D.J. Bettencourt: “Jane, You Ignorant Slut”

Bob Mead, director of legislative services for the House Majority Office, resigned yesterday after being outed by the Concord Monitor. The Monitor story revealed Mead used his taxpayer-funded position to recruit Republicans to run for office and he had billed the state for travel expenses related to that work.

Questions remain, said House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli:

“By whom was (Mead) directed to do electoral work? I would like to know why the speaker hasn’t taken any action against Greg Moore, the chief of staff, since he was the one who approved the reimbursement.”

We don’t discuss personnel matters, replied House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt:

“Unfortunately the professionalism and decorum underlying this policy allows ignorant partisans to jibber jabber without response but the House policy of not commenting on these matters is the proper one.”

Bettencourt Scolds Lynch, Twitterverse Responds

Fireworks in the N.H. House

It was another wild and woolly House session in Concord this morning. We’ll pick it up when the House GOP returns from a private caucus called by Speaker O’Brien.

Update: The House Democrats issued a statement calling Speaker O’Brien’s actions “an unprecedented power grab.”

“In NH, Marriage Equality Is for All NH Citizens”

“I would like to praise the NH House for recognizing that in NH, marriage equality is for all NH citizens. The vote today solidifies what the majority of NH citizens believe — that marriage equality is about the people of this great state. I am very proud of the House vote today to uphold our marriage laws and to be a leader in our nation.”

— House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli, on today’s defeat of House Bill 437, which would have repealed same-sex marriage.

Concord Today: GOP Advances Radical Social Agenda

Writing on Blue Hampshire, House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli detailed the “highlights” of the brutal day in Concord, where the House GOP advanced their radical social agenda on several fronts. The House will be back in session tomorrow.

85 Republican State Reps vote for House Bill 1264 to legislate allowing discrimination!

The House voted 246-85 Wednesday to kill legislation that would have allowed providers of wedding-related goods or services to withhold those services if they believe doing business with a couple would violate their conscience or religious faith. [WMUR]

House Republicans passed another Right to Work for less bill

They just can’t take no for an answer. They wasted time yet again debating a bill that already failed last year. The vote was 198-139 which once again isn’t veto-proof.

House Republicans vote to Raise Health Care Costs

House Democrats supported the unanimous, bipartisan committee recommendation to look how we could improve Certificate of Need law but House Leadership overturned that recommendation and passed an outright repeal.

House Republicans pass the so-called “Women’s Right to Know Act”

First they vote to defund basic preventive health services, then they vote to repeal contraceptive coverage. Now, they vote to require doctors to provide MISinformation to their patients in violation of physician’s responsibilities and the woman’s rights.

House Republicans Repeal Workforce Housing

House Republican Leadership again overturn a committee recommendation and pass an anti-business and anti-economic development bill.

A Day of Action to Protect Women’s Health

Reactions to passage of House Bill 1546, which would grant employers with a “religious objection” the right to exclude birth control and contraceptive services from employee medical insurance coverage. The vote was 196-150, more than enough opposition votes to sustain a gubernatorial veto should the Senate concur.

I never thought that in 2012 the New Hampshire Legislature would be debating the use of contraceptives. This issue is settled for Granite Staters.
— House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli

Allowing employers to decide what’s best for women’s reproductive health is outrageous. Who can imagine going to a job interview and having to ask a prospective employer whether or not they allow female employees access to contraception? 
— Laura Thibault, NARAL Pro-Choice NH

My Republicans colleagues are using the banner of religious freedom as a way to mask their blatant attacks on women’s health rights. 
— Rep. Chris Serlin, Constitutional Review Committee

This is more extreme than any similar proposal anywhere in the country. It turns back the clock on a dozen years of bipartisan support for a law that guarantees women have access to contraception, and all at the taxpayers’ expense. 
— Jackie Cilley, Democratic gubernatorial candidate

Speaker O’Brien’s Tea Party legislature has ignored the needs of New Hampshire women who simply ask for access to basic health care. This unbelievable assault on women has to stop.
— Maggie Hassan, Democratic gubernatorial candidate

h/t: Granite State Progress

Our Say-One-Thing-Do-Another Legislature

State House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli points out the obvious. These’s no lack of talk from the GOP House leadership on the topic of jobs — just a lack of action.

