We learned it was quite a long day as we dealt with 42 bills and approved HR17, the budget unrestricted revenue estimates from the Ways and Means committee. In attendance were roughly 207 Republicans and 165 Democrats in the House. Given that roster of House bills I’ll be reporting on some interesting bills as well as other fun antics. There was an interesting dress code of the day as some Democrat women (did I just misgender them?) wore Ukraine blue and yellow attire, while Republican women donned black clothing and pearls as an expression of solidarity for Rep. Laurel Libby in Maine who was recently censured for her statements on keeping men out of women’s sports. More on this later.
We learned that right out of the gate we ITL’d (killed) on a roll called vote HB503-FN a bill that amends how revenues from taxes are allocated to the education trust fund – 345Y-27N. Those were some great numbers to kill $711.8 million in tax increases. This Democrat sponsored bill re-instituted the Interest and Dividends (income) tax, raised rooms and meals taxes, increased business taxes. At least 6 of those 27 Democrats who voted for higher taxes live in swing districts… that should be remembered when the Nov. 2026 state house election comes along.
We learned that the House voice voted passing HB591-FN, allowing for keno gaming on weekends. That adds 6 extra hours to gaming and it is anticipated that this will bring in 1.5% increase in topline sales representing an extra $334,364 for NH in FY27. Good there’s not a Democrat majority or it would be spent already.
We also learned that HB245 was ITL’d on a roll call vote 225Y-147N. The title of the bill: establishing the speed enforcement and awareness fund and providing for grants to municipal law enforcement for speed enforcement and speed awareness traffic equipment. This bill would have created a fund directly tied to traffic violations. We don’t need legislation that encourages “Policing for Profit”. Of course House Democrats think this is good legislation so that police departments can purchase expensive equipment, which they cannot afford now, to place on the roadsides that tell drivers to “slow down”. Eyeroll.
We learned that HB583, relative to state participation in the Medicaid direct certification program for free and reduced price school meals, was Tabled 196Y-174N. As House Democrats dug out their “Feed the Kids” buttons from somewhere in their dresser drawers at home to wear today, House Republicans again said no to automatically signing up Medicaid eligible families for free and reduced meals in school. If people want to sign up for the program they can do so on their own and have ample opportunity to do so. This is a data privacy issue and also not forcing people to sign onto a government program they obviously don’t want to participate in. House Republicans chose to protect privacy and not to expand government dependence …Now there’s food for thought. The Democrat crying baby obviously did not like this bill either. We are beginning to believe that the baby may be Republican.
We further learned that HB771, relative to funding for open enrollment schools, passed on a roll called vote of 205Y-169N. The bill requires school districts to put into their budget a line item for expenditures for open enrollment tuition costs and it changes how open enrollment funding is sent and received. Although there is only one open enrollment school in the state, this might make it easier for school districts to deal with it, although special ed funding complicates the issue. In any case, House Democrats who are constantly screaming at everyone to “keep public dollars in public schools” somehow rejected this transfer of funding from one school to another. I really am having a hard time keeping up with the hypocrisy.
We learned that HB208 passed on a roll called vote 211Y-163N. This bill was relative to certification requirements for school nurses. This bill, as amended, removes the requirement that the Department of Education certify school nurses and states that a license from the New Hampshire Board of Nursing would be the requirement. Local districts would then determine if a licensed nurse applicant met their qualifications to be hired as their school nurse. In addition, DOE certified nurses carry a retirement cost for local districts of approximately 6% above that of a NHBN licensed nurse. Given the number of licensed nurses, there could be over $1 million savings for local districts. House Democrats whined that NHBN licensed nurses wouldn’t be experienced enough in pediatric care. Maybe they need a prescription for their anxiety.
