Pip: New Hampshire's right-to-know law is one of those statutes where the official guidance and the actual statute quietly drift apart, and nobody sends you a memo about the memo being wrong.

Mara: That's exactly what Dexter Dow has mapped out for Granite State Report — a redline of RSA 91-A showing every change to the state's Right-to-Know law since the Attorney General's March 2024 memorandum. Let's start with what that document actually tracks.

RSA 91-A Redlined: What Changed Since the 2024 Memo

Pip: The Attorney General's 2024 memorandum is the standard reference most people use to understand New Hampshire's Right-to-Know law. The question this redline answers is: how far has the statute moved since that document was published?

Mara: The post lays out its method plainly. The baseline is the Attorney General's memorandum released March 14, 2024, and the current text is RSA 91-A as published by the New Hampshire General Court. The post states: "Each block below reproduces the enrolled text of the act. Underlined text was added. Crossed-out text was removed."

Pip: So this isn't analysis — it's the raw legislative record, formatted so you can see exactly what each act did to the statute. Seven acts in roughly two years is a meaningful pace of change for a foundational transparency law.

Mara: The first and largest change came from HB 1002, effective August 13, 2024, which rewrote the fee structure for records requests. It added paragraphs VIII and IX — a per-electronic-communication charge framework, a 30-day aggregation rule for multiple requests, and a fee-waiver process for indigent requesters and those seeking records in the public interest.

Pip: A dollar per email, with the first 250 free — that's the kind of provision that sounds reasonable until someone files a request that touches a busy inbox.

Mara: HB 1125 added RSA 91-A:2-c, requiring county commissioner and delegation meetings to allow public comment from county residents, with at least three minutes guaranteed per speaker. HB 265, effective August 2025, updated the minutes requirement — meetings must now record start and end times and the name of the person who produced the minutes.

Pip: The budget bill, HB 2, handled the ombudsman's survival — it repealed the 2022 sunset provisions that would have ended the office on July 1, 2025, and moved the office administratively to the Office of State and Public Sector Labor Relations.

Mara: HB 485 created RSA 91-A:5-b, allowing lottery winners to remain anonymous if they meet specific conditions — domestic violence victim status, an active restraining order, or a successful superior court petition. SB 575 updated the certification-records exemption from "teacher" to "educator." And HB 164, effective August 31, 2026, lets a public body answer a records request by providing a website domain name if the record has been uploaded to a publicly accessible state-designated site.

Pip: The post also flags where the memorandum itself contains an independent error — it cites the wrong subsection for settlement agreements and inverts the legal conclusion, separate from anything the legislature did.

Mara: Right. And the post notes that SB 626, which would have restricted right-to-know requests to New Hampshire residents, was laid on the table in the Senate and went no further — so that's one change that didn't happen.

Pip: Seven acts, one frozen memo, and a gap that keeps widening — that's the record New Hampshire's transparency advocates are now working from.

Mara: The underlying tension here is straightforward: official guidance ages, statutes don't wait, and the distance between the two is where confusion lives.

Pip: Next time, we'll see what else Granite State Report is watching — because in New Hampshire, the ledger is rarely closed.

Transcript as generated by the tool, unedited. The listener’s note above records where it differs from the articles.

Pip: Granite State Report covers New Hampshire, where the right to know what your government is doing is technically guaranteed, and technically is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

Mara: Dexter Dow has been tracking that gap closely. Today we're looking at how New Hampshire's public-records law has shifted since 2024, what tools exist to navigate it, and where a federal benefits notice goes wrong in ways that cost real people real protections.

Pip: Let's start with the statute itself — seven acts, and a guide that predates all of them.

Right-to-Know Law: Seven Acts, One Outdated Guide

Mara: The question here is straightforward: what has actually changed in RSA 91-A since the Attorney General's 2024 memorandum, and does anyone working from that guide know?

Pip: The piece on every word that moved puts it plainly: "Anyone working from the 2024 memorandum, or from memory, is reading a law that has moved."

Mara: And it has moved significantly. The fee rule most requesters will feel came from HB 1002 in 2024 — up to a dollar per electronic communication beyond the first 250. The ombudsman office that handles fee disputes lost its only occupant in July 2025 and hasn't been filled. The companion redline piece, RSA 91-A Redline, reproduces every enacted word across all seven acts so readers can see exactly what changed.

Pip: So the quick lane for fee fights runs through an empty office. The longer route is superior court, which costs the money and time the ombudsman was created to save.

Mara: That's the practical upshot. Meanwhile HB 265 added start times, end times, and the producer's name to meeting minutes. HB 485 lets lottery winners stay anonymous in specific circumstances. The 2026 acts are narrower — one swapped "teacher" for "educator," the other lets agencies answer with a website address if the record is already posted there.

Pip: Which brings us to the archive built to hold what the law doesn't require anyone to organize.

Public Records: The Index Nobody Had to Build

Mara: The core tension here is a single sentence in RSA 91-A:4, paragraph VII — the law hands over documents one at a time but never requires an agency to say what it holds.

Pip: The piece on the index frames it this way: "Each document goes out to the person who asked, and then stops existing anywhere a second person can find it."

Mara: So the upshot is a public record system that is technically open and practically opaque — findable only to people who already know what to ask for. The Granite State Record Room, published the same day, is the direct response to that gap.

Pip: Twenty-nine items, four series, and a table of what got left out — which is the part that makes it an archive rather than a brochure.

Mara: Right. Series one holds six records obtained under RSA 91-A, along with the requests that produced them. Series two keeps the statute and the Attorney General's guidance, because, as the page notes, authoritative copies move and old versions stop resolving. Series three holds drafting files, including a proposed state constitution flagged as a side project. Series four holds cited research, with copyright ownership plainly marked.

Pip: The Record Room also explains why the records are free but the work isn't — and that explanation turns on RSA 106-F, the private investigator statute, which contains the word "accredited" and then declines to define it.

Mara: That's the legal constraint the index piece works through carefully. The exclusion in RSA 106-F:4 covers persons reporting to an accredited news outlet, but no state agency issues that credential, and the text doesn't resolve whether a sole proprietor who is the outlet qualifies. So commissioned work is structured as public-interest labor — the request, the clock, the challenge — with everything obtained published to everyone on the same terms.

Pip: A catalog of what the government won't catalog, free to anyone who wants it. Now to a letter the government did produce, and got wrong.

SNAP Notice: When the Letter Misstates the Rule

Mara: The piece on New Hampshire's SNAP work notice identifies a specific problem: a nine-page letter that federal regulations dictate must explain the rules accurately, but doesn't.

Pip: The clearest example is the employment exemption. Federal rules say a person working 30 hours a week or earning the equivalent is exempt. The notice copies that "or," then adds: "for this exemption you must be earning at least $217.50 weekly" — turning an alternative into a requirement.

Mara: That parenthetical appears in the general rules, the time-limit section, and the state form. The department's own Food Stamp Manual keeps the "or." The notice also leaves the time-limit list blank with no explanation, while a same-day decision notice tells the reader in capital letters to prove compliance or lose benefits. The DHHS records request and agency response that produced this reporting are both posted in the Granite State Record Room.

Pip: A letter explaining conditions for buying groceries should at least get the conditions right.

Mara: That's the closing line of the piece, almost verbatim.

Pip: An outdated guide, a missing index, and a benefits letter that misstates the rule it was written to explain — the common thread is information that exists but doesn't reach the people who need it.

Mara: That's the territory Granite State Report keeps returning to. More to come.

Transcript as generated by the tool, unedited. The listener’s note above records where it differs from the articles.