BY JENN McDOWELL

In conversations with town officials and staff involved with our Right to Know project, our reporters found that, in many cases, refusals to provide information such as town and school district salaries, police logs and meeting minutes were simply the products of misunderstanding, both of the law itself and of what was asked of them.

Upon seeing the report, several town officials were pleased with the way their respective agencies handled our requests.

Others were not, several of them charging Neighborhood News with unduly slamming their offices or being elusive about our identities and the information we wanted.

In last week’s coverage, we sent staff to town halls and SAUs to ask for minutes of meetings and municipal and school salaries, and to police stations to ask for a week’s list of arrests and activities. We did not identify ourselves as reporters to test whether the public has access to public information at local government agencies.

Candia and Epsom performed the best  of the Banner’s six towns, offering all documents with little trouble.

For Candia, this is a major turnaround from the last time Neighborhood News took on the project six years ago. In that experiment, Candia failed to turn over the list of arrests and their municipal salaries. Epsom completely passed the test for the second time.

Town offices

Hooksett Town Hall readily provided Town Council meeting minutes and, upon receiving a faxed written request, the town salary information our reporter asked for.

“We had the information, it was just a matter of gathering it,” said Christine Soucie, a town hall secretary, who had an inkling she was dealing with a reporter. “The interesting thing is, it is usually only reporters who come in here looking for different public records.”

In Allenstown, Kelley Collins, administrative assistant to the Board of Selectmen, said we could find town salary information in the 2006 Town Report, which she said was located on the town’s Web site.

Several Neighborhood News reporters and editors looked for the Town Report on the site following the visit, and could not locate the information.

A followup call was placed to Kelley after the initial report ran on Thursday, Sept. 13. Kelley said a selectman with the town had advised her against speaking to this newspaper.

She did say, however, that her original comments to our reporter made her take another look at the site, and that was when she discovered she had misinformed our reporter.

“I noticed the information was not on the Web site after I spoke with you and contacted the town administrator,” Kelley said.

According to the site, it was updated on Wednesday, Sept. 12, to include past town reports. We had not seen the addition to the Web site before press time last week.

Secretary to Candia’s selectmen Dawn Chabot was very forthcoming with information.

Chabot said the staff at Candia’s town offices knows the law well.

“We get these requests all the time, I’d say on a daily basis, and we realize that these are public documents,” said Chabot. “You have to be aware of the laws if you’re sitting here every minute of every day.”

Epsom Town Clerk Dawn Blackwell made similar remarks about her office, saying she keeps up with the latest developments with public information laws and makes certain the other town employees are well informed about them.

“The Right to Know laws are very important and I do distribute packets to the rest of the offices,” Blackwell said, adding that she would discuss some of the information regarding the laws at an upcoming meeting with department heads and selectmen.

Upon requesting the town salary and selectmen’s meeting minutes, Barbara Clark in the Epsom selectmen’s office directed our reporter to the town’s Web site.

Clark regularly directs citizens with such requests to the Web site, she said, to save the person money on copies.

She also confirmed that Blackwell distributes information packets to throughout the office on the Right to Know Law.

In Auburn, our reporter was  given the minutes from the last selectmen’s meeting and a photocopy of the town employee salaries from last year’s Town Report.

Our reporter later spoke with Town Administrator Bill Herman and asked for an updated listing of the salaries. The report had been published in March, Herman said.

“We can create a list. Is that what you want us to do?” Herman said. “It can be done,” adding that the request would not be processed immediately. “It would probably take a couple of days to do.”

Linda Williams, administrative secretary in the Pembroke town office, handed over the town salaries and selectmen minutes with no questions about our reporter’s identity or business with the information.

“People always want to see what we make, which is understandable,” Williams said, adding, “Sometimes getting (the information) may take some time, but, with few exceptions, everything is open to the public.”

Interim Pembroke Town Administrator Geoff Ruggles said his office is sensitive to laws about public information, and that he is pleased with the way Williams handled the request.

He said a lot of town offices are hesitant about giving out salary information, but he understands it is something the public should have access to.

“If people ask for it, we’ll give it to them,” said Ruggles.

School districts

The SAU 15 office in Hooksett, school district for Hooksett, Candia and Auburn, failed to provide us with school district meeting minutes and salaries. They said they would work on it and get them to our reporter as soon as possible, but, under the Right to Know Law, they have five days after a request to dispense the information.

