Wrapping Up 2019 Bills to Start the New Year
A busy and productive week in Concord as the legislature took votes on key priorities, including gun safety, fair elections, renewable energy and more. Here’s quick wrap-up.
On January 8 and 9, the New Hampshire House met to vote on hundreds of bills left over from the 2019 session. These were bills that had been “retained” by their committees for additional work. In addition to the bills themselves, votes were taken on dozens of amendments intended to fix issues with the original bills.
Some of the bills winning approval and moving on to the next step in the legislative process included:
Extreme Risk Protection Orders. HB687 (sometimes referred to as a “red flag law” bill) would make New Hampshire the 18th state in the nation to create a legal process allowing firearms to be temporarily removed from people presenting a significant risk to themselves or to others. It passed 201-176 and I was honored to be one of the legislators who spoke in favor of the bill on the House floor. While we have been fortunate to have avoided a mass shooting in our state for close to 20 years, we have not been anywhere near as fortunate with gun suicides. Currently, our state averages well over 100 deaths from firearms each year. 90% of those deaths are suicides. This bill would give families and law enforcement an effective way to intervene in situations where someone poses an immediate threat to themselves or to others that removes the lethality of firearms from the equation. The final bill was the result of input from members of both parties and took key steps to address due process and evidentiary concerns expressed by opponents. For more, see the text of my floor speech at the bottom of this post.
$15/hour State Minimum Wage. HB731 had the unusual (and confusing) distinction of being successfully amended three times. The first amendment would have increased the minimum wage to only $10 in 2021 and increasing to $13 by 2024. This was overridden by approval of a second amendment, which simply set the minimum wage at $10 with no planned increases. This amendment, in turn, was overridden by a third and final amendment that raises the minimum wage to $8.50 by the end of 2020 with annual increases until it reaches $15 in 2025. The final bill featuring the third amendment passed 212-155 with my support. The bottom line is that when people aren’t paid a living wage, part of their living cost is transferred to others or to the government. By being the only New England state not to have a state minimum wage, we effectively transfer part of the cost of doing business to family members or to taxpayers. These costs can include food stamps, Medicaid, subsidized housing, and more. When people are paid less than a living wage, we’re left with an impoverished segment of the population (almost 1/10 of our state’s total population would benefit from a minimum wage increase) that doesn’t make enough to pay taxes and has to rely on government largess to get by. By increasing the minimum wage in predictable steps, more people will earn closer to a living wage and can emerge from poverty. At the same time, by stepping up to $15 gradually, businesses have time to adapt and prepare their operational models.
Paid Family Leave. HB712 (a mirror version of the Senate bill vetoed last year by the governor) passed 215-141. The bill would establish a much-needed paid family and medical leave insurance program. In return for an average $5/week premium, it would provide up to 19 weeks of paid leave at 60% of regular pay when employees need to take time off for a medical or family emergency. This is one of several bills we considered that will give the governor an opportunity revisit a 2019 veto.
Single Use Plastics. Two bills were approved.
HB102 passed 215-151. At a time when recycling options are narrowing and landfills are near capacity, this bill gives municipalities like Portsmouth the ability to create local ordinances regulating the distribution of plastic bags to curb the amount of single use plastics entering the waste stream.
HB559 was approved 205-158. Also intended to reduce the amount of plastic bags, this bill requires a fee be charged at the point of sale for bags—which must be reusable, recyclable, and made from recycled materials. The idea is for more people to bring reusable bags to stores to avoid the fee—which retailers would keep.
Medical Monitoring As a Private Right for Toxin Exposure. HB661 was a bill I cosponsored that passed by voice vote. Originally it would have created a broad right for people exposed to the negative health effects of environmental contaminants to sue negligent parties even when an EPA consent decree was in place. As amended, the bill narrowed the scope to provide a right of action to seek medical monitoring in the event of significant exposure. This is a much-needed addition to the law in a state that traditionally has done a better job addressing the environmental consequences of pollution while focusing much less on the health consequences.
