Legislative Ethics Committee dismisses complaint against Belknap reps over Gunstock, budget meetings

CONCORD — The state’s Legislative Ethics Committee dismissed related complaints last month against three members of the Belknap County Delegation filed by a Gilford resident. 

The complainant, conservative blogger David “Skip” Murphy, asserted that, because each of the representatives had responsibility over delegation meetings called in violation of RSA 91-A state public access laws, they had violated their oaths as legislators.

Two subjects of the complaints, delegation Chair Harry Bean (R–Gilford) and Travis O’Hara (R–Belmont), said in interviews they felt Murphy’s endeavor was rooted in revenge and bitterness over their actions during Gunstock Mountain Resort’s turmoil last summer. The third representative did not waive the right to confidentiality attached to all Ethics Committee complaints.

“In looking at the remedies for violations of 91-A, there is no provision to find an individual culpable of a violation unless they have acted in bad faith,” the committee’s decision reads in the Bean complaint. “To the extent Representative Bean may have had responsibility, the Committee cannot find that he has acted in bad faith.”

Murphy declined an interview for this story but made a series of posts, some including video from the committee hearings, about the complaints on his site GraniteGrok.

The seven-member Legislative Ethics Committee includes members of the public, House and Senate, and is charged with developing a code of ethics for state legislators and fielding and investigating complaints that an official has violated that code.

Murphy’s complaints surround two incidents. The first is a meeting of the Belknap County Delegation called by Bean on Aug. 1 — a meeting that triggered the reinstatement of Gunstock senior management and the mountain’s reopening. The second is a series of budget subcommittee workshop meetings in late winter.

The August meeting was called by Bean, who was not the chair at the time, and a quorum of delegation members less than two days before it was held. In a letter ahead of that meeting, County Attorney Andrew Livernois advised that although there was a “gray area” around whether Bean calling the emergency meeting had legal grounding, he did not think “any legal challenge to such a meeting, if brought, would succeed in overturning it.” 

“The Supreme Court has made clear that in situations where the County Convention mistakenly holds a meeting that was improperly noticed, the defect can later be cured by simply posting another meeting within the statutory deadlines, and then having the members ratify their prior decision,” Livernois' letter continued. The representatives, in a September meeting regularly called and noticed by leadership, voted to ratify the actions taken on Aug. 1, in line with that precedent. 

The second incident, the subject of Murphy’s complaint not only against Bean but also against current delegation clerk O’Hara, focuses on budget subcommittee meetings. 

Notices for those committee meetings, usually issued by the county in a bloc, were not published, and leadership was not aware of the lapse until after the budget subcommittee had finished its work. The county administrator issued an apology, emphasizing the missing notices were a mistake by her office.

Leaning on the same precedent as in August, the subcommittee met again and ratified the actions taken during its unnoticed meetings. 

“All three abandoned the oaths and promises to strictly follow the law,” Murphy said in his testimony during committee hearings at the end of May, a transcript of which he posted online. “They willingly broke their oaths to us all. Worse, they broke the trust that we expect. We should not, cannot, adopt a lesser standard.”

The committee unanimously ruled to dismiss the complaints against Bean and O’Hara and — with a similar outcome, Murphy’s posts describe — against the third representative.

“The Committee can understand that there may have been differences of opinion as to whether an emergency meeting was required,” the dismissal of the Bean complaint reads. “It also understands that there was a question as to whether proper procedure was followed and Representative Bean was aware of that question. However, he sought a timely legal opinion from the County Attorney who concluded that the meeting was legally valid.”

Similar to its decision on the Bean complaint, the unanimous decision in the O’Hara complaint states, “The committee cannot find that Representative O’Hara acted in bad faith in these circumstances. It finds no ethical violation.” 

Responding to the decisions in a post, Murphy described them as “whitewashed.”

“I wasn’t looking for a criminal conviction — it was my understanding that this was a panel of former and current legislators to judge these three legislators’ behaviors from an ethical standpoint,” Murphy wrote. “I now know that I no longer understand what the definition of unethical is.”

Bean and O’Hara both said they felt the complaints stemmed from lingering resentment over Gunstock’s turmoil last summer. The meeting called and led by Bean was against the objections and advice of then-delegation leadership and of Murphy.

“The right to know should be a shield and not a sword,” O’Hara said. “A 91-A violation is supposed to go to superior court or to the [ombudsman] ... instead, he tried to get us kicked out of the Statehouse.”

The issue of the August Gunstock meeting’s legality, O’Hara emphasized, had already been litigated and decided.

Bean noted that former Reps. Mike Sylvia and Norm Silber, both opponents of the August meeting and its actions, attended the ethics hearings, as well as former Gunstock Commissioner David Strang, who interrupted a budget subcommittee meeting to object to the ratification motion.

O’Hara went on to say, however, that representatives this term have begun to move past the sourness of Gunstock-related factionalism. 

“It hasn't been washed away, but it's getting better. I feel like there's a little bit less hostility to the county meetings. We're at least getting through stuff and not just fighting.”