Two House Bills with Upcoming Committee Hearings
Two House bills that many of you will be interested in, described below, will be heard by the Municipal & County Government Committee next Tuesday, February 25, 2020. Please call or email the committee or go down and testify if you can.
Their email address is HouseMunicipalandCountyGovt@leg.state.nh.us
You can find the committee members’ phone numbers at the committee web site.
HB 1460: relative to the form of municipal budgets.
Tuesday, Feb 25 at 11:30 AM
Municipal & County Government Committee
Room 301 Legislative Office Building
33 N State St., Concord
Bill text is available here.
Support HB 1460.
HB 1460 is an important bill for budget transparency, introduced by a Sandown State Representative, Tony Piemonte. It requires budgets to be given to all elected officials in full line-item detail in active spreadsheet form, which makes them completely accessible to the public.
Please encourage the committee to vote OTP (ought to pass) for HB 1460.
HB 1451: relative to the definition of contracts relative to official ballot default budgets.
Tuesday, Feb 25th, at 11:00 AM
Municipal & County Government Committee
Room 301 Legislative Office Building
33 N State St., Concord
Bill text is available here.
Oppose HB 1451
This bill will nullify a hard-fought court ruling that essentially provided the safeguard to voters that SB2 towns and cooperative districts could not include contracts in a default budget that were not previously voted on and their amount approved. The court’s definition of a “contract” now precludes towns and districts from including in their default budgets planned but unvoted increases in contracts or new contracts. This proposed change will remove the approved amount provision, making it open season once again to make the default budget just a mirror of the proposed budget.
We must urgently oppose this bill.
Please encourage the committee to vote ITL (inexpedient to legislate) for HB 1451.