Independent Redistricting. While a proposed constitutional amendment that I supported (CACR9) requiring the establishment of an independent redistricting commission failed to reach the necessary 2/3 majority, a separate bill also calling for creation of an independent redistricting commission thankfully passed 224-141. SB8 requires commission members to be appointed by the legislative leadership of both parties with approval of the final districts still in the hands of the legislature.
Renewable Energy. A series of bills won approval that would put New Hampshire on a path towards replacing much of the energy generated by fossil fuels with solar and wind energy.
SB122 (passed 212-140) would reallocate Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) energy efficiency funds to energy efficiency projects. At least 35% would go to low-income energy efficiency projects.
SB124 (passed 214-141) sets new state renewable energy goals calling for 28.5 % of the state’s energy to come from wind, geothermal, and tidal by 2040. The standards also call for 18.7% to come from new solar projects and just under 10% from biomass, biogas, and hydro.
SB159 (passed 227-128) raises the limit on energy customers producing their own energy can sell back to the grid at a preferred rate from 1 MW to 5 MW. It would allow businesses, towns, school districts and other large energy users to produce their own zero-cost power and make money selling excess energy back to the grid.
Disappointments
HB221, a bill that would have replaced Columbus Day with a holiday celebrating Indigenous People’s Day, was tabled by a single vote 179-178. This bill will likely be taken off the table and acted on later in the session. (Sorry Christopher Columbus. You were a pretty terrible dude. Especially when compared to Bartolome de las Casas.)
HB735, which would have established a carbon pricing plan to shift energy usage away from fossil fuels was tabled 187-172. This will allow more time to address concerns over the impact of carbon pricing—and increases to oil and gas prices—on fixed-income and low-income NH residents.
Managing Expectations: A Few Words About Process
From here, all bills receiving majority “Ought to Pass” votes either move on to the Senate for action—or move back to a different House committee for additional work. The reality is that a “winning” House vote at this stage only keeps a bill in play at the start of a long, perilous journey where numerous obstacles can pop up to prevent it from ever becoming law. From here, each bill passed by the House faces a gauntlet of additional potential House votes, votes in the Senate and, if both bodies can agree on a final version, the governor’s office, where 55 very good bills (including several very similar to ones passed earlier this week) failed to survive vetoes in 2019.
Bills voted “Inexpedient to Legislate” are dead for this session.
Bills sent to “Interim Study” won’t be considered again in this session. But doing this instead of killing them outright gives committees the option of working on a bill over the summer and making a report or recommendation to the next legislature. It also lessens the blow to sponsors, who never enjoy investing time and energy in well-intended legislation only to see it die.
Bills that are “Tabled” may be brought back for votes at any time. Tabling can buy a bill’s supporters time to make changes and address concerns that led to the bill being tabled in the first place. Tabling can also provide time to draft an amendment that can be voted on if supporters request a vote to take the bill “off the table”. Bills where very close votes are expected are also sometimes tabled so they can be voted on at a later time when more supporters are more likely to be in attendance. Also worth noting is tabling a bill can be a strategy for avoiding a vote on legislation that could be politically sensitive and/or needs additional work to address potential objections.
My Floor Speech on HB687 Establishing an Extreme Risk Protection Order
THANK YOU MR. SPEAKER. I RISE TODAY IN SUPPORT OF HB687
Colleagues, here is a simple fact. You can have run-ins with police. You can be treated repeatedly for mental illness. You can talk about your intention to do harm to yourself or others. But without a provision in our law that allows the court quickly to order the emergency removal of firearms, you have a bill that is powerless to prevent a tragedy at the very time it may be needed the most.
The bottom line is that for laws like these to save lives in situations where the threat is significant and immediate, they must give families and law enforcement the ability to quickly remove firearms from a potentially dangerous situation. While there will always be alternatives to firearms for people determined to harm themselves or someone else, the lethality of firearms too often ensures that an act of desperation, of misguided revenge, of alienation, or mental illness becomes a final act for the shooter or the victims. 85% of suicides attempted by firearms result in death.
