Senate Bill 626 — triggered by towns overwhelmed with AI-fueled data requests — cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee 3–2 this week. But critics warn it would quietly build a wall around New Hampshire government, and that the state that already ranks 49th in public records access can’t afford to fall further.
By Granite State Report
Concord, N.H. – A bill quietly advancing through the New Hampshire Senate would rewrite one of the Granite State’s most fundamental democratic guarantees — the right of any person, anywhere, to request government records from a public body — restricting it exclusively to those who can prove they live here.
Senate Bill 626, sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman William Gannon (R-Sandown), passed out of that same committee on a narrow 3–2 vote this week and now heads to the full Senate floor, where its supporters say it closes a loophole being exploited by data brokers and AI firms, and its opponents say it quietly hands local governments a new tool to duck accountability.
The bill would amend RSA 91-A — New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know Law, the bedrock open-government statute enacted in 1967 — by redefining who may file a records request. Under the bill, a “citizen” eligible to request government records would be defined as “a natural person domiciled or who maintains a permanent place of residence in this state,” and filers would be required to provide sufficient documentation to prove domicile or permanent residence. LegiScan
The implications are sweeping: out-of-state residents, researchers, national advocacy organizations, competing businesses, and — depending on how the bill is finally written — attorneys representing undisclosed clients could all find themselves legally barred from accessing the records of New Hampshire’s town halls, school boards, and state agencies.
What Set This Off: AI, Data Mining, and Overwhelmed Town Halls
Gannon says he was asked to sponsor the bill by the New Hampshire Municipal Association, which has told legislators that towns, cities, and school districts have been inundated with records requests from out-of-state entities with massive data-mining information queries. Concord Monitor The picture supporters paint is of small New Hampshire municipalities — staffed by part-time clerks and volunteer board members — drowning in industrial-scale data extraction campaigns, many of them automated.
Town Administrator Diane Kendall of Henniker said her town gets about a dozen Right-to-Know requests per year, many of them from vendors asking things that are out of the scope of the law, such as accounts payable or bid packages. Concord Monitor That may sound modest, but supporters argue the trend is accelerating as AI tools make mass-scale records harvesting trivially easy and profitable.
Sarah Burke Cohen, a lawyer representing the municipal lobby, argued that the law has used the term “citizen” since 1967 and that the bill would simply clarify that the statute was meant to apply to New Hampshire interests. “The request is being sent to someone who has no ties to New Hampshire, who is not actually holding the government accountable, which is why 91-A has been set up and why the New Hampshire Constitution is written the way it is, for that transparency to be for those that are governed,” she said. Unionleader
Gannon framed the bill as protective of residents rather than restrictive of them: “The bill would ensure that New Hampshire residents retain full access to records under RSA 91-A, while limiting access for those with no ties to the state.” Unionleader
What the Bill Actually Does — and Doesn’t Do
SB 626 contains several carve-outs that its sponsors say address the most obvious concerns. The bill would exempt all news media from restriction, and an amendment makes clear that property owners in New Hampshire could make requests regardless of their residency. Unionleader
But those exceptions have generated their own set of concerns. Who qualifies as “news media”? The bill does not define the term. A national newspaper’s Washington bureau requesting records from Manchester? A national nonprofit investigative outlet examining a NH school contract? A blogger based in Vermont who writes regularly about Coos County politics? The bill leaves those questions open, and critics warn that in practice, those determinations would be made by the same local officials the records are meant to hold accountable.
The committee’s own deliberations illustrated the bill’s internal tensions. Sen. Daryl Abbas (R-Salem) said he wanted to further require in-state lawyers making requests to confirm they were representing a New Hampshire resident, property owner, or business. Sen. Tara Reardon (D-Concord) pushed back: “Why do we care who their client is? I think we are in the weeds and if we want to make sure of all of those things we are going to double the size of this bill.” Unionleader
Even Senate President Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry) — a Republican and a natural ally of the bill’s goals — broke with the committee majority. Carson said she could not support the bill as written: “I would rather get it right than with the explanation that we are going to fix it later.” Unionleader
The committee voted 3–2 to advance it anyway, with Gannon vowing to clean up the language. The Union Leader’s assessment of its prospects: “This concept has bipartisan support in the Senate, so despite Tuesday’s hiccup it still could make it out of the chamber. The path through the House is far less certain since no House members have signed onto the bill.” Unionleader
The Transparency Problem: New Hampshire Already Ranks Near the Bottom
Whatever its intent, the bill arrives at a moment of particular scrutiny for New Hampshire’s record on government transparency — and the numbers are not flattering.