In a very tight vote, we learned that HB94 passed OTP on a roll called vote 184Y-183N. This was the Medicaid coverage for circumcision bill. Before any debate happened, it was apparent that the 4th graders were cleared from the gallery, because of course they could not be present when there was so much talk about penises, etc. even though their school library is likely filled with books about gay sex, pornography, and how to use a dildo, but I digress…. So, here’s the thing, circumcision is an elective surgery, and parents have the choice of whether to have this procedure done or not. Some say it is healthier to have it done, others say the opposite. The question was whether the legislature wants Medicaid to cover that elective procedure or not. The whole religious aspect is really not an issue here as persons of the Jewish faith have a special ceremony at home by a trained Mohel on the 8th day after the baby is born, and that religious observance certainly is not covered by Medicaid. If you’re Jewish and on Medicaid you wouldn’t do this in a hospital on the 1st or 2nd day anyway. I am not familiar with Muslim practice. In any case the bill denies Medicaid coverage for the procedure unless it is a medical necessity. We are all glad this is over, especially since some guy in Arizona had his organization’s members from all over the country spam us hundreds of emails to vote against the bill. I found out his phone number and shared it with House members who returned the favor by calling his cell phone to tell him to stop clogging up our in boxes. After a real whole lot of us called him, he did.
One more thing about this bill: Rep. Ellen Read (D-Newmarket) offered a floor amendment to not only remove circumcision coverage under Medicaid, but ostensibly to take the savings of that non coverage and use it to establish a children’s vision screening initiative. The floor amendment was met with a very loud voice vote “NO” on the Ought To Pass motion, and Rep. Read was seen and heard ranting and yelling at colleagues in the anteroom regarding how awful the results of the vote were. We thought she’d wake up the Democrat crying baby who had finally gone to sleep.
We learned that HB223, relative to licensing requirements for health care facilities that operate within 15 miles of a critical access hospital, passed with a roll call vote of 213Y-158N. Passage of this bill will address the decline in medical access and the high cost of medical care in New Hampshire. It achieves this by exempting ambulatory surgical centers, emergency medical care centers, birthing centers, drop-in or walk-in care centers, dialysis centers, and special health care services from the critical access hospital exclusionary zone restrictions. House Democrats, of course, were wringing their hands that hospitals will (gasp) have competition, and suffer from a myriad of horrible detrimental effects by allowing more healthcare facilities to be made available within 15 miles of an existing hospital. They believe hospitals will go out of business and people will suffer and die in the streets from having more choices, removing bureaucratic barriers, and having easier and more abundant access to healthcare.
We also learned that HB524 passed 189Y-181N after a Tabling motion failed 175Y-198N (both votes roll called). This bill repeals the NH Vaccine Association. The NH Vaccine Association (NHVA) is a costly, inefficient, tax-payer subsidized state program. This bill would now shift vaccine purchasing to the private sector where it belongs. The bill increases flexibility and choice for patients and insurance companies while ensuring continued access to fully funded vaccines. Of course we heard all the contrarian fear mongering about how everyone, especially our children, will now get polio and other awful diseases, but the truth is that it will have zero effect on the cost and availability of vaccines. This will have no impact on vaccination choices or rates. This bill is not “anti-science” and has nothing to do with vaccine policy. This bill will not increase costs to parents through deductibles or co-pays either. Federal law requires that all vaccines for children be provided at no cost to the parent for the vaccines. This bill will not change that. Vaccines will still be required to be “free.” There will still be tons of vaccines for everyone who wants them. It is simply a matter of who is in the business of buying and selling a private use medical product…the state or private industry.
We learned that HB756, relative to establishing a blood lead level testing requirement for children entering daycare and public schools, died with an ITL roll called vote of 202Y-169N. This bill requires that children be tested for lead prior to being accepted into a school or childcare facility. NH law already requires that children must be tested for lead at age 1, and again at age 2. This bill adds another reporting requirement, and it would impose additional administrative burdens on childcare facilities and schools, which would be required to send notifications to educate parents on the need for lead testing if they do not provide a lead testing report to the school. They say that levels of lead are rising in children… despite the fact we’ve taken it out of paint and gasoline and a whole bunch of other products… so is anyone wondering about where are kids are getting lead into their systems? Good question.
