By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Melanie Plenda talks with Anna Brown, director of research and analysis for Citizens Count and host of the podcast, “$100 Plus Mileage” podcast about what State House lawmakers accomplished this year and what’s on the table for next year.

Melanie Plenda:

Let's talk about the path of a bill and how it becomes a law. 

Anna Brown:

Generally speaking, New Hampshire legislators vote on bills from January to June each year. A bill starts in the House or Senate, gets a public hearing, then a committee votes on a recommendation for the full House or Senate. At that point, the full House or Senate votes. If it passes, it flips to the other chamber and the whole process repeats. 

However, when the House and Senate can't agree on the final version of a bill, it will go to a conference committee, which is essentially a team of legislators from both the House and the Senate who try to hammer out a final compromise. That's where we're at right now and is the very last part of the legislative session. Notably, some of the most complex issues end up there.

Melanie Plenda:

What were some of the new proposals to come before lawmakers this year?

Anna Brown:

We saw an explosion of legislation related to gender — limiting sports in schools based on birth certificate sex at birth; relative to parents' notification around certain curriculum; what material can and can't be in school libraries; and whether parents can have access to their children's library records, which was a complex issue. 

Also an interesting new idea related to immigration. This is a top issue that voters identify when they're talking about national elections, but there is some impact in New Hampshire related to the northern border. There was a bill that was proposed in the Senate, SB 504, that would expand anti-trespassing laws so that police would be able to arrest someone on open land even if it was posted for hunting and hiking and so on. But the House and Senate are still negotiating on this issue. 

Another new topic was artificial intelligence. Several bills have gone through the process and are on their way to Governor Sununu that are looking to criminalize harmful deep fakes — adding fake or AI-generated images of child sexual abuse to current laws regulating  that and regulating AI use by the state. This was really a bipartisan issue that moved forward, and I expect it'll get support from Sununu.

Melanie Plenda:

What did we see in terms of old favorites, and how many of them made their way through the process?

Anna Brown:

Housing is still a huge issue for legislators. This year, the debate shifted more from funding to zoning laws. For example, the House passed HB 1291, which would allow two accessory dwelling units, called ADUs, on basically any single-family property. The House also passed a bill to limit parking requirements for new developments. The Senate mostly rejected those changes, so we aren't really going to be seeing any zoning changes coming down from the state level. 

Also an old favorite is school funding. This debate has continued for multiple decades in New Hampshire, and unfortunately there's not a sign of any resolution coming soon. The House passed bipartisan school-funding bills that would increase the state per-pupil funding a little bit. It would also increase special education funding, which is becoming a big challenge for towns and cities. The Senate pumped the brakes, and we're not sure what's gonna happen with the budget next year. These are big funding bills. There's still the lawsuits that are ongoing around school funding, so they’re not going to move those forward. 

Lastly, the House and Senate haven't agreed on an expansion to the Education Freedom Account program. As a reminder, that is a program that allows students to take the per-pupil share of state school funding and spend it on private and homeschool expenses. So we had a Republican majority in the House and Senate — granted, it was a small majority in the House. Nonetheless, the House voted to expand eligibility much more than the Senate did. The Senate, once again, is really looking to pump the brakes on more spending and is looking at that budget for next year. So we'll see if they can reach a final compromise.

Melanie Plenda:

What would you point to as some of the major accomplishments of the legislature this year?

Anna Brown:

I think it's notable to highlight when you really see some bipartisan movement among legislators. We saw that on several issues in the House of Representatives.

There was a bill that was introduced that would report some mental health records to the federal gun background check system. It was notable because it had Republican and Democratic sponsors and moved forward in a bipartisan way. 

The housing and zoning issue we just talked about was also a bipartisan agreement. You had conservatives coming in and saying, “This is an idea of individual liberty on your property, you should have more freedom to build.” You had Democrats coming in and saying, “This is a crisis and we need the state to take action”

In the House, there was also support from both Republicans and Democrats to limit new landfill development in New Hampshire in different ways. Now, the Senate shut down all of those, but I still want to note them. We hear so much about the partisan disagreements that I think it's important to highlight when people come across the aisle and there really is agreement in those areas. 

