VOTE YES ON HB 1675 - With the 91-a amendment

tHE PUBLIC DESERVES RIGHT TO KNOW ACCESS to PUBLIC FUNDing of non profits.

the nhcadsv, which interacts with public agencies (INCLUDING HOSPITALS) already required to abide by rtk 91-a.

HB 1675 ( passed in committee 9-7 ) with Rep. Erica Layon’s amendment, which passed the committee 16-0 is now headed to the House floor.

The amendment does something straightforward and, in any other context, uncontroversial: it says that private organizations administering state-funded domestic violence programs must comply with New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know Law – the same transparency requirements that apply to every town board, school district, and public commission in the state. Public money. Public accountability. The amendment doesn’t touch victim privacy. It doesn’t name any organization. It simply says: if you spend the taxpayers’ money, the taxpayers get to see how you spent it.

On the floor of the committee, Chair Layon made an observation that went unreported. New Hampshire Hospital – a state agency that handles some of the most sensitive personal information in government, including the records of psychiatric patients – is subject to 91-A. Patient privacy is protected through the exemptions that are already built into the law. If that institution can operate transparently within the 91-A framework, the argument that a domestic violence grant coordinator uniquely cannot is very difficult to sustain. The framework already handles it. It has always handled it.

Four New Hampshire Supreme Court cases, spanning fifty years, point toward exactly this result:

• Bradbury v. Shaw, 116 N.H. 388 (1976)

• Union Leader Corp. v. N.H. Housing Finance Authority, 142 N.H. 540 (1997)

• Professional Firefighters of N.H. v. Local Government Center, 159 N.H. 699 (2010)

• Ortolano v. City of Nashua, 343 A.3d 136 (2025)

The legislature wasn’t doing anything adventurous. It was, in the careful language lawyers use, codifying what the courts had already indicated the law requires. This is not a complicated idea. It is, in fact, the kind of idea that built the American tradition of open government – the instinct that public funds are not private property, that accountability is not harassment, that transparency is the price of the public’s trust.

New Hampshire’s Right-To-Know Memorandum from A.G. John Formella.

Professional Firefighters of N.H. v. NH Health Trust