My votes in the NH House session
of February 19, 2026

HB 1799-FN

This bill would have updated the school funding formula to comply with the orders issued in the ConVal and Rand cases by moving revenue from the Statewide Education Property Tax (SWEPT) to the state’s Education Trust Fund.

HB 1803-FN

A student receiving an education tax credit scholarship is allowed to also receive Education Freedom Account (EFA) funds. This double dipping gives some families over $10,000 per student. This bill would have changed that. I always vote against EFAs.

HB 1792-FN

The “Charlie Act,” named after right-wing icon, provocateur, and martyr Charlie Kirk. It prohibits public schools from teaching about critical race theory and LGBTQ+ “ideologies,” and it creates a private right of action for violations. This bill is unnecessary (schools are not pushing these “ideologies”), unconstitutional, and just plain idiotic. I think it likely that if it makes it through the Senate (probably “when” rather than “if”), Governor Ayotte will veto it.

HB 1627-FN

This bill would have created a single ballot for primary elections, with candidates from all parties, much the same as is done in California. California is currently demonstrating the problem with this idea. There are two Republican candidates for governor, and several Democrats. In polling, the Democrats are splitting up the Democratic votes, leaving the two Republicans as the top two, so that the general election is likely to be Republican vs. Republican, even though California leans heavily toward Democrats.

HB 1457-FN

Allows for natural organic reduction of human remains. This procedure is much more efficient than cremation.

HB 1811-FN

This bill would have repealed mandatory immunization requirements for children. Given the anti-vax contingent among the House Republicans, I expected this dangerous bill to sail through. Happily, I was mistaken. The OTP motion failed, with 34 Republicans joining all 158 Democrats to defeat it.

HB 1786-FN

This bill was a strange case. Because of an error by the House Clerk’s office, it never received a hearing and no vote in the Housing Committee. Therefore, it came to the floor with no hearing and no recommendation. Democrats wanted to pass it so that it would go to a second committee, where it could receive a hearing. But instead it was tabled, where it will likely die. Oh, and the bill would have put an additional assessment on second homes valued over $1 million.

HB 1130-FN

This bill requires publishing individual judicial performance evaluations. If a judge rules against you, then you can just submit a critical evaluation, even if the judge did everything correctly.

HB 1705-FN

Small-town and volunteer first responders see some stuff, and it can take a toll on their mental well being. This bill allows them to access the state’s Employee Assistance Program for the relatively small cost of $115,000. It’s the least we can do for those who do so much for all of us. The bill came to the floor with the committee recommendation of Interim Study. This motion was overturned, and the bill passed.

HB 1427-FN

How should a municipality, county, or school district fund capital projects? The proponents of this bill say that they should raise the money in advance. The problem is that it’s not possible to anticipate how much a capital project will cost 20 years into the future. I do not like debt. I run my own life debt-free, except for my monthly credit card bill, which I always pay off promptly. But it makes more sense for public projects to issue bonds for projects than to raise the money in advance. This bill would have disallowed bonding capital projects except in emergencies. As much as I don’t like debt, I voted against it.

HB 1603-FN

This was the one bill today in which I voted against my caucus’s recommendation. The reason was simple: Republican Rep. Tanya Donnelly made a more convincing argument for the bill than the Democrat who spoke against it.

HB 1718-FN

I cosponsored this bill, whose prime sponsor was my committee chair, Rep. Michael Vose (R-Epping). The bill allows for net metering from battery storage. The bill as introduced required the energy in the batteries to come from on-site renewable sources (solar panels). I worked with my committee and the utilities to amend the bill. The issue is that sometimes batteries are charged from the grid. Two instances when this can occur are the battery pilot program that Liberty Utilities runs, where they can control the batteries, and my own experience with Enphase batteries, where in advance of a storm, Enphase will charge my batteries from the grid so that I have fully charged batteries in case the grid goes down. The preparation paid off, as my committee voted unanimously to support the amended bill, and it passed on the floor by voice vote.

HB 1748-FN

This bill would have created the New Hampshire Energy Efficiency and Resource Development Authority. That might sound good, but it is not. The utilities run the NHSaves program, and it’s going just fine. It ain’t broke, so there’s no need to fix it. The “Resource Development” part would actually be about promoting nuclear power in the state. During her State of the State address, Governor Ayotte charged the Department of Energy with promoting nuclear. We don’t need another agency doing that, especially when more nuclear is several years away. Oh, and this Authority would not be subject to the Right-to-Know Law (RSA 91-A), the rules of any state agency, or ethics rules. To top it all off, the plan was for the very same people to be in charge of energy efficiency and nuclear power. These are areas where expertise is unlikely to overlap. The bill went to Interim Study, which is “death with dignity” for a bill.

HB 1775-FN

This is a terrible bill, and it passed.

The electric utilities were restructured 30 years ago so that their only job is to deliver electricity, and not to generate it. Power generators are privately owned, separate from the utilities. Restructuring accomplishes two important goals. First, to foster competition among power generators. Electricity is sold and bought on markets. You, the customer, can choose your electric supply (but not the delivery) from a third-party supplier, which includes Community Power, or from the utility via default service. For default service customers, the utility buys the power on the market and sells it to you with no markup.

The second goal of restructuring was to avoid what are called “stranded costs.” These occur when the utility invests in a capital project that yields no return. You would think that these costs would be borne by the utility’s investors, but that is not the case. These sunk costs are rebranded as stranded costs, and it’s us, the ratepayers, who pony up. If the utilities cannot build generation facilities, such as when PSNH built the Seabrook nuclear plant, then ratepayers can’t be on the hook for such stranded costs.

Currently, the utilities are allowed to build small solar arrays (less than 5 megawatts) comprising a small amount of the electricity that they deliver. This bill expands the generation capability of the utilities to include natural gas and nuclear. To be clear: any new natural gas or nuclear generation in New Hampshire is several years away. You can’t just call up Grainger and order a gas turbine to be delivered on Tuesday. No new nuclear plants the size of Seabrook will ever be built here. And the new nuclear technology, small modular reactors (SMRs), are years away. Moreover, these technologies are very expensive per megawatt generated, especially SMRs.

The Republicans backing this bill claim that because we allow the utilities to own solar arrays, we should allow them to own natural gas and nuclear. The flaw in this argument is that there is a huge difference between the cost of solar array and the cost of a natural gas or nuclear plant. The potential stranded costs are, frankly, incomparable.

The good news is that this bill is merely enabling legislation. It does not require the utilities to own natural gas or nuclear generation. We can only hope that, if enacted, this bill has no impact.

HB 1492-FN

If your vehicle is towed, then unless you called the towing company, you have no control over where it goes and how much you have to pay for towing and to recover the vehicle. This bill shifts the balance back toward you, and it makes it so that your license cannot be suspended if you don’t pay the fees.

HB 1028

This bill went to my committee. We did not really understand the issue during the hearing, and we unanimously voted it ITL. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. David Walker (R-Rochester) got it pulled from the consent calendar and finally explained to us what the issue was. The bill is being recommitted to my committee, where we will amend it to solve the actual problem. In case you’re interested, the problem is that a municipality has the option of a PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) with the owner of a small solar array, and current statute says that if the municipality has such an agreement with one property owner, it must have such an agreement with all owners of similar solar arrays.