Almost two weeks later, we had still not received the information.

Superintendent Charles Littlefield said his office does not frequently get requests for the information our reporter requested, and that there was some confusion over it.

“I believe my staff who deals with any of the requests we get for that information is very familiar with the law,” he said

He added that he usually does not ask for a written request, but that he asked for it this time to clear up the confusion among his staff.

“I told them it was all public records, so just give it to him, but we wanted to be sure we knew exactly what you were looking for,” Littlefield said. “I strongly believe we should do the public’s business in public, so it was our job to give the information that you want.”

At SAU 53 in Pembroke, covering Allenstown, Pembroke, Epsom, Chichester and Deerfield schools, our reporter’s request for school district salaries and meeting minutes was not immediately dealt with.

Human Resources Director Loretta Campbell asked our reporter for a written request. The start of the school year made things difficult for her to personally take care of getting the documents, she said.

She said later she was unsure about whether our reporter was a school district employee, and this created a dilemma for her.

“We’re not going to give out the personal identification information to people if they’re employees themselves. We just try to protect personal information like that,” she said.

According to the Right to Know Law, school district salaries are public information and therefore should be available to anyone, no matter who their employer is.

Police departments

At the Hooksett Police Department, our reporter could not even find someone at the reception area to locate the police log for him, even after going to the department on three separate occasions.

The first two times, the reporter was greeted by officers who said they could not help him. The third time, he found no one at all to ask, just an unmanned reception window.

Chief Stephen Agrafiotis said the report was eye opening for his department, and that he is taking steps to make sure someone is always available during business hours to field such requests.

“We don’t have officers or dispatchers deal with requests, just our administration staff, so if by chance they aren’t available we want to make sure we have someone the citizen can talk to in order to get their name and contact information down until someone can help them,” Agrafiotis said.

“We understand the law, and we certainly are not trying to keep anything from anybody. We learned a lesson from your experiment,” Agrafiotis said, adding that he is going to meet with police personnel on the issue.

Allenstown Police Chief Shaun Mulholland also expressed concern over the report. When our reporter arrived at the Police Department to ask for a listing of the previous week’s calls and arrests, a staff member at the front desk told her the information could not be printed out.

Mulholland said there was apparently some confusion about our reporter’s request, adding that our reporter was not entitled to all of the information in the log.

Mulholland is correct that under the Right to Know law police departments are not required to reveal their police logs to the public if the document contains personal information about juveniles, would jeopardize an ongoing investigation, strip an offender of his or her right to a fair trial, or  could put officers in harm’s way.

“Most of that information we can give you, but we need to redact all the personal information,” Mulholland said. “When we asked (the reporter) why you wanted the information we were trying to determine what you were looking for. Sometimes people aren’t sure what they’re really asking for.”

To “redact” information in the log is to black out certain information that is confidential.

“We’ve always been open with the press,” Mulholland said, which is true. Mulholland has provided The Hooksett Banner with information regarding specific incidents numerous times during his tenure as chief.

Our reporter was asked to file a written request for the arrest log with the Pembroke Police, which they provided us with before the five-day period was up.

Police Chief Scott Lane reiterated Mulholland’s comments that the department would need time to redact some information in the log and that they were attempting to get more specific information from the reporter about what she needed.

“We were trying to save the trouble of gathering information you didn’t need,” Lane said, adding, “I feel we were painted with a brush we didn’t deserve.”

In Auburn, we were asked to file a written request for the arrest log. Chief Ed Picard said he is not comfortable releasing the information to someone unknown to the department, adding that he is happy to comply with such requests coming directly from Union Leader and Hooksett Banner reporters.

“If a stranger walks in here without the proper credentials, we’re not going to give out the information,” Picard told the Neighborhood News publisher.

In Epsom, our reporter was able to obtain the redacted arrest log without a problem.

Gail Quimby handled our reporter’s request. She later said she had a feeling that the visitor was a reporter, and that she understands the values of the Right to Know Law.

Chief Wayne Preve said that either Quimby or himself handle all such requests from the public for information.

“We control most of what goes in and out while acknowledging the public has a right to see much of it,” said Preve.

Candia’s police department also immediately provided us with the arrest log, without question.

Our reporter encountered Karen Merchant there, who was very familiar with the Right to Know Law.

“I wondered in my mind who (the visitor was), but it’s not up to me to discover that or ask about it,” said Merchant.