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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Local governments and school boards are pushing for a new state law that would allow them to charge for the time it takes to respond to public records requests under the Right to Know law, potentially making it much more expensive for members of the public to access those records.
The House delayed action Wednesday on the bill and it likely won't come back to the floor until next year, but lawmakers on both sides of the issue say there is an important conversation to be had about how records are kept and given out.
Advocates for new pricing say it is a modest proposal that appropriately asks people filing the requests to cover the cost rather than shifting it onto taxpayers. But opponents say making obtaining the records more expensive inhibits the public's right to know.
"I think the citizens have a right to access those records and inspect those records at no charge," David Saad, a Rumney resident who has been in a dispute with the school district, testified to lawmakers.
The bill's prime sponsor, Democratic Rep. Patrick Long of Manchester, said he does not plan on trying to revive the bill this year but hopes to continue a dialogue on the issue.
New Hampshire's Right to Know law allows access to meeting minutes or government records of any state agency or public body, including the Legislature, boards of selectmen, school boards and the governor with the Executive Council. The governor's office itself is exempt from the law, although it still must provide information under the state Constitution. Efforts are underway in the Senate to explicitly include the governor and legislative leaders in the Right to Know law.
Existing law allows public bodies to charge for the costs of making copies of any documents, but the proposal before the House would add the ability to charge up to the minimum wage, or $7.25, per hour spent fulfilling the requests. It would not have allowed any charges for the first hour or to gather any meeting minutes created within the past year.
School board members and boards of selectmen say responding to requests can often take multiple staff members away from performing other duties the taxpayers pay them to complete.
Lorrie Carey, a former state representative and Merrimack Valley School Board member, said she supports being able to charge more because the district gets requests "almost daily" that require significant time and research. One request ended up being 300 pages of records that were never picked up, she said.
The district already charges 25 to 30 cents per page to print, meaning a 300-page request would cost $90 already without the labor costs attached. Spending at least five hours responding to a request would cost an additional $30, and many requests can take more than that depending on what information is sought, assistant superintendent Chris Barry said.
The New Hampshire Municipal Association and New Hampshire School Boards Association both support the new charges, as do a number of boards of selectmen. The New Hampshire Press Association and American Civil Liberties Union oppose it.
"Nobody questions Right to Know being a valid thing," said Republic Rep. David Hess of Hooksett, a co-sponsor of the bill. "There have been a number of abuses, and the abuses are getting more frequent and the abuses are a significant burden on taxpayers."
But opponents say charging for public information creates a slippery slope that could make it harder for people to access records and give public bodies a way to shield information.
Concord lawyer Bill Chapman, who has represented newspapers, suggested that lawmakers create a committee to study how public bodies record and store public information to better understand why some of the requests take so much work.
"I've got this notion of garbage in, garbage out," Chapman said. "If you don't organize something when it comes in or when it's created, then obviously it's going to take you a long time to find it when someone asks for it."
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