The week ahead: Hot button bills face lawmakers in final, regular week of business

Yahoo

2 days ago

The final week of regular business for the New Hampshire Legislature features showdown debates on many top issues, from parental rights and mandatory prison terms for drug dealers, to a 'bell-to-bell' ban on cellphone use in public schools and universal access to Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs).
While much of the attention at the State House will be on the finishing touches to a proposed two-year state budget in the Senate, lawmakers face a Thursday deadline for final action on all other bills.
Once they clear those decks, the closing weeks of the session will come down to the work of committees of conference to be named to thrash out differences between competing versions of the same bill.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte has listed parental rights as a priority issue for her to achieve in 2025 and the House and Senate each have their own versions (HB 10 and SB 72) to debate this week.
The real battle is in the House where House Child and Family Law Committee Chair Debra DeSimone, R-Atkinson, has crafted a compromise said to have the backing of Senate GOP leaders.
DeSimone defended the most controversial provision that could prevent minors from being able to obtain contraception without parental consent.
'Disastrous consequences'
'No children should ever be prescribed any medical procedures or medication without parental consent to protect all children from undue and unnecessary harm by parental knowledge and information provided concerning family history,' DeSimone said. 'This bill is necessary to continue to build a strong, healthy society.'
Rep. Heather Raymond, D-Nashua, said such a policy could have disastrous consequences.
'In states like Texas which now require parental permission for birth control, teen pregnancy rates have increased along with the rates of maternal and infant death,' said Raymond, noting that New Hampshire has the lowest teen birth rate in the U.S.
House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Chairman Terry Roy, R-Deerfield, has reworked a bill (SB 14) that also has Ayotte's backing to impose longer minimum mandatory prison sentences for possessing large amounts of fentanyl or selling drugs that cause someone's death.
'It's time for New Hampshire to reclaim its place in New England as the state that dealers fear to tread,' Roy said.
Roy's proposal would allow a judge to impose a more lenient sentence if the offender met several conditions including a clean record prior to this latest conviction.
'Under this bill, if a defendant is cooperative with law enforcement, not a leader in a drug dealing organization, does not have a recent conviction for the same thing, and the charges do not involve violence, a judge is free to use their discretion,' Roy said.
Rep. Buzz Scherr, D-Portsmouth and an appellate law expert, said the bill is a political talking point, not an answer to dealing with deadly overdoses.
'Mandatory minimums for fentanyl continue to have a superficial political attraction as an easy solution, but, they always fail in practice,' Scherr said. 'We do not need to spend even more money on prisons for a solution that doesn't work.'
Firearms training in public schools
Roy championed another sweeping and controversial provision, adopting a mandatory one-hour firearms training course in K-12.
A former police officer, Roy attached his provision as an amendment to an unrelated bill (SB 54) that would increase the penalty for someone accused of driving drunk who refuses to take a blood alcohol test.
The House and Senate will each vote on two bills (SB 295 and HB 115) allowing all families regardless of income to receive a taxpayer-paid scholarship to help offset their student attending a private, religious, alternative public or home school program
The House is likely to approve Ayotte's approach to cellphone use, which is to direct school boards to adopt policies that restrict access throughout the school day (SB 206).
Both the House and Senate have passed versions of a more lenient reform that would give school boards more latitude on when they would be accessible.
Democrats on the House Finance Committee oppose this latest idea because Republicans rejected their attempt to carve out an exemption for any teacher who wanted to incorporate cellphone use into a specific lesson plan.
In other actions:
• Mandatory mask policies (HB 361): The Senate is likely to pass this House-endorsed bill to block school districts from requiring mask wearing; former Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed an identical bill last year;
• Capital budget (HB 25): The Senate will vote on its version of a two-year budget for public works projects financed by state, federal and fee-backed bonds.
• Risk pools (SB 297): Secretary of State David Scanlan opposes and HealthTrust, the largest risk pool, supports this bill to allow either regulation by Scanlan or the Insurance Department of these programs that offer health, property or liability insurance to governmental units.
[e-mail]