Thursday, May 16, 2019

NH Senate session 15 May


Senate session, Wednesday 15 May.  This was a long one.  Started at 10 AM and lasted until 5 PM.  We dealt with a lotta bills, most of them nit noi unimportant stuff.  We kicked things off by passing the Fast Track calendar with 17 bills on it with one quick voice vote, no debate.  Then we faced up to 51 bills on the regular calendar. 
   We killed HB 558 the plastic straw ban bill.  We amended HB 560, the plastic bag ban into something totally different.  After amendment HB560 didn’t say any thing about plastic or bags, but now requires cities and towns to report weight of trash dealt with to DES.  Guess my town will have to buy a scale. We stalled off HB 447 about school calendars by re-referring it to committee.  It would have allowed school boards to start school anytime they please which guts an earlier bill we passed that required schools to start after Labor Day.   I think starting school before Labor Day is child abuse, but teachers and administrators would start school in July if they thought they could get away with it. 
   We passed HB 446 on a voice vote.  This bill allows editing your birth certificate to remove “Male” or “Female” and replace it with “Other”.  We passed HB 669 that would do the same for NH driver’s licenses on a voice vote.
   That’s all the interesting bills.  The bulk of them are just not interesting enough to me to comment on them.  Twelve bills created study committees, which I think is a polite way of killing the issue. 
   And, we passed HB 280 making the red tailed hawk the state raptor.  Important issue that.  Apparently a bunch of 4th graders proposed this bill four years ago.  Those kids are now in 8th grade, and they were present for the vote on HB 280.  I think we taught them that it takes forever to get the NH legislature to anything. 

No comments: