April 18th, marks the anniversary of the day Queen Sharon placed her disregard for the Nashua citizenry on full display with her OTP move as Judiciary chair. I know what you, the reader, might be thinking. A few thoughts might be: “Resentment is a dubious luxury,” “free yourself and let it go,” or “it’s Easter, take a biblical view.” I’m not here to dispute the merits of such perspectives, I’m here to remind everyone that Sharon’s crime against 91A should NOT be forgotten, and neither should that of all her accomplices who are still in office today.
There’s plenty of Grok material on HB1002, but I’ll give a brief Senate recap as there’s plenty of blame to go around in the upper chamber, and not everyone’s fair share is equal. Just to name a few, in no particular order, on the blame hierarchy, there’s the Judiciary chair, Judiciary members, HB1002 cosponsors, senators representing RTK embattled cities(Senator Gray does NOT get a “get out of jail, free” card), and ordinary Senate Rs. Notice that I mentioned CITIES. Most blue Senate districts are that way because they include cities, so the Senate Dems are included in the blame.
I emailed the Judiciary Rs multiple times while HB1002 was in committee. When Queen Sharon sailed that ship, I emailed many of the non-committee Rs, including my own Senator at the time, urging them to reject HB 1002. On May 1, 2024, the day before the next meeting of the whole Senate, I was informed that Tim Lang, a cosponsor, allegedly had an amendment exempting locals from the RTK tax. Such an amendment would have been very helpful to people like Laurie Ortolano or her Rochester counterparts, for example, but there was no amendment. Not long after hearing that, I (accompanied by Nurse Terese) happened to run into Tim Lang (accompanied by Howard Pearl and Councilor Prescott) outside the front of the state house. Tim Lang didn’t care for my reprimand nor was he interested in preparing the amendment that Kevin mentioned earlier that morning. In fact, as Terese and I continued walking to her car, she said, “You know they’re laughing at us,” to which I concurred.
The rest is history, the Damn Emperor signed HB1002 later that summer and Queen Sharon was given the gavel after the election. Many of Sharon’s obedient soldiers were rewarded with things like promotions to or within committee leadership, or a seat at “the cool kids’ table,” um, I mean an office on the 3rd floor, or a new office(such as Tim Lang being gifted the highly visible D’Allesandro office).
Why am I rehashing all of this, and why should you, the readers, care? If you’re still reading at this point, I am hitching my HB1002 resentment to the very contentious SB 84 and other housing bill controversies. I happen to like Senator Murphy, but I disagree with his SB 84 and nine Senate Republicans, plus Altschiller, voted as such, while Dan Innis played hooky. Queen Sharon voted for SB 84. If you, the reader, happen to be as “apoplectic” about SB84 (relative to zoning procedures concerning residential housing) as Kevin said multiple times in his March 27 floor speech before the roll call, you might consider Sharon unworthy of the gavel. Good! I don’t mind being accused of rage farming.
While you, the reader, might not have a vote in a District 14 primary, or even have ties with anyone in that district to help with recruiting an opponent for Sharon, you can still help. There are other things out-of-towners can do once an opponent joins the race next June, but at anytime between now and the next election, you can tell your own senator you want the gavel given to someone else.
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