I’ll start with a bit of history on State of Emergency (SoE) Reform this session.
HB127 was the bill I was co-sponsored on that included last term’s SoE language. It left Executive Departments committee with an 11-7 vote to pass. From there, a roll call vote of 193-185 passed it out of the House. The Senate then ran defense for the Governor, with their committee recommending to kill the bill, stating “it does nothing” and unceremoniously allowing it to die on the Senate floor by a cowardly voice vote.
There’s some debate on the excuses, some claiming they believed the text didn’t change current law, and then others claiming they knew the text was included in HB2 so they killed the standalone bill since the Governor would veto. This is a running theme with the Senate – instead of forcing the corner office to bear the shame of vetoing bills that would make him look bad, they find excuses to do his bidding and act as his representation in the Legislature, instead of their constituents’.
Meanwhile, the House stuffed the text of HB127 into the budget trailer bill (HB2) as a safeguard, assuming the standalone bill will once again get vetoed. The budget was a battle in an of itself, but ultimately passed out of the house with a voice vote after the Freedom Caucus attempted, but failed, to correct the massive overspending.
When HB2 arrived in the Senate, the language of HB127 was the first to be struck. This, again, was likely due to the request of the Governor. Thankfully Melissa Blasek at RebuildNH spotted this in the hard-to-follow daily reports on the GenCourt website and notified myself and several other Reps. We immediately took to the phones and contacted Senators Gray and Carson, explaining we would not vote for this budget if SoE was not included.
There was an angry return phone call from Gray where he once again tried to claim the language “does nothing” but as soon as I explained what it changed, he stated the Governor would likely veto the budget if the language was included, meaning Gray knew the language did *something* but assumed I would back off, or was quizzing my knowledge of my own co-sponsorship – not sure which. He said my attitude was brinksmanship, which is true, but some priorities are too important to compromise over.
After about a week, the sheer amount of principled liberty Reps must’ve concerned the Senate enough that they had to put SoE Reform back into HB2.
This brings us to yesterday, June 8th. The Concur motion on the Senate-amended HB2. They did a lot of dancing around with numbers, moving some spending from 2024 into this year by consuming a budget surplus and claiming they cut down the budget by ~$750M by doing so. But the real choice now had to be made: Pass the bloated budget, and take whatever wins from it that we can, or send it to a committee of conference.
If the bill went to committee of conference due to Republicans not getting on board, the Senate would absolutely strip SoE as the first order of business as a “well, we gave you what you wanted, but it wasn’t enough, so now you get nothing” retribution. They’d also add in a bunch of junk to win over the solid voting block of the Dems, meaning the bad budget would only get worse. My choice was to pass the budget and get a few wins in HB2, to include SoE Reform, faster Interest and Dividends tax phase out, minor occupational licensing reform, and an alert system to Federal checkpoints.
The budget ultimately passed with a resounding super majority of 326-52. Coupled with the unanimous 24-0 vote from the Senate, any veto from the Governor will be overturned. I campaigned on SoE reform, and the path was rocky, but we’re going to get there.
Tom Mannion for New Hampshire 