The Wire’s 2008 legislative preview

The New Hampshire primary has come and gone, and while most of us are still nursing political hangovers and wondering what sort of terrible, strange surprises democracy has in store for us next, the political work that matters most to Granite Staters is already underway. The New Hampshire Legislature is back in session, and more than 400 members of the House and 24 members of the Senate are in Concord, ready to debate, pontificate and maybe even pass a law or two. Some of the topics up for discussion this year are familiar to voters—debates over how to fund education in the state, questions about spending cuts and so on—while others are new and, occasionally, weird (why is the legislature talking about peeing in public, anyway?). Here’s a look at what lawmakers will be talking about during the legislature’s 2008 session.

the big two: education funding and revenue shortfalls

While legislators debate the merits of hundreds of bills scheduled to be heard in the House and Senate this year, policy watchers in the Granite State believe that, ultimately, only two topics will matter: the ongoing education funding debate and Gov. John Lynch’s request for $50 million in spending cuts.

According to Charlie Arlinghaus, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, these issues will dominate the 2008 legislative session.

Why the budget? It’s not a budget year (the state is operating under the second year of its biennial budget, set in 2007), but Gov. John Lynch’s announcement last week that state revenues will be at least $50 million less than expected will bring discussion of the state budget to the forefront, according to Arlinghaus.

“Rosy revenue projections” made when preparing the budget last year—which resulted in a 17.5 percent spending increase—are to blame for the shortfall, according to Arlinghaus. And the prospect of a nation-wide economic downturn isn’t helping.

“The only thing to do now that we know what the reality is, is to adjust spending to meet reality,” Arlinghaus said. “The governor started by talking about looking for $50 million to cut (from the budget), but that’s a little, tiny fraction of the problem.”

In a Jan. 15 statement, Lynch said news of the revenue shortfall is “sobering,” and that he would not support any bills passed by the legislature this session that would increase spending from the state’s general fund.

“Barring an emergency, I will not support any bills this session that require additional general funding spending. I also will not support bills that create positions or programs to be funded in the next budget. Those proposals should be considered in the context of the next biennial budget and weighed against other priorities,” Lynch said.

The debate over how best to cut spending and raise revenues will change the tone of the debate in the State House, according to Arlinghaus.

“Because of the size of the problem, everything else will be viewed through that prism. It’s going to make it a very difficult year for legislators,” he said.

That difficulty will be compounded by the ongoing debate over education funding.

This session, lawmakers are focusing on how much an adequate education costs and what the state’s share of that cost will be. But, in light of the revenue shortfall, solutions to the problem will be difficult to come by.

“Legislators looking to spend more money on education funding don’t have more money (to spend), and state aid to education is going to have to be reduced, not increased,” Arlinghaus said. “I suspect it means a significant debate over taxes, whether some taxes have to go up, which is a difficult thing to do during a recession.”

Stephen Norton, executive director of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies, agrees with Arlinghaus. He said the revenue shortfall puts a “question mark” on the legislative agenda.

“If you had asked me a week ago what my thoughts are (on this year’s legislative session), I would have said one thing, but now it’s up in the air,” Norton said.

In the short term, Norton said, there’s little the legislature can do to combat the shortfall, apart from voting down bills that increase spending. One unknown is the nature of the economic stimulus package that President Bush and the U.S. Congress are in the process of developing.

As far as the question of education funding, Norton said the prospect of the revenue shortfall will make the work of the legislative commission charged with determining the cost of an adequate education more difficult, but not impossible.
“At this point, the costing commission is trying to keep questions of revenue out of the conversation and focus on what the primary pieces are and let the cost fall where it may,” he said.

The costing commission’s preliminary findings have pegged the cost of an adequate education at $3,334 for each of the state’s 200,000 students, or about $666.8 million. The committee is due to present a final report to the legislature and governor on Friday, Feb. 1.

speed limits, public urination and more

While talks of budget issues and education funding will take up a lot of legislators’ time, other equally heated discussions will take place. Though the legislature has only been back in session for a few weeks, some bills have already attracted substantial controversy.

