CONCORD – State legislators are currently mulling legislation regarding Right-to-Know requests – and Nashua activist Laurie Ortolano views some of these bills as a direct response by Nashua leaders stop her from accessing information from the Assessing Department.

Last week, Ortolano and her attorney went to Concord to testify in opposition of House Bill 1170 and House Bill 1307, while they were being heard by the House Judiciary Committee. Ortolano said her lawyer gave opening statements about these bills before allowing her to provide specific examples. Ortolano believes these two bills were assembled because of her Right-to-Know requests submitted to Nashua’s Assessing Department.

“Both these bills are in an effort to answer requests brought forth by Nashua’s recent spate of RTK requests,” Nashua Alderwoman and New Hampshire Rep. Jan Schmidt, D-Nashua, stated via email regarding the matter.

HB 1170

“They were a direct response to my Right-to-Know requests,” Ortolano said. “Most citizens in Nashua don’t understand the assessing process, and we’re at the mercy of the assessors to explain it to us. So, this bill (HB 1170) covered information that’s making certain the request is reasonably described, and it gave a 30-day window within which you could access information within the request.”

The bill Ortolano is referring to states, “‘Reasonably described’ means a document is identified with necessary specificity to allow a public employee to retrieve it without making an extensive search and, at a minimum, by date or range of dates not exceeding 30 days, by type, which means by letter, minutes, or a report, and by title or subject matter.”

In that same email, Schmidt stated that HB 1170 “would simply add a definition to the RTK laws that, though the words are used liberally within the law, “Reasonably Described” is never defined. This caused several complaints by a citizen that too much, too little, or the wrong things were produced.”

Ortolano said this bill would limit the ability of residents to get information, and that to have meaningful data, people are going to want to access information that spans far beyond 30 days.

Schmidt is the one sponsoring this bill. Ortolano believes Schmidt wanted to be able to dismiss requests that are not reasonably described. However, Ortolano also cites how there is specific language involved with assessing that the public does not understand.

Ortolano also believes the public should be allowed to ask the assessors questions.

“This reasonably described language would allow the city to very quickly dismiss requests without ever reaching out or contacting the requester in an attempt to understand what information is being sought,” Ortolano said.

Ortolano said she has been asking assessing officials to provide a list of all reports that are run in assessing. Ortolano said one of the problems is that some information that should be in a report is, but she has no way of knowing the name of a specific report.

Ortolano claims city leaders have denied requests for not being specific enough in describing the report. For months, she has been asking for names of the reports so she can request the specific information.

“This bill would really make the process of information for Right-to-Knows more difficult,” Ortolano said. “It restricts transparency – and to me, it was an aldermanic response.”

Ortolano believes Schmidt was responding in a way to protect employees from Right-to-Know requests, rather than to assist residents and help them understand how they are taxed.

HB 1307

Ortolano is also opposing House Bill 1307, and believes this bill, again, was initiated because of her specific Right-to-Know requests. This legislation relates to the cost of production of records under the Right-to-Know law, allowing public bodies or agencies to charge personnel costs for retrieval of records for certain requesters.

“As the department was undergoing necessary changes, updating systems, and training – managing deadlines was difficult. 1307 was to address the costs to manage those excessive RTK requests, such as overtime and temporary workers, while meeting the time requirements of the law,” Schmidt states in her email.

House Bill 1307 states, “If the production of records for one requester in a calendar month exceeds five person-hours, the public agency shall require the requester to pay the personnel costs required during the month to complete the search and copying tasks.”

“People who don’t have the money are not going to be able to access information, and that would be really unfortunate that those that can afford the costs will be the ones who are able to get public information,” Ortolano said. “This bill would have prevented me from obtaining records that allowed me to uncover all the wrongdoing that was going on in the Nashua Assessing Office to begin with.”

With Ortolano’s requests, she claims there has been a lot of protracted, back-and-forth communication with the city that should have been filled quickly. Ortolano also claims some of her requests took her 20 tries to get the information she wanted. For her, the real issue is the city was never willing to call her to meet and see if together they could narrow the scope, or define what it was she wanted in a way that was productive for both parties. Ortolano said the city was never willing to mitigate any issue to come to an agreement on the best way to proceed to provide the information she was seeking.

Ortolano said Schmidt never reached out to her to speak about what was going on in the last 16 or so months. Ortolano also said this is a public issue that has become significant, and that Schmidt never asked to hear her side. This is something Ortolano said she would like to do.

“I think it’s unfortunate that she’s pushing for legislation to change the entire state because of a specific issue that’s going on in Nashua,” Ortolano said. “The issue in Nashua is the result of really bad practices within our city government to respond to information requested by citizens that should be relatively simple.”

Adam Urquhart may be contacted at 594-1206, or at aurquhart@nashuatelegraph.com.

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