Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NHWhich New Hampshire public bodies meet their duties under the Right-to-Know Law, which do not, and the document behind every line.
The office New Hampshire built to hear right-to-know complaints has had nobody in the chair for more than a year. Granite State Report has located no state agency that keeps a running count of how the law is obeyed, and no statute requires one to. So a reader who wants to know which town answered in five days and which took five months has to go and build that record by hand.
This is one attempt at it. The page has two halves, and the difference between them is the whole point. The first half holds findings by a tribunal: cases where the state’s own Right-to-Know Ombudsman decided that a public body broke the law. Granite State Report is not a party to any of them. The second half holds GSR’s own correspondence with public bodies, measured against four duties the statute spells out, with the document behind each line named. In that half GSR or its editor is the requester, and this page says so at the top of it rather than burying it at the bottom. Where the editor is also a named subject of the records, the entry says that at its top too.
Bodies that meet the duty are listed as meeting it, and three of the six named below met every test applied to them. A record that only collects failures is a grievance, not a record.
| 7Bodies with a finding against them | 6Bodies in GSR’s documented record | 2Duties not met in that record |
The four duties
Every body in the documented half is measured against the same four duties, in the same order. Three of them come straight out of one paragraph of the statute. The fourth is the body’s own word.
| Duty | Statute | What it requires |
|---|---|---|
| Five-day response | RSA 91-A:4, IV(b) | Within 5 business days of a request, a public body must make the record available, deny the request, or provide a written statement of the time reasonably necessary to determine whether the request shall be granted or denied and the reason for the delay, with an itemized cost estimate if a charge would be incurred under paragraph VIII. The period is time to decide, not time to produce. |
| Written exemption statement | RSA 91-A:4, IV(c) | A body denying a request in whole or in part must provide a written statement of the specific exemption authorizing the withholding and a brief explanation of how the exemption applies to the record withheld. |
| Fees | RSA 91-A:4, IV(d) and VIII | No cost or fee may be charged for inspection or delivery without copying, whether paper, electronic, or other form, except the per-electronic-communication charge paragraph VIII allows beyond 250 communications. Copies are at actual cost. |
| Kept its own date | RSA 91-A:4, IV(b)(3) | Where a body answers with a written statement of the time reasonably necessary, that stated date is the body’s own commitment. GSR records whether it was met. |
“(b) If a public body or agency is unable to make a governmental record available for immediate inspection and copying the public body or agency shall, within 5 business days of a request:
(1) Make such record available;
(2) Deny the request; or
(3) Provide a written statement of the time reasonably necessary to determine whether the request shall be granted or denied and the reason for the delay, and an itemized estimate of the cost of making the record available if a charge would be incurred under paragraph VIII.”
Read RSA 91-A:4 →
Read the numbering, because it carries weight. The itemized cost estimate belongs to option three alone. And the five days are time to decide, not time to produce: a body may answer inside the week with a written statement of the time reasonably necessary and the reason for the delay, and name a date months out. Whether the time it names is reasonably necessary is a judgment the statute leaves open and this page does not make. What this page records is whether the body then kept the date it set, which is its own word rather than the statute’s.
One point gets misstated constantly, including on printed forms handed to people at police counters. The access provision, RSA 91-A:4, I, runs to “Every citizen” and draws no distinction among them. There is no press tier. Paragraph IX of the same section does name a category of news organizations, and it does so for one purpose only, to carve them out of the public-interest fee waiver. It bears on cost, never on who may see a record.
Adjudicated
Compiled from the decisions posted by the John W. King New Hampshire Law Library, a page headed “Selected Orders and Decisions.” That collection holds 41 documents across 34 dockets, the newest docketed RKO 2024-015. The Ombudsman’s own first annual report counts 75 cases filed between January 27, 2023 and December 31, 2024, running to docket RKO 2024-038, and 11 more filed between January 1 and April 14, 2025. This tier is therefore a floor, not a total. Every entry below was read in the decision document itself. The posted decisions →
Recordings of five meetings were lawfully destroyed once the minutes were approved, but the February 9, 2023 recording was requested before those minutes were approved and should have been released.
The decision: “the RKO concludes that a violation has occurred”
Remedy. Declaratory. No affirmative order.
The decision finds a violation but names no subsection in the sentence that finds it. The analysis runs on RSA 91-A:4, II and III-b together with RSA 33-A:3-a, LXXX, which is why those are listed as the provisions at issue rather than as provisions found violated. Whether this decision was appealed or complied with is not stated in the posted record.The bureau missed the five-business-day deadline on requests of January 17 and March 20, 2023. The substance of the eventual responses was lawful because the records were exempt.
The decision: “The RKO concludes that a violation occurred”
Remedy. None. The respondent was cautioned to be mindful of the five-day provisions.
