My votes in the NH House session
of June 12, 2025

Today was entirely about voting whether to concur or non-concur with Senate amendments to House bills that had already passed in the House. Committees of Conference were already formed in recess for bills where the House and Senate disagreed but had agreed to iron out their differences.

Almost all the motions today were to Concur with the Senate’s changes, which sends the bill to the governor for her signature, or to Non-Concur, which kills the bill. Simple as that! There were also motions to Table and one motion to Accede to the Senate’s request for a Committee of Conference.

HB 771-FN

Requires all school districts to budget tuition costs for resident students to attend any school outside the district. This open enrollment process, sold by Republicans as school choice, has the real possibility of draining significant resources from smaller school districts.

HB 768

Changes “nonsectarian private” to “nonpublic” in statute, so that it becomes even easier to funnel public money to religious schools (violating the NH Constitution, but, hey, who cares?).

HB 342

Although I agreed with the underlying premise of this bill, as well as with the non-germane amendment regarding clean energy districts that the Senate added, I went against my caucus’s recommendation and voted to non-concur. The underlying bill encourages housing, which of course we need, but it is poorly written. My chief concern was with the provision reading “Property owners seeking to subdivide a lot within a 1,000-foot radius shall obtain planning board approval.” In debate, it was pointed out that this criterion is not at all clear. I voted against the bill so that in the future we can get it right.

HB 457

This bill was another tough decision for me, as well as for many of my colleagues. It says that municipalities should permit uses of housing based on the type of use, regardless of who lives there. That sounds good, but it opens the door for “student slumlords” and could remove housing from the workforce housing stock. I voted against concurring, but the motion to concur passed by a small margin.

HB 672-FN

This bill came through my committee—Science, Technology and Energy—and, in fact, I was an original co-sponsor. It allows for off-grid electricity providers. As we came to learn, we’re talking about unregulated generators. What could go wrong? And it creates a two-tiered system of generators, some regulated, some not.

HB 690-FN

Republicans believe that you can leave an organization that you’re not a member of. I know this because this bill calls for the state Department of Energy to investigate the state withdrawing from ISO-New England, the regional grid operator. Republicans don’t like that the clean energy policies of the other five New England states affect our rates, so they would like us to go on our own. After all, that has worked out so well in Texas. As our committee learned in May on a field trip to ISO-NE, there’s one little problem: the state of New Hampshire is not a member of ISO-NE. In fact, no states are members. The members are the utilities, the power generators, and the transmission companies. Although Rep. Ned Raynolds and I spoke against this idea, also pointing out that isolating will leave us in a precarious position with regard to energy security, the motion to concur passed on almost a strict party-line vote.