The best job in New Hampshire government may very well be register of probate.
Win your countywide election, and you get $100 a year for doing just about nothing.
“They don't have any function. They don't have an office. They don't have a phone,” says Donna Styek.
And she would know: In 2016, Sytek, a former Speaker of the New Hampshire House, won the Rockingham County probate seat on a platform of abolishing it altogether.
“I was not successful,” she reports.
She, along with voters statewide, will get another chance on Nov. 3.
A proposed constitutional amendment will appear on the ballot formally eliminating the register of probate from the two sections where it appears in the state constitution.
Since 1877, voters in New Hampshire who look all the way down to the bottom of their ballots have seen candidates running for the position. (The job was included in the original state Constitution in 1784, but wasn’t an elected position at the time.) Up until 15 years ago, the register functioned like a court clerk, assisting the judges who oversaw cases involving wills, estates and trusts. It came with a two-year term, a salary paid for by the county, and a decent workload.
“They didn't have any authority to make any decisions, but they kept the trains running on time,” says Sytek.
In 2011, though, there was a major consolidation and overhaul of the state’s judiciary, including the folding of the probate court into the new circuit court model. Rather than having county government continue to pay registers, the functions of the job were absorbed by other court staff. The salary was dropped to $100 annually, the same measly pay members of the Legislature receive. There was one job duty left in place, related to archiving records, but even that has now been farmed out. That leaves the register of probate with essentially no responsibilities.
The New Hampshire Constitution, however, can only be amended through a statewide vote, and there was no appetite at the time to tidy up the state's founding document. So instead, for the past 15 years, voters have still been asked to pick their preferred register of probate each election. And candidates continue running.
“I can be helpful sometimes for folks,” says Jane Bradstreet, one of the state’s longest serving registers. She’s held the Merrimack County post since 1999, with the exception of one term.
Bradstreet says the job, pre-2011, was a kind of liaison between residents and a complicated bureaucracy. Even now, despite having no desk, no publicly available phone number, or a website, Bradstreet will still try and assist people who contact her.
“It’s word of mouth,” she says.
Some registers have advocated, at times, to restore the job to its former status. Bradstreet, for her part, says having an elected officer inside of the judicial branch was valuable, since they technically couldn’t be supervised or even fired by judges.
Next week, her name will again appear on the ballot in Merrimack County, along with a Republican challenger. And below their names, there will also appear a proposed constitutional amendment to formally remove the job from the books entirely.
In 2022, the only other time voters were asked to weigh in, the measure received approximately 63% of the vote, falling just short of the 66% needed to pass. This year, the Legislature drafted and approved a new constitutional amendment, which Sytek is optimistic will get the super majority of support it needs.
“It's just a loose end in the Constitution,” she says. “It's a housekeeping measure, and I'd like to have our Constitution reflect reality.”