Whether this decision was appealed or complied with is not stated in the posted record.The trustees never answered a May 2, 2023 minutes request in any of the three ways the statute allows and did not produce July 11, 2023 minutes in time. The board also relied improperly on a nonpublic-session exemption to close part of a June 13, 2023 meeting concerning the reputation of one of its own members. Four other allegations failed for want of proof.
The decision: “which constitutes a violation of the statute”
Remedy. An adjudicative proceeding on RSA 91-A:8 remedies was scheduled for July 10, 2024.
Two further provisions appear in the decision and are not listed above, because neither was found violated. RSA 91-A:4, IV(a) is reached only inside a conditional: if the minutes were immediately available, then IV(a) required them to be provided immediately. And the decision says the board “improperly relied upon” a nonpublic-session exemption, which it prints as RSA 91-A:3, II (b) while the analysis and the pleading both address paragraph II(c). GSR quotes the citation as printed and notes the discrepancy rather than correcting the tribunal. No document showing the outcome of that sanctions hearing appears in the posted collection.The district failed to respond in time, and in the manner required, to Laconia Daily Sun requests of May 15 and June 21, 2023, including a request for an investigation report concerning the superintendent.
The decision: “the District violated the provisions of RSA 91-A: 4 by not timely responding”
Remedy. Costs and fees denied. The claimant did not show the complaint was necessary to enforce compliance or that the violation was purposeful under RSA 91-A:8, I.
Whether this decision was appealed or complied with is not stated in the posted record.The town answered the claimant’s questions promptly but never addressed the document requests inside his August 14, 2023 communication in any of the three statutory ways, and produced no records.
The decision: “that would constitute a violation of RSA 91-A”
Remedy. None. The violation was found not purposeful and not in bad faith; no sanctions and no remedial training. The complaint was also found not brought in bad faith.
Whether this decision was appealed or complied with is not stated in the posted record.The district missed the five-business-day deadline on an October 2, 2023 request, and the response it eventually gave neither granted the request, denied it, nor supplied a written time estimate with a reason.
The decision: “the 5- business day response deadline … was violated” Quoted as printed in the April 12, 2024 decision, including its spacing; the omitted words are the citation to RSA 91-A:4, IV(b)(1)-(3).
Remedy. Motions to dismiss denied; cross-requests for costs and fees reserved pending a further proceeding.
Former RKO 2023-028 was consolidated into this docket and dismissed; former RKO 2023-027 survived. Reconsideration denied May 16, 2024. No later document appears in the posted collection.Read the decision → · The companion order of May 16, 2024, denying reconsideration →
The department never entered an appearance or filed a proper answer, and gave the claimant no response at all to an October 26, 2023 request until after the complaint was filed.
The decision: “the Department has violated the provisions of RSA 91-A: 4, IV (b)”
Remedy. None.
The decision also cites RSA 91-A:7-b, II. The date line on the posted decision was left blank. The text places it more than two weeks after a procedural order of December 18, 2023. Whether this decision was appealed or complied with is not stated in the posted record.Decided against a body, but not a violation finding
Four more matters went against the public body without the Ombudsman writing that the law was broken. They are separated out here on purpose. A page that quietly folds them into the count above is doing the thing it accuses agencies of doing.
| Docket | Body | What happened | Why it is not in Tier One |
|---|---|---|---|
| RKO 2023-004 May 26, 2023 | Town of Milford | Decided against the town. The board placed the stated need for an August 12, 2022 emergency meeting in sealed nonpublic minutes; the Ombudsman held the need must be spelled out to the public. | The decision resolves the only question against the town but never uses the word violation. GSR does not list it as a violation finding. |
| RKO 2024-002 April 16, 2024 | City of Franklin | A conditional default was entered against the city after it failed to appear at an April 15, 2024 prehearing conference, to become final judgment for the claimant unless stricken. | A default is not a finding on the merits, and no final outcome appears in the posted collection. |
| RKO 2023-011 October 8, 2023 | N.H. Department of Health and Human Services | The Ombudsman rejected the department’s exemption claims and held the hearing officers’ rulings subject to disclosure. He declined to decide timeliness, wrote that he did not find the department knew or should have known it was acting in violation, and denied fees. | A substantive loss for the agency, but the decision contains no violation finding. |
| RKO 2023-013 February 12, 2024 | Town of Hudson Police Department | On in camera review the redactions were upheld and the department was found to have applied the balancing test properly, but the Ombudsman wrote that the initial complete denial was not an appropriate response. | Partial and expressly not final. Nothing further appears in the posted collection. |
Cleared
Bodies the Ombudsman examined and did not fault. They belong on a record about compliance as much as the failures do.