We also learned that HB224, relative to rebates to ratepayers from the renewable energy fund, passed on a roll called vote 200Y-162N. Now, House Democrats claimed that what each ratepayer would get back would be enough to buy themselves a latte a week, but House Republicans believe that lowering energy costs is the direction we want to go in and while that is not going to save each ratepayer thousands of dollars each year, it’s a start and an important step to providing relief from some of the highest electricity costs in the country. This bill rebates the Renewable Energy Fund ($2.5 to 7.3M annually), funded by Alternative Compliance Payments made by utilities, to ratepayers, except for administrative costs and funding of the DoE Office of Energy Innovation. Of course, rather than more “green” (as in money) coming back to customers, the House Democrats would rather spend that money on other “green” stuff.
We further learned that HB723, repealing the multi-use energy data platform, passed on a roll called vote of 201Y-160N. The multi-use energy data platform law passed in 2019 requires utilities to create and jointly operate a statewide, multi-use, online energy data platform. It’s been 6 years and the platform is yet to be built and the cost-benefit analysis was not even done yet (expected this fall)! The costs to implement this platform were conservatively projected to be $4.5 to $7 million. There’s significant overlap in features between this proposed data platform and what some utilities already offer in their customer facing portals: mainly the ability for a customer to view their electricity usage and to manually share that usage with third parties. But House Democrats want more time to put this expensive duplication of efforts in place. It’s time to pull the off switch on this project.
We learned that the Transportation committee brought us 3 interesting bills. HB305 relative to speed and red light cameras for traffic enforcement – this died with a voice vote. Big Brother Democrats wanted to blanket NH with speed & traffic cameras but House Republicans stopped them from turning NH into the “Live Free or Spy” state. We said NO to the Democrats’ traffic cam scam and NH will continue to be speed camera free!
HB419 requiring vehicle headlights to be on when the windshield wipers are also on, was ITL’d on a roll call vote 227Y-129N. It is yet another unnecessary vehicle regulation pushed by House Democrats and another reason for the police to stop you and write you a ticket. As if cars don’t already have enough reasons for employing blinding illumination.
One of the major bills of the day was HB649, removing the requirement for physical safety inspections and on-board diagnostic tests for passenger vehicles and eliminating funding for the motor vehicle air pollution abatement fund. House members got a gazillion emails from people all across the state who were fed up with the “inspection scam”. People complained bitterly on how they were made to pay thousands of dollars for repairs to their vehicles despite the fact that their car was safe and drivable… faulty sensors and minor repairs would be a cause to fail inspections. New Hampshire is one of only 11 states with safety inspection laws, and in a review of states with similar population density and climate, there was no direct correlation between vehicle accidents, nor injury, nor lethality, when NH was compared with other states that do not have this law. This plus the fact that we have tried many many years to fix the inspection system – everything from not inspecting new cars, to every other year inspection, to eliminating rust inspection… you name it … but it never passed. So rather than continue to try to “fix” it – the House decided in an OTP roll called vote to repeal the whole system 212Y-143N. The car inspection system failed inspection. So, the question remains, will the Senate put it up on the lift see all the rust and system failure and finally take it off the road, or will they just put a sticker on it and let it continue on its merry way with a wink and a nod?
