What Is Nashua Hiding? — The “Unsettling” Hunt for Settlements
New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know Law has a provision most people don’t know exists, and one New Hampshire city is apparently counting on that.
RSA 91-A:4 VI is short, clear, and unambiguous. Every settlement agreement involving a lawsuit, a threatened lawsuit, or any other claim against a political subdivision or its insurer shall be kept on file at the municipal clerk’s office and made available for public inspection for no less than ten years. Not “may be.” Not “should be.” Shall be.
So, here’s a simple question for the City of Nashua: Where are they?
What I Found — Or Rather, Didn’t Find
When I visited Nashua City Hall’s Clerk’s office in February 2026 to review the 2025/26 settlement file, I found something remarkable: A stack of property tax abatement settlements and one DPW playground injury settlement. That was it.
For a city of Nashua’s size, with a police department, a fire department, a public works department, a community development office, a school district, and dozens of other agencies, the suggestion that only one qualifying settlement, outside of property abatement, was executed in all of 2025 defies belief.
So, I started asking questions and seeking records.
The Runaround Begins
When I emailed the City’s legal office asking them to check whether additional settlements existed and add them to the Clerk’s file, the response I received was not “we’ll look into it.” Instead, within an unprecedented turnaround of a few hours, the records administrator conducted the search and scanned all the same files I reviewed that morning! With that, the request was deemed satisfied and closed! No one even bothered searching.
When I submitted a formal Right-to-Know request for settlement agreements handled by the Office of Corporation Counsel, I was told the request was “not reasonably described”, because the legal office doesn’t organize its files by settlement status. They organize them by party name, docket number, or address.
Think about that for a moment. The law requires settlements to be in the Clerk’s office, organized and publicly available. The city’s response is that its internal filing system doesn’t make it easy. That’s not your problem as a citizen. That’s their problem as a government obligated to follow state law. The legal office created a “needle in a haystack” filing system and hands over the haystack.
It Gets Worse
When I persisted and when I sent requests directly to the legal office, the fire department, and the police department, Corporation Counsel Steven Bolton sent me a letter warning me to stop emailing his office about records requests. He then blocked my email address.
Let that sink in. The chief legal officer of New Hampshire’s second-largest city blocked a citizen’s email to prevent records requests from reaching the office that holds the records. Records that state law already requires to be publicly available.
Why would he do that? Because at the end of November 2025, his office crafted and approved a settlement agreement in a Whistleblower complaint filed with the Department of Labor, including claims of discrimination, harassment, false imprisonment, and mismanagement of Federal HUD funds and reporting. Attorneys Bolton, Leonard, and Mayor Donchess were directly involved in these issues for 5 months. This settlement with unique workplace conditions was in the legal office. Bolton blocked my email, so I could not directly obtain this record. Instead, the office deceived and deflected while I dug deeper until I discovered it. When Legal finally delivered the settlement, it was significantly redacted. I’ve challenged those redactions; the City won’t budge.
Meanwhile, I emailed the Police on March 19th and reached Police Chief Rourke directly. He located relevant settlement agreements within minutes of our phone call and forwarded them to Risk Management. That was on March 23rd. As of this writing, those agreements have still not appeared in the Clerk’s office. They went to the legal office for “review” and vanished.
A Settlement Agreement That Raises Serious Questions
Through persistence, I obtained a copy of a November 2025 settlement agreement between the City and a municipal employee signed by Mayor Jim Donchess himself. This agreement never appeared in the Clerk’s office as required by law.
The agreement contains a clause that I believe every New Hampshire resident should know about: as a condition of settlement, the employee was required to withdraw all open RSA 91-A Right-to-Know requests.
Read that again. The City of Nashua used a publicly mandated settlement agreement, one that state law says must be transparent and accessible, as a mechanism to silence a citizen’s transparency rights under that same law. New Hampshire courts have been crystal clear: private settlement terms cannot override RSA 91-A. You cannot contract away the public’s rights.
This agreement also contains a confidentiality clause in a document that fails to identify that the records are public records under RSA 91-A. This agreement involves a claim under RSA 275-E, New Hampshire’s Whistleblowers’ Protection Act. The Mayor and the legal office certainly didn’t want the public to know about this.
The School District Did It Right
Here’s what makes Nashua’s posture even harder to defend. When I sent the same basic request to the Nashua School District on March 11th, I received responsive records for review within 5 days. Two settlement agreements, ready for inspection, with copies provided.
The same law. The same city. One entity complied promptly and professionally. The other blocked my email. To reach the legal office, I now must use U.S postal mail.
Questions Every Nashua Resident Should Be Asking
- How many settlement agreements has the City of Nashua executed since 2020 that were never placed in the Clerk’s office?
- Who approved these settlements? Did the Board of Aldermen ever vote on them? Were they ever on a public agenda?
- How much public money, including insurance premiums paid by taxpayers, was paid out in settlements the public was never allowed to see?
- If a city employee filed a whistleblower complaint, why was the City hiding what they were blowing the whistle on?
- Why did Community Development have a significant enough internal dispute to require an outside investigator and again, was there a settlement?
- Is the legal office routing all settlement agreements through a “legal review” process specifically designed to delay or prevent public disclosure?
What the Law Actually Says — and Why It Matters
New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know Law exists because the founders of our state constitution understood something fundamental: government that operates in secret is government that cannot be held accountable. Part I, Article 8 of the New Hampshire Constitution guarantees the public’s right to know. RSA 91-A is how the legislature put that guarantee into practice.
The settlement transparency provision, RSA 91-A:4 VI, exists for all the reasons you’d expect. Settlements involve public money. They can mask repeated management failures. They can hide civil rights violations. They can silence whistleblowers. And when they’re kept secret, the voters who elect the officials responsible for these settlements have no way to evaluate whether their leaders are managing the public trust responsibly.
The law uses the word “shall.” That’s not a suggestion.
What Happens Now?
The Right-to-Know Ombudsman’s office, the lower-cost avenue for enforcing RSA 91-A, is currently vacant and nonfunctional after the Legislature gutted its funding. The N.H. AG’s office chose to remain silent. That leaves Superior Court as the only remedy for citizens whose rights are being violated.
I intend to pursue this matter through every available legal channel. But this shouldn’t require a lawsuit. It requires a city government willing to follow a law that couldn’t be more plainly written.
If you live in Nashua or in any New Hampshire municipality, go visit your Clerk’s office. Look at the settlement file. Ask whether what’s there represents everything it should. You might be surprised by how little you find.
And then ask why.
