Deadlines, Pandemics, and Partisan Politics: Welcome to 2020
With both a legislative deadline and the COVID-19 crisis bearing down, the New Hampshire House of Representatives met in a marathon two-day session this week that ended shortly before 4 a.m. Friday.
Here’s why we decided to keep going well after midnight:
We had hundreds of bills that required action before a key legislative deadline that expired at midnight Thursday. Any that we didn’t vote on before the deadline would have died for this session.
Wary of forcing 300+ people, many of them elderly, to endure a marathon voting day that would end with them exhausted and jumping into cars to drive home, shortly before midnight Democratic leadership proposed suspending House rules to allow the remaining bills to be pushed ahead to a future date.
Republicans would not vote to allow a suspension of the rules. While Democrats have a majority, we don’t have the required 2/3 to suspend the rules without some Republicans crossing over. While our Republican colleagues chose to use to use this as a moment to express their “concern” over the public health risk of meeting again next week, what we learned was that in behind the scenes negotiations, something else was in play. In return for voting to suspend the rules, Republicans were demanding that reprimands previously issued to and pending for Republican legislators who failed to complete mandatory sexual harassment training be rescinded. Democratic Majority leadership refused to go along with this blackmail attempt.
After the motion to suspend the rules failed because of lack of Republican support, one of my Republican colleagues made a motion as the clock crept into the wee hours of the morning to simply adjourn the session. The good news was that voting to adjourn only requires a majority vote. The bad news? Under a procedural technicality in House rules, the remaining bills on the calendar would have died if the motion had been approved. What’s more, EVERY ONE of the bills we had previously voted on during Thursday’s session would have also died. Once the House Clerk made that clear to us, we—Democrats and many Republicans too—sighed and voted down the motion to adjourn.
Over the course of a very long day, it became clear to me and to many others that pressing ahead and acting on ALL of the bills was simply the responsible thing to do because it eliminated the need to return next week. One key positive outcome during a day filled with contentious debates spilling over into occasional frustration and anger, was that somehow leaders of both parties managed to agree to a new rule giving the Speaker more flexibility in the future to amend legislative deadlines because of COVID-19. But the new rule didn’t include our Thursday (and early Friday) session day, so we plowed ahead.
Something else that was good to see as we worked through the final 3 dozen or so bills in the small hours of the morning was some welcome consideration of the late hour. At various points as we entered the home stretch, legislators in both parties thoughtfully either waived or shortened their remarks during debate in the interest of time. Unfortunately some of the usual suspects also decided it was mustache-twirling time and chose to use delaying tactics to stretch things out. These tactics included long-winded speeches against bills with bipartisan committee recommendations, motions to print the remarks from various long-winded debates in the House journal that documents each voting day, and repeated calls for rollcall votes—which take extra time because wandering members need time to navigate back into their seats.
At around 1:30 a.m., members of both parties were starting to tire of this and voted to limit floor speeches to 3 minutes. Because the time clock is bipartisan, legislators from both parties found themselves cut off after exceeding the limit—which produced a few tired but muted cheers from the cheap seats.
While All of This Was Going On….
Four things that were very much on (almost) everyone’s mind over the course of a very long day were:
The strikingly apparent loss of public confidence in the federal officials charged with managing the crisis
The ongoing, minute-by-minute flood of sobering news stories announcing more deaths, test kit availability problems, school and business closings, the tanking of financial markets, and the suspension of most college and professional sports seasons.
We also learned that while New Hampshire has relatively few confirmed COVID-19 cases (only 2 at this writing), lack of access to test kits means the actual number of cases may be much higher. The rapid unfolding of these events, along with the virus’s 2-14 day incubation period—where victims are contagious but may not yet feel ill—combined to make holding this week’s session seem in retrospect to be a risky gamble. As the day chugged along and the intensity of the crisis outside of New Hampshire became clear, it became increasingly clear to me that postponing any of this week’s votes to next week—and then attempting to meet again—will very likely be seen as irresponsible act. Not only would it put legislators at risk (especially those in vulnerable 60+ age groups), but it would substantially increase the risk of newly infected legislators carrying the virus back to the communities they serve.
For this reason, I wasn’t very sad to see the various motions for rules suspension and adjournment defeated. We had a responsibility to get this done and avoid the need to return to Concord next week. But knowing that we ultimately chose to act responsibly—and finish up—didn’t make me any less tired when I finally got back home at 5 a.m. and fell into bed.
So Why Doesn’t the Legislature Simply Meet and Vote Remotely Online?
As Speaker of the House Steve Shurtleff explained to Rep. Prout, the legislator who made a motion (which was ultimately defeated) for a rules change that would have tried to do exactly this, there are complications with our state Constitution and our Right to Know Law that won’t make this possible anytime soon.
The Right to Know Law requires our meetings be public—which means any online meeting tool we use to meet, debate, and vote would somehow need to accommodate non-voting participants.
Any electronic meeting tool would also need to be extremely secure to prevent people from voting or tampering with votes on bills who are not legislators.
Meanwhile, our Constitution requires we meet and vote in-person. Although both would seem to be show-stoppers, the Speaker did tell us that the COVID-19 crisis has prompted the formation of a joint House and Senate Committee to discuss ideas for legislative continuity in the event the crisis worsens (which it likely will).
So Was 19 Straight Hours Sitting in a Giant Petri Dish Worth It?
