My votes in the NH House session
of May 30, 2024

This was the session where we voted on bills that the House passed, sent to the Senate, and the Senate amended. There were four possible outcomes to each bill: Table, Concur (with the Senate’s changes), Non-Concur (which kills the bill), or Non-Concur and Request a Committee of Conference (in which four representatives and three senators decide how to reconcile the differences between the two bodies). The initial motion on each House bill was made by the chair of the relevant House committee. After voting on such bills, we voted on whether or not to Accede to the Senate’s requests for Committees of Conference for Senate bills that the House amended.

We voted on 112 bills that day.

HB 1018-FN

I voted to Non-Concur because the Senate attached SB 504, an anti-immigrant bill that would make it difficult for law enforcement to distinguish between someone out for a hike and an undocumented immigrant, putting public safety at risk.

HB 1633-FN-A

The Senate mucked up the cannabis bill that the House sent over. Although there were some reasonable aspects of the Senate’s changes, the main problem for me was that the amended bill called for a franchise model that would give the state Liquor Commission authority to set prices, impose a 15% franchise fee on all cannabis purchases at retail stores, and give no exemption for registered medical patients. I wanted to send the bill to a Committee of Conference, which is what happened.

HB 1186

This bill, which passed, bans banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions from requiring a merchant category code when purchasing firearms and ammunition, making it more difficult to flag suspicious purchases.

HB 115

This bill would change the date of the state primary election to the third Tuesday in June. The House had already rejected a June primary. The problem is that our September primary is awfully late, giving only a couple of months between the primary and general elections. But a June primary is early, and we would have to be campaigning while we are in session. July or August would be good a compromise, but would people vote in mid-summer? For now, we’re just leaving things as they are, with a September primary.

HB 1596-FN

There’s quite a story with this bill, sponsored by Rep. Angela Brennan and for which I was a co-sponsor. It is one of the AI-related bills that I worked on to create consistent definitions for AI and deepfakes across bills. I wrote about it on March 28.

The Senate amended this bill and HB 1432 and, in so doing, made a big mistake. The language that the House put in these bills said that if an internet service provider (ISP) disseminates a deepfake but has nothing to do with creating it, then it is not liable. The Senate amended the bills so that an ISP could create and disseminate any deepfake with impunity. So, in theory, I could say that I’m an ISP (gosh, I have two users) and then create and disseminate deepfakes to my heart’s content.

I caught wind of this change to both bills as I was tracking them through the Senate. I spoke with Sen. Daryl Abbas, who is on both the Senate Judiciary and Election Law Committees, to understand why this change was made to these bills. Even though I put the new language right in front of him, he failed to see the issue. I found out that a Google lobbyist was behind the change. Rep. Zoe Manos and I contacted him and pointed out the problem. To his credit, he understood why we were concerned, and we worked out language to undo the damage. Although HB 1432 was able to be fixed before it got out of the Senate, HB 1596 was not. So it came back to the House with this problematic language.

Meanwhile, there had been some turmoil in the House Election Law Committee. The Speaker had removed Rep. Ross Berry as the committee chair and replaced him by Deputy Speaker Steven Smith. (Berry subsequently resigned from the House because he had moved out of his district. He is now running for the House from his new district.) Rep. Smith moved to Non-Concur, which would kill the bill. His reasoning was that, as he put it, if Grandma in the basement receives a deepfake, doesn’t realize that it’s a deepfake, and reposts it, she is liable. Grandma is clearly not liable according to the bill, however. Fortunately, the motion to Non-Concur failed. The next motion was to create a Committee of Conference. Rep. Brennan was concerned that a Committee of Conference would kill the bill or amend it in a negative way and asked us to vote against the Committee of Conference. She wanted to Concur with the Senate’s changes and fix the bill next year. But the motion to send the bill to a Committee of Conference passed.

If you read about this bill in my June 13 writeup, you’ll see that everything turned out fine.

HB 1410

The Senate attached the bill allowing optomitrists to become certain procedures to this bill. We tabled it.

HB 1607

I wrote about this bill on March 28. The Senate’s changes did not make it any better, but the House concurred with the Senate’s changes.

HB 1432

As I wrote above, the Senate fixed the broken change they made to this bill, and we concurred.

HB 1215

The Senate added non-germane language to allow the town of Hampton to discontinue D Street by a vote of the selectboard, rather than by a vote of the whole town. There didn’t seem to be much objection to the change itself, but the process was highly controversial. For example, the timberland owners were against it because they felt it could serve as a precedent for taking of land by a vote of just a few people. I didn’t see a problem here and voted to Concur, but that vote failed and the bill went to a Committee of Conference.

HB 609

I wrote about this bill on January 3-4. The Senate’s changes were good, and we concurred.

HB 1600-FN

I was the prime sponsor for this bill, but it was written by the Hon. Clifton Below, Chair of the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire (and a Ward 3 constituent). The bill as passed by the House says that a municipal host offsetting a group load for municipal or county aggregation (such as Community Power) will be considered a customer and compensated for its output, and that it will accordingly reduce the load. The bill also contained a technical correction, fixing a reference to an existing RSA.

When the bill was heard in the House Science, Technology and Energy Committee and when it was heard in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the state Department of Energy had no major concerns. Just before the Senate committee was going to exec the bill (i.e., vote on its recommendation), DOE sent a letter to the committee chair, Sen. Kevin Avard, expressing many concerns about the bill. The Senate turned the bill into a study committee to study Community Power. We did not need a study committee, and especially not coming this late in the second year of a session.

Yet, the motion made by our committee chair, Rep. Michael Vose, was to Concur. Rep. Vose told me that Republican leadership wanted to concur with the Senate’s version and have the study committee. I saw no need for it. To this day, I don’t know why Republican leadership would have wanted a study committee. I wanted to get this bill to a Committee of Conference so that it would have a chance of passing in something like the form that the House passed.

I debated Rep. Vose on the House floor. You can see our debate here. (Do you like my purple Jerry Garcia tie?) As you can see, the motion to Concur was defeated by 5 votes, and the bill went to a Committee of Conference.