Loeb School names 2021 First Amendment Award mominees

MANCHESTER — A Webster couple who pursued town government wrongdoing is being recognized as this year's Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications First Amendment Award honorees. Tara Gunnigle and Jon Pearson will be saluted by the communications school on Tuesday, Nov. 9, with U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, as featured speaker.

The annual event honors New Hampshire individuals or groups that have advanced or exercised their First Amendment rights in a special or extraordinary way. Presenting sponsor is Peoples United Bank. For the first time, the Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College will host the event.

Gunnigle, originally from Long Island, and Pearson, a Webster native, are among a handful of regular attendees at select board meetings in Webster, northwest of Concord. Their ears perked up last year, they say, when the topic of potential gravel use from two town-owned parcels near Walker Pond was raised at a meeting. That's when town treasurer Bruce Johnson said that wouldn't happen because he had purchased the land from the town.

This was news to Gunnigle and Pearson. They filed Right to Know requests but were told files on the matter were either sealed, missing, or did not exist. But they kept digging, seeking out revenue and tax records and property deeds and sealed minutes, which the select board agreed to open. They eventually presented nearly 100 pages of information to Webster's police chief and the Merrimack County attorney. Johnson was charged and this year pleaded no contest in Franklin District Court to two counts of violating the “public officials barred from certain private dealings” law for purchasing the two lots from the town while he was treasurer. He was fined $1,200.

Johnson, who lives across the road from the property, resigned as town treasurer. He and other town officials maintained the purchase had been in the public interest because of his commitment to preserve the property and that taxes would be paid on it. He paid $7,000 for the two, one and one-half acre lots, which were assessed at a combined value of $44,000 in 2019.

In nominating Pearson and Gunnigle for the First Amendment honor, Concord Monitor editor Jonathan Van Fleet noted that the two aren't lawyers or journalists, writing "She's a postal worker and owns a horse farm with her husband..." The couple said they were humbled to be named recipients of the honor. It gives them, "another reason to keep pushing forward for the Constitution of the U.S. and the state of New Hampshire, so that all people are represented equally in all ways."

The Loeb School’s First Amendment Award judges are Rod Doherty, former executive editor of Foster’s Daily Democrat; retired New Hampshire Supreme Court Justice Richard Galway; attorney Gregory Sullivan of Malloy & Sullivan, LPC.; and previous recipient Mary DeWinkeleer.

For more information, visit loebschool.org.