Rep. David Smith’s (D-Nashua) bill to increase the speed limit on state highways to 70 miles per hour is one of those bills. In addition to increasing the speed limit by five miles per hour on divided highways with four or more lanes, House Bill 1524 would require drivers to keep to the right lane except when passing.

“A lot of people cringe when I say it, but my main concern is safety,” Smith said. According to Smith, slow drivers puttering along in the left lane cause bottlenecks on two-lane highways like Route 101 or Interstate 89. Upping the speed limit and keeping drivers in the right lane will keep traffic flow steady. Critics of the bill have said that, since many drivers already speed, increasing the speed limit will only encourage them to hit the gas pedal harder. But Smith does not believe that’s the case. When he drives through other states with 70 mile-per-hour speed limits, motorists stick to the limit, he said. The Department of Transportation has the final say when it comes to setting speed limits on highways, Smith said.

“Wherever they feel there is congestion, they always have the right to cut back where it’s dangerous,” he said. “But there’s absolutely no reason people can’t go up and down Interstate 89 at 70 miles an hour.”

The House Transportation Committee heard testimony on the bill last week, and while Smith said the hearing went well, he’s not sure the bill will win the approval of his fellow legislators.

“I don’t think it’s always important to be sponsoring legislation to expect a win,” he said. “I think you can tend to educate people.”

Smith is also the primary sponsor of HB 267, a bill held over from the 2007 session that would place limits on “payday loan” providers. Payday loans work like this: A person in need of extra cash can borrow money against his or her next paycheck from the loan provider, but must pay back the principal in addition to a fee. For example, a person borrowing $400 may agree to pay $15 for every $100 he or she borrows. According to Smith, payday loan borrowers end up taking out loan after loan just to keep paying off the initial money they borrowed. Payday loans trap people with low incomes in a cycle of debt, Smith says, and local and state services end up picking up the tab.

“In the city of Nashua, our welfare officer, in the month of December, had to hand over $2,400 to four different clients who needed money to pay rent because they could no longer renew their payday loans,” Smith said. “I don’t think we have any business subsidizing a business that charges 400 or 500 percent on loan arrangements.

Smith’s bill caps the interest rate on payday loans at 36 percent and bars payday lenders from giving a loan to anyone with an outstanding payday loan. The House voted on the bill on Jan. 16 and the measure passed 207 to 124. Payday loan providers argue that the cap is too restrictive and will put them out of business, but Smith says providers will have to adjust.
“If (payday loan providers) can’t live with that, they’ll be leaving, and my reaction to that is simply good riddance,” Smith said.

Other bills also focus on providing relief to low- and middle-income people in the state. Rep. Frances Potter (D+R-Concord) is the primary sponsor of HB 1472, which would require towns and cities throughout the state to provide “reasonable and realistic” opportunities to develop workforce housing. Potter’s bill defines workforce housing as a home that is affordable for a household with an income of no more than 100 percent of the median income for a four-person household, as determined by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Potter said that the issue of affordable housing for the state’s workforce has benefited from attention given by the state’s Business and Industry Association and other groups. A supply of affordable housing keeps young people working and living in the state, according to Potter.

However, Potter is quick to point out that the bill is not a “mandate” to communities. It does not require communities to develop a certain amount of workforce housing units or set any kind of regulations. Instead, Potter calls it “enabling” legislation that gives developers a process for appeals through Superior Court when they encounter zoning provisions that discourage development of workforce housing units.

Communities typically set limits on lot sizes and apartment units to discourage the development of dense clusters of housing, which some communities believe attracts families with young children and, in turn, burdens the school system. That idea is a myth, according to Potter.

“The typical pattern is, a young family will move in with a child, possibly, or perhaps not with any (children), and when the second child is envisioned, they look around to find a housing location that will be more suitable for two kids,” she said. “So, workforce housing does not typically bring in masses of kids.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Stephen Shurtleff (D+R, Merrimack) is the primary sponsor of HB 1294, which he believes will fix a flaw in the state’s laws regarding sex offenders. Under the bill, a separate criminal offense would be established for public urination. According to Shurtleff, people caught peeing in public are typically charged with indecent exposure. That kind of conviction could soon be even more problematic—a committee charged with reclassifying the state’s laws regarding sex offenders is recommending this year that a person convicted twice in a three-year period for indecent exposure be placed on the state’s non-public sex offender registry.

