UPDATE (and bumped from 8 am)! And an important one: Summary – Emergencies (like what has been called for Gunstock below) in 91:A ONLY APPLY TO TOWNS AND CITIES; not the “County Convention” (aka, “the Delegation”. While I have a call into the County Attorney, Andrew Livernois, I have not heard back as to which holds priority: RSA 24-9:d or RSA 91-A:2 II. However, Dan Itse has this:
Pay attention to the highlighted sections: Dan Itse is a former multi-term State Rep and is often considered to be one of the State’s leading experts on the NH Constitution.
From: NHHRA@groups.io <NHHRA@groups.io> On Behalf Of Dan Itse via groups.io
Sent: Monday, August 1, 2022 11:47 AM
To: NHHRA@groups.io
Subject: [NHHRA] Belknap County meetingTo those of you on this list who are following the Belknap County controversy an emergency meeting was called Friday for tonight. RSA 24:9-d which governs meetings called by the body requires 7 days notice. Those who called the meeting were advised that they could call an emergency meeting with less notice under 91-A:2 However, though 91-A does include counties under definitions, the section which refers to emergency meetings includes only cities and towns.
And the Count Delegation is NOT a Town or a City!
If a construe 91-A:2 to apply to counties, it requires that the situation be declared emergent by the presiding officer.
The Belknap County Chair, whom I just got off the phone, has not called a meeting for tonite as he follows RSA 24 as the governing Law for County Conventions He DID call for a meeting and the quickest was for August 8th. But here is the REAL IMPORTANT part:
The body has no power to declare the situation emergent. Therefore, 91-A:2 cannot be construed to apply to a meeting called by the body, even if it did apply to counties.
The Delegation can’t call something an “emergency” for legal purposes. This clause was supposed to be for emergencies like a natural disaster (flooding, tornado, blizzard) or for things like the Town Hall or School building(s) catching fire, roofs falling in, a critical piece of equipment like a fire engine gets wrecked in an accident.
Like it or not, the Convention can’t declare, if I am reading this correctly, that a county owned facility that isn’t open ISN’T an emergency of the type above. However, there are partisans that are trying to make this to be a POLITICAL emergency – if Tom Day and Peter McGonagle had honored the agreement made with David Strang, it would be open. Instead, in the parlance of the reality show called Survivor, they blindsided him by changing the deal to include ALL of the Sr Management that quit, not because the meeting room was rearranged (a very petty excuse) but because of the demand Letters from Lawyers investigating serious charges. Those resignations worked, didn’t they – who in the public has taken any note of the Investigation? How much has the local media kept that in front of the reading public?
If you are a Belknap County Rep. Please do not attend the emergency meeting with is invalid on its face.
Dan Itse
24:9-d Notice. – The clerk of the convention, or his or her designee, shall mail to each member of the convention a notice stating the time, place and purpose of further meetings at least 7 days before the day of the meeting and shall cause to be published a like notice at least 7 days before the day of the meeting in a newspaper of general circulation in the county. Mailing such notice is not required during any session of the general court, if the notice is printed for 2 legislative days in the journal of the house of representatives.
91-A:2 II. Subject to the provisions of RSA 91-A:3, all meetings, whether held in person, by means of telephone or electronic communication, or in any other manner, shall be open to the public. Except for town meetings, school district meetings, and elections, no vote while in open session may be taken by secret ballot. Any person shall be permitted to use recording devices, including, but not limited to, tape recorders, cameras, and videotape equipment, at such meetings. Minutes of all such meetings, including nonpublic sessions, shall include the names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, and a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions. The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes. Subject to the provisions of RSA 91-A:3, minutes shall be promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting, except as provided in RSA 91-A:6, and shall be treated as permanent records of any public body, or any subordinate body thereof, without exception. Except in an emergency or when there is a meeting of a legislative committee, a notice of the time and place of each such meeting, including a nonpublic session, shall be posted in 2 appropriate places one of which may be the public body’s Internet website, if such exists, or shall be printed in a newspaper of general circulation in the city or town at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to such meetings.
Here’s the emergency part:
An emergency shall mean a situation where immediate undelayed action is deemed to be imperative by the chairman or presiding officer of the public body, who shall post a notice of the time and place of such meeting as soon as practicable, and shall employ whatever further means are reasonably available to inform the public that a meeting is to be held. The minutes of the meeting shall clearly spell out the need for the emergency meeting. When a meeting of a legislative committee is held, publication made pursuant to the rules of the house of representatives or the senate, whichever rules are appropriate, shall be sufficient notice. If the charter of any city or town or guidelines or rules of order of any public body require a broader public access to official meetings and records than herein described, such charter provisions or guidelines or rules of order shall take precedence over the requirements of this chapter. For the purposes of this paragraph, a business day means the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday through Friday, excluding national and state holidays.
So here’s the emergency from the agenda items:
- Remove Dr. Strang from the Commission for cause
That completely renders the Commission inoperable – 2 Commissioners cannot be a quorum. And what is the cause? Merely a difference of opinion of how things should proceed? Let the Delegation INFORM US ALL what laws or regulations he has broken? All we hear is “he broke his oath” (saying it over and over again without saying HOW he broke his oath!
Well, Commissioner Jade Wood, who is the NH GOP Area 5 Vice-Chair, where is your voice about the RINOs that break theirs? Or the Democrats? Funny, you’ve remained VERY silent on that, haven’t you.
