The office that handles disputes over access to public records in New Hampshire is now vacant, putting all cases on pause until a new right-to-know ombudsman is selected.

Thomas Kehr, the attorney who has led the office since its creation in 2022, no longer occupies the ombudsman role, according to a July 1 notice from Doug Ingersoll, executive director of the Public Employee Labor Relations Board.

Ingersoll expects the position to be filled, but the office cannot take any action on right-to-know cases “unless and until” there’s a new ombudsman, he said in the notice.

Officials haven’t yet disclosed the circumstances around Kehr’s departure, and Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s office did not respond to the Monitor’s questions about his exit or replacement prior to deadline.

The Office of the Right-to-Know Ombudsman was designed by the Legislature to give New Hampshire residents a more accessible path to redress violations of the right-to-know law, RSA 91-A.

Kehr’s exit comes after lawmakers made changes to the office in the state budget, downgrading it from a full-time, salaried position to a part-time role with a stipend. Kehr could not be reached for this story prior to deadline.

Lawmakers, who slashed the office’s budget from about $170,000 annually to just shy of $30,000, said the state needed to trim its spending across the board and that there wasn’t enough of a caseload to justify a full-time attorney for right-to-know cases.

“There really isn’t, in my opinion, enough work for a full-time person,” Epsom Rep. Dan McGuire, a Republican, told the Monitor earlier this year. “The cost per case – that’s how we look at these things – is way too much.”

As of March 9, Kehr’s office had closed 51 cases since it began reviewing right-to-know complaints in January 2023. 29 cases were still active, according to a case status report. By the end of 2024, the ombudsman’s office had handled cases against 35 municipalities, 13 state entities, five school districts, two counties and one college.

With the spending cuts, the ombudsman is now housed within the Public Employee Labor Relations Board, which is directed to share its office space and administrative support. The Office of the Right-to-Know Ombudsman had initially been created as a one-man show, with Kehr not only presiding over dozens of cases but also handling all the administrative work.

Lawmakers hoped the ombudsman process would be a faster and cheaper option than risking lawsuits, as well as a way to relieve some of the burden on the state’s court system.

The mediation and decision process, however, has elicited mixed results and opinions from those who’ve navigated it. While government agencies and claimants told the Monitor they like the alternative to a courtroom, some say the process is still lengthy and legalistic.

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.