Rick Heath

To the editor,

Wednesday, January 14 was a red letter day in Concord for those towns in the State of New Hampshire that either use the ‘town meeting’ form of governance or use Official Ballot Voting (SB-2). Almost too late to do anything about it, three house bills were being offered for public comment in committee hearings. These three bills would have (HB-72) crippled voters’ rights, (HB -71) given a huge blank check to the administrations of small and medium sized town, and (HB-114) made the deliberative session portion of SB-2 just a discussion with no chance of amending any article of the warrant. Any one of these bills would have had disastrous influence on spending, town budgets and voters’ rights.

Considering that all three bills were written and presented by Representative Betsey Patten of Moultonborough (also one of our town's selectmen) it would seem that there was a plan afoot by a local group of officials to cripple voter’s rights and the town budgeting process throughout the entire state of New Hampshire in order to make Moultonborough “more secure” in the light of the possibility of SB-2 coming to town.

Ten months ago Moultonborough garnered 56-percent and 58-percent of the vote respectively for the town and school district in favor of SB-2 (SB-2 needs 60-percent to pass). There were cries from the opposition to SB-2 that “selectmen would resign”, “budgets would fail to pass” and life as we now know it in “Moultonborough would never be the same”. Let me remind you that SB-2 is very simply a voting initiative that allows all of you voters out there in newspaper-land that may not be able to attend an all-day session to vote on ALL town and school issues. But I digress.

HB-72 would have essentially eliminated the possibility of any secret ballot vote at a town meeting for critical issues (crippling voters’ rights). HB-71 would have raised the amount of a potential bond issue requiring a public hearing from $100,000 to ONE MILLION DOLLARS. And HB-114 would have virtually ELIMINATED the deliberative session of SB-2, where amendments are presently encouraged (as in town meeting).

The battle for SB-2 is nothing more than this: a struggle between power by intimidation vs. the power of the secret ballot. It is that simple. Power in town meetings is held by the moderator and sustained by the selectmen and the rest of the administration. Have you ever gone to a town meeting and voted against an issue you thought as critical about 9 p.m. and then gone home secure that you voted it down? The next morning you wake up to the news that the very issue you spent your evening to vote against, PASSED after a “motion to reconsider” at 11 p.m. That, my friends, does not happen with SB-2. There is a time form deliberation, at time for the voter to get information and then vote intelligently, by secret ballot.

The good folks that showed up at a moment’s notice and offered testimony against the bills, offered by Representative Patten, deserve the thanks of all voters and property taxpayers in New Hampshire. These issues are not gone, however. They will be back. To the people that spoke up for the elderly, a moderator that spoke of giving a secret ballot vote if even one person requested it, the Moultonboro Citizens Alliance that spotted this covert attempt and responded, and many more, we who were not able to be there owe a huge debt of gratitude.

Rick Heath

Moultonborough