New Hampshire House passes bill that could make public records requests costly

by Annmarie Timmins, New Hampshire Bulletin, February 1, 2024

Requests for public documents, such as those that unearthed the shady sale of public land in Webster and over-inflated taxes in Nashua, could become pricey under a bill that cleared the House Thursday but will go before lawmakers again next week for reconsideration.

House Bill 1002, which passed 193-179, would allow public bodies and agencies to charge up to $25 an hour for record searches that take longer than 10 hours. Under the existing right-to-know law, RSA 91-A, local and state bodies can charge for copying records but not record searches.

The state’s news organizations, the ACLU of New Hampshire, Right to Know NH, and the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy were among those that urged lawmakers to reject the bill, calling it a threat to public accountability and transparency. 

“The core conceptual flaw in HB 1002 is that it treats public records as government property and access to those records as a burden on government employees,” wrote Drew Cline, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center, in a blog post this week. “In fact, public records belong to all citizens, and government employees are merely custodians of those records on behalf of their citizen owners.”