The information contained in this article is not intended as legal advice and may no longer be accurate due to changes in the law. Consult NHMA's legal services or your municipal attorney.
Including retained 2025 bills, NHMA is currently more than 350 bills that could impact municipal government. While no two legislative sessions are alike, here are four topics we believe you will be hearing a lot about over the coming months:
Zoning and land use: There are close to 100 bills dealing with local zoning and land use in 2026. While several bills seek to expand the erosion of local choice that began in earnest last year, others attempt to revise some of the most onerous changes and restore balance. Other bills would expand or create new voluntary affordable housing programs and incentives; however, in a non-budget year, these efforts will be an extremely tough sell. NHMA continues to support balanced, community-driven growth that delivers needed housing and commercial development while managing local impacts through creative, shared solutions.
Property taxes/municipal budgets: We’re following 50-plus bills dealing with budget caps, overriding tax caps, property tax exemptions, and new disclosure requirements for warrant articles and/or tax bills. There are also multiple proposals to impose additional assessments on high-value, non-primary residences.
Risk pools: The conversation on the appropriate way to regulate public employee insurance risk pools that ended last year in a stalemate between the House and Senate picked back up in February. Pools are created by cities, towns, counties, and school districts to reduce risks and associated insurance costs, shifting risk from an individual political subdivision to the pool. NHMA supports the ability of members to establish and govern the pools and understands that clear regulations that protect the members and allow the pools to operate are necessary. With health insurance being a huge driver of municipal costs, regularly outpacing inflation, resolving these regulatory disagreements is crucial.
Right-to-know: There are several attempts to define “citizen,” one of which (SB 626) would be beneficial for municipalities struggling to respond to “fishing expedition” requests from out-of-state vendors or AI bots.
Stay Connected
Due to magazine publication deadlines, some of the bills referenced above may be killed or retained by the time you read this. The best way to stay up to date on the biggest bills impacting municipalities is by subscribing to NHMA’s weekly Legislative Bulletin. Every Friday during the legislative session, NHMA emails out the Bulletin, which provides updates, previews, and reviews of key actions taking place in legislature. Members who haven’t already subscribed to the Bulletin can do so through the member portal. Members can subscribe to the Bulletin through our member portal at: https://nhmunicipal.weblinkconnect.com/portal
In addition to our weekly Legislative Bulletin, NHMA provides members access to FastDemocracy, an online bill tracking platform, for efficient, real-time updates to legislative activity of interest to members. This tool can help ensure that you know when the bills that you care about most are scheduled for public hearing or votes. Visit our online Bill Tracker page at https://www.nhmunicipal.org/nhma-bill-tracker-fastdemocracy to learn more and feel free to subscribe to weekly or daily updates on specific bills of interest.
What else is on your mind? If there are particular bills that your municipality is concerned about or bills you have been communicating with your legislators on, please let us know by contacting governmentaffairs@nhmunicipal.org.