Three bills waiting for action Bariatric
The 2008 session ended 39 days ago and, believe it not, Gov. John Lynch hasn't gotten quite to the bottom of the pile of bills sent to him.
It's not for lack of effort
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He dispensed three dozen bills Friday, and waded through another 60 or so in the 10 days before that.
The timing of when bills get signed by any governor is an art form of draftsmanship and political timing. It's not at all uncommon for a fast-moving bill to hit the brakes in the final stages because a sponsor wants a signing ceremony further in the future.
As of this writing, Lynch still has three bills to finish, and one of them, as of Friday morning, had still not been sent to his desk.
The two sitting on his desk are both political hot potatoes, which Lynch still has not indicated if he will sign, veto or let them become law without his signature.
The smart betting is he'll choose the third option.
They are:
Bariatric (weight-loss) surgery insurance mandate (SB 312): This one has been written and speculated about endlessly over the past two months.
Hudson Republican Sen. and congressional candidate Robert Clegg is the sponsor and poster child for the cause, having dropped more than 110 pounds after having the surgery and paying out-of-pocket more than $10,000 for it.
Lynch is loath to pile more mandates onto health insurers, though he authored a bill to require companies to offer a wellness program to small business customers (Health First).
But Clegg's bill has strong, bipartisan support, and studies have shown while expensive, it has reduced health-care costs for some patients.
Earlier this week, Clegg continued to have fun with Lynch, handing him a signed copy of a recent feature in The Telegraph on the measure.
According to sponsors, first lady Susan Lynch said she favors the bill as a physician who specializes in helping patients keep healthy diets.
Evergreen Clause (HB 1436): This will require all public employees working without a contract to get step pay raises mandated in the last contract.
House Democratic leaders agreed with the Senate's insistence to scale this one back, for it originally would have awarded cost-of-living increases, also.
The state's bargaining contracts have given this benefit to state employees for years.
Organized labor made a big push for this one, and had some notable, longstanding contract disputes to point to, starting with the Nashua teachers contract impasse that stretched for more than a year before an agreement was reached this past spring.
Opponents include the New Hampshire Municipal Association, N.H. Association of Counties and the University System of New Hampshire.
Nashua Mayor Donnalee Lozeau was among local officials who had weighed in last spring with her concerns about its cost.
If Lynch took the tough route and vetoed the measure, he'd have a good shot of winning the veto fight in either branch. The Senate only passed it, 13-11, and several House votes fell short of the 2-1 majority needed to override a veto. In an election year, that would be mighty bold; the guess here is too much so.
The third, still-waiting bill began as the perennial fight over the view tax or the legal practice of city and town assessors placing a value on what a homeowner can see out the back window (HB 1442).
It's become a voluntary option to let cities and towns choose to assess farmland as open space. The bill also makes needed changes to a low-income housing tax credit program.
Since it's not a mandate, there's every indication Lynch will sign this one.
Health-care reform
U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu, R-N.H., forcefully made the point this week the Senate Democratic leadership has done little on health-care reform in the past year and put up a partisan roadblock to GOP efforts to help small business.
Take the small business health association bill that died in the Senate in 2006, Sununu told reporters.
"The associated health plan failed on a very close vote in (the) last session of Congress. That's not a reason not to continue to pursue it. We can do that. There has been no effort, no movement in this direction,'' Sununu declared. "It's wrong for Jeanne Shaheen.''
It was also wrong for 12 Democratic governors, including New Hampshire's John Lynch and 41 attorneys general including New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte, all of whom wrote letters condemning the bill prior to the Senate vote.
The governors included 2008 presidential candidate and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, as well as the two women governors on many lists of potential running mates to presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.: Kathleen Sebelius, of Kansas, and Janet Napolitano, of Arizona.
Both groups protested that the bill pre-empted state consumer protections, expedited insurance company lawsuits against states and overrode state laws that in some cases gave families coverage that this bill would take away.
"Many of these vital services, which were enacted on a bipartisan basis at the state level, could now be stripped away and made increasingly unaffordable for consumers and businesses alike,'' Lynch and the other governors wrote in May 2006.
The state prosecutors against the bill hailed from many red states, including North Dakota, Mississippi, Kentucky, Indiana and Montana.
"Consumers rightly expect their state government to require a minimum of health-benefit protections and to protect them from abuse by health insurers,'' Ayotte and 40 other prosecutors concluded.
"Elimination of strong state protections in exchange for weak federal oversight fails consumers.''
