Today, we learned that we voted either Concur, Non-Concur, or Non-Concur with Committee of Conference (CoC) on 93 House bills and 20 Senate bills. Most bills passed the recommended motion of the committee chair with a voice vote. Some bills and their amendments were debated, and others were voted on with just a brief explanation of what the Senate’s fingerprints… I mean, amendments… were tacked onto the bills.
All in all, the House didn’t seem to mind a few word changes or adding or removing certain items… it was the tacking on of whole other bills that sent them to CoC land.
We learned that most of the returned House bills that we non-concurred on, or those House bills that were already designated to go to Committee of Conference, had some Senate bill tacked onto it that the House had already rejected or tabled. In fact, SB499, the bill that expands the school free and reduced breakfast and lunch program, along with making it available in the summer, and also expanding food assistance to eligible older adults and people with disabilities, was not only sent to the House on its own, but also tucked into HB1278. A similar House bill, HB1212,was already tabled in the House on 4/11/24. Seems like these free school meal bills keep repeating on us like a bad hotdog.
We learned that the first bill concurred today was HB185, relative to parental rights and responsibilities based on shared parenting. Republicans have been trying to pass this shared parenting legislation for over a decade, and finally, we got it done. Of course House Democrats were opposed to it. The bill also included language to require school governing bodies to post on their official website the amount of funds received by the state, either by allocation or grant. The bill was concurred 191Y-171N.
We also learned that HB1018 will go to a Committee of Conference (if the Senate accedes). The House voted Non-Concur CoC by a voice vote after a Concur vote failed 179Y-190N and a Non-Concur vote failed 180Y-190N.HB1018 was relative to on-premise and off-premise liquor licenses…simple right? But the Senate tacked on a current use bill (SB504) which provides that the owner of land in current use and designated as open space may post that such land is restricted to use for public recreation only and expands grounds for criminal trespass to include violation of open space land posted for recreational use only and when associated with a violation of the controlled drug act or human trafficking. Now why would the Senate do that? Well, SB504 (the current use bill) came to the House only to be amended to include the House version of bail reform (HB318). Well, why did they do that? It’s because the Senate amended the House version of HB318, which is going to a Committee of Conference (if the Senate accedes), which puts the Senate bill version in jeopardy. So everyone is tacking the language of bills that they want into bills that the other body may want in hopes of getting it passed. It can be very confusing… and that is why they call this “silly season”.
We learned that the Senate amended HB1633, cannabis legalization bill, was ultimately non-concurred with a committee of conference with a division vote of 261Y-108N. The House did not like the Senate version, and if the Senate accedes to having a CoC then they will have to come up with some sort of compromise next week or it’s dead. There were some who said we should pass this version and fix it later, especially since it doesn’t take effect for two years. There were others who didn’t think a state solution (like the liquor store model) was the right idea. Then there were House members who didn’t like either the House or Senate version. Rep. Anita Burroughs (D-Bartlett) spoke against the Concur motion and remarked, “I agree with my esteemed colleague [Commerce Chair Rep. Hunt (R-Rindge)] that a gummy before going to bed would be better than a drink because I only drink on legislative days.” That did get a good laugh. Visit Tandy’s after House session and count how many legislators you see there. (Wink)
We learned that the Senate changes to HB1186 was concurred with a roll call vote of 190Y-179N. The vote was basically on party lines. This bill was relative to firearm purchaser privacy. This bill prohibits the assigning of a specific merchant code to the sale of firearms, ammunition, or firearm accessories. This bill further provides a mechanism for enforcement of this prohibition. The folks voting in favor of this bill basically do not want the government tracking what we buy by putting little notation on our credit card purchases. Nah… we don’t want to be a part of that… but House Democrats do… because of “public safety” or something. Our friend Rep. David Meuse (D-Portsmouth) also just wants to make sure there’s no fraudulent activity going on with your credit card. I really didn’t know he cared so much about my purchases… how thoughtful.
We learned that HB115 brought us yet another turn at changing the date of the state primary. It would have moved our state primary to June. The House did not concur with this attempt to move the state primary and voted down the Concur motion 159Y-202N. A Non Concur motion passed on a voice vote. The issue is now dead. June would have been a good time to have the state primary because that is when the out of state “resident” voters at our college campuses are not around to “participate”, if you know what I mean.
We learned that HB1410, relative to certain professional licenses and relative to the board of optometry and the regulation of optometry, was tabled 192Y-170N. HB1410 was amended by the Senate to include SB440 since SB440 was Tabled in the House last week. So the Senate made another stab at trying to get this language passed. It would have increased the scope of practice of optometrists to include four new procedures that they currently cannot perform. This ostensibly is meant to alleviate the shortage of people performing those procedures. The ophthalmologists would have none of it, though, and they lobbied furiously to prevent passage of the bill. Optometrists claim they are trained in these procedures and the bill language required them to get more extensive training as well. In the end, we did not see this getting passed.
We learned that the “safe haven” bill was concurred 185Y-174N. The debate regarding this bill centered around an exclusionary clause. This means that if a child is dropped off and it had been abused, that the person handing off the child could not be prosecuted. The opponents of the bill wanted to make sure that abusers would be prosecuted and held accountable for their crimes. The proponents of the bill just want the babies to be dropped off to be taken care of and they claim that people would be more likely to leave the child if they knew they wouldn’t get in trouble for doing so or for whatever they’d done. Testimony during debate indicated that no other state with safe haven laws (or baby box drop offs) prosecute people who drop off babies.
We further learned that HB1215 was non concurred. This bill included language that would have allowed the Town of Hampton to discontinue a particular highway in order to lease that property. Currently, if there is a road in town that the town wants to change the designation (class 6 to class 5, etc.), it goes on a warrant article in a town meeting. This bill would allow the select board to make that decision. House members voted No on concurrence 172Y-180N (roll called) and sent this to a committee of conference on a voice vote.
We also learned that another House member changed her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. Today the Republican Caucus welcomed Rep. Sherry Gould (R-Bradford, Henniker, Warner) to their side of the House.
Finally, we learned that next week, we’re taking a session break while House and Senate members duke it out in Committees of Conference while listening to The Rolling Stones sing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” We’ll be back on June 13th, ready to vote on Committee of Conference reports. See you then!
Editor: A quick thanks to Judy for all of these updates. I’m appending this week’s attendance list to this because we already have a ton of extra content this morning. There were very few roll call votes this week, which is why the numbers are so low, but again, the YTD missed vote totals on the right should interest voters.
