Also on today’s menu:
Court Chooses Voters Over Technicalities
Solid Waste Working Group Targets Food Waste
NH Supreme Court Supports Right To Know
Attorney-General John M. Formella has issued a warning about fraudulent websites posing as legitimate Granite State small businesses offering their products online, including firearms and heavy equipment. The scammers typically advertise products for sale at deeply discounted prices and may use fraudulent email addresses to “verify” the small business through independent organizations such as the Better Business Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce, and Show Me Local. The scammers often insist that the consumer pay for the products using a bank wire transfer which can send the money overseas.
To avoid falling victim to such a scam, Formella suggests that people question deals that seem to be too good to be true. Ask to speak to the seller over the phone, and ask probing questions as to why the product is discounted. Ask for references that can verify the legitimacy of the seller and contact those references. Check with local law enforcement or the Attorney-General’s Office to see if any complaints have been filed against the seller. Do not make a purchase if a seller insists that you pay via money transfer service or gift card.
Anyone can set up a realistic website and social media pages, and scammers sometimes purchase advertisements to direct you to their website. If you or someone you know has fallen victim to a scam, report it to your local police department and the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Bureau of the Attorney General's Office. Complaints may be filed at: https://www.doj.nh.gov/consumer/complaints/index.htm or by calling the Consumer Hotline at (603) 271-3641.
Court Chooses Voters Over Technicalities
New Hampshire Democrats’ bald-faced attempt to stop the counting of legitimate ballots — something they objected to when it was the Republicans trying to halt the process — failed to persuade Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Amy Ignatius to let the official results of the Hillsborough County District 6 representatives race stand. Ignatius ruled that, while the Secretary of State lacks the statutory authority to conduct a second recount after the first recount was completed, “The issue is: What is the legally expressed choice of the voters.”
With the judge’s decision, another recount took place on November 22, returning the victory to Republican Larry Gagne, by 26 votes. He had 1,824 votes to Democrat Maxine Mosley’s 1,798. Gagne had been declared the winner following the election, but a recount flipped the seat to Mosley. After declaring the Democrat the winner, Secretary of State David Scanlon conducted an audit, and found on reconciliation that some ballots may have been missed in the recount. He therefore scheduled the second recount.
Following Judge Ignatius’ decision that allowed the recount to proceed, House Majority Leader Jason Osborne (R-Auburn) said, “Don’t let the Democrats’ spin on today’s court ruling cause whiplash. The fact is that the Democratic Party attempted to take a legislative seat by subverting and disenfranchising voters. New Hampshire’s full and complete election process should play out to ensure the voters’ duly elected representatives are the ones, in fact, representing them.”
Political reporter Garry Rayno did raise a legitimate point about the audit: “I wonder how and why the Ward 6 race in Manchester was selected for an audit.” A new state statute requires the Secretary of State to audit a voting district in each of the state’s 10 counties, but it does not specify how to select a district. Rayno suggests: “Republicans do not want a 200-200 tie in the House because that is not to their advantage. … It would be better to have a special election for the two seats in Ward 6 in Manchester, and in the Rochester race that ended in a tie. Yes let the people decide without the political insiders using their magic to get their desired results.”
Solid Waste Working Group Targets Food Waste
With Thanksgiving approaching, operators at municipal solid waste transfer stations across the state can expect to see the containers fill much more quickly in the days ahead, and much of that trash will be food waste. As the legislatively created Solid Waste Working Group prepared its first report for the state, members spent a great deal of time talking about how to incentivize or require those at the retail and consumer levels to find ways of diverting food waste from the state’s landfills.
Other New England states are far ahead of New Hampshire in dealing with food waste, which accounts for 24.1 percent of all municipal solid waste generated in the United States. Representative Karen Ebel (D-New London), who serves as chair of the working group, plans to introduce legislation that would require large producers of food waste — those generating a ton a week — to compost if there was a food composting facility within 50 miles of their business.
Right now, the state lacks the infrastructure for food diversion, and the working group hopes a new fund established by the legislature would help build incentives for private companies to establish food composting facilities.
NH Supreme Court Supports Right To Know
Many government agencies and school boards have been complaining about the amount of time they have to spend responding to right-to-know requests from citizens, and sometimes it takes a prolonged legal battle for them to release information that should be readily available. Now, in a 3-2 decision, the New Hampshire Supreme Court has ruled that those making information requests have the right to attorneys’ fees when they have to take the matter to court.
The case prompting the decision involved Nashua’s denial of a resident’s request for all email correspondence between two city employees over a two-month period. In denying Laura Colquhoun’s right-to-know request, the city said her demand for “all email” was over-broad, despite its focus on two people within a short timeframe. The case went to superior court where Judge Charles Temple quoted from the RSA 91-A: “Each public body or agency shall, upon request for any governmental record reasonably described, make available for inspection and copying any such governmental record within its files when such records are immediately available for such release.” However, he denied Colquhoun’s request for attorney’s fees, finding no evidence the “city knew or should have known that its conduct violated the right-to-know law.”
Colquhoun appealed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, and justices Gordon MacDonald, Gary Hicks, and Pat Donovan sent the case back to superior court to determine the amount of attorneys’ fees she should receive. In their dissent, justices James Bassett and Barbara Hantz Marconi argued that, because neither the New Hampshire Legislature nor the Supreme Court has defined what constitutes a reasonable right-to-know request, Nashua had to rely on previous court rulings where requests for “all” emails, without identifying a subject matter, were determined to be over-broad.
Giving Tuesday
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