There have been mixed opinions as to whether the select board may put its recommendation on non-budgetary warrant articles, i.e., separate warrant that do not contain appropriations. In this case, a Grafton Superior Court judge ruled that the Grafton Select Board did have the authority to place its recommendation on non-budgetary warrant articles.
This petition for declaratory and injunctive relief was brought by several residents of Grafton who were the proponents of 19 petitioned warrant articles on the 2015 Grafton Town Meeting Warrant. All of these articles were non-budgetary articles, and the select board inserted, after each, the following: The Selectmen do not recommend this article. The petitioners argued that the insertion of these recommendations violated RSA 39:3, which allows the select board to make only minor textual edits to petitioned warrant articles; that the select board did not have the authority to put recommendations on non-budgetary warrant articles; and that the recommendations infringed on the constitutional right to free elections and equal right to vote under the New Hampshire Constitution.
First, the judge determined that the recommendations did not violate RSA 39:3 because they were not textual edits; they were parenthetical notations added after the text of the warrant article and did not interfere with the substance of the articles. As to the second argument, the judge decided that RSA 32:5, V-a, in the municipal budget law chapter, gives a governing body the authority to insert recommendations after any warrant articles, not just non-budgetary articles. Finally, the judge found that the constitutional claims were unsupported and therefore lacked merit as well.