New Hampshire Affirms Right-to-Know Law

The New Hampshire Supreme Court ordered an umbrella organization representing municipalities and schools to release individual salary records to a firefighters' union that tracks the organization's use of taxpayer money paid for health insurance.

Affirming the state's Right-to-Know Law, a unanimous court said public access gives direct insight into the operations of a public body through scrutiny of wages paid to particular job titles.

"Public scrutiny can expose corruption, incompetence, inefficiency, prejudice and favoritism," Chief Justice John Broderick wrote.

Read more here.

New Englanders Favor Open Government

A recent poll commissioned by The New England First Amendment Coalition (NEFAC) and conducted by the University of New Hampshire's Survey Center shows the vast majority of New Englanders believe having open access to the workings of government is important to citizen and favor strengthening laws to protect access, such as making government agencies pay any legal bills necessary to open public records.  

Among the findings:

• One in four respondents strongly believe that public business in their community is done out of public view.
• The majority in the six-state region believe the news media seeks out public information useful to citizens. But one in four people polled disagreed, 14 percent strongly.
• Most citizens have not asked for a public record in the last 12 months and, of those who did, 87 percent said they got what they asked for. 
• A plurality of respondents said they were familiar with the workings of their state's open records laws.
• On the whole, New Englanders are satisfied with the response of state and local government to citizen requests for access, but they remain skeptical of government motives.

Get the full report here and more from NFOIC here.