Today we learned that being in a comfortable majority is a glorious thing indeed! At the start of this wintry day there were 209-R and 149-D in attendance. We knew the 23 bills we had before us were going to yield some very good wins. That being said, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us in the coming weeks and it looks like we will be able to deliver some very good policies to move to a second committee or to our friends “on the other side of the wall” for crossover.
We started out the morning with the withdrawal motion for HB476-FN – the 15 week abortion bill. There were some problems with that bill, and the House decided that now was not the time to send it back to committee to deal with it. The bill was withdrawn with a division vote of 335Y-18N and a roll called motion to reconsider vote of 15Y-340N.
We learned that Democrats probably see the political writing on the wall with regard to how constituents feels about enforcement of immigration laws and the prohibition of municipal sanctuary city policies. There was a shocking turnaround, as all but 6 Democrats joined all Republicans to pass HB511-FN (351Y-6N) in a roll called vote to pass legislation requiring broad cooperation of local law enforcement with federal immigration officials and the prohibition of sanctuary city policies. This came on the heels of recent press conferences given by the Democrats decrying federal immigration enforcement and supporting sanctuary city policies. Given how the issue has been polling, it looks like their previous disapproval of enforcing federal immigration law may have been put on ICE.
We learned that the Democrats were not as eager to pass HB71-FN which prohibits the use of publicly funded schools as shelters for illegal aliens. Nevertheless, the bill passed on a roll called vote 211Y-146N. All but 2 Democrats in the House voted to allow your publicly funded schools to be used to house illegal aliens.
Moving on to education, we learned that as we strive to make better definitions in education statutes, this bill promotes using the term “evidence based” as applied to pedagogical methods and requires the department of education and all local schools to conform to that definition in their communications. This means they must use objective science and clear reproducible methods to steer NH education policies and abandon the subjective practices used in the past. This bill passed with a division vote of 211Y-155N.
In Election Law we learned that HB67-A allowing that the Secretary of State can move onto permanent agreements for accessible voting systems for all elections (not just federal elections), and HB340-FN which clarified the prohibitions of electioneering by public employees, both bills passed on voice votes.
Our new Housing committee has been busy working on bills. They gave us 4 to vote on today. We learned that HB60 passed on a roll called vote of 217Y-139N. This bill allows a landlord to terminate tenancy of a resident at the end of a lease that is at lest 6 months in length and requires 60 day notice to the tenant of termination of the lease. Just like you have to return a rental car when your rental is over, your apartment lease is truly over when the lease term ends, unless the landlord wishes to to renew it. Democrats would have you believe that old ladies and orphans or people of color or people with certain political beliefs will be tossed out into the street with this legislation by uncaring and dastardly landlords. The fact is, that tenants sign a lease for a period of rental and the owner of the property should be the one to decide if they wish to renew the lease or not. There’s a myriad of reasons why they may not wish to renew… like maybe they have family they want to have move in there or maybe they want to sell the property. At the end of the day, it IS their property, and a lease/contract does have a termination date to be respected.
HB444 was another housing bill that was voted on primarily by party lines, only this was one the Republicans wanted to kill. This bill said that in a rental situation, you had to give the tenants in your apartment the first right of refusal if you wanted to sell your property and you had to give them 60 days to decide! That represents a true impediment to the free flow of commerce and the transfer of real property. House Republicans called this a “Socialist Bill” which elicited noises of protest from the Democrat side of the House. (Hey, we call ‘em as we see ‘em). In any case, the bill died with a roll called ITL vote of 213Y-144N with all but 5 Democrats voting No. They must be landlords.
HB623-FN was another awful Socialist bill that deserved to die. It was ITL’d with a roll call vote of 216Y-141N after an attempt to Table by the Democrats failed 149Y-207N. This bill would have prohibited corporations (non-natural persons) from purchasing single family homes for 90 days. Naturally, that includes LLC’s and non-profits and other legal entities that may be used to legally represent/protect small private investors or other individuals. The bill was unworkable and did nothing to alleviate our housing crisis, and only served to obstruct real estate transactions. The ITL pile was the only place this deserved to go.
We learned that Municipal and County bill HB110 passed OTP/A 182Y-175N. This bill was met with mixed bi-partisan votes. What this bill did was to allow counties to set up county public safety revolving funds, Those might be used for money needed for public safety service for special events or construction details or other special services related to public safety. There were questions about how the fund would be budgeted, managed, and what would happen to excess funds at the end of the fiscal year. In my opinion, it looked a lot like we’d be giving permission to set up some county slush fund. Truly, if you can’t budget for public safety special events in a normal category, perhaps you need some further training in budgeting 101… but that’s me (and apparently 174 others as well). Let’s see how it does in the next committee it goes to.
Next we learned that HB106 – establishing a commission to determine the monetary costs of climate damage to the State of NH and means of recouping those costs, was ITL’d in a roll called vote 207Y-149N. This “climate communism bill” assumes the use of fossil fuels will cause billions of dollars of damage to the state and that the state is obligated to seek remedies, including legal action against fossil fuel companies. In case you’re not paying attention, this kind of dangerous nonsense is happening out west in Montana and there are lawsuits galore since they have claimed clean air, clean water and a clean environment to be a “right”. Google it. It’s an absolute nightmare.
Another energy bill was HB189. This one was roll called and passed OTP-A with a great big “Green for Clean” button YES (206Y-148N) with House Democrats opposing this. They objected to nuclear energy being added to the definition of clean energy in our 10 year state energy strategy.
The next two energy bills were so bad we didn’t even want to waste time debating them, so HB306 and HB527 were Tabled. HB306 had to do with establishing a commission to study national and regional carbon pricing and HB526 would have established a very expensive and unnecessary climate change and damage division in the Department of Environmental Services. It doesn’t really matter what the votes to table were since we easily had the numbers to kill these awful bills, but HB526 was roll called if you’re interested.
Speaking of climate…. Rep. Katelyn Kuttab (R-Windham) came running down to the well with a motion that, “gentlemen may remove their jackets except when speaking from the well, several are very hot”… the request was granted and I suppose now we should have a “Hot Man’s Caucus” in the NH House. Of course only hot men need apply and we have several of them according to Rep. Kuttab – of course on the Democrat side, they may not be able to define what a man is these days… but I digress.
We learned that HB133-FN passed OTP with a roll called 206Y-147N. This bill requires new residents to transfer their out of state driver’s licenses to a New Hampshire driver’s license. Individuals will have 60 days to transfer their out of state licenses to a NH license. After the 60 day threshold, the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will send the required notice reminding individuals of their obligation to transfer their driver’s license to NH or submit a form explaining why they do not plan to do so.
We also learned that we indefinitely postponed HB83-FN with a roll called vote of 215Y-140N which would have increased the minimum age of sports betting from 18 to 21. There may have been some members taking bets as to the outcome of the vote – but we knew it would be tabled, ITL’d or Indef Postponed one way or another.
Finally, we learned that after our business was finished, and some members left the room to get home before the weather turned more nasty, Rep. Hope Damon (D-Croydon) came up to speak with an unanimous consent speech. In her speech she let us know that some committee chair had said that “online testimony” was of less interest than “in person testimony” and she wanted to point out that all testimony should be valued and considered and recognized. She wasn’t wrong. After she was done with her speech, Rep. Nicholas Germana (D-Keene) asked for her remarks to be printed in the permanent journal. Many members had already left the room but a roll called vote was taken 165Y-104N to print the remarks. It was the only vote of the day that the Democrats won.
So kids… that’s it for today. We’ll be back on the 13th with a budget presentation from the Governor and more House bills. Stay Tuned!
