Keeping secrets: Towns and states are doing it

(The following editorial appeared in the Union Leader on Monday, March 8.)

From one week's news clippings, a few examples of how New Hampshire residents are being kept in the dark by their local and state government servants:

In Hooksett, controversial police pay raises were approved in secret because, officials said, a privacy issue was involved.

In Concord, the head of the state Liquor Commission has been on leave, with pay, for weeks while the Attorney General investigates something that may or may not involve the commission, a state legislator and a Keene bar.

In Manchester, an elementary school principal finally resigns, having been on paid leave for months on end. Why? It's a "personnel matter."

And in Londonderry, school officials confirmed that a police probe was going on, but would not confirm or deny that any employees had been removed from the school. We learned later through our own reporting that a teacher is involved.

In all of these cases, the officials who work for the people refuse to keep the people even barely informed.

They hide behind whatever loophole or misinterpretation of the people's right to know they can find or dream up. And unless and until the press calls them on it, they often get away with it.

People need to be aware of this. People need to understand that it will continue, and get worse, unless they demand the true openness in their government, of which the New Hampshire Constitution and the Right to Know law speak.