For the third time in the last month, House Republicans called a press conference to announce “jobs” as their top priority for the upcoming legislative session. If this prioritization sounds like news to you, it’s because the only time House Republicans actually talk about jobs is at press conferences.

House Republicans have issued 18 press releases promoting specific bills since January, covering such important topics as Transportation Security Administration searches, Arizona’s immigration law, and abortion policy. Jobs have been mentioned only twice: in press releases promoting payday loans and the repeal of insurance mandates.

“House Republicans would be wise to shift their attention away from guns, gay marriage and press conferences,” chides the former House Speaker, “and onto legislation that provides the educated work force that businesses need to create jobs.”

D.J. Bettencourt’s False Equivalency: ALEC & NCSL

State House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt took to Twitter this afternoon to belittle his opponents (with an ironic #changethetone hashtag). His scorn was directed at organizations like Granite State Progress who have shed light on the number of House bills taken verbatim from model legislation written by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Bettencourt dismissed the complaints as “silly” and compared Republicans’ reliance on ALEC model legislation to House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli leading the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). The Center for Media and Democracy demolishes the notion that those two organizations are, in any way, similar or equivalent.

ALEC Has Corporate Leaders and Members, who Vote on Bills Behind Closed Doors, While NCSL Does Not

NCSL is run by an Executive Committee made up of legislators only. Corporations and their lobbyists are not members of NCSL committees. NCSL rarely if ever develops “model” legislation, but it does widely share its governance rules and substantive policy positions online.

ALEC has crowed that it gives business “an unparalleled opportunity to have its voice heard, and its perspective appreciated” in changes to state laws. Its model bills and resolutions have been published in state houses across the country, but without disclosing that they were approved through ALEC…

ALEC Is Funded Almost Entirely by Corporations, While NCSL Is Not

NCSL does not accept for-profit corporate members or donors. In 2010, NCSL’s general fund was $16.8 million. State legislatures contribute about $10 million a year to NCSL. Most of the remainder comes from grants from federal agencies … and from mainstream private foundations.

ALEC, on the other hand, is funded almost entirely by its corporate members. In 2009, ALEC’s revenues were $6.3 million. About one percent ($82,981) of its revenues came from dues paid by state legislators.

Almost All of ALEC’s Legislative Leaders are Republicans, While NCSL’s Leadership Is Strictly Bipartisan

NCSL is led by a fully bipartisan group of legislators through an “Executive Committee.” Each year, the chair of NCSL’s Executive Committee rotates between Republican and Democratic legislators.

ALEC is led jointly by a corporate board and a 23-member public board. All of the public board members are Republican legislators. … In all, ALEC’s legislative leadership is 103 Republicans and one Democrat.

Speaker O’Brien’s “Dictatorial and Illegal” Tactics

The New Hampshire House session yesterday was one for the record books — don’t miss Dean Barker’s contemporaneous, tweet-by-tweet account of the chaos.

The House ostensibly met to address several fast-tracked bills that were introduced last month. One of those, SB 198, provides a technical fix to the formula used to calculate assistance payments. It corrects an oversight that has cost the state $2 million since July1.

Speaker Bill O’Brien insisted on appending a non-germane amendment to SB 198, despite the fact that this will delay its adoption for at least three months and cost the state another $2 million. State Senate President Peter Bragdon blasted the House action.

“It is unfortunate the Speaker has chosen such a confrontational position when the governor, the non-partisan Legislative Budget Assistant’s Office, leaders and members of our party as well as other conservative voices agree that SB 198 should have been passed immediately without an amendment.”

