Are there any readers who remember a House Election Law hearing in the early winter of 2022 when the late Rep Mark Alliegro introduced a bill about hand counting? I’ve been unable to track down the HB number despite a search on bills that Mark sponsored and a quick look at the YouTube playlist. I didn’t watch every minute of every hour of hearing time, but I was able to narrow my search with some clues. House bills are in House committees before crossover time, so that’s January, February, and the first part of March.
This particular hearing was in Reps Hall, and I remember observing it in person. Lots of good and well-known people were in attendance and spoke. That’s why I started with the question I asked. The House Election Law playlist has only one date when a video was taken in the Reps Hall: 2/2/22. All the others were in the LOB.
If you were there for the hearing I’m talking about, you would remember Rep Barbara Griffin, the chair, standing up in front of the Speaker’s workstation, playing with her phone a lot of the time, and being snarky to the audience when she wasn’t busy whispering into the ears of Reps Sweeney and Berry. I took pictures of them. When Barbara called the committee to order, she said “good MORNING” and the video is less than 3 hours long.
However, I remember that it was dark when she adjourned the committee because Russan Chester, Kelley Potenza, and I went to dinner at a nearby pub down the hill. I remember many other details about that day, but I don’t want to bore the readers with the less relevant ones. What I want to do is find where (web address) the video from that hearing is. What was special about it (to me) was that Barbara threatened to silence Mark Alliegro from the mic if the audience didn’t stop applauding. I’m not here to debate decorum policy right now, just to point out that I see a trend of various committee videos disappearing from public access. It’s not committee-specific or chamber-specific. Let’s move on to the Senate for 2 examples.
On 11/24/24, Ian Underwood wrote an article criticizing Ruth Ward‘s behavior as Senate Education chair in the handling of SB266. My knee-jerk reaction was to pull up SB266 in NH dot gov to see all the important dates of its movement and then watch all relevant videos, like the hearing and executive session. When I went to the Senate’s YouTube page, all the committees had playlists sorted by committee name and year. The 2024 Senate Education playlist had an amazingly few videos in it, which was laughable for such a busy committee. Of course, the few available did not include the date(s) that I was interested in.
I emailed Tammy, the senate clerk, and Attorney Lehmann to request access to the video(s) I wanted to watch. Neither one of them replied, but the good news is that when I revisited the playlist page less than 5 days later, I saw the one I was looking for among approximately 10 other newly added ones. The problem was quietly fixed in a timely manner, though a reply notifying me would have been nice.
Today I received an email from old Nashua connection that included an article about the Community Loan Fund, which was Tara Reardon’s employer prior to being elected to the senate. I met Tara and learned about the Community Loan Fund minutes after speaking at a Senate Executive Departments hearing in February 2023. I actually had some nice things to say about Sharon, who was a member at the time. Clegg was still alive, and he also spoke at this particular hearing. I wanted to grab the memorable sound bites from both of them; Clegg at the mic as a lobbyist and Sharon at the head table thoughtfully questioning people who spoke after me. When I went to pull up the 2023 playlist for Senate Executive Departments, there was only one video in that folder! Where else should one look?
I’ll add that I’m the kind of person who only disturbs Market Basket employees with questions after I’ve exhausted all logical places to look when I can’t find something I want. Using that mantra, I found it appropriate to email Tammy and Attorney Lehmann about the 2023 videos. After sending that email, I thought about the time Ms Maya had blocked me. I requested a list of Senate social media admins and confirmed my intuition that it was her, since the only other person on the list was a stranger.
Today, I want to know who controls the content on the Senate’s YouTube account. I requested a list of current and former people with such admin access. It shouldn’t be a long list, since videos have been available only since 2021 at the earliest. I’d like to make the same request for the House, but first, I want to give their clerk an opportunity to help me find the video of the Mark Alliegro bill hearing. Let’s see what happens over the next 5 days. Meanwhile, if anyone else has noticed that videos have disappeared from any committee’s playlists in either chamber, please speak up.
