Nine months after the office that handles disputes over access to public records was vacated, the state has yet to staff it.
Thomas Kehr, the attorney who served as the state’s right-to-know ombudsman and was the sole member of the office, did not continue in the role after lawmakers sliced the budget from $170,000 to $30,000 last year. They shuffled it under the wing of the state’s Public Employee Labor Relations Board, which was directed to share office space and administrative support.
Last July, when the cuts took effect, a message from the board’s executive director, Douglas Ingersoll, indicated that the Office of the Right-to-Know Ombudsman was “currently vacant” but “anticipated that the position will be filled soon.”
The role remains empty, however, and all cases that were unresolved by June 30 last year were dismissed, Ingersoll told the Monitor on Thursday. Right-to-know cases can still be filed in the courts.
The Legislature created the Office of the Right-to-Know Ombudsman in 2022, designed to give New Hampshire residents a more accessible path to redress complaints when they believe the right-to-know law has been violated. Lawmakers hoped it’d be a faster and cheaper option than lawsuits, but some who went through the process felt it was still too lengthy and legalistic.
The right-to-know ombudsman is a political appointee, to be nominated by the governor and confirmed by a vote of the Executive Council.
No one has applied for the position, Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s office said on Wednesday. The office did not answer questions about whether Ayotte is actively searching for someone to fill the role or whether and how she would like the position to continue to exist.
Ayotte instituted a hiring freeze last year, which prohibited state agencies from filling most of their vacant positions, though the governor has continued to nominate people to serve in other high-ranking roles in state government. Her office can also issue waivers to exempt certain positions from the hiring freeze on a case-by-case basis.
Among the dismissed cases was Larry Brown’s. After filing a complaint with the ombudsman’s office over access to documents regarding a bullying situation in his local school district in 2024, the Lancaster resident said Kehr warned him that the office might cease to exist.
“It just fell apart,” Brown said. “He had told me and the person that I was dealing with, a lawyer … that he may not be able to get to it before he was out of office, and he didn’t, so it was really too bad.”
Shortly thereafter, Brown said, he lucked out. A new superintendent started at the district and agreed to release the records.
As of last spring, Kehr’s office had 29 active cases, according to a case status report dated March 9, 2025. It had closed 51 cases since it began reviewing right-to-know complaints in January 2023. The cases brought to the office involved municipalities, state entities, school districts, county governments and a college.