What are state lawmakers doing that actually affects your daily life? Lots! Find out with Front Door Politics: jargon-free, non-advocacy state house news at www.frontdoorpolitics.com.

reversing PACE: bill would disallow clean energy districts: An energy efficiency measure that passed just last year could soon be voted down by a House committee. 

The Municipal & County Government Committee recently held an executive session on House Bill 144, which is sponsored by Rep. Carol McGuire (R-Epsom). It would repeal the law allowing cities and towns to create energy efficiency and clean energy districts. 

House Bill 1554 was signed into law in August, enabling municipalities to voluntarily establish revolving loan funds to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy projects of up to $35,000 for both residential and commercial properties. These energy efficiency loans are then financed through increased property tax payments that the property owner is assessed, for up to a 20-year period. The program is also known as PACE, or “Property Assessed Clean Energy.”

McGuire, who testified at the public hearing for HB 144 on Tuesday, had opposed HB 1554. She tells Front Door Politics it was “not good public policy” and had too many technical faults. Moreover, she says, it puts local taxpayers in jeopardy of having to pay for loans that go into default. She says PACE puts towns in the position of being banks, that the state already has enough energy efficiency programs and that the law interferes with the market process.

“We already have a lot of things. The banks and utilities have programs. The state does energy audits and has a subsidized weather program,” McGuire says. “This program benefits the few at the expense of everybody else.”

That characterization is not shared by Dick Henry, president of the Concord-based Jordan Institute, an environmental nonprofit which advocates reducing energy use and carbon emissions in buildings. Henry testified in opposition to HB 144 Tuesday. He tells Front Door Politics that creating PACE was a painstaking process and covered many of the objections and concerns raised by McGuire and other supporters of HB 144. There is a wide range of financial eligibility caveats for the loans, he says, which are designed to help homeowners save more money annually for their energy efficiency and clean energy upgrades than what they are paying back through their property taxes. If property owners can’t show that level of savings, they are not eligible.

Unlike most parts of the country that heat with liquid natural gas, Henry says 81 percent of homes in New Hampshire heat with petroleum (oil, propane, kerosene). PACE fills a large market void for property owners who would like to upgrade but either don’t have the cash in hand, don’t fit into income guidelines for other subsidies, or can’t afford bank loans, which charge a higher interest rate over shorter periods of time.

“If financing is a barrier, this is a way to overcome it,” Henry says. “This is serious because the state’s economy remains very vulnerable to high petroleum prices … We send out of state 89 cents out of every dollar for petroleum products. That’s over a billion dollars a year now and it’s only going to increase as the price of oil rises. The money saved would be spent here, jobs would be created here.”

The main thrust of the new law, Henry explains, is a “conservative, New Hampshire” solution of local control, allowing communities to voluntarily assist their taxpayers in cutting their energy and heating costs. Towns like Durham and Lee have already established or are establishing programs to take advantage of the new law. Henry says other communities across the state are also considering it. “It’s giving local control to individual communities. It escapes me why it is necessary to intervene and take away local control,” he says.

The bill’s due date out of committee is March 10. —Michael McCord

legislators only: restricting membership of study committees: Members of the public could be barred from serving on legislative study committees, with a new bipartisan proposal.

Sponsored by Rep. Laurie Harding (D-Lebanon), House Bill 190 follows a strong bipartisan House vote last year that approved a rule (not a formal law) limiting membership on House study committees to legislators. Previously, some study committees had invited public members, industry experts, or representatives from state agencies to serve.

Study committees are often an important step for bills that were not believed ready for a full vote, but were voted to be worthy of more consideration through a fact-finding process. A study committee offers lawmakers a chance to learn more about a specific proposal and for that group to make recommendations to relevant committees and the House or Senate.

On Jan. 25, the House Legislative Administration Committee held a public hearing on HB 190. It would go a step further than last year’s House rule, requiring by law that any study committee would only be made up of legislators. It requires at least one House and Senate member on each study committee. Also, in a nod to the digital age, it requires the chairman of the study committee to file the final report electronically with the House and Senate clerks for posting on the legislative website.

Neither the House rule change of last year nor HB 190 would change the composition of the more than 200 statutory commissions or task forces established by state law, such as the Commission for Human Rights and the Commission on the Status of Women. For example, the Commission on Health Care Cost Containment, formed in 2010, calls for a wide range of appointments beyond House and Senate members. This is different than a committee formed to study one specific bill.

Last year’s House rule to limit membership on study committees itself came from a legislative study committee looking into sunset provisions for outdated commissions. The group was also considering how to make short-term committees run more efficiently, complete their duties on time and keep outside influence about specific recommendations to a minimum.

“They (the public) can have a seat at the table, but not a vote,” former House Speaker Terie Norelli (D-Portsmouth) told the Portsmouth Herald last year when the rule change came about. “The whole point is for elected officials to gather information. What’s good is healthy public input, but undue outside control of the outcome is not good.”

When the House rule was debated, some lawmakers gave testimony that they had served on legislative study committees where they felt lobbying pressure was too strong.

Not everyone was thrilled about the rule change last year, though. Former Rep. Jim Splaine (D-Portsmouth) called it “anti-democratic.” It led him to speak out against a rule change on the House floor for the first time in his decades of serving in the legislature. He told the Portsmouth Herald that legislative study committees need and should encourage the participation of unelected citizens. —Michael McCord

cold case unit could become permanent: More than 120 unsolved murders in New Hampshire stretch back over four decades. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to make the state’s temporary investigative Cold Case Unit a permanent entity.

The unit has been up and running since fall 2009, when House Bill 690 was enacted. Paid for with federal stimulus funding, the bill created a Cold Case Unit with a prosecutor and three detectives whose work has raised the public profile of a number of cases. A recent story in the Greenfield Daily Reporter, for example, indicates that some people have recently brought forward new information about the 1989 stabbing death of then-17-year-old Craig Lane. Authorities are hopeful that these revelations will trigger more until the evidence they need—and Craig Lane’s killer—is found.

On Dec. 1, the unit released its first annual report, saying it “has made tremendous progress towards the resolution of these important cases.” So far, though, no cases have been solved, and the investigations could run out of time. The 2009 law that created the Cold Case Unit also gave it a sunset provision to expire July 1, 2013.

The Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee recently held a public hearing on House Bill 138, sponsored by Rep. David Welch (R-Kingston). His bill would make the Cold Case Unit permanent, funded by a variety of federal, state and other sources. It is estimated to cost approximately $354,000 in fiscal year 2014 and $365,000 in fiscal year 2015.

The bill is scheduled for an executive session on Feb. 3. —Michael McCord