By KATHARINE WEBSTER, InDepthNH.org
Should the fact of whether or not a patron has a library card and active membership in a city’s or town’s public library be private or public information, and should people be punished for releasing it?
State Rep. Lisa Mazur, R-Goffstown, a library trustee in Goffstown with no library card, thinks so. She introduced two bills this session that would exempt that information from the state’s right-to-know law and punish disclosure with a financial penalty.
The bills are part of a flurry of state legislation concerning public libraries and librarians that grew out of battles between the Goffstown Public Library and local Republicans.
Some of those bills could amount to illegal censorship or invasions of privacy, leading to costly court challenges, according to legal experts.
All of them are sponsored by Republican legislators and appear poised to pass the Republican-dominated House, if they haven’t already. And the issues they involve resonated in Tuesday’s municipal elections for library trustee in several towns.
“The attacks that libraries are under, it undermines everything that we stand for,” said Goffstown Library Director Dianne Hathaway. “Librarians are being attacked just for doing their jobs, for being that person who stands up for the entire community, no matter who they are.”
LIBRARY TRUSTEES WITHOUT LIBRARY CARDS
Last fall, a member of the public filed a right-to-know law request with the Goffstown Public Library, seeking to learn which of the town’s library trustees and candidates had library cards and membership. Mazur, who was running for library trustee, fought the release of that information.
The privacy of public library users, including records of the materials they have checked out and their browsing histories on library computers, are protected under U.S. Supreme Court precedents and the New Hampshire right-to-know law.
But when Hathaway consulted the town attorney, he advised her that there was no exemption for the fact of library membership, so Hathaway released the information.
Mazur won election to the library board. And this legislative session, she introduced House Bill 376, which would protect library membership information from disclosure. It was voted “ought to pass” in the House last week and is now in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mazur also introduced House Bill 666, which would require any library or staff member who discloses library user information, even accidentally, to pay a hefty fine to the person whose privacy was violated. The library or staff member would also have to write a public, notarized letter of apology and send it by certified mail.
Mazur did not respond to an email requesting an interview or written comment on the bills and why she wanted to be a library trustee in Goffstown.
But state Rep. Joe Alexander, R-Goffstown, spoke up for HB 666 in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and offered an amendment that doubled the $500 “restitution” payment Mazur had initially proposed to $1,000, saying it was necessary to rein in “activist” libraries.
State Rep. Marjorie Smith, D-Durham, the ranking Democrat on the committee, called supporting bills that grow out of legislators’ local disputes a violation of the committee’s “integrity.”
“This bill is one of a series … that came out of a particular situation in a particular town, and a court ruled that in fact the library had not done anything wrong, had not done anything political, but still there is a lot of anger,” Smith said.
“This is over the top, the fine is unbelievably inappropriate … (and) the public apology is totally irrelevant unless we have come to the stage where we’re going to build stocks in front of town hall where we can periodically put people we don’t approve of.”
The committee adopted Alexander’s amendment and voted to recommend HB 666 for passage, 10-8, along party lines.
ELECTIONEERING OR INFORMING THE PUBLIC?
The court decision Smith referenced came in a lawsuit filed by state Rep. Ross Berry, R-Weare, who also represents part of Goffstown, and state Sen. Keith Murphy, R-Manchester, whose district includes Goffstown.
Last fall, the pair sued to prevent publication of the answers to a questionnaire that the Goffstown Public Library had sent to local candidates for state Legislature. They claimed that questions about the candidates’ positions on education funding, reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ issues were politically biased, making the questionnaire a form of illegal electioneering – using one’s public position or public resources to advocate for particular candidates or issues.
Hathaway, who has been a Goffstown librarian for 26 years, said that all the questions were suggested by community members and that the questionnaire was part of a long tradition of hosting candidate forums and providing voter guides in a nonpartisan manner, so that people can make informed choices.
“Libraries are the last great bastion for people to get information, where a person walking in can get the full picture of an argument or information without worrying about whether it’s produced by the right or the left – and it costs them no money,” she said, noting that the library promised to publish the candidates’ answers verbatim.
A Superior Court judge agreed and dismissed the electioneering lawsuit, and the library published the candidates’ responses before last November’s election.
Meantime, Murphy had also filed a formal complaint of electioneering with the state Attorney General’s Office on behalf of all the Republican candidates who had received the questionnaire, including Mazur and Berry. That was likewise dismissed on Dec. 18.
