HB 1069 (2024)

Requires that preliminary drafts circulated to a quorum or a majority of the public body be available for inspection following a public meeting.

The House rewrote the bill. The new bill replaces references to "citizen" with "person" in the state's Right-to-Know Law. According to the House Judiciary Committee, "The committee heard evidence that at least some municipalities had used the 'citizen' reference to limit the reach of the law to only those persons who were either citizens of the municipality in question or citizens of New Hampshire. For example, recently one New Hampshire municipality refused a records request from the publisher of a local newspaper that serves that municipality because the publisher resides in Maine." The rewritten bill also gives the right to request information electronically without having to appear at the local offices of the governmental body.