Today, we learned that session days can be very long as we toiled over Senate bills from 9:00 a.m. until 7:10 p.m., with time, of course, for an hour-long lunch break. All in all, we slogged through 45 bills on the regular calendar and two more taken off consent. I can’t report on all of them, but I will try to share some highlights, both good and bad. Today, we surely earned our $100 for the year (wink).
We learned that we had around 28-floor amendments that we hoped to tack onto some of the Senate bills before us. These were amendments created from the language of House bills that the Senate recently killed through ITL or Interim Study. Not all 28 were voted to be added onto Senate bills, but for those that did, the House decided to send the Senate a strong message back to them that our work shouldn’t be dismissed so easily. Their favored bills will now include our favored bills. Let’s see what they will do with them. It’s an annoying little game both bodies play at this time of the year and during Committee of Conference season. Seeing as they are also still holding some of our bills hostage, I am sure those House bills will come back to us with many unwelcome surprises.
We learned that we special ordered our first bill to be done after lunch break, only to come back from lunch to Table it 325Y-32N. That was SB558, a bill that would require insurance companies to cover fertility treatments. The Commerce Committee recommended Interim Study because there was some questions about whether insurance companies cover those procedures or not, so either way, the bill ended up yielding no fruit… so to speak.
We learned that CACR22 failed to garner 3/5th of votes needed to pass, as the votes were 195Y-165N on a Roll Called vote. If this had passed, then a question would have been posed on November’s ballot as to whether or not we should establish the New Hampshire presidential primary (FITN) as the first such electoral contest in the nation in our State Constitution. We needed 216 yes votes for this CACR to pass. Apparently 21 House members did not trust the people enough to make that decision. I appreciated comments made by Deputy Speaker, Steve Smith (R-Charlestown), about presidential candidates, “It’s not cute when candidates come here and serve our coffee and cook our eggs. It is a reminder to the powerful people who want to be a leader of the free world that their first job, their only job, is to be a public servant.” He was spot on.
We learned that after all the tons of emails House members received about SB440, which made our eyes blurry, we tabled the bill 224Y-137N. This expanded the scope of what procedures optometrists could perform that they are not currently permitted to do. There were stipulations in the bill regarding required education, training, supervision and certification, but there was lots of push back by many organizations, ophthalmologists, and eye surgeons, warning legislators of horrible consequences that could happen to people if these procedures are not done properly. People who had gone blind from botched laser surgeries came to testify against the bill, as this type of optometry expansion has been allowed in other states. The bill was intended to help increase access to eyecare and procedures because there is a lack of ophthalmologists in our state, especially in rural areas. The thought was to allow optometrists to take on some of the procedures and make them more available for patients. There was no data to suggest that with optometrists performing some laser surgery treatments there would be higher rates of complications or malpractice suits. We also didn’t really know if this move would truly increase access to care and make it less expensive. In the end, the House saw fit to Table the bill.
We learned that SB417 passed 361Y-3N. This bill was a reaction to some horrific things that happened to kids that were placed out of state after being removed from their abusive or troubled homes. SB417 revises criteria for out-of-home placement of children under the child protection act and other juvenile statutes and establishes an order of preference based on placement with the child’s siblings, when possible, and proximity to the child’s community of origin. The committee amendment to the bill was a tighter Roll Called vote of 186Y-178N with all but 2 Democrats against the amendment (because remember… it’s for the kids). The amendment did many things to streamline the process of placement and to help facilitate getting children into homes where their unique needs can be met. For one thing it updated the standard for evidence from “a preponderance of the evidence” to “clear and convincing evidence.” Increasing the standard slightly to the clear and convincing evidence standard will help reduce the number of spurious cases heard by the court and allow the Judicial Branch to focus on the cases where there are real concerns. The amendment also addressed parental ownership of firearms and made it clear that mere ownership does not make a home “unsafe” and that this one factor should not be weighed against the parent. This was a good bill from the Senate… and the House made it even better with its amendment.
We learned that SB476 was the bill that approved a capital appropriation to the Department of Corrections (DOC) in the amount of $40 million for architectural, engineering, programming, design and construction documents for a replacement state men’s prison. This is a must have bill for the Senate. Rep. Terry Roy, (R-Deerfield) offered as a floor amendment the language to HB1711 to be added onto the Senate bill. HB1711 is considered by some, including many gun groups, to be a “Red Flag Law” bill and was recently killed in the Senate with a Tabling motion. It adds mental health records to gun background checks, and was a response to the shooting of Chief Bradley Haas at the NH Hospital. The floor amendment passed 202Y-165N, and the amended Senate bill passed 212Y-155N. Personally, I am not a fan of a $40 million expenditure in an “off budget year”, especially since we in the House keep getting chastised by the “folks on the other side of the wall” regarding bringing “money bills” to the Senate in an “off budget year” (hence their reason for killing some of our House bills…but I guess their money bills are betterer)… and I certainly didn’t support the floor amendment. It will be really interesting to see what the Senate does with this.