| Docket | Body | Date | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| RKO 2023-003 | Town of Newbury | July 1, 2023 | Town complied with the request; no violation. |
| RKO 2023-026 | Wolfeboro Police Commission and Carroll County Attorney’s Office | March 10, 2024 | No violation by either respondent; redactions upheld. |
| RKO 2024-003 | Milton School District | June 4, 2024 | Dismissed. RSA 91-A:5, IX is an exemption, not a prohibition. |
| RKO 2024-015 | Town of Chester | May 15, 2024 | No violation. Meeting notice was not so vague as to violate the statute. |
| RKO 2023-001 | N.H. Department of Transportation | July 8, 2023 | In camera review: 744 pages properly withheld as exempt. |
Documented
Granite State Report’s own record of correspondence with each body. GSR or its editor is the requester in every matter in this tier, and an entry in which the editor is a named subject of the records says so first. Nothing here is a legal finding. Each line rests on a dated document, and the four tests are applied the same way to every body.
Across the bodies named below, 9 of the duties tested were met, 2 were not, and 2 remain open. Two things are worth saying about that before anyone reads it as a finding about New Hampshire. It is four bodies with a measurable clock, all of them correspondents GSR chose to write to. And it points the opposite way from Tier One above, where six of the seven adjudicated violations are failures of that same five-day duty.
The honest version of the observation is narrow and still interesting. In GSR’s own file, every body whose clock could be measured answered inside five days. Both failures came afterward and both are exemption statements: one department withheld records naming no exemption at all, and another refused five items on a single statutory citation without saying how it applied to any of them. The duty agencies fail badly enough to end up before a tribunal is the same one they meet when a reporter is holding a stopwatch. That is a pattern worth watching. It is not yet a finding, and this page will not call it one until the record is wide enough to carry it.
Disclosure. This request bears in part on a matter involving Dexter Dow, editor of Granite State Report, and in part on how the Department applies the standard generally. This entry is held to the same four tests as every other.
| Duty | Result | What the documents show |
|---|---|---|
| Five-day response RSA 91-A:4, IV(b) | Met | Request sent August 4, 2026. Written response from the Civil Bureau August 7, 2026, the third business day. |
| Written exemption statement RSA 91-A:4, IV(c) | Not tested | The production covered the request; GSR has not identified a withholding to test. |
| Fees RSA 91-A:4, IV(d) and VIII | Met | No fee was quoted or charged. |
| Kept its own date RSA 91-A:4, IV(b)(3) | Met | The Department stated September 16, 2026 and produced 583 pages that day. |
The Attorney General’s office met every test GSR applied.
Documents behind this entry. Request of August 4, 2026; Department letters of August 7 and September 16, 2026; production of 583 pages.| Duty | Result | What the documents show |
|---|---|---|
| Five-day response RSA 91-A:4, IV(b) | Not tested | The request date is not in GSR’s record, so the five-business-day period cannot be computed. No result is stated. |
| Written exemption statement RSA 91-A:4, IV(c) | Not tested | No withholding identified. |
| Fees RSA 91-A:4, IV(d) and VIII | Met | No fee was quoted or charged. |
| Kept its own date RSA 91-A:4, IV(b)(3) | Not tested | The office made no written statement of the time reasonably necessary, so there is no stated date of its own to measure. |
Records arrived two days after the acknowledgment. The request date is not in GSR’s email record, so no elapsed time is stated.
Documents behind this entry. Acknowledgment of September 2, 2026; production of September 4, 2026.Disclosure. Some of the records sought in these requests concern Dexter Dow, editor of Granite State Report, and some do not. This entry is held to the same four tests as every other.
| Duty | Result | What the documents show |
|---|---|---|
| Five-day response RSA 91-A:4, IV(b) | Met | Request of August 21, 2026; written response August 26, 2026, the third business day. |
| Written exemption statement RSA 91-A:4, IV(c) | Not tested | GSR has not identified a withholding to test on this record. |
| Fees RSA 91-A:4, IV(d) and VIII | Met | The department stated in writing there are no charges for the material provided. |
| Kept its own date RSA 91-A:4, IV(b)(3) | Not tested | The department made no written statement of the time reasonably necessary, so there is no stated date of its own to measure. |
Disclosure. Dexter Dow, editor of Granite State Report, is the named subject of the records sought in this request. He requests records about himself and reports on them the way he would on anyone else. This entry is held to the same four tests as every other.
| Duty | Result | What the documents show |
|---|---|---|
| Five-day response RSA 91-A:4, IV(b) | Met | Request received July 30, 2026; acknowledgment with an estimate August 6, 2026, the fifth business day. |
| Written exemption statement RSA 91-A:4, IV(c) | Not met | Five items were refused on a single citation to RSA 159-D:2 with no statement of how that exemption applies to each record withheld, which is what RSA 91-A:4, IV(c) requires. |
| Fees RSA 91-A:4, IV(d) and VIII | Met | No fee was quoted. |
| Kept its own date RSA 91-A:4, IV(b)(3) | Pending | The Department set December 16, 2026 for the sixth item, 139 days after the request. That date has not arrived. |
Answered on the last day the statute allows, then set a date four and a half months out.