Asst. Attorney General Brendan O’Donnell, head of the Election Law Unit, had previously advised Berry by email that nothing in state electioneering law prohibits municipalities “from conducting candidate forums and candidate questionnaires, which have a long history in New Hampshire.”
“If you believe that additional limits should be placed on such activities, you are of course free to seek a legislative change,” O’Donnell wrote.
Berry, now chair of the House Elections Committee, decided to do exactly that with House Bill 340, which would expand the definition of electioneering to prohibit public employees from displaying political materials in the workplace, including voter guides, “making public statements in favor of or against any candidate, political party, or measure … (and) organizing or conducting surveys, forums, or events that are expressly or primarily political.”
He later amended it to exclude public opinion polls, such as those conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
“I won Goffstown (a swing town), and I believe the voters are behind us on this issue,” Berry wrote in an email.
HB 340 was voted “ought to pass” with amendments by the House. It is now in the Senate Election Laws and Municipal Affairs Committee.
John Chrastka, founder and executive director of EveryLibrary, a nonprofit with the mission of building voter support for libraries of all kinds, says HB 340 could violate the First Amendment free speech rights of public employees.
If it becomes law, it could prevent everyone from firefighters to school custodians from discussing their political views on their own time, speaking up at town meetings, posting political signs in their yards or writing letters to the editor as private citizens, he said.
“Private time, private activity needs to be preserved, protected and defended,” Chrastka said, alongside the opportunity to provide nonpartisan voter guides and host forums in public buildings. “It would have a chilling effect to prohibit that.”
FREE SPEECH CHAMPIONS AND OPPONENTS
A case in point is that of former state Rep. Arlene Quaratiello, R-Atkinson, who was fired from her job as assistant director of Raymond’s Dudley Tucker Library in 2023 for a letter she wrote to the editor of a local advertiser supporting two conservative candidates for library trustee in Atkinson.
Quaratiello was accused of electioneering. She sued the town of Raymond, the library, its director and three trustees, arguing that the letter was protected free speech because it had nothing to do with Raymond or her position as a librarian there. A judge magistrate in U.S. District Court agreed.
“I was supporting and endorsing candidates in my own town,” Quaratiello said in an interview with New Hampshire Public Radio afterward. “Now, if it had been in Raymond, that would have been completely inappropriate. It would have been electioneering.”
Under a consent decree, Quaratiello got her job back and the town agreed not to restrict employees’ private political activities.
Quaratiello, who has since left the library to teach English at a public charter school, ran for library trustee in Atkinson this year and used her greater political freedom to speak out on social media against Jill Galus, one of the Raymond library trustees she had sued, who was up for reelection.
Both Quaratiello and Galus were defeated in Tuesday’s municipal elections.
DILUTING CHILDREN’S PRIVACY RIGHTS
While Berry and Quaratiello fall on different sides of the electioneering divide, a “parents’ rights’” bill that Quaratiello introduced in the state Legislature last year has been taken up by Berry this year.
House Bill 273 would give parents the right to ask a public librarian for their minor child’s library record.
Right now, state law protects the privacy of children’s library records, but local libraries can adopt policies like that in Atkinson, where residents must show a picture ID with their address and provide an email address and phone number to obtain a library card.
That means a child cannot get their own library card until they turn 16 and qualify for a driver’s license or state ID. Before that, they must use a parent’s or guardian’s ID, email and phone number, which gives the adult 24/7 online access to the child’s borrowing information.
All of the librarians and library trustee candidates approached for this article agreed that parents have the right and responsibility to supervise their children’s use of library materials and programs.
But several also said that some children, especially those who are LGBTQ+, do not feel safe asking questions about sex and sexuality, alcoholism or domestic violence at home, and they should be able to find information at the public library in an age-appropriate way.
“I believe that children have a right to privacy, especially as they get older, especially when they’re adolescents,” said Erica Laue, a candidate for library trustee in Londonderry who was edged out in a tight, eight-person race for three open seats Tuesday.
“A policy like that violates a child’s right to explore a range of topics … and it creates a lot of extra work for librarians. I trust librarians to guide children to resources that are appropriate for them,” she said.
Quaratiello’s bill last year did not pass the House. This year, Republicans hold a larger majority in the House and a super-majority in the Senate, where Murphy has signed on as a co-sponsor to HB 273.
If all the bills pass, it will leave librarians navigating a maze of contradictions, as one Goffstown voter pointed out on Facebook before the elections and Wednesday’s hearing.
“My question is, how can a library employee possibly comply with (HB 273) if they face a $500 (now $1,000) fine for even acknowledging that anyone, including a child, has a library card?” Brian Campbell asked.