Something we hear a lot in this state is that our gun laws are fine just the way they are. Until you, your family, or your community become personally touched by gun violence, it’s tempting—even logical—to think that’s true.
But as we heard repeatedly from family members of victims of gun violence or gun suicide, once it touches you or someone you care about, there’s no opportunity to go back in time and unring the bell. Human lives that have been lost in the fraction of a second it takes to pull a trigger, stay lost forever. The very real human suffering and the often-disabling injuries that come from the barrel of a gun can crush the human spirit, cause an endless well of pain, and create a profound sense of loss and regret that never goes away.
While mass shootings deservedly get much of the attention, suicide by gun accounts for almost 2/3 of all gun deaths in the United States. In our state, we average 123 gun deaths a year. 90% are gun suicides. While each is a profound tragedy for the individual families affected, when taken together the toll is simply staggering.
Unfortunately, no state legislature has the power to unring the bell of gun violence or gun suicide. But one thing we can do is take sensible steps to minimize the risk of that bell ringing again and again and again in the future. States like Connecticut, Florida, Colorado, and Maryland whose citizens have suffered from some of the most horrible acts of gun violence, have found that while you can never bring back the innocent people you’ve already lost, you can take prudent, sensible steps to minimize the chance of future tragedies.
As amended, HB687 allows the court to temporarily remove firearms from a person who is shown by a preponderance of the evidence to be an immediate or significant risk to themselves or others. No one gets arrested and no one loses their freedom. Based on the experiences of other states with similar laws, in most cases firearms will be voluntarily surrendered. In cases where the the person fails to comply or there is probable cause that they have not relinquished all of their weapons, a search warrant can be issued. At all times, the the person who is the subject of the order remains the owner of the weapons. Once the protection order is lifted or expires, the owner can request the court to return the weapons. Why not simply return the weapons to the owner? So the court can make sure that the owner is not a prohibited person. This bill uses exactly the same process for weapons returns as NH’s domestic violence statute. To sum up: weapons are not confiscated. They are temporarily surrendered by the owner. Once the order is no longer in effect, the owner can ask the court for their return.
The procedure we are debating today is a civil procedure—not a criminal procedure. Because no crime has been committed, no criminal record is generated unless the person subjected to the order violates the order. Meanwhile the identity of the person subject to the order is shared with state and federal background check systems for the duration of the order to prevent that person from buying another firearm. This is especially important for family members worried that a depressive incident could send someone who has already surrendered their weapons back to a gun shop to buy another.
Stories like this aren’t just speculation. During the public hearing, we heard from an Exeter mother who lost her son to suicide. A suicide aided with a newly purchased firearm shortly after he voluntarily surrendered his weapon to police.
While this law can be a lifeline for families, it also offers police offers another helpful way to accomplish their primary mission—protecting public safety. As amended, this bill creates a legal process adopted by 17 other states that respects due process and can defuse an immediate threat. It guarantees the right of the firearms owner to a final hearing within a maximum of 7 days. Worth noting is that for the final hearing, an even higher burden of proof—clear and convincing evidence—is required for the protection order to stay in effect. The bill also contains provisions that harshly penalize anyone who seeks a protection order under false circumstances as an act of revenge to get back at an enemy or former romantic partner. Not only does the bill make this a Class A misdemeanor. It also specifies that other applicable charges—such as perjury—also be brought.
The bottom line is this body has a choice. We can continue to allow our gun laws to fail the victims of suicide and their families. We can also continue to bide our time until our own failure to act sees a city or town in New Hampshire joining those of Newtown, Parkland, Miami, Dayton, or El Paso. Or we can choose to act together by passing this bill now and sending it on to the Senate and then on to the governor.
Thank you.