Thoughts from the House Floor
We hear a lot about bipartisan politics. And, to be fair, it is a noble goal. Policies should be sufficiently agreeable to a wide range of ideologies in order to move forward. After all, we represent a wide range of constituents.
And yet.
This past week saw some interesting moments of compromise and cooperation. It also saw an impressive display of hypocrisy from Republicans in the NH House as they contorted their politics around "local control" of (mostly) education policies to ensure decidedly partisan policies moved forward.
The Consent Calendar
Every bill submitted in the NH House receives a hearing in a committee and nearly all of them also receive a vote of the floor. For our body, with limited time to meet, that can prove incredibly time consuming. Enter the Consent Calendar.
Bills that are unanimous out of committee, either in support or against, are often considered on the Consent Calendar. A single voice vote at the beginning of the session can dispose of roughly half the bills we undertake in a given week. On the 13th we had 35 bills on the Consent Calendar, against 41 on the regular calendar. The prior week split was 74-41. The upcoming week will see 31 on consent and 46 on the regular calendar.
Overall that's somewhere in the ballpark of 50% of the recent bills handled by Consent, showing that there is a decent level of cooperation and common motivation in the legislature.
But when things diverge, they often do so with gusto.
No Need to Compromise
A couple weeks ago the NH House killed an anti-union "right-to-work" bill. That required cooperation between the parties to draw enough support. This past week showed a continuation of that effort with respect to HB123, a bill about taxing timber in the north country. In a show of compromise (and Republican infighting), many who supported the unions also supported the need for those remote communities to establish a reliable revenue base, outside of tourism or timber harvesting. This is the sort of behavior we often correlate with the idea of bipartisanship and cooperation.
But it is also rare, outside of the Consent Calendar. Most bills are voted along party lines, even if we like to pretend they're debated on policy and independent of party.
On Thursday we debated a bill to dramatically alter bail reform, undoing a policy that was approved last session and put in place just 10 weeks ago. And the Republican majority displayed no pretense that the issue was a partisan one. Representative Terry Roy was disappointingly blunt about the situation, "We don't have to compromise." And he's right.
Killing a bipartisan bill before letting it actually have an impact, simply because you can, doesn't seem like solid politics to me. It removes the idea that future compromises will be made in good faith.
But I'm also a member of the Democratic party and it seems like, especially at the Federal level, that message has still not made it through to leadership. I do wonder if this will dissuade further cooperation at the state level as well.
That said, Roy also cosponsored and championed HB159, which would mandate reporting of mental health data for firearms background checks. It had a bit of Republican support, but ultimately they also killed that one, at least temporarily. Interestingly, they did so with a Division vote rather than a Roll Call. The latter is typically used for anything gun-related so various lobbying groups can hold those legislators accountable.
The Hypocrisy of "Local Control"
New Hampshire prides itself on local representation (no wonder we have 400 seats in the House) and local control of politics. But that proves to be a concept easily altered in pursuit of ideology.
HB319 would have required school districts to provide transportation for half-day kindergarten sessions (turns out kindergarten is optional in NH??). HB646 would have required school districts to create an online portal where families could apply for the USDA free meals program. HB703 would have prohibited schools from denying meals to students with unpaid meal balances.
All three were decried as overstepping our authority as a state government and overriding local control. The Republican majority killed them all on the floor.
Intermixed with those debates, however, were HB667 mandating curriculum changes (mostly anti-abortion garbage) and HB675 capping the amount a school district can spend on education. Those bills, too, override local control with mandates from the State. While the votes were closer – 14 Republicans crossed party lines for HB675 and a similar number on HB 667 – the Republican majority held its position and passed both.
On a Personal Note
This week also saw debate of HB452 on the floor. The bill aims to prevent people with pending asylum cases from obtaining a driver's license, despite federal authorization to be present and work. It is xenophobic trash, and the prime sponsor even admitted during the committee testimony that the bill is not based in safety concerns.
Not surprisingly, this bill is one of many that passed along party lines.
Representative Veilleux spoke against it and I offered the Parliamentary Inquiry.
It didn't work. The Republicans (plus a trio of Democrats🤯) voted for it as expected.
I should also note that, as written the bill prevents everyone from being able to renew a license. It also does not prevent asylum applicants from receiving a license, only asylees. Which are people who have had their case adjudicated. I have no idea if that will get fixed in the Senate or conference committees, or how it will be enforced if signed into law. But it is pretty terrible at many levels.