{"id":3480,"date":"2015-03-09T19:53:23","date_gmt":"2015-03-10T00:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/?p=3480"},"modified":"2015-03-09T19:53:23","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T00:53:23","slug":"grafton-watch-dogs-bark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/2015\/03\/09\/grafton-watch-dogs-bark\/","title":{"rendered":"Grafton Watch Dogs Bark!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Grafton Watch Dogs Bark!<br \/>\n<em>by Ed Naile<\/em><br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nSpeaking of town elections, the Town of Grafton this year decided to misuse a part of RSA\u00a032:5, V-a  to allow them to print &#8220;The Selectmen DO NOT recommend this article&#8221; on all the\u00a0warrant articles that were petitioned by liberty activists.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Activists in Grafton have challenged how the ballots are written.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The statute RSA 32:5, V-a  says in part:<\/p>\n<p>V. When any purpose of appropriation, submitted by a governing body or by petition,\u00a0appears in the warrant as part of a special warrant article:<br \/>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0(a) The article shall contain a notation of whether or not that appropriation is\u00a0recommended by the governing body, and, if there is a budget committee, a notation\u00a0of whether or not it is recommended by the budget committee;\u2026<br \/>\nSpecial Warrant Articles are defined as:<br \/>\nVI. &#8220;Special warrant article&#8221; means any article in the warrant for an annual or special\u00a0meeting which proposes an appropriation by the meeting and which:<br \/>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0(a) Is submitted by petition; or<br \/>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0(b) Calls for an appropriation of an amount to be raised by the issuance of bonds or\u00a0notes pursuant to RSA 33; or<br \/>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0(c) Calls for an appropriation to or from a separate fund created pursuant to statute,\u00a0including but not limited to a capital reserve fund under RSA 35, or trust fund under RSA\u00a031:19-a; or<br \/>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0(d) Is designated in the warrant, by the governing body, as a special warrant article,\u00a0or as a no-lapsing or nontransferable appropriation; or<br \/>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0(e) Calls for an appropriation of an amount for a capital project under RSA 32:7-a.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nA Grafton citizen called the SoS\/AG who concurred; towns are only allowed to print\u00a0these recommendations on money\/&#8221;special&#8221; warrant articles, not other kinds of warrant\u00a0articles. The SoS is probably going to go after Grafton for doing this, but not before the\u00a0elections.<\/p>\n<p>Several concerned citizens sued Grafton to enjoin them from using these biased ballots,\u00a0trying to force the Town to reprint them before the elections. Atty. Brandon Ross filed the\u00a0complaint in Grafton County Superior Court. The judge ruled against them, but CNHT believes he is  wrong, as shown above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Grafton Watch Dogs Bark! by Ed Naile \u00a0 Speaking of town elections, the Town of Grafton this year decided to misuse a part of RSA\u00a032:5, V-a to allow them to print &#8220;The Selectmen DO NOT recommend this article&#8221; on all the\u00a0warrant articles that were petitioned by liberty activists. Activists in Grafton have challenged how the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,51,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-litigation","category-town-government","category-town-meetings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3481,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480\/revisions\/3481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}