The Republicans, having passed HB1002, not only made it more expensive for investigators trying to find malfeasance within the Government, but they also hobbled people like me in a different way. Or, actually, not. Never mind. Rewind. Fagettiaboutit. Consider this just a post that describes what Republicans attempted to do (stick a political shiv into those looking into the Dark Corners of Govt) and how the different versions of the bill watered that down, DEPENDING ON THE PRACTICAL, real-world definitions that actually happen, to pretty much “don’t communicate with us very often.”
See what happens when one “goes away” for an extended period of time and doesn’t have the time to stay up to date? I have to admit, that’s what happened. And not knowing “the rest of the story”, I wrote the above title still thinking that the poison pill, getting charged $25/hour after 10 hours spent by a Subdivision of the State researching for a RSA 91-A demand, was still in it. So, in defense of the title, I started to write the following:
- The number of “communications for a given request (or to a given entity—the language isn’t clear) is now limited to 250. But what isn’t stated is “over what time period”—lifetime? Monthly? Yearly? Daily?
- Entities…
I stopped at Entities as I wanted to find the exact wording of that “protection racket” set up by the Government to protect the Government from its citizens in the final version that was passed and signed by Guv Buh-Bye. After all, it was in the introduced version:
…No cost or fee shall be charged for the inspection or delivery, without copying, of governmental records, whether in paper, electronic, or other form, unless the time to make the record available exceeds 10 hours, as provided in paragraph VIII
…A reasonable charge may be made for the employee time to make the record available to the requestor, including time to search, retrieve, duplicate, redact, and otherwise make the record available for the requestor. However, hourly costs shall not exceed $25 per hour and no costs shall be charged for requests under 10 hours. Multiple requests from any person or entity to the same public body within a 30 day time period shall be considered one request.
So not only was a tax being applied to a citizen’s desire to find out what was going on in his or her Govt if was being the most rudimentary of questions, they doubled down on someone that was looking:
- For an answer to a medium to complex answer
- Or a department that is taking advantage of its information disorganization to cover up its “information slovenliness” and make requestors pay for the department’s ineptness.
- or just being petty in view its citizens (and I’m thinking of Nashua as being a prime example of all three) in meting out bureaucratic punishment
OR
- Finding some simple answers (or non-answers) that started to lead down paths that were turning up “wrong stuff” along the way.
I think most can understand the top three but it’s this last one that’s a signpost stating “you can ask just so many things and we’ll drain your bank account”. After all, if one RTK takes 3 hours, another one takes 2 hours, and five little ones end up taking 6 hours total, it’s a time accumulator – and over the 10-hour free time you go!
Then you have to wait for THIRTY days to ask more questions?
The process is the punishment – make it difficult to get answers from your government and see how quickly it will punish you. You might get the answers – but at what price? In time? Financially? Frustration?
And they wonder why the Government is now held, according to most polls I see, in disrepute.
I found that in the original version of HB1002. Then, knowing that it had been amended, mostly due to the citizens’ outcry, I went to the final version and did a word search on “reasonable” and “charge”—it wasn’t there.
Huh? Am I looking in the wrong place? Need new glasses? I woke up too soon for my brain to engage. No, it just wasn’t there. So, I went back to the first amended version of the bill and found it:
<snip>
2 New Paragraph; Fees for Records. Amend RSA 91-A:4 by inserting after paragraph VII the
following new paragraph:
VIII. A reasonable charge may be made for employee, contractor, or attorney time in excess of 10 hours to make the record available to the requestor, including time to search, retrieve, duplicate, redact, and otherwise make the record available for the requestor; provided that no charge may be made for time spent with the requestor to review the records. Hourly costs shall not exceed
$25 per hour, and no costs shall be charged for requests under 10 hours. Prior to charging any fees, the public body or agency shall create a policy so that practices are transparent, uniform, and consistent. Multiple requests from any person or entity to the same public body within a 30 day time period shall be considered one request. If a party believes the estimated number of hours or cost to make the records available is unreasonable, the party may file a complaint with the ombudsman pursuant to RSA 91-A:7-b for a determination of whether the estimate is reasonable.
Lovely—and the result was that if you don’t like what the government told you about the process, it decides to punish you again—go ask another part of the government to correct what the first part is stonewalling. It takes more time and more paperwork, and you still might not get what you want.
