NH Senate doings.

Senate session 18 April.  Started off with the Fast Track (consent) calendar.  18 bills, including HB 540 which sets up a complex deal to finance the Balsam project.  We pulled HB 369 off the Fast Track.  It allowed HHS workers access to the prescription drug monitoring program.  We felt it was a big privacy violation.  NH keeps a list of people obtaining opioid prescriptions largely so that doctors can check to see how many opioid prescriptions a patient has before writing a new prescription.  Needless to say, opioid prescriptions are something of a black mark with employers and others, so we ought to keep this information confidential.  Allowing HHS people access to it doesn’t help the patients, and may well hurt them. Five of the Fast Track bills were to set up more study commissions.  And then a quick voice vote passed all 17 bills left on the Fast Track.   

   Then we ran thru the 14 bills on the regular calendar.  Passed them all on voice votes.  Only bills of interest were HB365 which raised the amount of power a net metering generator can get paid for to 5 megawatts, up from 1 megawatt.  And HB 572 proclaiming second Saturday in June as Pollyanna recognition day.  Very important bill, trust me on this, cause Pollyanna was written by a Littleton author, and we put up a Pollyanna statue in front of the Littleton public library. 

 After all this heavy lifting we finished up and adjourned by 11:30.