Melanie Plenda:

What doesn't look like it will get a vote this year, but we may see next year?

Anna Brown:

I mentioned zoning issues, landfill limitations, school funding — they all got shot down in the Senate, but I fully expect that they're going to be coming back next year. The other issue we haven't talked about yet is related to fentanyl penalties and how the state continues to address the opioid crisis. 

There were bills in the Senate that would increase the penalties for dealing fentanyl, crossing state lines with fentanyl and deaths resulting from overdoses. The House largely rejected this because this stricter law enforcement “drug war” approach has been shown not to be effective. The House focused on harm reduction. 

They passed bills, for example, that would legalize certain drug testing equipment so that a user could see if there is fentanyl in this drug that they are about to consume. Ideally, this would lower the risk of a deadly overdose. The Senate rejected that. So it really seems like the House and Senate were interested in the opioid crisis but couldn't reach agreement on the best approach forward. I think we all know that is still an issue that is really serious in New Hampshire.

Melanie Plenda:

So there were also several gun-related bills that came up this term, how did those fare?

Anna Brown:

There were many, many gun-related bills. Proposals for a red flag law, proposals for a waiting period, a proposal for expanded background checks — all of those failed, which is not surprising given the strong Republican majority in the Senate, where many of them were introduced.

There was a bipartisan proposal in the House that would report to the firearm background check system if a person is found not guilty by reason of insanity, not competent to stand trial, or involuntarily committed to a mental health facility. So basically, for one reason or another, they've gone before the court and they're losing some of their liberty — there is a criminal aspect involved. Right now, it's basically a loophole that this is not being reported to the federal background check system, since those people also should not be having firearms under federal law. 

There were concerns about privacy and how it’s done, but this was with bipartisan sponsors and passed with some bipartisan support in the House. So I was really surprised when it hit roadblocks in the Senate. That being said, I would think that there’s a good chance that this will come back next year because it was in response to a very specific incident where a security guard at New Hampshire Hospital was shot and killed by a person who didn’t have some of this information reported to the system and definitely should not have been in possession of firearms.

Melanie Plenda:

Switching gears a little bit. What about some of the quirkier bills like kangaroo adoption and brass knuckles? Can you tell us about those proposals and how did they fare?

Anna Brown:

You missed a few! There was also one about kangaroo farming. There was a bill about seceding from the union if the national debt reaches $40 trillion — that was actually a constitutional amendment. A bill that would allow self defense via autonomous machines — for example, can you get your self-driving car to hit someone who's trying to rob someone else? Then SB 190, for letting underage college students taste wine if they're in a culinary class that's for wine tasting.

None of these bills move forward, to answer your question, but there's always unique ideas in the New Hampshire legislature. Just because it seems a little head scratchy at first, you never know. Some of these are really interesting and unique ideas. So I'm glad you brought that up. There's roughly 1,000 bills a year. Today, we're talking about maybe a dozen, maybe two dozen at most — that’s a tiny percentage of what the legislature talks about.

Melanie Plenda:

Finally, what should people watch for as the session winds down?

Anna Brown:

Any statement from Sununu on these issues or bills — because a negative word from him could take any compromise that we see coming out of the legislature. Legislators might end up just saying it's not worth it, throw it out the window, vote it down, what have you. 

I am also gonna be looking for action from the legislature or Sununu on bills related to voter ID. That's not something we touched on, but they are debating some significant changes that, for example, might require someone to prove citizenship, which you know, goes beyond just showing your driver's license. Some bills would set up almost a live hotline at the polls on Election Day to try to verify people if they show up without ID because we do want to still have same-day voter registration in order to be exempt from some other federal laws. So that's a very complex issue, and it’s not one I’ve heard Sununu weigh in on.

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you so much for joining us, Anna Brown, the director of research and analysis for Citizens Count and host of the podcast, “$100 Plus Mileage.”

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative as part of our Race and Equity Initiative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.