City of Manchester Has Not Published Board of Alderman Minutes Online for Two Months
The Office of the City Clerk of Manchester, New Hampshire has not published the minutes of the Board of Mayor and Alderman on its online webpage for two months. The latest available minutes of meetings are for November 19, 2019.
There is no requirement in the City Charter that requires that the City Clerk or the Board of Mayor and Aldermen keep minutes, accurate or otherwise. The Board of the School Committee minutes are notorious for elisions, according to critics.
RSA 91a, the state’s right-to-know law, is not mentioned in the City Charter. One of the few state laws referenced in the section of the Charter dealing with the machinations of Manchester’s municipal government is RSA 21 J:35, regulating the setting of property tax rates by the New Hampshire Commissioner of Revenue Administration.
RSA 91a does not require that the minutes of organs of municipal governments be posted online, only that the minutes be kept in a public place, and ready for public inspection.
The failure of the City Clerk’s Office to post minutes online may be part of a move among municipal governments to limit public access to government documents. This is occurring in Nashua, according to right-to-know advocates. State Rep. Jan Schmidt, a Democrat from the Gate City, introduced a bill that would allow cities and towns to charge RTK requesters for the labor of government officials to gather information.
Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess, a Democrat who supported Pete Buttigieg for President during he New Hampshire Primary, is supportive of charging citizens the cost of the labor of city employers to fulfill RTK requests. RTK advocates claim that this would severely limit the ability of citizens to search for documents revealing malfeasance, as happened in Nashua with its Board of Tax Assessors.