But as egregious as the delay is, the manner in which the amendment was adopted is even more deplorable. In fact, Republican state Rep. Steve Vaillancourt claims the amendment “never really passed.” (!)

In the most shameful display of strong-handed tactics I’ve witnessed in this my eighth term in the House, Speaker O’Brien refused to allow a recorded vote on the amendment. … Such a blatant denial of free speech is unheard of and a most vile and dangerous precedent in the New Hampshire House.

After calling for the yeas, O’Brien banged his gavel before even hearing the nays—everyone should really listen to the tape on this one. The vote could have been two to one against the amendment and he would have ruled that it had passed!. If a vote is close, people may request a roll call or division vote. In fact, several people were yelling for a recorded vote before the gavel fell, but the Speaker refused to acknowledge the request, no big deal when the vote is a foregone conclusion, but this voice vote hardly fell into that category.

He may well have hammered in a vote which would in fact have lost. That’s how few yeas he had. I’m sure you’ll all want to review the tape—I certainly will.

I was embarrassed (as were many other Republicans) by this ham-handed anti-small d-democrtic treatment. As a defender of the Speaker throughout the year, even when he cleared the gallery on the day the budget passed, I was disgusted by his actions today. I begin to understand complaints Democrats have been mouthing all year. I had my problems with Democratic Speaker Terri Norelli from time to time in the past four years (as did O’Brien when he was in the minority), but she never did anything even coming close to the dictatorial and illegal tactics we witnessed today.

Norelli: Spare States from Severe Budget Cuts

Rep. Terie Norelli, co-chair of the The National Conference of State Legislatures’ Task Force on Federal Deficit Reduction, led a bipartisan delegation to Capitol Hill yesterday. The state legislators lobbied the congressional Super Committee, which is seeking to craft a bipartisan debt reduction plan, and urged them to spare states from severe budget cuts.

“We know that there will be cuts,” New Hampshire Representative Terie Norelli, a Democrat, told reporters during a briefing at the offices of the National Conference of State Legislatures, which organized the lobbying trip. “What we are asking is that cuts to state budgets be proportional to everything else that’s on the table.”

Some have suggested that the best outcome for the states would be for the committee to fail, thereby triggering $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts. Those automatic cuts specifically exempt Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, welfare and food stamp programs.

Norelli emphatically rejected that assertion on Wednesday. She said deep cuts to K-12 education, military installations and other priorities would still happen if the committee is unable to reach a deal, and that the states want the committee to take a comprehensive approach.

“Not succeeding is unacceptable,” she said.

Terie Norelli: Consider GOP Claims with Grain of Salt

State House Minority Leader Terie Norelli says Speaker Bill O’Brien’s claim that the recently passed state budget will lower taxes and spur growth should be taken with a grain of salt.

Democrats helped businesses weather the recession through job training, tax credits, New Hampshire Working and continued funding of services. The Republican budget that has just gone into effect not only directly eliminates hundreds of public sector jobs, it eliminates private sector jobs as well. …

In the coming months, we will see how the policies of this Republican Legislature really affect the people of New Hampshire. My prediction is that rather than the tax cuts and job growth that O’Brien touts, we will all see significant job loss and increases in our local property taxes to make up for lost aid to towns and organizations that give aid to our neediest.

Quote of the Day: The People Hurt Most

The people hurt most are those least able to fight back. Students, those with disabilities, those with mental health issues, and domestic violence victims are not as well represented in these halls. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t equally deserving of help, or that no one should stand up for them.

5,000 New Hampshire citizens came to Concord to defend these individuals, and protest a budget proposal that sadly looks just like this one. House and Senate Republicans claim this budget protects our most vulnerable citizens, but the facts say otherwise — this budget fails to live up to our responsibility to provide for our children, our seniors and others who need essential services.

— Terie Norelli, New Hampshire House Democratic leader, on proposed state budget