Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

Seven Laws Changed New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know Statute Since 2024. Here Is Every Word That Moved.

The two changes signed in 2026 are narrow. The rule that can put a price on a large email request dates to 2024. The office that rules on fee fights has no one in it, and the attorney general’s 2024 guide predates all seven acts.

On July 2, 2026, Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed two bills that rewrote parts of RSA 91-A, New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know Law. One swapped a single word, twice. The other gave local governments a new way to answer some records requests: hand over the address of a state-designated website.

Neither bill came out of nowhere. HB 164, the website bill, was introduced in January 2025 and cleared four committee votes without a single no. SB 575, which carried the one-word change, was introduced in January 2026 and cleared its committees 5-0 and 18-0. Both passed each chamber on voice votes after months on the public calendar.

They are also not the changes most requesters will feel. Seven acts have changed the chapter since the attorney general’s office released its 2024 Right-to-Know memorandum on March 14, 2024. The one that can put a price on a request came in 2024. The office lawmakers created in 2022 to settle right-to-know complaints, which the 2024 fee law also points to, lost its first and only ombudsman in July 2025 and has sat empty since, according to the New Hampshire Bulletin. Anyone working from the 2024 memorandum, or from memory, is reading a law that has moved.

Seven acts, in order

The table lists each act by the date it was signed and the date it took effect, as recorded in the chaptered laws of the New Hampshire General Court.

Source: chaptered laws and bill dockets, New Hampshire General Court. The enacted text of every change, word for word, is on GSR’s companion page, RSA 91-A Redline: Every Change Since the Attorney General’s March 2024 Memorandum.

The count covers the text of RSA 91-A itself. Other chapters carry their own exemptions: the same 2025 budget bill extended a workers’ compensation records exemption to the state’s compensation appeals board and made records of the voluntary gambling self-exclusion list confidential.

What changed in 2026

SB 575 touched one exemption. RSA 91-A:5, V shields the Department of Education’s certification files but requires the department to release certification status. The act replaced “teacher” with “educator” in both places and took effect the day it was signed. The final act, retitled in the House in May, also covers school bullying and superintendent services.

HB 164 did more, and most of it sits outside RSA 91-A. It has the director of the state’s Division of Archives and Records Management designate a public website for local electronic records, with the municipal records board’s approval. It lets municipalities store electronic records on that site, and a municipality that does so need not keep another copy if it gives the public at least one free way to reach the site. It appropriates $50,000 for the fiscal year that ends June 30, 2027, to build and maintain the site. Its sponsors included Rep. Bob Lynn of Windham, a retired chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court who chairs the House Judiciary Committee.

The Right-to-Know change is one clause. Paragraph IV(a) of RSA 91-A:4 already required an agency to make an immediately available record available for inspection and copying. HB 164 kept that duty and added an alternative.

Read plainly, the new option covers one situation: a record already uploaded to the state-designated site under RSA 33-A:5-a, III. It does not let an agency answer with its own website or with a record nobody has posted. The act sets no deadline for the site to go live, does not say what happens if the site is down or the record cannot be found there, and says nothing about requests pending on the day it took effect. That is a reading of the text, not legal advice. Until a site is designated and a record is on it, the option has nothing to point to.

The rule that costs money is from 2024

The change most likely to show up on a requester’s bill came from HB 1002, signed June 14, 2024, and in force since August 13, 2024. It added two paragraphs to RSA 91-A:4 and made four smaller changes to paragraph IV.

Paragraph VIII lets an agency charge a reasonable fee of no more than $1 per electronic communication when a request covers more than 250 of them, on top of the actual cost of any copy. The first 250 carry no charge. An email and the replies under one subject line count as one communication, and attachments count with their email. A text or chat thread on one topic counts as one until it passes 50 messages, and each further block of 50 counts as another. The charge can apply whether the records arrive on paper or electronically.

Two more lines in paragraph VIII carry weight. Each public body or agency must create a policy for these charges, including a waiver for requesters who are indigent or can show financial hardship. Multiple requests from the same person or entity to the same public body within 30 days count as one request, so a large email request split into smaller pieces inside that window still counts as one.

Paragraph IX makes the waiver mandatory in two cases: when the requester is indigent under the federal poverty line, or when disclosure is in the public interest because it is likely to add significantly to public understanding of government and is not primarily in the requester’s commercial interest. The paragraph then carves out a class of news publishers, defined by professional news standards and by not serving mainly as a platform for a special interest, government, individual, or cause. The text does not say what the carve-out does. One reading frees news outlets from the commercial-interest test; another leaves them outside the mandatory waiver. The careful definition of who qualifies fits the first reading better, but the statute does not settle it. Either way, it is a fee rule. It gives no requester, news outlet or otherwise, more access to records than anyone else.

In paragraph IV, the rule against charging for inspection or for delivery without copying now carries an exception for paragraph VIII charges. An agency that answers with a written time estimate must now itemize any paragraph VIII cost, and it may suggest a reasonable change in scope that would produce the records more efficiently and affordably. An agency that releases exempt information is shielded from civil damages if it tried in good faith to redact and did not act wantonly or recklessly; redaction software used with spot checks counts as good faith.

Fee disputes have their own route. Paragraph VIII lets a requester who thinks an estimate is unreasonable, or that a waiver was wrongly denied, seek relief under RSA 91-A:7-b. It puts the burden on the public body to show the cost is reasonable and requires a determination within 10 business days. RSA 91-A:7-b is the ombudsman’s complaint section, and it also preserves the option of going to superior court.