- Appoint a temp Commissioner
See below for the reasons they can’t (no mention of a “temp Commissioner” capability/status in Law. If they appoint one, they are breaking the Law if you read RSA 399
Look, if Gunstock opens or closes, I really don’t care. But what SHOULD matter to everyone that the Law be followed. But it seems that most peopler that are angst ridden that THE MOUNTAIN MUST OPEN WITH THE SAME STAFF (that are currently under investigation) don’t care about the Law. Like Commissioners Doug Lambert and Jade Wood They want a political “want” and not worry about the law.
My actual post follows below:
Yes, I went to the emergency Gunstock Area Commission meeting this afternoon. And yes, it was a crapshow. I have decided to wait on processing the video until later – I just don’t have it in me right now. The only thing that didn’t happen, during the mobocracy and “WE HAVE to DO SO SOMETHING NOW!!!”, was that someone said “Is that Legal”? and that everyone else listened.
Sidenote – as soon as politicians start saying that, like Doug Lambert, Jade Wood, and a bunch of others that should have known better, you can be sure that the fix is in. And yes, IMHO, it was in but I’ll leave it for the recording for you to decide for yourself.
What I am peeved (not, I’m not going to use any of the other dozen words floating before me to stay within Rule #1) at is what seems to be both a lack of knowledge of the Rule of Law and ACTUAL knowledge of the Statutes (RSAs) that govern the Gunstock Area Commission, on handling RSA 91A demands and about the Law regulating how County Conventions are concerned.
I’m not going to give the context just yet but at one point, NH State Rep Harry Bean said that an emergency meeting of the Delegation (all the NH State Reps in Belknap County) had been planned for tomorrow at which time:
1) Dr. Strang would be removed from the GAC leaving just Doug Lambert and Jade Wood
2) That renders the GAC unable to carry out its duties as there must be three to have a quorum
3) NH State Rep Harry Bean announced that he had the votes and that the meeting would be held tomorrow to do that. That’s a problem.
4) He also declared that they would immediately appoint a “temporary/interim/30 day” (paraphrasing here – wait for the recording) Commissioner to have three to be functional. That’s a problem.
Somebody gave Harry REALLY bad advice (I’m hoping he didn’t do this on his own; shame on him if he did) – unless they wish to be willing to break the Law to be seen to be “DO SOMETHING!!”.
24-hour notice, as he said during the meeting, is not the correct Law that governs county Delegation (“County Conventions”) meetings. He was quoting RSA 91:A which other political bodies (Selectmen, BudComms, School Boards) that do set that standard for those entities. However, NH RSA 24 is in charge of Delegations and as far as setting up meetings, specifically RSA 24:9-D (emphasis mine):
24:9-d Notice. – The clerk of the convention, or his or her designee, shall mail to each member of the convention a notice stating the time, place, and purpose of further meetings at least 7 days before the day of the meeting and shall cause to be published a like notice at least 7 days before the day of the meeting in a newspaper of general circulation in the county. Mailing such notice is not required during any session of the general court if the notice is printed for 2 legislative days in the journal of the house of representatives.
Seven days – not one. So Monday is out unless they want to do it illegally; August 8th would be the first day possible – and there is already a Delegation meeting scheduled for that day for a completely different purpose. So it would have to be further out on a calendar.
Really, Harry, an “interim” Commissioner”? That is just as bad as when Gary Kiedaisch proposed making Rusty McLear (who had overstayed his interim term by 15 months, or so) a “de facto” Commissioner to keep his power base on the GAC. Which was just ONE of the plots with plots within plots of this whole sordid affair.
Sorry, Harry, but RSA 399 which covers the operation of the GAC has NOTHING concerning a temp Commissioner, an interim Commissioner, or a time-limited Commissioner. There is only a full Commissioner. Thus, because we are a Dillon’s Rule State, the Delegation just can’t “make stuff up” just because people are demanding that you DO SOMETHING! And he forgot the normal due process of advertising for the Commissioner position, receiving Letters of intent, scheduling them for interviews, and then voting for them.
The meeting ended around 3 pm – even IF 24 hours was lawful for a meeting, it takes time to do all the rest of that stuff.
So, IF THEY AREN’T GOING TO FOLLOW THE LAW, they’ve got bupkiss – no meeting, no temp appointment.
So, the ball’s in your court, Harry, as you seem to be leading this effort – what is the Delegation going to do now?
Topic switch – Josh McElveen (former WMUR TV reporter and now in charge of McElveen Strategies) also walked into the main Lodge at Gunstock for the meeting. He had been hired by former Chair Peter Ness (now resigned) to help out the entire GAC with some PR assistance and direction. With today’s turn of events (if this was Survivor, it was clear that Dr. Strang got blindsided by the “other side” of the GAC as well as by Tom Day when the rules were changed at the last minute (yes, the crowd ate it up), it wasn’t clear what should happen.
He and I have talked in the past especially when we crossed candidate paths during election cycles and we talked about the difficult position into which he had been placed. He had this to say:
Since ex-Chairman Peter Ness did not inform the full Commission that he had executed a service contract with our team until after the fact, we [Update: Doug Lambert and McElveen] have decide to void the agreement. That should have been a collective decision made by the full Commission.
Yeah, there hadn’t been a full “there, there” for quite some time and having been in similar situations (being told one thing and find out that reality bites HARD), that’s probably the best situation. Can’t work in that environment when half the GAC was playing full on “politics of personal destruction” while efforts were being made by the other half to react.
Which was the entire plan all the time. Glad that Josh realized he was in a no-win situation and was able to extracate himself and his team. Given that Doug Lambert and Jade Wood decided to NOT pay the investigative lawyers, PretiFlaherty (which may well result in a lawsuit) that Ness had hired, I’m doubting that McElveen is going to get paid either.