My votes in the NH House session
of May 7, 2026

This was a day of dealing with House bills amended by the Senate, in which we voted to Concur or Non-concur, followed by voting on Senate bills that had been reported out of House committees. The motion to Reconsider SB 482 that I was concerned about was never made, and so the OTP vote on that bill is locked in.

HB 1535

I was the prime sponsor for this bill, which was requested by Clifton Below, a Ward 3 constituent who knows a thing or two about energy. The Lebanon landfill produces methane, and the city uses the methane to produce electricity. Due to how the statute about getting credit for electricity is punctuated, however, Lebanon has not been getting credit for electricity produced from methane. The problem, believe it or not, was a missing semicolon. Although I referred to this bill as “the semicolon bill,” rather than add the missing semicolon, I rewrote text so that punctuation would not be at issue. The bill passed the House on consent, but when it got to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Cindy Rosenwald (D-Nashua) wanted to insert some commas. When the bill came back to the House with the extra commas, we were fine with it. The bill now goes to the governor.

HB 1733

This is another energy bill. I had put in a similar bill to this one, but we ITLed my bill because HB 1733, as a Republican-sponsored bill, had a better chance of making it through. Here’s the issue. The electric utilities and the PUC set rates for default service every six months. But instead of the utilities entering into contracts for that energy, the PUC has them buy much of it on the day-ahead or spot markets. That approach introduces variability in the actual price that the utilities pay for the energy, though the PUC claims that in the long run, the cost is lower than it would be for fixed contracts. What happens if the utility undercollects from ratepayers during a six-month period because the market price turned out to be high (such as happened in the winter of 2026)? How does the utility “true up”? This bill says that the utility makes up the difference from only default service customers, not from customers on Community Power or any other third-party energy supplier. After all, if you’re on Community Power, why should you pay because the utility underpriced service for other customers? There was a lot more to this bill, so if you’re interested in hearing the gory details, please feel free to contact me.

SB 669-FN

Did you know that when you go to a barbershop or hair salon, they may serve you one free alcoholic drink, as long as they pay for a $100 license and are trained? Yeah, me neither. This bill would have allowed them to sell you that one drink, for an increased license fee. Rep. Erica deVries (D-Hampton) convinced me to support the bill and vote against the Interim Study motion. But it passed by two votes, 173-171. Later in the day, Rep. deVries found a Democrat who had voted for Interim Study to move to Reconsider. Surprisingly, that motion failed by 49 votes, so it would appear that many members who voted against Interim Study were done with it.

SB 481-FN-A

The infamous Sununu Youth Services Center is slated to be sold. The question is where the proceeds from the sale go. The 2025 budget earmarked the proceeds to go to the victims compensation fund, but this bill will redirect the proceeds into the general fund. It’s yet another way that the state is cheating the victims of abuse that occurred at the facility.

SB 603-FN

This bill would have directed the Department of Health and Human Services to transfer funds to compensate for reduced SNAP federal funds. But who would possibly want to feed the damn kids?