2024-02-07. This written testimony was submitted to the New Hampshire House in support of HB1120 (2024), a bill “repealing the provision that requires the reflection of municipal body votes on warrant articles.”
Greetings, members of the Municipal & County Government committee.
Thank you for allowing me to testify at the hearing on HB1120 (“Repealing the provision that requires the reflection of municipal body votes on warrant articles.”) today. I testified in support of the bill.
I was lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Town of Grafton over this very issue. HB1120 reverses the bad decision that arose from that case. The case is Jeremy Olson &a. v. Town of Grafton, 168 N.H. 563, 133 A.3d 270 (2016). Other plaintiffs in the case were Rep. Tom Ploszaj (Belknap 1), Chris Kairnes, and Jay Boucher. Our attorney was Brandon D. Ross.
I moved to Grafton in 2010, which is an SB2 town, and began attending the Town Deliberative Session as soon as I moved there. I organized a group of people who were interested in getting involved in local politics, which included attending the Town meetings and writing warrant articles.
Over a period of 4–5 years, I was able to get 50 people active in a town with a population of 1,340. About 30–35 of them would attend the Deliberative Session each year. Grafton is spread out, 50 miles of dirt roads, and I and a few others took it upon ourselves to collect the warrant articles people wanted to see on the ballot, then drive around or attend public meetings and find people to sign them.
These warrant articles were mainly ideas people had to downsize or limit local government. Some of them took advantage of specific RSAs, such as following the process to create an elected Board of Assessors, to expand the Selectboard from 3 to 5 members, and to begin the process of withdrawing from the school district and creating our own. Others were “advisory” articles, asking the Selectmen or various Town departments to do or not do things, asking our Representatives to submit certain legislation, and so on.
In 2015, after doing this for several years and increasing participation each year, the Selectmen decided to add “The Selectmen do not recommend this article” to every one of our petitioned warrant articles. This is what is allowed under RSA 32:5.
There were 3 other petitioned warrant articles that year, submitted by other people independently, to which the Selectmen did not add any recommendation one way or another.
Every one of the articles with the negative recommendation was voted down.
Several of the articles were clearly things to limit the Selectmen’s power and authority in the town, such as removing their ability to bid in tax auctions (which they oversee as Selectmen), instructing them not to hire family members as Town employees, and so on. Their opposition to articles such as these are a clear conflict of interest.
Further, that they added the recommendation only to the articles I helped gather, and not the other 3 articles, made it clear they were specifically targeting people trying to limit their power and authority.
What they did would be considered a clear case of electioneering—if it were done by anyone else. No one else is allowed to enter the ballot box and place statements in front of the voter “recommending” or “not recommending” a warrant article. What the Town does here is not merely “inform” voters (which should certainly be permitted in the general sense) but “advocate” a particular for or against position on an article, and do so directly on the ballot. That makes it electioneering. And if it were not for RSA 32:5 exempting Town officials, it would not be legal. Why should Town officials have a special privilege to engage in electioneering—directly on the ballot?
So, we researched the RSAs and found what we thought said that the Selectmen could only put recommendations on money articles. Only one of our articles involved money, the rest did not—but they placed negative recommendations on all of them. We hired an attorney and he agreed with our analysis, and we sued.
The case went to the N.H. Supreme Court, and they agreed with the Selectmen’s position. The Court admitted that the law was vague, and that it was in fact in a section of the RSAs only dealing with money articles. So to uphold the Selectmen’s position, the Court had to resort to going through State House transcripts from SB38 (2009), and they found that the apparent intent of the law was that the power to make recommendations applied to any warrant article, not just money articles.
After we lost this case, I gave up trying to organize people who wanted to participate in the Town meeting process. I moved to Manchester a few years later. Rep. Tom Ploszaj lived in Grafton at the time, but moved to Center Harbor a few years later. From what I have heard, most other people in Grafton have also dropped out of the process there.
I support this bill because—
It prevents the Selectmen from engaging in what is essentially electioneering on the ballot.
People who want to place warrant articles on the ballot should feel free to do so without interference from the Town government.
The decision in Olson v. Town of Grafton directly led to a reduction in civic participation in Grafton.
If HB1120 in its current form is unpalatable, I would recommend amending RSA 32:5 to restrict the Selectmen’s and Budget Committee’s recommendations to money articles, or to non-petitioned articles. It is reasonable for example for the Budget Committee to be able to weigh in on an appropriation, since they know the Town finances more than anyone else. But allowing the Town government to essentially tell people to vote against petitioned warrant articles is, fundamentally, electioneering and discourages participation in Town politics when people see it used against them to defeat their articles.
If this bill is sent to a subcommittee or interim study, I would be more than happy to participate in those meetings.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. ▰
Jeremy J. Olson
Manchester Ward 11