Honestly? I don’t know yet. That’s because no piece of legislation, no matter how important we think it may be, is worth a single human life. Even if only one legislator who attended yesterday’s session becomes sick with the virus as a result of attending, our efforts in will not have been worth it. So while I’m hoping we’ll be lucky this time and that all the good advice we received about sanitizing and hand washing results in no one getting sick (this time), hope is not a sensible strategy for dealing with a pandemic going forward. See the latest updates from NHPR here
That said, by “normal” non-pandemic legislative standards—which may not apply again for some time—we moved some very good legislation onto the next step and killed some very bad bills.
We finally passed a bill (HB1516) raising the minimum age for marriage in New Hampshire to age 18. This was a huge victory for Rep Cassandra Levesque—our youngest legislator—who has led the fight since she was a Girl Scout to end child marriage in our state. It passed 207-132 over objections that girls who get pregnant when under 18, but who were above the age of consent (16), be allowed to marry the fathers.
We passed the so-called “pillow tax”. HB1160 (approved 174-113) was supported by my hometown Portsmouth City Council and would allow cities and towns to collect up to a $2 occupancy fee from hotel and room rentals. This has the potential to offset police, fire, and public works costs during peak tourist season and would relieve some of the pressure on property taxpayers.
After 30+ years we may finally get independent radiation monitoring of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant along the New Hampshire seacoast. Rep. Peter Somssich’s bill, HB1676 (which I cosponsored) passed 162-118. It would require the Department of Health and Human services to install real-time radiation monitors in the area surrounding the plant.
Several other key environmental bills also won approval:
HB1319 (passed 189-23) prohibits the siting of new landfills near state parks, national parks, of US Department of Agriculture forest land.
HB1472 (passed by voice vote) restricts the distribution of plastic straws in restaurants. (If you want one, you’d need to ask for one).
HB1564 (passed 194-129) would ban the use of polystyrene foam containers used in food service businesses. These containers are not recyclable and more environmentally-friendly alternatives are readily available.
We also passed a series of bills mandating insurance coverage in a variety of critical situations:
HB1280 (passed 223-121) caps copayments for prescription insulin at $100 per month and makes these costs not subject to a deductible.
HB1233 (passed by voice vote) requires private insurers to cover early intervention services for children affected by the opioid crisis without being subject to copayments, coinsurance, or deductibles.
HB2187 (passed by voice voice) requires insurers to extend the maximum anti-biotic treatment period for tick-borne illnesses, such as Lyme disease.
HB1577 (passed 194-109) allows our trans citizens to request changes or corrections to birth records to reflect their preferred gender designation. A similar bill was vetoed last year by Governor Sununu.
We passed two bills that would unwind the damage to student voting rights caused by passage of SB-3 in 2018. Additionally we approved several bills that would make it easier for people to vote and make our elections fairer, including:
HB1665 (passed 203-121) would establish an independent redistricting commission to end partisan gerrymandering so voters can finally choose their politicians in New Hampshire, rather than the other way around.
HB1672 (passed 194-132) simply allows voters to request an absentee ballot without the need to provide an excuse for doing so, such as a pending business trip.
Four important gun safety bills won approval:
HB1285 (passed 182-141) allows New Hampshire law enforcement officials to arrest people possessing firearms on school property who aren’t specifically authorized by local school boards.
HB1608 (passed 150-145) makes it a crime to possess, manufacture, sell, or acquire large capacity magazines and ammunition feeding devices. These devices make it easier for a mass shooter to rain deadly fire down on victims with less need to stop and reload. The killers in Newtown, Parkland, Orlando, Las Vegas, and dozens of other mass shootings used these devices. I cosponsored this bill and spoke in support of it on the floor.
HB1374 (passed 181-141) repeals a statute passed in the 1990’s with the support of gun rights groups that prevents state agencies from destroying firearms voluntarily surrendered to citizens wishing to get rid of them. While the bill repeals the law, there is no immediate requirement for the state to set up a voluntary surrender and destroy program.
HB1349 (passed 205-128) would establish a committee to study firearms incidents involving children with access to unsecured firearms. I was the prime sponsor of this bill and put it forward because I found in my research that while some of these incidents occasionally make the news, they may be under-reported because they involve minors and, sometimes, suicide. The State Police told me that there is no central record kept of these incidents and I feel it’s important to gather data so we understand the scope of this problem in New Hampshire.
Among the bad bills successfully killed:
HB1251 was a discriminatory and cruel bill that would have subjected young transexual students wanting to play high school sports to invasive testing in order to “keep girls’ teams for girls.”
Four bills that would have restricted abortion rights were voted Inexpedient to Legislate, including:
HB1475 prohibiting abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat
HB1640 which would have forced all minors to notify their parents of an abortion even if notification would be harmful of dangerous to the minor
HB1675 which would have made it a crime to “abort” an infant a mother has given birth to—something that is already a crime known as infanticide
HB1678 which would infringe of a woman’s right to obtain an abortion before fetal viability)
Among the bills I supported that were not approved were:
HB1586 (sent to Interim Study 200-123) would have removed the statute of limitations for most forms of sexual assault. While I felt strongly that the clock to prosecute a heinous crime like rape should never be a allowed to run out like the 24 second clock in a basketball game, others felt we should study whether it makes more sense to simply extend current limitations for a few more years.
HB1350 (killed in a close 169-153 vote) would have required a locking safety device be provided for firearms sales and transfers at gun shows and gun shops. I was the primate sponsor of this bill and spoke in support of it on the House floor.