On Tuesday I went down to Concord to testify on behalf of passing HB576, my “No means No” when Budget Committee use their fiscal policy setting Powers to tell Selectmen and School Boards that they don’t approve of those “purposes”. I thought that I had prepared well, spoke well (I did ask some of the folks that were there that I knew to make sure), and answered every question fully. I thought I had rebutted the NH Municipal Association’s lawyer/lobbyist on all points when the Chair, Rep. Carson (D-Warner), let me address the points.
Yesterday was the “Exec Session” day – hearings are when the public gets to speak and the committee members get to ask questions of them. Executive Session is when the members talk amongst themselves and take the vote. While not necessary, I was advised to be there during the Exec Session just in case the Committee had some final questions so I planned to be there at the Exec Session starting time: 1pm.
Murphy’s Laws: It turned out to be a much longer day than what I had expected. Unfortunately, hearings on the morning’sbills went WAY long. When I first arrived in the room around 12:30, I met up with NH State Rep Dave Testerman (R-Franklin) who informed me that he had been scheduled to speak (in favor of allowing “Tiny Home parks”) at 11am. He didn’t start until later on yesterday afternoon. I began to think that I should have brought my laptop to get some work done. Sigh….
Around 3pm the Exec Sessions started and they rolled through a number of bills before getting to mine. Two things alerted me that things were not going to go well for me:
- A bit earlier, Cordell Johnston (NHMA) spoke again and as he was going back to his seat, the Chair said “we all have to congratulate OUR Mr. Johnston for being on NHPR this morning
- When the Chair started the Exec Session, he led off with “I am ready to entertain a motion to ITL this bill“.
Yeah, good times, good times. That “OUR” bit said a lot. In fact, that single word said WAY too much:
- Was I working against a too powerful lobbying group, one that exists on the dues paid by my town, using (in part) my property taxes? Using my money to lobby against MY interests? I had heard about these kinds of stories for years – now, I have my own personal story of getting smacked right in the face.
- That perhaps too much familiarity didn’t create “contempt” as sometimes happens but worse: a sense of “we’re all together in this” – so we’ll take his words over an “outsider” citizen?
- As soon as I heard “OUR”, was I trying to work with a Committee that now was “captured”? Or was the more correct word “against”?
A couple of other things that might have impacted the final result:
- It was also clear that there was some no small amount of animus from Jim Belanger (R-Hollis) who has served, it seems, on almost every committee in town including Selectmen. And like many Selectmen, how DARE a Budget Committee rain on MY parade?
- Although I used my real name, in this hyper-partisan political atmosphere, someone may figured out “Skip” and GraniteGrok. End of the process (RE: “I am ready to entertain a motion to ITL…”). In that case, perhaps a pure partisan vote? Yeah, but…
The final vote was 17-3 to ITL. Only three of the nine Rs voted for it.
Yeah, it was a severe pasting. I’ll be honest – it wasn’t easy to take as I thought I had done most things right and the engineer in me really does believe that this was a non-partisan issue and only a technical fix. Yet, everything in government IS political and I didn’t do enough homework to figure out where those politics lay (re: Belanger).
Oh well – stuff happens. Even with this outcome, I’d do it all over again. I’ll lick my temporary wounds, reformulate, and try again.