legislative issues

The 2023-2024 NHMA Legislative Policy Conference will be held on Friday, September 23, 2022, at 9:00 a.m. at NHMA offices at 25 Triangle Park Drive, Concord, NH 03303. This is an in-person event. Each member municipality will be asked to appoint a voting delegate to cast its vote at this conference.  Each member municipality, regardless of size, has one vote on all policy matters.

In January, our greenhorn of a team was looking at the legislative term with some amount of trepidation, but the sky didn’t fall, and we approached the session the same way that you’d eat any elephant – one bite at a time. As it turns out, it was a very good year for municipalities. Despite not being a budget year, funding municipal interests turned out to be a top priority, particularly for the Senate, with approximately $100 million in direct payments coming to municipalities. Meanwhile, few of the bills that we opposed ended up on the governor’s desk.

Our Advocacy Efforts Matter!  Your Voice Matters More!

Established in 1941 as a voluntary association of New Hampshire’s cities and towns, the New Hampshire Municipal Association has served as the primary legislative advocate for New Hampshire’s municipalities, representing its members at the state legislature and before numerous federal and state administrative agencies.

In the January/February issue of Town & City, I encouraged members to get involved in NHMA’s upcoming legislative policy process. It’s not just that your voice is the most crucial part of NHMA’s advocacy, or that it’s important NHMA’s policies reflect the perspectives of a wide cross-section of our membership, or even that it’s a membership benefit that we want our members to take advantage of—although those are all good reasons.

Our Advocacy Efforts Matter!  Your Voice Matters More!

Established in 1941 as a voluntary association of New Hampshire’s cities and towns, the New Hampshire Municipal Association has served as the primary legislative advocate for New Hampshire’s municipalities, representing its members at the state legislature and before numerous federal and state administrative agencies.

And so, we begin the second year of the two-year legislative term. It’s early yet but having now digested the bill titles that were released in the fall, it’s fair to say that it’s shaping up to be a session very similar to last year. Once again, we can expect to be on the defensive throughout the 2022 term. There are a few bills of particular note on that front:

What a year it has been. The turnaround from January to June has been quite remarkable, and I don’t just mean with the pandemic.