A 2015 nationwide investigation by the Center for Public Integrity into state government and accountability found New Hampshire ranked 34th in overall state integrity and 49th in public access to information. Concord Monitor That was eleven years ago, and while the ACLU of New Hampshire’s legal director, Gilles Bissonnette, has acknowledged the state has made real strides in transparency since then — particularly around police conduct — opponents of SB 626 argue this is precisely the wrong moment to begin narrowing the law’s reach.
“What SB 626 is, is a restriction of our Right-to-Know law,” Bissonnette said. “It does narrow that statute, and from our vantage point, what we should be doing is making the government more transparent and more accountable, not less transparent.” Concord Monitor
Bissonnette also flagged an unresolved constitutional concern: the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act in 2013 after two non-residents filed requests and, after being denied, filed a lawsuit accusing the state of violating the Privileges and Immunities Clause, which generally requires states to treat people from other states equally. Concord Monitor That ruling provides some cover for state residency restrictions, but the doctrine’s contours are contested, and opponents say New Hampshire would be inviting litigation if it pushes this further than Virginia did.
The Spirit of RSA 91-A — and Whether This Bill Violates It
The preamble to RSA 91-A is direct: “Openness in the conduct of public business is essential to a democratic society. The purpose of this chapter is to ensure both the greatest possible public access to the actions, discussions and records of all public bodies, and their accountability to the people.” New Hampshire Law Library
That word — “greatest” — is the one opponents keep returning to. A law written to guarantee the greatest possible public access cannot simultaneously exclude the majority of the American public from exercising that access, they argue. The counterargument, from the bill’s supporters, is that “the people” in the preamble has always meant the people of New Hampshire — those who are governed by the bodies the law covers.
It is, at its core, a philosophical dispute about the nature of democratic accountability: whether government transparency is a right of citizenship in a particular jurisdiction, or a universal democratic norm that transcends residency.
Who Gets Shut Out — And Why That Matters
The practical consequences of SB 626 extend well beyond data miners and AI firms. Consider the range of requests that would become presumptively invalid:
A journalist based in Boston or Burlington investigating a New Hampshire official. A national civil liberties organization researching how Granite State police departments handle misconduct. A parent who owns a vacation home in New Hampshire but maintains their legal domicile in Massachusetts, trying to get school records affecting their child. A business competitor seeking public contracting records from a town in Hillsborough County. An academic researcher at a university outside New Hampshire examining the state’s land use records.
Under SB 626 as introduced, each of those requesters would be told: you do not qualify.
The media exemption matters here — but only for those who can assert credibly that they are “news media,” a term the bill does not define and that local officials would be left to interpret case by case. Small, independent outlets like Granite State Report could face the prospect of their reporting credentials being challenged by the very entities they are investigating.
What Happens Next
SB 626 now moves to the full New Hampshire Senate. No House members have co-sponsored the bill, which is unusual for Senate legislation and may signal resistance on that side of the General Court. Unionleader If it clears the Senate, it would cross over to the House, where its prospects are more uncertain.
Governor Ayotte has not commented on the bill. Her record on transparency is mixed: she has supported expanded police conduct disclosures but has also not moved aggressively to strengthen public records access more broadly. Whether she views SB 626 as a reasonable administrative relief measure or a threat to her administration’s own accountability is an open question.
Gannon has pledged to work on the bill’s language — particularly around the lawyer provision and the definition of news media — before a full Senate vote. What that cleanup looks like could determine whether this bill draws broader Republican support or stalls on the kind of internal GOP resistance that blocked Senate President Carson’s vote at committee.
For now, New Hampshire stands at a crossroads that many states have already navigated. Seven states have already enacted similar residency restrictions on public records access. Concord Monitor Supporters argue that makes New Hampshire’s adoption of SB 626 a matter of bringing the state in line with mainstream practice. Opponents say it means joining a minority of states that have concluded government accountability is a privilege — not a right — that depends on your zip code.
The full Senate vote has not been scheduled.
SB 626 at a Glance
| Bill | Senate Bill 626 (2026 Session) |
| Sponsor | Sen. William Gannon (R-Sandown, Dist. 23) + 6 co-sponsors |
| What it does | Limits RSA 91-A Right-to-Know requests to NH domiciliaries; requires proof of residency; exempts news media and property owners |
| Committee vote | Senate Judiciary, 3–2 to advance |
| Full Senate vote | Not yet scheduled |
| House outlook | Uncertain; no House co-sponsors |
| Constitutional question | Privileges and Immunities Clause; NH Constitution Part 1, Article 8 (open government) |
| NH transparency rank | 49th in public access to information (Center for Public Integrity, 2015) |
Sources: Concord Monitor, Union Leader, LegiScan (SB 626 bill text), NH Municipal Association, ACLU of New Hampshire, NH Law Library (RSA 91-A), Center for Public Integrity.
