This week, the New Hampshire legislature debated a bill that would give local towns and cities the power of rent control. In its defense, one New Hampshire Democrat argued that the landlords were not housing providers.
This bill enables municipalities to adopt bylaws to regulate the period of notice required prior to a rent increase on residential property and the permissible amount of such rent increases.
HB95 died a well-deserved death by a large margin in a chamber with a very slim Republican majority. It came out of committee with a 16-3 recommendation to kill it and lost on the floor of the House 301 to 63. 117 Democrats opposed it, which makes this all the more amusing.
One of the bill’s sponsors, Democrat Rep. Eric Gallager, from Concord, looking the part of the scruffy Marxist with his suitably useless cloth bandana face mask (to protect him from COVID, I can only assume), delivered what one Rep reported to me to be the worst floor speech he’s ever seen.
You can watch all six incredibly painful (but amusing) minutes here, but NH House Republicans took the money shot and set it to some… appropriate music.
Gallager is not new to controversy though many of the tweets we’ve shared in the past have since been deleted. He appears to have left Twitter, probably at the request of the State Democrat Party. (If I missed him, please share the link to his feed in the comments.)
They may want to ask him to refrain from speaking on the floor of the House.
It’s not good for the business, which, as we all know, is ‘you didn’t build that,’ but as soon as they have the votes, they’ll whittle away and try to take it from you and give it to the workers government.
*NH is a Dillons Rule State. Local government entities, from counties to cities to towns to school boards, cannot do anything without the legislature having passed authorizing legislation. And yes, they still try to do things without authorizing legislation.
