State Representative Memo

This communication is from our state representative Lucy Weber, who, along with representative Tara Sad, spoke at a Moving In Step pot luck on Thursday, February 2, 2012.

Thank you again for inviting Tara and me to a great evening of wonderful food and good conversation.  It was a much-needed antidote to the current situation in Concord.  Here is some of the information I promised at our meeting.  Feel free to forward this email to anyone you think would find it interesting.  If you receive this email as a forward, and want to be added to a very sporadic mailing list, email me at lwmcv@comcast.net, and I will add you to the list

Redistricting.  Nelson will share one House representative with Gilsum, Stoddard and Sullivan.  The full text of the redistricting plan for House members as it passed the House can be found in HB 592, here: http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2012/HB0592.html .  Nelson will move to Senate District 10 with Keene, and I am glad to say Walpole has also been added to that district, which is an improvement over being in a district which includes New London.  You can find SB 201, containing the current proposal on senate districts, here:  http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2012/SB0201.html . The current proposal on Executive Council districts can be found here by clicking on either the text or map for amendment 0518h to HB 1670:  http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/committees/committee_websites/h48/exec_council_districts.htm .

Revision of Town Charter: RSA 49-B covers the procedure for revising a Town Charter.  I assume that this is the route for changing the number of Selectpersons.  I did not instantly find out if there is an upper limit on the permissible number of Selectboard members.  You can find the text of RSA 49-B here: http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/III/49-B/49-B-mrg.htm

More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About the Right to Know law.  The link to the Attorney General’s memorandum about the Right to Know law is here:  http://doj.nh.gov/civil/publications.htm  The full text of RSA 91-A is attached as one of the addenda, or you can find it here:  http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/VI/91-A/91-A-mrg.htm

Navigating the General Court web site.  I am going to do this both by links and by telling you how to do it from scratch.   You can either click on the links, or use the text as a guide.  As I am more familiar with the House side of the web site, I am going to use that as the guide.  The Senate side is similar, but not exactly the same.  Once you have rummaged around a bit on the House side, you will be able to explore the Senate side on your own.

Start by Googling ‘NH General Court.’  That should get you here:  http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/ .

About your representatives.  In the box headed House of Representatives Dash Board, select Find Your Representatives.  This will bring you to a page where you can search by town or by map.  Selecting Nelson, you will get to this page:  http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/members/wml.aspx .  Clicking on any of our names, in blue, will get you more information than you will ever want to know about each representative, and Senator Sanborn as well.  Of particular interest may be the Voting Record button.  Here is what you need to know about reading a voting record.  Bills come out of committee with a recommendation, usually Ought to Pass (OTP) or Inexpedient to Legislate (ITL).  We are voting on the recommendation, not the bill itself.  A Yea or Nay vote on Ought to Pass is straightforward—Yea is FOR the bill and Nay is AGAINST.  The tricky part is when the committee recommendation is Inexpedient to Legislate.    So if the motion is ITL, a YEA vote is for KILLING the underlying bill, and a NAY vote is IN FAVOR of the underlying bill.

More about the House of Representatives and its Committees.  From the General Court Home page, select House of Representatives on the left hand side.  This get you to the House home page, to be found here:  http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/default.htm.  In the Quick Links box, click on Standing Committees.  This gets you to a list of House Committees.  http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/committees/standingcommittees.aspx Click on any committee to get to the committee home page.  The Judiciary home page looks like this:  http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/committees/committeedetails.aspx?code=H10 The box on the right hand side gives you links to Email Committee Members, Bills Originally Referred to Committee, Bills Currently in Committee, and a Mailing List.

Email Committee Members will send your email directly to each member of the committee.

Clicking on either of the Bills links will get you a bill list.  http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/committees/HouseBillsInCommittee.aspx?code=XH10  For each bill, there are further links to the bill’s text, docket and status.  I don’t use the status report as much as the docket report, but all are useful.  Be aware that the Bill Text will not get you the text of any amendment adopted by the committee but not yet adopted by the full House.  The bill Docket may point you in the right direction, though.  If you page down on the  bill list to HB 437, which is the repeal of marriage equality bill, and click on the Bill Docket link, you get this page  http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/committees/HouseBillsinCommitteeDocket.aspx?lsr=14&code=XH10  At the bottom of the page, you can see where the amendment was published in House Calendar 69 in 2011.  There is a link on the left hand side of the page which will take you to House calendars, and you will need to specify 2011, rather than 2012..  (This was not a great example for navigational purposes.  HB 437 was a retained bill, so the report came out at the end of last year, so you need to search the 2011 calendars.  If the report had been printed in a 2012 calendar, there would have been a live link.)

Bill Search. If you know the bill number, you can enter it on either the General Court Page or the House of Representatives page.  The bill number will get you the link which allows you to look at text, docket or status of the bill.  If you only know the subject matter, try the Advanced Bill Search function In the State Legislation Dashboard on the General Court home page.

House Calendar.  The Calendar and Journal link is on the left hand side of the House of Representatives Home Page.  The Calendar contains the work for the upsoming week, and sometimes beyond.  The Journal cantains records of past House sessions. The most recent calendar or journal is on top.  Looking down through the calendar for this week,http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/caljourns/calendars/2012/houcal2012_6.html you will first see official notices, and then House Deadlines.  After that Comes the Consent Calendar for this week’s Session Day.  These are bills that are relatively non-controversial, and they are voted on as a block.  If any member wants to debate a consent bill, the member may “pull” the bill off of consent, and it will be debated at the end of the day.  Then comes the Regular Calendar.  The bills on the Regular Calendar are the ones with more dissention.  Not all Regular Calendar bills get a floor debate, but many of them do, especially those which have a minority report printed under the majority report.  If a bill is recommended Ought to Pass with Amendment, you will find the amendment printed later in the calendar.

After the Calendars for the session day, you will get to the section on Committee meetings.  This is the committee work schedule.  All committee meetings are open to the public.  Public hearings are for public comment.  Work sessions are just that—usually a subcommittee, and the Chair gets to decide if members of the public will be invited to participate or not.  Generally the public is not invited to speak unless someone has specialized or clarifying knowledge, or if you are trying to negotiate a compromise between a number of interests, all of which have representatives in the room.  Executive sessions are when the committee as a whole votes on its recommendation to the full House.  Public is welcome, but may not comment.

At the end of the calendar is more public notices, the school visitation schedule, and the text of bill amendments.

This is probably more that you ever wanted to know, but I hope parts of it are helpful.

New Hampshire Statutes:  You can find the statutes online here:  http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/indexes/default.html  I find the Browse function the most useful.

If there were questions I have not answered, or if your explorations on the websites above raise further questions, please feel free to email or call either of us.