Today we learned that the first year of the 169th General Court is up and running. Committee assignments have been made, members have been seated, bills have been submitted, and the House today adopted a bunch of new House Rules and voted down a bunch of others. Oh, and new license plates were issued to House members too!
We also learned that today was Convening Day in the NH House. We had a short joint session to start things off. Secretary of State David Scanlan came to read the certified election results for Governor and Executive Council as well as our Federal delegation seats, and our Sergeant-at-Arms, JB Cullen was sworn in. After that, we tackled 22 rule changes.
We learned that after passing mundane things like the House deadline schedule (Rule 66) and how the clerk will distribute bill copies (Rule 43) via voice vote, we got down to more serious business.
We learned that the House killed 2 attempts at making rules regarding a Committee’s subpoena power (Rule 28). One died 150Y-229N and another died with a vote of 83Y-299N. Both sought different measures to create a subpoena process that would compel requested individuals to come testify before a committee. Apparently, this issue has come up because of the failure of some State Agency heads to show up and/or answer questions asked of them by committees when committees are trying to solve problems via legislation. The Majority felt that Mason’s Rules, which we live by in the House, already provides the mechanisms for subpoena power. Others felt that more is needed. One of the problems too, is that even if someone is hauled into a committee and questioned, would they provide the answers being sought or simply say, “I don’t know”. In any case, both rule change attempts seemed to have fallen short of a complete remedy to this problem and the House fell back on what is offered in Mason’s Rules.
We learned that despite efforts to bring dress decorum to the House, changes to Rule 2 did not happen. The first attempt at new wording which sought proper business attire be worn in the House Chambers AND in committee meetings was Tabled via Voice Vote. A second attempt which was just seeking proper business attire in the House Chambers was killed 183Y-196N. Now, no one was calling for the fashion police to show up… but let’s face it, we’ve seen enough horribly unprofessional clothes being worn in the House to make it truly embarrassing. OK… we can deal with clean looking jeans and a suit jacket with shirt and tie and we’ll even forgive the sneakers… but do we really need to see tee shirts with questionable sayings on them and sweat pants being worn by people who are supposed to be representing YOU the public? So, now we do not have a dress code for the House… which is a real shame. People just couldn’t bring themselves to define or accept “proper business attire”. Maybe I ought to feature “worst dressed of the week” in subsequent columns to show you what I mean.
We also learned that the most controversial rule change was House Rule 44, 45 and 52. This rule was all about tabling bills in committee and not allowing them a hearing. State Reps got tons of emails from both sides of the aisle saying that this was not how NH should do legislative business. People said that every bill deserves a hearing… even the hair-brained ones…. At least we’d learn how hair-brained they are! Perhaps this was meant as a way to clear out some “time-wasting” bills from committee work, but at the end of the day the rule change was Tabled via voice vote. How ironic that the Tabling Rule was Tabled.
Additionally, we learned that Rule 44(b) was changed to remove the requirement for a committee chair to provide notice in the House calendar for Executive sessions. The old rule required at least 2 days notice and also required a specific date and time for exec’ing a bill. That rule change passed 199Y-181N. Opponents claimed that the public would not know when a bill would be voted on in committee, but supporters said this will make committee work go a little bit faster by not having to schedule date and time specific votes and that this was traditionally how things were done in the past.
We learned that a voice vote passed the change to House Rule 46 (c) which said that if a bill comes to the House without a committee recommendation, that the committee chair could offer the motion of OTP or ITL on the bill when it comes up for a House vote, instead of it just starting out automatically with an OTP motion.
We learned that a change to Rule 64 passed with a roll called vote 216Y-164N. This change allowed an exception to the rule so that if a deadly weapon was displayed accidentally that no rule would be considered broken. Of course, our resident hoplophobe, Rep. David Meuse (D-Portsmouth), had his own version of a rule change for Rule 64, which would have banned firearms from the House chamber, anterooms, gallery and cloakrooms. That was shot down via roll call vote of 154Y-227N.
We learned that Rule 20 was changed with a vote of 211Y-170N to allow for easier special ordering of bills. That way we only need a simple majority instead of 3/5 of the House to change when bills on the House agenda could be voted on. This was the way it used to be done. Sometimes we want to have a bill scheduled for later in the day to be voted on earlier or vice versa. Remember this jingle? “Hold the pickles hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us…” well special orders won’t upset the NH House!
We also learned that change to House rule 39 (e) was passed on a voice vote and that will allow bill sponsors to withdraw their bill from a committee so long as a time and date of a hearing for it has not been published. The request for withdrawal would also appear on the consent calendar. Sometimes a bill sponsor might want to not waste a committee’s time with a bill that they feel isn’t complete or was duplicated somewhere else. This will save some time in committees.
There was also a change to Rule 36(e) that we learned was very unpopular. It died 83Y-295N and was meant to limit House members to filing only 1 bill in the second year of the legislative session. They could file more bills if they could find more than 6 people to co-sponsor each bill. Looks like restraint from filing bills will still be left self-imposed.
We additionally learned that change to House Rule 33 died via voice vote and would have vacated all committee chairs and vice chairs and put the committees in charge of electing a chair and vice chair. I can’t even imagine the pandemonium that one would have caused!
We learned that change to House rule 47(f) died 186Y-193N. This change would have removed the ability for the Committee Chairman to waive a bill’s referral to their committee without a vote of the full committee. This is usually for bills going to a second committee. Sometimes a committee chair needs to be able to move a bill along without an unnecessary stop in the second committee. I think our Finance Chair appreciated the demise of this rule change.
Finally, we learned that Rep. Read (D-Newmarket) presented the House with 6 Rule changes and all of them failed. Amending House rule 100, which would have had committee chairs who impose testimony time limits in hearings must do so uniformly, died 177Y-205N. She also tried to amend House rule 44(a) changing notice of House hearings from 3 days to 10 days and that died 73Y-308N (even her own caucus hated that one!). Rep. Read also tried to change House rule 52 which would lower the number of members required to remove a bill from the consent calendar from 10 to 3, and that died 182Y-202N. Her attempt to change House rule 100 (q) to make it so that Committee Chairs could not edit a committee report except for spelling and grammar, failed 173Y-208N. Then she tried to change a General House rule to effectively dictate that a leading member of a committee would be referred to as “Chair” be they male or female. That genderless proposal died 175Y-208N. Why are these people so pre-occupied with sex? Finally, Rep. Read, our resident Satanist, who during the holiday season assisted in placing the Satanic idol on the House Common alongside the creche and Christmas tree, and subsequent menorah, tried to pass a House rule change to 58(a) 1 removing the standard prayer/invocation at the beginning of House session with a “reflection”. That proposal which didn’t have a prayer, died 160Y-222N.
So kids… that’s it for today. With the rules that passed today, our upcoming House sessions and committee work should be productive! We’ve got some great bills in the pipeline that we intend to pass, and some other not so great (and at times boneheaded) ones that we will dispose of. Stay Tuned!
