Press "Enter" to skip to content

Let’s Revisit Business Secrecy Exemptions As Energy Week Meets Sunshine Week

By D. Maurice Kreis

Power to the People

This is both Sunshine Week and Energy Week in New Hampshire – a very happy confluence.

It’s happy not because of solar energy (though it’s never a bad time for consumers to consider the benefits of rooftop or backyard photovoltaics). Rather, because Sunshine Week is a celebration of the virtues of government transparency, this is a great time to consider the extent to which secrecy is impeding the development of great energy policy.

Journalists and transparency activists tend to focus on those aspects of the Right-to-Know Law – RSA 91-A, our sunshine statute – that deal with sexy items like police records, personnel issues, contract negotiations, and executive sessions. Seldom noticed is the over-used and much abused provision of RSA 91-A that allows businesses to shield from public disclosure vast swaths of information they provide to the government.

Read the full article in InDepthNH.org here.

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *