"Why Would We Record It? It Was a Workshop."
Nashua taxpayers paid for the Board of Aldermen’s lesson in ethics and public trust through the City’s NHMA dues. Then the Board made sure almost nobody could see it.
Some ironies are too good to make up, so all you can do is report them.
On Monday, November 9, the Nashua Board of Aldermen held a special meeting to hear Attorney C. Christine Johnston of the New Hampshire Municipal Association teach "Conflicts of Interest and Ethics in Municipal Government." It was properly noticed under RSA 91-A:2, II. The roll was called, 13 of 15 aldermen were present, and Corporation Counsel was in his seat. An alderman had asked for the session because they believe this Board isn't living up to its own Code of Conduct, and that the public has noticed. So naturally, the cameras were off.
Every regular Board meeting gets a broadcast on the government channel, a YouTube upload and verbatim minutes. This one got a page of minutes saying the presenter was "recognized" and that the meeting adjourned at 8:41 p.m. That's one hour and forty-one minutes of instruction on ethics, public trust and avoiding litigation, boiled down to one line.
When I asked Board President Lori Wilshire why the session wasn't recorded, she said: "Why would we record it, it was a workshop." Let's look at that.
"Workshop" is not a legal category
New Hampshire's Right-to-Know Law doesn't recognize "workshops." When a quorum of a public body gathers to discuss matters within its jurisdiction, that's a meeting. The City knows this. It said so on the posted notice, and again in the first sentence of its own minutes. You can't post something as an RSA 91-A meeting on Friday and call it craft night on Monday.
To be clear, the City did not break the law. RSA 91-A requires only bare-bones minutes. It doesn't require video or a verbatim transcript, and the minutes the City posted likely meet that minimum.
But Nashua has never run its Board on the minimum. Every Board meeting I've watched or attended since 2018 has been broadcast, posted to YouTube and transcribed word for word. On November 9 the President broke with that practice, and she did it for the most useful session this Board has held in years.
That's exactly the situation the presenter warned about. More than once, she told members to check themselves: if something doesn't feel right, don't do it, even if it's legal. Not recording was legal. Did it feel right?
So the question is simple: why did Board President Lori Wilshire choose not to preserve this presentation? "It was a workshop" isn't a reason. It's a label.
Who got left out
I was the only member of the public in the room. Beforehand I'd told people, including residents with disabilities who can't easily get to City Hall, that they could watch it on the government channel or catch it later on YouTube. That's what Nashua has done with every Board meeting I've watched or attended since 2018. This time they couldn't.
Neither could the aldermen who missed it. When I pointed that out, the President said she wished all members could have attended. So do I. Luckily, there's a device that grants exactly that wish. It was mounted in the chamber the whole time.
The members who did attend lost out too. Aldermen often tell me they go back and rewatch meetings on YouTube. This was dense material: incompatibility, conflicts of interest, the First Amendment, civility. Heck, the City’s been involved in lawsuits on three of four of these categories. Most people would need to see it twice. The members whose decorum is the reason the workshop was held might want a third viewing.
I also had to ask for the slides to be posted on the City's website. But slides are only an outline. The presenter's explanations, her examples and her answers to members' questions were the part that actually taught something, and they're gone.
The lesson Nashua most needed
Here's some of what a recording would have preserved.
The presenter urged the Board and the City to work with the public rather than fight it. She acknowledged that residents sometimes misread the law. Her point was that pushing them into lawsuits and picking fights wastes time and money.
I know Nashua's approach firsthand. When I asked Alderwoman Klee for a public record, she told me, "Sue me." Corporation Counsel Steve Bolton told a citizen, "I look forward to beating you in court." Both were in the room on November 9. They heard a fellow municipal official explain that picking fights with residents is a waste of time and money.
Meanwhile, the City's property, casualty and liability budget has gone from about $3.5 million in 2016 just over $10.7 million in ten years. That's taxpayer money. A free lesson in how to spend less of it seems worth turning on a camera the City already owns.
As I see it, that's the pattern. City Hall dares residents to sue, then complains about the legal bills, as if the lawsuits fell out of the sky. The City lit the fire, and now it's upset about the smoke.
That "check yourself" advice was aimed at individual aldermen. It applies just as well to a Board President deciding whether the public gets to watch the ethics training.
Corporation Counsel, as seen on (no) TV
There was one more thing worth recording. In my observation, Corporation Counsel Steve Bolton was a different man that night. When the NHMA attorney asked him questions, he was patient, thorough and happy to explain the law in detail. Aldermen who are used to short, sharp answers when they ask him for advice in the chamber might have liked to see that version of him. They'll have to take my word for it.
What a transparent Board would do now
This can still be partly fixed:
1. Invite NHMA back, and record it. Broadcast it and post it to YouTube like any other Board meeting.
2. Close the "workshop" loophole. Adopt a written rule that every noticed meeting of the full Board, whether regular, special or "workshop," is recorded and broadcast.
3. Enforce the Code of Conduct the training was about, consistently and for everyone.
4. Stop picking public fights to escalate legal battles.
The bottom line
Nashua spent an evening hearing that public trust is hard to rebuild once it's lost. Then the Board President made sure the public couldn't watch. The law didn't require a camera. Nashua's own practice did, and so did the lesson of the evening. So the question stands, President Wilshire: why didn't you want this one on the record?