An office saved on paper

The attorney general’s 2024 memorandum noted that the ombudsman provisions were set to sunset on July 1, 2025, unless the Legislature acted. Lawmakers acted in the 2025 budget trailer bill, HB 2. Section 207 repealed the sunset effective June 30, 2025. Section 206, effective July 1, 2025, moved the office from the Department of State to the new Office of State and Public Sector Labor Relations and wrote the ombudsman’s pay into RSA 91-A:7-a: a $200 stipend each biweekly payroll cycle for work outside scheduled sessions, $400 for each day devoted to the office, $50 an hour for drafting final decisions, and reimbursed expenses.

The statute survived. The ombudsman did not stay. The New Hampshire Bulletin reported that the money for the job’s pay and expenses fell from $105,000 to $30,000, that Thomas Kehr, the state’s first ombudsman, resigned in July 2025, and that Ayotte had not nominated a replacement a year later. With the seat empty, no one holds the office that RSA 91-A:7-b directs to rule on complaints. GSR reported on the empty seat in July 2026.

The quick lane the Legislature built for fee fights runs through an office with no one in it. A requester handed a per-email bill can still petition superior court, and RSA 91-A:7 directs judges to move these cases up the docket. Court still costs the money and time the ombudsman route was created to save.

Meetings, minutes, and lottery winners

HB 265, signed June 23, 2025, and also co-sponsored by Lynn, requires the minutes of every public body meeting, nonpublic sessions included, to record the start time, the end time, and the name of the person who produced the minutes. The bill’s title spoke of the recording secretary; the enacted text requires the name of whoever produced the minutes.

HB 1125, signed July 3, 2024, added RSA 91-A:2-c. County commissions and county delegations must allow public comment from county residents during a period the chair designates. Every resident who wants to speak gets at least three minutes, and every speaker gets the same time.

HB 485, signed August 1, 2025, added RSA 91-A:5-b. A lottery winner who asks in writing can keep the lottery commission from releasing the winner’s name, town or residence, prize date, and prize amounts, if the winner is a domestic violence victim, holds an active restraining order against another person, or wins a superior court petition for good cause. The petition can be filed under a pseudonym.

What did not pass

The biggest proposed rewrite never came off the table. SB 626 would have limited requests to people domiciled or keeping a permanent residence in New Hampshire and required proof. The Senate Judiciary Committee recommended an amended version 3-2. On March 12, 2026, the Senate tabled it on a voice vote after its prime sponsor, Sen. Bill Gannon of Sandown, moved to lay it on the table. The docket shows no action after that. GSR covered SB 626 while it was pending.

Other right-to-know bills stalled too. HB 1587, which would have made police body-worn camera footage subject to the law, went to interim study, and so did HB 1746 on taxpayer-funded investigations. HB 74, which would have defined “citizen” for the law, ended with an inexpedient-to-legislate finding in the House. GSR reported on the body camera bill in July 2026.

When the law changes while a request is open

Both 2026 acts took effect on dates written into them. SB 575 took effect on passage, July 2, 2026. HB 164 took effect 60 days after passage, which the chaptered law records as August 31, 2026. Neither act says how it applies to a request already pending on its effective date. Whether a new procedure reaches an open request is a question for a lawyer or a court.

For most requests the question stays academic. SB 575’s word swap matters only to requests for Department of Education certification records. HB 164’s option works only for records on the designated site. If an agency answers with a web address, confirm that it points to the state-designated site and that the record you asked for is there. If it does not, a plain reading sends the request back to paragraph IV: within five business days the agency must produce the record, deny it in writing with the specific exemption and a brief explanation, or give a written estimate of the time it needs and the reason for the delay.

The fee rules have been in force since August 13, 2024. Paragraph VIII covers requests for electronic communications; on a plain reading, a request for reports, contracts, or other records that are not emails or messages is not one. Before paying any per-communication charge, ask for the itemized estimate the statute requires and for the public body’s fee policy. GSR’s working guide to RSA 91-A walks through the rest of the request clock.

The guide is older than the law

The attorney general’s 2024 memorandum predates all seven acts, and the gaps are specific. Its discussion of copying costs states the no-charge rule for records delivered electronically without the paragraph VIII exception. Its ombudsman section warns of a sunset the Legislature repealed. Its list of what minutes must include has no start time, end time, or name of whoever produced them. Its summary of the youth development center claims exemption points settlement agreements to RSA 91-A:4, IV and says “would constitute a violation,” where RSA 91-A:5, XIII points to paragraph VI and says “would not constitute.”

A dated guide still helps, as long as the reader knows its date. Since 2024 the statute has let agencies bill for large email requests and has pointed fee fights to the ombudsman’s complaint process, and that seat has been empty since July 2025. Until someone fills it, a requester fighting a per-email bill has one referee, and it sits in superior court. Read the current statute before trusting any summary of it, this one included.

— Dexter Dow, Granite State Report

Fact check

Editor’s note. The statutory comparisons above rest on the chaptered laws, bill dockets, and statute text published by the New Hampshire General Court and on the Attorney General’s 2024 Right-to-Know memorandum; see the fact-check table. The ombudsman budget, resignation, and nomination details rest on the New Hampshire Bulletin’s reporting; the seat’s status in September 2026 rests on a Concord Monitor column published Sept. 12, 2026. The readings of HB 164 and RSA 91-A:4, IX are Granite State Report’s reading of the text, not legal advice. Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly, at the top of the article, and notes what changed and when.