STATE HOUSE UPDATE JUNE 2023
By Dick Thackston State Rep. Cheshire 12 – Troy & Fitzwillam
The following is a list & comments on some of the more interesting bills from this House Session to date.
HB 401 Would have made landlords be at the will of tenants when they wanted to renovate their own properties and would have required them to take the property off the market for a full year no matter when the renovations were completed if the tenant was required to leave for the renovations. If not it held a $10,000 fine!
Status: Defeated in committee.
HR 8 Would have called on Congress to implement a new assault weapons ban.
Status: Defeated in committee.
HB 76 Would have imposed a three-day waiting period between the purchase and delivery of a firearm, unreasonably restricting access to a firearm for self-defense.
Status: Defeated in committee.
HB 208 Would have established California-style greenhouse gas emission reduction goals for the state and a climate action plan & tied NH directly to California.
Status: Defeated in committee.
HB 50 Would have had the state pay 7.5% of the retirement costs of municipalities’ teachers, police & fire, roughly $25M per year. All this does is encourage over-hiring by schools and municipalities, and/or shift money from one set of taxpayers to another.
This was Amended: Take the $50M that would have been spent in this biennium (we budget on two-year cycles) and use it to pay down retirement debt faster than it would otherwise. Because of compound interest this will reduce payments into the system by $105M over the next 16 years and does not encourage overspending by schools and towns on personnel.
Status: Passed w/ Good Amendment.
HB 92 Would haverequired the adoption of “innovative vehicle emissions standards” pursuant to section 177 of the federal Clean Air Act.
Status: Defeated in committee.
HB208 Would have established greenhouse gas emission reduction goals for the state and established a climate action plan.
Status: Defeated in committee.
“Both these bills would have allowed the government to dictate what types of cars we could drive, how we could heat our homes, whether we could travel, and what our cost of living would become. The NH House stood up for the freedom of our constituents by saying No to this massive expansion of government control of our lives.” – Rep. Michael Vose
HB 125 Would have created unprecedented restrictions to crush youth employment, restricting the opportunities for 16 and 17-year old’s to get and work their first real job. If passed, it would pile red tape on employers [and] would particularly target homeschoolers and other outside-of-the-box kids whose schedules don’t fit the mold of the public, district schools. In the end, we got support of 100% of Republicans (hardly a given in this House) and a handful of Democrats to defeat the bill by a decent margin. The floor debate is on YouTube.
Status: Defeated on the House floor.
HB57: Would have raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour and created an annual increase indexed to CPI. The minimum wage would increase every year, forever.
Status: Defeated in committee.
HB58: Would have prohibited payment of subminimum wages, that is to say, people who work for tips. This would have been devastating for the hospitality & restaurant industries in NH.
Status: Defeated in Committee