Miller4NH Updates
Mornings are a bit cooler. Sunset comes a bit earlier. School is back in session. No doubt, summer is over. For the New Hampshire legislature that also means bill filing season is upon us.
We get just one week to submit our ideas to the Office of Legislative Services (OLS)*. From there the gears start spinning, generating the hundreds of pieces of legislation to be debated.
And the ideas for what to do come from a wide range of sources. One bill I'm sponsoring** comes from a failed effort of the 2025 session, for example. Two others come from constituents who reached out to colleagues with ideas. One of those, with respect to drivers who are deaf or hard of hearing, led me on a particularly interesting path.
The idea started out relatively simple: Find a way for first responders to better identify and interact with hearing impaired members of the community. We had a couple conversations. I (thought I) understood the issue. I got to looking at legislative options.
And then I did the other, incredibly important part of this job. I spoke with a bunch of subject matter experts.
- Community buy-in is important, so I spoke with the President of the NH Association of the Deaf.
- The NH legislature has a Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. I spoke with Representative Pearson, who chairs that group.
- Implementation would be handled by the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Safety. I spoke with the Director of the DMV and a representative from the Commissioner of the Department of Safety.
- I spoke with a local police officer to better understand how they interact in these situations, what improvements they'd like to see. Needless to say, TV and movies show a very different version of this experience.
I had a lot to learn, and not a lot of time to do so.
Ultimately all those conversations led me to an unexpected conclusion. We did not have a legislation problem; we had a communications and implementation problem.
Is a problem really solved if no one knows?
New Hampshire, like many other states, has a "visor card" program that created printed cards to enable better communication with members of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community. The parties involved can point to the appropriate sections, including requesting an interpreter. The problem, it turns out, is that scant few know the cards exist or even how many are available and where to find them. Thanks to this push, however, I now know where to find them and also expect that the DMV will be updating its website in the coming weeks to provide a downloadable copy.
Similarly, the idea of allowing people to voluntarily have their license marked as Deaf or Hard of Hearing seemed a no-brainer from everyone involved. There's some debate about whether the marking should be visible on the card to avoid discrimination, but generally the idea to allow for that designation is well supported. So much so that the NH Legislature approved it in 2020. RSA 263:41-b (III) was updated, adding "Deaf or hard of hearing" to the list of markings that can be added.
Alas, DMV implementation came up short, to say the least. Only in January 2025 did the system that produces ID cards get updated to allow for that to happen. And the DMV software used to manage licenses still does not have the option available. Having raised the issue, however, I've been told to expect that will be resolved within the next 30 days.
Don't get me wrong: we still have a publicity problem. Far too many people still don't know the resources exist. And we probably don't have a budget to get more cards printed when the existing batch runs out.
And it is a shame that the programs came up short in implementation, to the point that even people who theoretically are responsible for them don't entirely know they exist. Legislation cannot fix that, but being a legislator seems to at least have a chance of helping. And much more quickly than any new bill might deliver.
But we're making concrete progress in addressing the needs of the community. And I'll take that (partial) win every time.
*OLS is a non-partisan group that works for all legislators, handling bill drafting, amendments, and such. Because we're such a large body and don't have individual staff everything goes through OLS on the way to being debated. The team can handle a query as basic as "I want a bill to outlaw boneless chicken wings" to copying bills from other states and more. And the text they come up with properly meshes with our existing laws, which is key.
** I don't have the bill numbers yet. One will create protections for designated EV or motorcycle parking places, co-sponsored by Rep. Giasson, another first-term legislator on the Transportation committee. It is a redo of a bill that got killed in May because he and I didn't have enough time to sort through the necessary changes before it got to the floor for a vote. The other, brought to me by Rep. Raymond, recognizes the need for improved digital literacy in our aging population and specifically a group of high school students delivering that today.