“What is the Executive Council?” was the title of a routine column written by the late Bernie Streeter about 30+ years ago for the 1590 Broadcaster, a now-defunct free newspaper in Nashua. Bernie Streeter was one of Dave Wheeler’s predecessors and held office in the early 90s before becoming the mayor.
As a young adult, I was too busy living in my own little world to pay attention to whatever he was saying. I just showed up to vote in every election for the Republican because I didn’t want the Democrat to be elected, and the office of Executive Councilor was no exception.
The Executive Council is a five member-elected body that shares power with the governor. To borrow content from former Rep Melissa Blasek’s presentation, NH is unique and arguably has the weakest governor among the 49 others. The EC is kind of like the last firewall protection against a tyrant governor. That’s why who its five members are is so important, especially as of late.
Unfortunately, the EC had been derelict in its duty of representing the Granite Staters who elected them and rather just rubber-stamping the governor’s wants and desires. This is also another reason why State of Emergency reform is so badly needed. More on that in a moment.
I will embed the following link for the reader’s reference on the EC, of which some parts are not always up to date, particularly the meeting calendars and with that disclosure out of the way, let’s discuss the responsibilities of that body.
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The EC must approve all appointments by the governor. They include judges, cabinet members, and lower-level bureaucrats. Keep in mind that these are UNELECTED government positions. Again, you don’t get to vote those out in the next election. That is why it’s so important to get the EC to block bad picks so they don’t have a lifetime appointment.
I use the word “lifetime” because the only positions that I’m aware of with an expiration date are supreme court judges on their 70th birthdays. There is currently a vacancy created by the outgoing Judge Hicks and a nomination in the pipeline for Judge Countway (or whatever last name she is most currently using or will use).
Gordon MacDonald was a rogue attorney general, and Sununu nominated him to the bench. Many of us aggressively implored Councilor Wheeler et al. to reject the nomination for a variety of reasons that would make for another article. Anyway, the EC at the time, which is the same five people we have today, defied the will of the constituency and rubber-stamped him into office. He is currently 62, so there’s a light at the end of the tunnel less than eight years away, pending the outcome of a recent bill changing that 70 to 75 years of age.
Anne Edwards, another Sununu appointee, was rubber-stamped onto the bench despite solid reasons made known for not confirming her.
And look at the Department of Insurance. DJ Bettencourt, a long-time friend of the state Royal Family, was recently rubber-stamped into his commissionership despite his less-than-noble character.
Another part of the EC’s duties is approving contracts and spending that involves more than $10,000. I will let someone else discuss what’s wrong with just handing out wasteful sweetheart deals without any oversight to out-of-state businesses. Remember St A’s on 9/29/21 and the arrests on 10/13/21? Of course, you do! A big agenda item was accepting millions of federal dollars with unreasonable strings attached. The rest of that was history. There are, however, all kinds of smaller tag items, but they do add up and put NH over a barrel and dependent on federal money, which is a big part of what makes NH secession so desirable to many.
Keep in mind that federal money is YOUR income tax revenue. There’s a great Thomas Sowell quote about the government quietly stealing your money while giving some of it back to you flamboyantly. If you don’t know Sowell, look him up.
As to the State of Emergency (SoE) issue, we are all by now familiar with Chris Sununu’s Executive Order (EO) madness. It started almost four years ago with over 80 COVID-related EOs, some of the most egregious ones being decreed shortly AFTER his reelection! But there’s a quieter part of the SoE that receives much less attention from Adam Sexton and his peers. It involves bypassing the legislature. Since I am not a constitutional scholar by any stretch of the imagination, I will refer the readers to Daniel Richard with detailed questions that might arise, but simply put, our governor misused the Executive Council to move larger parcels of money around that would, outside of the SoE, require approval from the legislature.
Remember, it is the House and the Senate that make law, NOT the governor. That means the EC can’t make law either. But this monkey wrench of an umbrella, the SoE, has allowed our governor to enhance his tyranny with millions of dollars at his disposal that otherwise would not be so easily available.
In the fall of 2021, an injunction against accepting that federal money was petitioned for and rejected by Judge David Ruoff, the same Maggie-appointed judge that recently ruled the wrong way on the “Claremont 2.0” school funding suit. That judge was UNANIMOUSLY ushered into office, and 2 of those ECs (Wheeler and Kenney) are still in office today!
Who sits on the EC matters! And so does SoE reform!
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