After the recent town meeting day snowstorm fiasco, I’m pretty sure that – even if they’d be loath to admit it publicly – a lot of town officials would love to give Secretary of State Bill Gardner a spiffy new title: Secretary of State Emeritus.
The honorific would surely please Gardner himself, who definitely doesn’t suffer from low self-esteem. And retirement would give him scads of free time to concentrate on burnishing the fame of the first-in-the-nation primary and his celebrated central role in it, as he clearly sees it.
Plus, we would lessen the chances of another chaotic election day – or, more accurately, town meeting day. Because the last one – with some towns sticking to the traditional meeting date and others postponing their meetings to spare voters from having to navigate dangerous roads during a large snowstorm – ended up a mess that tried the patience and endurance of all involved and quickly devolved into a political imbroglio.
Even now it threatens the ability of some towns to issue needed bonds.
And the confusion, with all the smokescreens cleared away, was due to one man: Secretary of State Bill Gardner. Who insisted that, massive snowstorm or not, towns had to hold their vote on that day, laws to the contrary be damned.
Let’s concentrate first on what town meetings are. They are a unique form of local government in which the citizens of a town – in effect, its legislature – meet for one day (which can be extended over several days) to organize their government for the year. By law and tradition, they follow a warrant – the agenda for the business of meeting – and, as a body, vote on items on that agenda.
One of the first items on any town meeting agenda is election of officers to run the town from day to day. New Hampshirites have been electing town officers at town meetings since Colonial days. Thanks to mid-20th century reforms, the election of the town officers has been by secret ballot, but it is still an intrinsic part of each town meeting, not a stand-alone function.
And while Gardner, as secretary of state, is obliged to ensure that state elections run smoothly and to maintain voting records, he really has no authority over town meetings.
There are state laws governing the way town meetings operate, and one law allows town meeting moderators – at their discretion – to delay and reschedule town meetings in case of severe weather that could compromise the safety of town meeting attendees.
Five or six days before the recent scheduled town meeting date it became clear that there was a pretty good chance a massive snowstorm would arrive the same day. And town officials pondered what to do. They checked with their moderators and their lawyers. Some also called the secretary of state’s office, and people there, citing the relevant state law, said that – when bad weather threatened – the moderators had the authority to reschedule the meetings, including the ballot voting portion.
In fact, there are letters in the record from some town officials describing these phone calls in detail.
So, reassured, many Granite State towns’ officials, including moderators, made plans to reschedule the meetings.
Then came Monday, the day before both town meeting day and the storm. And Bill Gardner inserted himself into the picture. No, he decreed, ballot voting and town meeting are two separate functions. And the ballot voting could only take place on the second Tuesday of March, no exceptions, ever. And House Speaker Shawn Jasper, for some reason, egged him on.
Monitor columnist Ray Duckler was at the State House and wrote about the sometimes-surreal drama of the day. “Don’t back down from your position, Bill,” Duckler quoted Jasper. “You are 100 percent right, and I am with you 100 percent of the way.”
We should note now that Bill Gardner is not a lawyer. Nor is his cheerleader, Jasper.
Lined up against these two were the bulk of the state’s municipal lawyers. And speaking for them was the New Hampshire Municipal Association’s Cordell Johnston, who is a lawyer and who told Union Leader columnist Dave Solomon that the secretary of state “has no authority over town elections, none. . . . It’s a town issue,” and the moderator has full authority. My own unofficial poll of a few municipal lawyers I know backed him up completely.
If my car breaks down, I’ll call a mechanic. If I break my arm, I want an orthopedic surgeon. And when I want to find out the law, I’ll consult a lawyer – not a state bureaucrat nor, as in Jasper’s case, a politician and landlord.
At this point, new and still inexperienced Gov. Chris Sununu – also not a lawyer – got involved as well and, in a conference call with what seems to be a great number of town officials from around the state, acknowledged that he didn’t really know the law either, but he strongly advised them not to reschedule the meetings because they might be sued.
He didn’t tell them, apparently, what (according to the Nashua Telegraph) he did tell the guests several days later at Nashua’s annual Wild Irish Breakfast, a back-slapping tribute to St. Patrick’s Day. Sununu referred to a “bizarre conversion” on Monday. “I had (Gardner) . . . yelling at me that we have to keep every town meeting open, and I had the . . . attorney general (Joe Foster) saying, ‘Absolutely not, towns have the choice.’ ”
Who’s right – the state’s municipal lawyers and moderators (many of them lawyers as well) and the state’s attorney general? Or Bill Gardner? Dozens of towns followed the lawyers’ advice, opting for safety, and rescheduled.
But Gardner managed to sow enough confusion that some thought it would be a good idea for state legislators to pass a one-time bill ratifying the results of the town meeting votes, whenever they were held. One state senator quickly introduced such a bill and scheduled a hearing.
The situation took on some urgency when David Barnes, described by the Union Leader as “the leading bond attorney” for the state’s cities and towns, popped up to say that – thanks to said confusion – it would be impossible for any bond counsel to sign off on the legality of the bond issue “to the ‘degree of certainty’” that’s required. He urged a quick ratification vote.
Alas, it wasn’t to be. Led by Jasper, Senate President Chuck Morse and – of course! – Bill Gardner (who is apparently implacably opposed to any attempt to ratify the legality of meetings he, Gardner, doesn’t approve of), members of the Senate voted to send the legislation to the limbo of a study committee.
So there matters stand – a mess. That’s what can happen when a whole lot of state officials, who should know better, treat every pronouncement of Gardner – who at age 68 has been secretary of state for 41 years – as if he’s speaking, like the pope, ex cathedra.
Presumably this is in large part because, over the years, Gardner has cultivated his image as the only person who can defend the New Hampshire presidential primary from out-of-state barbarian hordes trying to snatch our glory.
I’ve never really quite understood this reputation, since essentially his duty is simply to set a date so that our primary is always held at least seven days before any comparable election elsewhere. And that law was introduced and shepherded through the legislature by Portsmouth’s Jim Splaine, one of the real unsung heroes, along with a succession of Democratic and Republican national committee members who regularly fight, with both stealth and skill, to keep the Granite State first in both party’s primary schedules.
Here’s to Steve Duprey and Ray Buckley!
Aside from the primary, presumably Gardner has overseen his office with competence. But he seems to despise the 21st century and flatly rules out any changes in the way things are done – such as adopting early voting days or expansion of absentee voting – to reflect the way people live today. Election day is election day, period.
Even as he has insisted for years that there is no real voter fraud in New Hampshire, especially at the polls, he also has increasingly gone along with a slew of restrictive voter requirements because, as he often says, people think there’s fraud even if there isn’t.
More alarming, Gardner has asked for legislation, currently under consideration, that would greatly expand the powers of the secretary of state’s office by giving it investigative and enforcement powers now restricted to the office of the attorney general, the state’s constitutional law enforcement agency. This idea is virtually unprecedented – and dangerous.
So maybe it is a good idea to polish up that Secretary of State Emeritus title. And get a little fresh, new air in the office.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)