“If someone has a medical problem or they don’t go into the woods far enough (to urinate), or a young person has too much to drink and goes into an alley, they aren’t tagged with having a sexual offense on their record,” he said.
Though he doesn’t have any hard numbers on how many people have been charged with indecent exposure due to public urination, Shurtleff said it’s a problem that needs fixing.

“If it’s a homeless person … who has varying degrees of mental problems, they’re not going to be charged with a sexual offense (for public urination). If they are (charged with a sex offense), it could keep them from receiving certain benefits.” 

other hot topics and a looming election

And then there are the bills focused on more hot-button issues, like abortion and illegal immigration. Rep. Jordan Ulery (R-Hudson) is sponsoring HB 1614, a bill that creates eight provisions designed to prevent and discourage illegal immigration. The bill would require businesses to verify employees’ immigration status, require law enforcement to investigate the immigration status of criminal offenders, prohibit illegal aliens from receiving state benefits and establish a “fraudulent document investigation” unit in the state Department of Safety, among other provisions.

The debate over illegal immigration is emotionally charged, Ulery said, and his hope is that when the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee holds a hearing on the bill on Thursday, Jan. 24, committee members will focus on facts, not feelings.

In his first term as a House member, Ulery has introduced similar bills in the past. Many times, he said, committee hearings deviate into discussions about the difficulties of legal immigration and federal immigration policy and do not focus on how the state can enforce existing laws.

“All too often, people have said it’s too complicated. Well, it’s not. The state has … not only the ability, but the duty to regulate the effects of immigration. Not immigration itself, but the effects of it,” he said. “The provisions benefit everybody. This bill talks about identity theft, it talks about human trafficking, it talks about slavery and the abuse of workers, about saving and keeping jobs. It doesn’t talk about ‘anti’ anything.”

Other controversial topics, such as abortion and civil unions, will once again appear before legislators this year. HB 1495, sponsored by Rep. Fran Wendelboe (R-Hampton), would re-instate a law requiring minors under the age of 18 to inform their parents when seeking an abortion. The law was originally passed in 2003; however, after a court battle that led all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, justices ruled the law needed to have an exception for medical emergencies. When Democrats seized power following the 2006 elections, the law was repealed. Under Wendelboe’s bill, the law would be amended to include exceptions for medical emergencies and would provide pregnant minors with 24-hour access to a judge in order to waive the notification requirements.

Another bill, HB 1498, sponsored by Rep. Maureen Mooney (R-Merrimack), would prohibit any person from performing a medical procedure on a minor without written notification to a parent or guardian.

Mooney is also the primary sponsor of HB 1415, which amends the law permitting same sex civil unions. Under Mooney’s bill, same-sex marriages and civil unions recognized in other states would not be valid in New Hampshire. Such civil unions are currently valid under the law that legislators approved in 2007 and became effective on Jan. 1.

Dealing with the effects of global warming is also on legislators’ agendas. On Jan. 17, the House Science, Technology and Energy Committee heard testimony on HB 1434, which would make New Hampshire part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The initiative is a pact among 11 states—Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware—to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through a cap-and-trade program. The bill before the House would require power plants in the state to purchase credits for every ton of carbon they emit into the atmosphere. Revenue from these credits would then go to the state to encourage the development of more energy-efficient and carbon-neutral buildings and industries. Gov. Lynch has thrown his support behind the bill, and Senate President Sylvia Larsen (D-Concord) has called it the “most important initiative” the legislature is working on this year.
“Providing clean energy and improving our energy efficiency means we can have economic growth and still address climate change in our state and across the region,” Larsen said in a statement.

Whether any of these issues are resolved during the current legislative session may not matter, according to Stephen Norton, of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies. The simple fact that debates over parental notification, civil unions and other issues are underway will force legislators to take a public stance on the issues—stances that will become very important when elections take place in November.

The issues “may take up as much of the legislative conversation as these budget issues, if only because we’re in an election cycle,” Norton said. “But the other possibility is that those areas are so politically volatile that people may decide not to engage in a conversation about them and wait until the election is over.”