{"id":20,"date":"2009-03-28T10:08:44","date_gmt":"2009-03-28T14:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/?p=20"},"modified":"2009-03-28T10:08:44","modified_gmt":"2009-03-28T14:08:44","slug":"whats-the-hold-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/?p=20","title":{"rendered":"Access to Information – What\u2019s the Hold Up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you want to keep up to date with what’s going on in Town politics you have\u00a0 few options. Attend the meetings, watch CATV, catch the rerun, or read the minutes of the meeting. The later is, according to state law, the only legally binding record.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

RSA 91-A Section A:2
\n<\/strong><\/span>II. Subject to the provisions of RSA 91-A:3, all meetings, whether held in person, by means of telephone or electronic communication, or in any other manner, shall be open to the public. Except for town meetings, school district meetings, and elections, no vote while in open session may be taken by secret ballot. Any person shall be permitted to use recording devices, including, but not limited to, tape recorders, cameras, and videotape equipment, at such meetings. Minutes of all such meetings, including names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, and a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions, shall be promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting, except as provided in RSA 91-A:6, and shall be treated as permanent records of any public body<\/strong>, or any subordinate body thereof, without exception<\/strong>. Link to the law<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

According to the RSA’s the permanent record ‘without exception’ are the minutes available 5 days after a meeting. Why do we have to wait for these minutes to be “approved”? Most boards, Town Council, School Board, etc will not publish their minutes on-line until they have been approved at a future meeting. In many cases this can take weeks or even months before these documents are easily accessible to the public.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, you could take off work early to get a copy of the minutes, sometimes you can\u00a0get them through email. <\/span><\/p>\n

But if you\u00a0want to get them from the Town or School website you can wait weeks sometimes months. Many times when the information is published\u00a0it is dated and the decisions\u00a0have already been made.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So\u00a0if these minutes are the “permanent record without exception” it would seem there is no approval needed. If an error is found in the minutes they should be amended at a future meeting.<\/span><\/p>\n

A look at what’s available today, March 28th 2009, from the Boards that post minutes on the Town and School websites:<\/span><\/p>\n

Town Council – 3\/2\/2009
\nBudget Committee – 2\/6\/2009
\nConservation Commission – 3\/10\/2009
\nHeritage Commission – 11\/12\/2008
\nArt Council – Has a link to minutes, but the page is blank
\nInternational Exchange – 9\/17\/2007
\nPlanning Board – 2\/11\/2009
\nRecreation Commission – April 2008
\nSolid Waste Advisory Committee – 1\/29\/2009
\nZoning Board of Adjustment – 2\/18\/2009
\nSchool Board – 2\/6\/2009<\/span><\/p>\n

Knowledge is power. Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)<\/span><\/p>\n

So what’s the hold up?<\/span><\/span><\/dt>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to keep up to date with what’s going on in Town politics you have\u00a0 few options. Attend the meetings, watch CATV, catch the rerun, or read the minutes of the meeting. The later is, according to state law, the only legally binding record. RSA 91-A Section A:2…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}