A crusader for the public's right to know

The Concord Monitor asks how much of what goes on at Town Hall should the public have the right to know?

The short answer: nearly everything.

Trouble is, reasonable - and sometimes unreasonable - people can disagree over the specifics. In New Hampshire and across the country, there will always be public officials working hard to keep the public's business from the public. That's where lawyers like Bill Chapman come in. And thank goodness.

Chapman, who has long represented the Concord Monitor and other news organizations, will receive the annual First Amendment Award this evening from the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications in Manchester. Chapman, who has fought for open government in New Hampshire for nearly four decades, is well deserving of the honor. The beneficiaries of his hard work, after all, are each and every resident of the state - citizens who have the right and ability to learn more about the workings of their government and court system because of his efforts.

A Victory for Right To Know

While we're in the mood to praise state government, we would like to thank the Attorney General's Office for their swift cooperation in releasing the full investigative file in the complaint by Pan Am Systems against the Milford/Bennington Railroad, simply known as the Leishman Railroad Lease.

Associate Attorney General Ann Rice followed through on her promise to provide the entire file in an electronic format within a week. Today, I picked up a CD with the over 200 pages of correspondence and notes, with only two cell phone numbers redacted. The AG's Office charged us $1.00. This is how public information requests should be handled by state government, and we thank Attorney Rice for her diligence in exceeding the standards of New Hampshire's Right to Know Law.

We will upload the entire file shortly, and make it available for review online. Analyzing the investigation will take longer, as there is a lot of source material to examine.

On a side note, Attorney Rice added a cover letter to the file. It was on Kelly Ayotte's letterhead, with her name blacked out and Micahel Delaney's typed neatly in its place. We salute the Attorney General's Office for its frugality.