It was bad enough to have to run to the ombudsman just to force govt to fork over the answer before HB1002 but, NOW you have to dicker over how much it will cost BEFORE you get the answer? A two-stepper of a process?
Most people will just not bother following through, thus making the bureaucrats smile, and the Republican legislators that started this targeting towards their detractors chuckle to themselves (or a loud and public guffaw).
However, a funny thing happened on the way to the Second Amendment version – the Public, to whom the aforementioned Republican ding-dongs are accountable to, started to see the light – of the Public’s collective Train named “Er, No Reelection For You!” and modified it again. The $25 hourly fee after 10 hours of research vanished.
Sidenote: I noticed that NH State Rep JR Hoell tried to neuter it and counter the argument that too many out-of-state entities (individuals, companies) were chewing up a lot of time with their RTKs with this:
No costs and/or fees shall be charged for any request made by an individual who is a resident and/or taxpayer of the political subdivision of the public body. For requests to state agencies, no costs and/or fees shall be charged for any request made by an individual who is a New Hampshire resident
Unfortunately, it didn’t pass. Then NH State Rep. Jim Kofalt decided that to apply a flat fee was appropriate:
For requests to public bodies, costs and/or fees shall be no more than $250 per request for any request made by an individual who is a resident and/or taxpayer of the political subdivision of the public body. For requests to state agencies, costs and/or fees shall be no more than $250 per request made by an individual who is a New Hampshire resident and/or taxpayer.
Thanks, Jim. He’s a Grokster and knows what we do and how little our yearly operational budget is. So, for grins and giggles, consider four requests that try to dig deep into one of those Dark Corners. Each would be $1,000. He knows we’re all volunteers—how many times could GraniteGrok spend $1,000 like that? Answer: none. Jim, how many ordinary people would want to fork that over? Also, probably none.
Instead, they replaced it with an “electronic communication charge”. Emphasis mine and reformatted for easier reading:
2 New Paragraphs; Fees for Records. Amend RSA 91-A:4 by inserting after paragraph VII the following new paragraphs:
VIII. A reasonable per electronic communication charge in addition to the actual cost of providing the copy under paragraph IV(d) may be made for requests for electronic communications in excess of 250 communications.
Per electronic communication charges may not exceed $1.00 per communication and may be charged whether the records are delivered in hard copy or electronically.
No charge may be incurred for the first 250 electronic communications. For the purposes of this paragraph, attachments to electronic communications shall be considered part of a single communication,
and e-mails and responses under a single subject line shall be considered a single communication.
Text or chat message threads regarding the same topic shall be considered a single communication unless exceeding 50 individual messages at which point each additional group of 50 messages shall be considered another single message.
The public body or agency shall create a policy so that practices are transparent, uniform, and consistent, including a provision consistent with paragraph IX for the waiver of such fees for requestors who are deemed indigent, or who can demonstrate that such fees would present a financial hardship.
Multiple requests from any person or entity to the same public body within a 30 day time period shall be considered one request.
If a party believes that the estimated cost to make the records available is unreasonable or that a waiver under paragraph IX was improperly denied by the public body or agency, the party may seek relief according to RSA 91-A:7-b for a determination of whether the cost is reasonable or whether any waiver under paragraph IX applies. The burden shall be on the public body in establishing that the cost to make the records available is reasonable. A determination shall be made within 10 business days.
Well, wasn’t that sweet of them, eh? Is this a case of that old consulting joke dealing with cowboy boots and expense reports (“Go ahead, find the boots!) Oh, and this as well (emphasis mine, reformatted) about those charges and “media requestors”:
IX. The public body or agency shall waive any per electronic communication charge provided for in paragraph VIII for search or retrieval when the person requesting the records is an indigent individual as established by the federal poverty line
or if the disclosure of the information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government
and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requestor, except media requestors.
Media requestors are organizations or individuals who publish information in accepted digital, print, or broadcast formats
and to standards generally recognized by professional news organizations that do not serve primarily as a platform to promote the interest and/or opinions of a special interest group, government, individual or cause.
So I have questions about the above, especially as to how some of these “break aparts” can be interpreted. And I can already see issues about people issuing Right To Know demands having to assemble all kinds of paperwork to prove they are “indigent.” Generally, aren’t they the folks who are least likely to HAVE such paperwork?
I’m also not sure how “media requestors” are really to be looked at:
- Is this an infringement of the Press (Article 22)?
- And who is going to “provide” the “standards” – shouldn’t this new law have specified what the standards are?
