This week, we met in committees of conference. Since the budget was agreed without one, the atmosphere was much less stressed than previous years. My committee’s bills had generated six committees, and as chair, I served on four of them…
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HB 358, my bill on the administrative rules process, had a three-part Senate amendment. The first part was clarifying language for the original bill, requested by the Administrative Rules staff; we accepted that change without debate. The second was SB 42, on unemployment overpayments, which had passed the House last week: that was removed from the bill without objection. The last change was an employer mandate to accommodate nursing or pumping mothers; we discussed that at some length. The Senate insisted on including it, and after they conceded on the social work compact (on HB 409), the House members reluctantly agreed to accept this. Since the federal government has some new regulations in this area, and the state requirements don’t go into effect for two years, the rather vague language of this regulation can be improved in the meanwhile.
HB 409, which started as a reciprocity requirement for barbers and cosmetologists, was actually better covered in HB 594, which dealt with accepting out-of-state licenses for all professions. Therefore, it was used to add a hefty bundle of changes to various professional regulations. The most significant were the investigation and discipline sections we had pulled out of HB 655; the subcommittee had kept working on them and shared the results with the Senators. So the conference committee went through these sections, making a few minor tweaks to the language.
We discussed the changes to the Board of Nursing: the Senate added two members, a registered nurse and a licensed nursing assistant, and required one of the nurses be a specialist in nurse education. More board members was not a problem – there are over 30,000 nurses in the state and the board has not had a problem meeting its quorum. Board members had convinced the House members (mostly me and the leading Democrat on the committee) that the education specialist was a conflict of interest, as the Board of Nursing approves education programs and regulates them. That was removed in favor of having an education subcommittee of the Board.
Finally, the Senate had added the social work compact to the bill. I, and the Republicans on the committee, were opposed to including this on the bill. First, the compact has not yet been formed, and we felt being “at the table” (as one of the first seven states to adopt the compact) when the rules were developed was not enough to counterbalance that by joining the compact at this time we were accepting its rules as law in New Hampshire – before we knew what the rules contained! Secondly, my committee has retained the compact as part of a retained bill, and we expect it to go to the House in January. So, we caucused, convincing the Democrat member that there was no real hurry on this section, and after some more discussion, the Senate agreed to remove the compact.
I wasn’t on the conference for HB 461, which we had passed as a penalty for employers who converted police chief or school superintendent to “part-time” so that they could hire retirees. The Senate converted it to a study committee on the issue; as expected, they were unable to reach any reasonable compromise.
HB 532, on licensing music therapists, was also amicable. The Senate changes were innocuous, so we agreed with their position.
SB 147, on the dental board, was quick: the Senate, convinced by the dentists’ association, agreed with the House position. We pointed out that the policy on deep sedation for children was being studied in SB 91, which was retained in the Senate Health & Human Services committee, and any policy changes could be implemented by that bill.
SB 207, on critical incident management and conditional licenses for mental health workers, also had a very cordial conference committee to incorporate some updated language.
All in all, a very cordial and efficient committee of conference season for my committee. Since the budget had been agreed as the Senate version, there was none for Finance. Apparently, the conflicts were over bail reform, which had been attached to a number of HHS bills this time…
Representative Carol McGuire
carol@mcguire4house.com
