampshire’s is one of the lowest. It is why we oppose NH Dems Jersey tactics – that same whispered lie that a statewide tax will lower your local taxes.
NH already does more with less and has better outcomes, which would end.
HB1002 is a carpenter ant. If we can’t convince the governor to kill it, it will begin gnawing away at the foundations of government accountability until it finds a way to get to where New Jersey is today.
If HB1002 is still in play and Governor Sununu has not yet signed it (he has not, as I write this), they do not have the votes to override a veto.
Ask him to please veto that bill.