- And since they haven’t, is it now an “arbitrary and capricious” choice by any subdivision of the State to pick (or cherry-pick) what standards fit their “pettiness of the day” purpose?
- ALL news organizations have biases when it comes to reporting the news—every single one. And each one expresses its opinions by which stories they carry—or don’t—how the titles are structured, how the verbiage of the story is constructed (words have nuances, after all), and the images they use with them.
- So, was this written expressly to harm GraniteGrok in pursuing its citizen journalism?
I tend to think that the last part is a yes. However, I’ll be taking another swipe at this to discuss some of these more in-depth and try to get better definitions/meanings for them.
And finally, the passed, enrolled, and signed into Law version:
CHAPTER 49
HB 1002 – FINAL VERSION1Feb2024… 0197h
21Mar2024… 1173h2024 SESSION
24-2001
05/08HOUSE BILL 1002
AN ACT relative to fees for records under the right-to-know law.
SPONSORS: Rep. Kuttab (R), Rock. 17; Rep. M. Cahill, Rock. 10; Rep. Ball (R), Rock. 25; Rep. Maggiore, Rock. 23; Rep. Ankarberg (R), Straf. 7; Rep. DeSimone (R), Rock. 18; Rep. Dunn (R), Rock. 16; Rep. J. Nelson (R), Rock. 13; Rep. B. Boyd (R), Hills. 12; Rep. Edwards (R), Rock. 31; Rep. Grassie, Straf. 8; Sen. Carson (R), Dist 14; Sen. Gannon (R), Dist 23; Sen. Watters, Dist 4; Sen. Lang (R), Dist 2; Sen. Avard (R), Dist 12
COMMITTEE: Judiciary
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────ANALYSIS
This bill establishes parameters for when a public body may charge a fee for records provided under RSA 91-A.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –Explanation: Matter added to current law appears in bold italics.
Matter removed from current law appears [in brackets and struckthrough.]
Matter which is either (a) all new or (b) repealed and reenacted appears in regular type.
1Feb2024… 0197h
21Mar2024… 1173h 24-2001
05/08STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty FourAN ACT relative to fees for records under the right-to-know law.
Be it Enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court convened:
<snip>
49:2 New Paragraphs; Fees for Records. Amend RSA 91-A:4 by inserting after paragraph VII the following new paragraphs:
VIII. A reasonable per electronic communication charge in addition to the actual cost of providing the copy under paragraph IV(d) may be made for requests for electronic communications in excess of 250 communications.
Per electronic communication charges may not exceed $1.00 per communication and may be charged whether the records are delivered in hard copy or electronically. No charge may be incurred for the first 250 electronic communications. For the purposes of this paragraph, attachments to electronic communications shall be considered part of a single communication, and e-mails and responses under a single subject line shall be considered a single communication.
Text or chat message threads regarding the same topic shall be considered a single communication unless exceeding 50 individual messages at which point each additional group of 50 messages shall be considered another single message.
The public body or agency shall create a policy so that practices are transparent, uniform, and consistent, including a provision consistent with paragraph IX for the waiver of such fees for requestors who are deemed indigent, or who can demonstrate that such fees would present a financial hardship.
Multiple requests from any person or entity to the same public body within a 30 day time period shall be considered one request.
If a party believes that the estimated cost to make the records available is unreasonable or that a waiver under paragraph IX was improperly denied by the public body or agency, the party may seek relief according to RSA 91-A:7-b for a determination of whether the cost is reasonable or whether any waiver under paragraph IX applies. The burden shall be on the public body in establishing that the cost to make the records available is reasonable. A determination shall be made within 10 business days.
IX. The public body or agency shall waive any per electronic communication charge provided for in paragraph VIII for search or retrieval when the person requesting the records is an indigent individual as established by the federal poverty line or if the disclosure of the information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requestor, except media requestors.
Media requestors are organizations or individuals who publish information in accepted digital, print, or broadcast formats and to standards generally recognized by professional news organizations that do not serve primarily as a platform to promote the interest and/or opinions of a special interest group, government, individual or cause.
49:3 Effective Date. This act shall take effect 60 days after its passage.
Approved: June 14, 2024
Effective Date: August 13, 2024
This was WAY long so I’m going to do a Summary of what was actually passed. And since this went long, I’m quite sure that the Legislators who had a hand in this aren’t going to read to the bottom of this post. They will be getting their own Right To Know.