We learned that there was “House Drama” after the passage of SB476. Loud words were had between Rep. Terry Roy (R-Deerfield) and Rep. Cyril Aures (R-Chichester) about the HB1711 gun bill language. Afterwards, there were Motions made to Reprimand both House members for their unruly conduct, but the House decided to Table both Motions to Reprimand and get on with the days business. It was a good move, because we still had tons of work ahead of us, and the Reprimand really is nothing more than a “finger-wagging, don’t do that again boys” gesture. The House had already been in recess for a half hour to sort through the aftermath of the “kerfuffle” and decide how to deal with it all and we didn’t really need to waste more time on that. People need to chill… it’s just legislation the Senate will likely kill again anyway.
We learned that SB591, modifying definitions, claims procedures, and funding relating to the youth development center settlement fund and claims administration, passed on a voice vote. That was after an amendment was tacked onto it by Rep. Dan McGuire (R-Epsom). This bill makes various changes to settlement terms, and adds $60 million to the settlement fund for the YDC lawsuits.and will cover our expenses until July 1, 2025. There’s a $75 million cap on the state’s annual settlement costs, and a 5% interest rate on settlements that are paid over time, and that is going to be a level of expense to continue for many years. The amendment removes the ability of those funds to be borrowed and instead will have to be budgeted with the state’s other operating expenses. While it is appropriate to borrow when necessary for capital projects such as roads, prisons or other infrastructure that will be used for many decades, it is not appropriate to borrow to pay current expenses such as this settlement fund. The amendment passed 187Y-173N. Can you imagine that 173 House members would borrow money to pay structured settlements? That would just be a policy of insanity…taking out debt to pay more debt.
We also learned that SB431 relative to Wake Surfing was passed with an amendment 214Y-148N. This bill and its amendment restricts the activity of wake surfing on lakes and ponds that are less than 50 acres in size, codifies provision of existing wake surfing education by the Department of Safety, and mandates a 300-foot distance from shorelines and docks, versus the present distance in statute, which is 150 feet. The hope is that this will enable some progress with the mitigation of the cumulative environmental and recreational challenges. The motorsports industry has a “Wake Responsibly” campaign, to educate about the erosion of shoreline, damage of docks and boats, and interference with other lake recreational activities. For some wake boaters, passing this bill will surely make some waves.
We learned that SB358 was killed 176Y-174N on a Roll Called vote. It should have been passed. With this bill, New Hampshire would not honor out of state driver’s licenses issued exclusively to people unable to prove lawful presence in the United States. We have no problem with legal immigrants, but we know some of our neighboring states are issuing drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. That’s not cool. We heard arguments that allowing people who are unlawfully in our country to obtain driver’s licenses improves the safety of our roadways, but there’s no real evidence to support this. We also know that licenses (a government ID) given to unvetted individuals poses a much greater risk to public safety. Those licenses also confer certain privileges. Why would we give privileges to law breakers? The rule of law is important and should not be discarded. Allowing and condoning illegal immigration by honoring licenses specifically issued to unlawfully present individuals is not in the best interest of this state and is an affront to the millions of immigrants who have legally come to this country. Changing the status quo of state reciprocity on driver’s licenses is not to be taken lightly, but we have a duty to protect the rule of law and safeguard the citizens of our state from the bad policy decisions made by some of our neighboring states.
Finally we learned that SB501 was passed on a roll called vote of 181Y-169N, and that should have been killed. This bill will grant licenses to non-citizens residing in New Hampshire. The bill changes the term “Non Resident Alien” to “Non-Citizen.” Second, it mentions the term “granted conditional residence” but does not describe what it means. Third and most importantly, the bill states that “once licensed, the individual shall be subject to the same provisions of the law as all other licenses.” This is a back door to allowing non-citizens to vote. The minority feels that this bill will have an adverse effect to election integrity. One can only hope that the Governor will veto this horrible bill. This just underscores the need to stop using licenses as ID to vote in our state. We really need to find another way to validate voters. I am amazed this bill came to us from the Senate!
Next week we’ll have Concurrence Week – The House will vote on all the bills coming back to us from the Senate with their marvelous changes. We can hardly wait to see all the presents they will send back to us in our House bills. I’m sure there will be some surprises and disappointments… like when you get socks or coal for Christmas. 😉