Documents behind this entry. Request of July 30, 2026; Department acknowledgment of August 6, 2026; GSR letter of August 29, 2026; Department letter of September 4, 2026.| Duty | Result | What the documents show |
|---|---|---|
| Five-day response RSA 91-A:4, IV(b) | Met | Request of June 4, 2026; chief’s written response June 9, 2026, the third business day. |
| Written exemption statement RSA 91-A:4, IV(c) | Not met | Internal-investigation and discipline records were withheld with no cited exemption and no explanation of how one applies. |
| Fees RSA 91-A:4, IV(d) and VIII | Not tested | No fee was quoted on this request. |
| Kept its own date RSA 91-A:4, IV(b)(3) | Not tested | The department set no date of its own. |
The department’s printed request form told requesters that staff would contact them within ten business days. The statute requires a response in five.
Documents behind this entry. Requests of June 4, 2026; department form; chief’s letter of June 9, 2026.| Duty | Result | What the documents show |
|---|---|---|
| Five-day response RSA 91-A:4, IV(b) | Not tested | The request date is not in GSR’s email record and is not stated here. |
| Written exemption statement RSA 91-A:4, IV(c) | Not tested | No withholding identified on this record. |
| Fees RSA 91-A:4, IV(d) and VIII | Open question | The department quoted a $20 charge for an 8GB USB drive carrying audio recordings. RSA 91-A:4, IV(d) permits the actual cost of providing a copy. Whether $20 is the actual cost of that drive is a question GSR has put to the department. |
| Kept its own date RSA 91-A:4, IV(b)(3) | Not tested | No date was set by the department. |
What is kept off this list
A list is defined as much by what it refuses to carry.
- Nothing is kept off because it concerns the editor. Dexter Dow requests records about himself and reports on them the way he would on anyone else, and a public body owes him the same duties it owes any requester. Where the records sought concern him in whole or in part, or he made the request in his own name, the entry discloses that at its top, the same four tests apply, and the same standing rule on naming applies.
- Requests made under statutes other than RSA 91-A, including case-record requests under RSA 170-G:8-a, which carry different duties and different clocks.
- Any body about which GSR holds a single data point. One interaction is never an entry.
- Anything GSR cannot show a reader in a document.
How a body gets on the list, and how it gets off
Documents decide. Every line rests on a dated document a reader can be shown. Where a date is not in the record, this page says so instead of estimating it.
The same four tests for everyone. Every body is measured against the same four duties, in the same order, whether GSR likes the answer or not. Bodies that pass are listed passing.
Business days are computed, not judged. The five-business-day clock runs from the day after the body receives the request, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and New Hampshire legal holidays. The computation is shown.
Right of reply before naming. Before a body is named in Tier 2, it receives the entry and the documents behind it, with ten business days to respond. Its response is published in full. If none arrives the page says no response was received by the date. It never says the body refused.
GSR does not call it a violation. Tier 2 says what a document shows and which duty it bears on. Only a tribunal decides that a body broke the law, and those decisions live in Tier 1 under the tribunal’s name.
Corrections stay. A correction carries what the page said, what is true, what changed, and the date and time of the fix. It runs at the top of the entry, it stays permanently, and it goes out on the channels that carried the original.
Entries come off. A Tier 2 entry closes when the body produces the records or supplies what the duty required. The closed entry stays visible with its resolution date, because a record that disappears when it is satisfied is not a record.
If you are named on this page and something here is wrong, write to the same address. A correction runs at the top of the entry and stays there.
v1.0.1, October 4, 2026, logged October 11, 2026: The New Hampshire Bulletin source gained its author, William Skipworth, and a link to the article. The page styling was compacted with no visible change. This edit was made without a log entry at the time; this line corrects that.
v1.1, October 11, 2026: The first rule under “What is kept off this list” was rewritten. In v1.0 it kept off any matter in which Dexter Dow is a named subject of the records sought, while the N.H. Department of Safety entry, RTK 2026-2163, concerns records about him. The rule and the entry disagreed. The rule now carries such matters under the same four tests with a disclosure at the top of the entry, and the Department of Safety entry carries that disclosure. Wording in the introduction, Tier Two, the editor’s note, and the sources line changed from “GSR is the requester” to “GSR or its editor.” No result on any entry changed.
v1.2, October 11, 2026: Disclosures added to the N.H. Department of Justice and Northfield Police Department entries, where the records sought concern Dexter Dow in part. The first rule under “What is kept off this list” now reads “concern him in whole or in part” in place of “is a named subject.” No result on any entry changed.
This page is never edited without a log entry.
