Rachel Ford

GSNC/NHPBS

The State We’re In program

This has been a busy week in the legislature, as both the House and the Senate wrap up their work for Crossover Day — the deadline for House bills to make their way to the Senate and Senate bills to make their way to the House. Anna Brown, the director of Research and Analysis for Citizens Count and host of the podcast “$100 Plus Mileage,” and New Hampshire Bulletin Reporter Ethan DeWitt talk with The State We’re In host Melanie Plenda about what Crossover Day is and what it means for Granite Staters.

This content has been edited for length and clarity. Watch the full interview on NH PBS's The State We’re In.

Melanie Plenda: Anna, for those who might not be familiar with it, what is the process for a bill eventually becoming a law? 

Anna Brown: A bill can start in the house or the Senate in New Hampshire, and every single bill gets a public hearing that anyone from the public can speak at. Then the committee will make a recommendation whether they think it should pass, maybe get an amendment, or if it should be killed. Then it goes for a vote before the full House or Senate, and that process is repeated on the other side. If a bill starts in the House, it's repeated in the Senate; if it starts in the Senate, it repeats in the House. If it passes both the House and Senate, it goes to the governor for a signature or veto, which means essentially he would kill the bill. If it does get vetoed, there's one last chance to override that veto in the legislature, and that usually happens in the fall. 

Melanie Plenda: Ethan, how does Crossover Day play into that, and what is its significance? 

Ethan DeWitt: Crossover Day is a deadline that's imposed on the process that Anna described. It's the date at which all House bills that are going to the Senate must go, and all Senate bills that are going to the House must go out. Because every bill needs to be approved by the House and the Senate in order to go to the governor's desk, any bills that survived the deadline to be moved over are the bills that the governor might be able to sign. Any bills that aren't taken up or voted down after today won't be able to move across. There are some exceptions to allow that to happen, but it becomes significantly harder to do.

A lot of bills are brought up, but they're either controversial or they're complicated and lawmakers don't always want to deal with them right away. Sometimes they'll put them on the table or they may special order them because they don't want to debate it this week; they'll do it next week. Crossover Day is like the last call for those bills. What makes it interesting is seeing which of the more complex bills are going to move ahead and which ones might fall because they didn't have the support that their sponsors originally thought, and there's also a few maneuvers that lawmakers can do around this time to move bills onto other bills.

Melanie Plenda: Anna, do these bills have to stay in their original state or can they be amended after crossover?

Anna Brown: After crossover, once a bill moves from the House to the Senate or the Senate to the House, anything is fair game because that public hearing process, the voting process, and amendments changes to the bill get to happen all over again. There's a catch though - if a bill passes the House, goes to the Senate, and the Senate makes amendments or changes, any of those changes have to go back to the House to be approved. They both have to pass the same version of a bill. We definitely will see some changes to major legislation coming up, then there will have to be those final negotiations between the House and Senate, but Crossover Day is definitely a good test of what general legislation topics are going to be able to survive and make it to the governor's desk.

Melanie Plenda: There have been a lot of interesting pieces of legislation proposed this session relating to abortion, elections, education, housing, and so much more. Anna and then Ethan, let's talk first about some of the highlights of what's already been passed and is headed over into crossover.

Anna Brown: A lot of the bills that I saw come forward, particularly in the House that are maybe more controversial, had their controversial moment and have been voted down. For example, there was the notable moment when legislators proposed a constitutional amendment that would've had Granite Staters voting on whether to secede from the United States of America. That was a very controversial bill that did not become a constitutional amendment. First of all, it needs a three fifth vote; if I remember correctly, only 13 legislators voted in favor.There were other dramatic bills related to elections and abortion and things like that that maybe have been toned down a little bit. That's a lot of what I observed in the first half of the legislative session before crossover.

Ethan DeWitt: Crossover Day is the final stretch of the legislative session, and it really lays bare different philosophies in both chambers and their different ways of tinkering with bills. The House and the Senate are vastly different in terms of the number of members they include, in terms of the number of committees. Some of the processes that might have worked on the House side are put to the test after this because there's a little bit of natural tension that happens when a bill heads over. The Senate might propose something that has bipartisan support and a House committee might shred it to pieces.

Each one of the bills that have not already had a hearing and been discussed are going to have another hearing in the next two months. That's where we're going to see whether the legislation is strong enough to get through both these processes, but often bills can be turned inside out in the next few weeks. A few of the House Republicans are using Crossover Day to reintroduce bills that have already passed the House. There's a very bipartisan bill that would make a slight change to the education freedom account program. It had a seven team to three vote out of the committee, and that bill is facing about six or seven amendments in the final hours of Crossover, which include a number of controversial bills; one would authorize dispensing ivermectin, another would legalize possession of cannabis.

Those bills have already passed the house and they're actually already in the Senate, so it would make you wonder why House members would try to reintroduce them and pass them again. The reason is that they're trying to create another point of negotiation for later on in the session. That's an example of how everybody's gearing up for the final two months, where even though it's a Republican legislature, there are vast differences and they're going to have to bridge those and use the amendment process to add bills on. 

Melanie Plenda: As you both have mentioned, before any of these proposals become law, they have to get the governor's signature. Anna, and then Ethan, has Governor Sununu indicated what he might support and what he might veto?

Anna Brown: The governor did indicate that he was open to the proposal to legalize marijuana through a liquor commission system. He's also brought forward SB 400, a housing bill, as something he is very interested in moving forward. That's a big package that includes a lot of different funding mechanisms and new training options and potentially infringes on local control. He's also interested in easing that ultrasound requirement that was passed as part of last year's state budget, and I think that that's probably going to be a big priority for him if he's working with legislators because he got a lot of heat from Democrats for signing a budget that included that abortion ban and that ultrasound requirement. I think for him, if he can work with legislators to ease that ultrasound requirement, it's going to give him something in his pocket as the election season starts to heat up this summer.

Ethan DeWitt: There are always surprise vetos. I think the governor chooses carefully when he decides to weigh in on legislation. In all of his past terms, whether under Democratic or Republican legislatures, if reporters ask him, he will often say he wants to let the process play out unless he decides he wants to get ahead of a bill; it’s a discretionary move that he makes. The only legislation that he's directly vowed to veto that I'm aware of is the House redistricting map for the congressional districts, and he has been very clear about that. 

Governor Sununu has suggested he’s open to cannabis legalization, but then he sort of walked that back. He said, I like this approach, but I don't know if this is the right time. This is why Crossover Day is important; we are entering the final stretch where we're gonna see how these bills shape up. We're gonna see what negotiations the House and Senate make with each other. All of those negotiations are done with the elephant in the room being the governor, so we'll see how those final arrangements are made, whether they're tailored to the governor at all, and whether he makes more statements.

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