Well, we couldn’t end this day without some incredible drama in House chambers. Remember I said Republican women wore black and pearls to display solidarity with Rep. Laurel Libby from the Maine legislature? Well, Rep. Erica Layon (R-Derry) honored Women’s History Month by invoking “unanimous consent” to speak about how far women have come since the days of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in NYC in 1911, where 123 women were locked inside and died in that fire. She spoke about the advances women have made over the years and the spaces created for them in politics, the work force, sports, etc. She also spoke about how through women’s struggles most suffered in silence and were silenced. She then began to say how today women are still being silenced and pressured to accept the “erasing of women’s spaces and women’s sports”. At this point, 4 Democrats stood up and objected to the speech, and Rep. Alissandra Murray (D-Manchester) came to the well to withdraw her consent. Prior to the vote to allow Rep. Layon to continue speaking, a PI was given. Interestingly enough, House Democrats sent a male member of their caucus, Rep. Nicholas Germana (D-Keene) to go to the well to promote silencing a woman. He gave the PI stating, “If I know I’ve been teaching women’s history at the college level for more than 20 years, and I believe we do not need to denigrate or diminish any of our Granite Staters in order to celebrate or honor Women’s history would I now press the red button to bring this to an end”. Rep. Layon gave the rebutting PI stating, “If I know that this vote is whether or not we’re going to silence women, would I then press the green button”. So of course we all (those who were still left in the chamber) voted on the motion “shall member continue”. The vote was roll called and the results were 171Y-89N (find it here https://gc.nh.gov/nhgcrollcalls/ ) . We needed 3/5 to win. Rep. Layon won the right to continue to speak. Interesting to note that these 89 Democrats are likely the same people who vote to keep pornography in our school library… because “free speech”, but they refuse to allow Rep. Layon to speak and sought to silence her. At that point, Rep. Layon continued her speech and the House Democrat caucus which remained at the end of the day, walked out with a few yelling – notably Rep. Paige Beauchemin (D-Nashua) screaming, “You’re killing us”. Rep. Layon ended her speech by saying, “We must overcome the campaign to silence women, or women ourselves will become history”. She also added, “I look forward to the day when we can also celebrate men who have been villainized and demonized for too long”. We are grateful to the Republican men in the chamber who stood and supported Rep. Layon and chose not to silence women. To his credit, Rep, Germana did ask to have all remarks of all unanimous consent speeches be placed in the permanent journal.
Later, far Left House Democrats took to social media to call House Republicans “bullies and bigots” and of course these are the people who always espouse “tolerance” of other ideas. These are the people who walk out when people are speaking truth and who shoot us the finger when they do not agree with what you say. These are the people like Democrat Congressman Al Green (TX) that disrupt and cause mayhem when they don’t like you or don’t like what you have to say. It’s not a good look.
While NH House Democrats continue to push to erase women in society and allow male athletes to dominate women’s sports and be in women’s spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms, the NH House and Senate Republicans continue to support legislation such as the Parental Bill of Rights and other bills which protect women’s spaces from intrusion from biological males. 79% of those polled agree that women should not be erased and they should be protected from this “war against women”.
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQkyz9ZM6i8 – but this has been all over the news… friends of mine in Alaska have texted me about it. Kudos to Rep. Layon for having the courage to speak up, speak the truth, and refuse to be erased or silenced. Us women wearing black outfits and pearls, joined with her and Rep. Libby in Maine to say that we women refuse to be erased and silenced.
Biological males are NOT, and CANNOT EVER BE, biological females, and they do not deserve our scholarships, or to compete with us, or to take our spaces in society. Being a woman is more than the clothes or make-up that you wear, or the name or pronoun you give yourself, or the surgeries that you have. And just because someone is deluding themselves does not mean the rest of us have to play along either. More importantly, this delusion can not and should not be pushed on our children! They too must be protected from this absurdity and they should not be made confused or sold the lie that they can be the opposite sex of what they are.
In celebration of women’s history month – let’s affirm biological women and support their right to their own spaces, and celebrate their achievements.
So kids… another Thursday House Session in the books. We’ll be back next week as House Republicans continue to deliver on their NH Contract with the voters for smaller, less expensive and less intrusive government, more freedom, more choice, and more sanity. No doubt the Democrat baby will be back next week to cry about something else, as will the rest of the Democrat caucus.