Campaign condemns vote
The Shaheen campaign and the Democratic Party spent a good 10 days beating Sununu about the head and face over his refusal to support the Medicare bill that would end a threatened 10.6 cut in fees to doctors.
Nine Republican senators flip-flopped and voted for the bill when Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., put his brain cancer recovery on hold for a day to cast what was thought to have been the filibuster-breaking, 60th vote.
Sununu and Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., held firm because the bill avoids the cut by reducing payments to private insurance companies offering the Medicare Advantage option to seniors who want it.
Executives with Harvard Pilgrim and the New Hampshire Hospital Association came to the aid of Sununu's position.
But there's little doubt Sununu opted to run out his own small business health-care plan the next morning to tamper down the stories whacking his Medicare vote.
If there any still remains out there, here was the timeline:
Wednesday, 5 p.m.: Senate passes Medicare bill, 69-31, with Sununu and Gregg on the losing end.
Wednedsay, 5:14 p.m.: Sununu re-election campaign announces conference call for 10:20 a.m. Thursday to discuss Sununu's health-care plan.
Obama in hot water
Presidential candidate Obama is still stuck in some hot water with his liberal base for voting to support the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation that gives retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that cooperated in the wiretapping President Bush approved after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Obama had come out against immunity early in the 2008 campaign, but said a comprehensive rewrite of the federal surveillance program was too important not to endorse.
New Hampshire Sens. Gregg and Sununu voted for it; New Hampshire Congressmen Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter, both Democrats, opposed it.
What about Democratic Senate hopeful Shaheen?
"She would not support immunity for the telecommunication companies without knowing what it was for,'' said spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield.
Senate supporters note most of the Congress didn't know all the details, since that's classified information, given in secret to congressional committees.
So how would she have voted?
We're still waiting for an answer to that question, posed Thursday afternoon.
As the challenger leading in the polls, this is the posture Shaheen will take for as long as she can: Keep her own specifics to a minimum, except on those issues she believes are in her favor: energy prices, stem cell research and the war in Iraq to name a few.
In the meantime, the mantra is to keep this campaign in full metal jacket, attack mode against the incumbent.
She tipped that strategy quite clearly during a Concord Monitor editorial board meeting late last month. Shaheen essentially said that unlike the 2002 campaign, when her record as governor was the issue, this time it's Sununu's turn under the heat lamp.
Fire chiefs endorse Clegg
Clegg won the endorsement from the New Hampshire Association of Fire Chiefs at its monthly meeting in North Hampton earlier this week.
Last month, the Professional Association of Fire Fighters embraced Clegg.
Judy Galuzzo, of Salem, a savvy political activist who helped local boys John H. and John E. Sununu win higher office, came on board the campaign of congressional rival Jennifer Horn, of Nashua.
Bosse releases new posse members
Republican congressional candidate Grant Bosse will release new GOP members of Bosse's Posse.
The list includes Milford State Rep. Ryan Hansen, former Lebanon Rep. Terri Dudley, and state representative candidates Tom Linehan, of Salem, Dawn Lincoln, of Westmoreland, and Anne Copp, of Danbury.
Reps. endorse assistance
It didn't take long for New England members of Congress to act after their governors Tuesday endorsed a significant increase in spending for the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, jumped forward a day later with the bill, and by close of business Thursday, both Gregg and Hodes had come aboard as co-sponsors.
Not all the New England governors present were on board with the off-handed comment of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who said that nuclear power should be considered as among the mix of potential, future power sources.
Let's keep in mind that Obama has not ruled out, but hardly been any kind of cheerleader for, nuclear power in the future, and Patrick just got named as one of the leading framers of the Democratic Party's 2008 platform.
State Sen. Lou D'Allesandro, D-Manchester, wants the state to explore whether it can get its fuel-aid dollars stretched further by bulk purchases.
He said the state's community action agencies contract with more than 500 different suppliers of fuel, and more families could be served if the state could make the buy from a few sources.
"We've got to do all we can to make what dollars we get from the federal government go the furthest they can go this winter,'' D'Allesandro said.
Rosenwald kicks off discussion
Rep. Cindy Rosenwald, D-Nashua, will kick off a panel discussion on prescription drug prices at the Legislative Summit of the National Conference of State Legislatures later this month in New Orleans.
Rosenwald will speak on the three-state, New England collaboration to give objective information to drug prescribers.
She spoke out this week against Sununu's Medicare vote, saying she had some hopes, since Sununu had voted to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program.
Meanwhile, Rosenwald hopes to return to the House and, if the Democrats stay in charge, to do so as chairwoman of the Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee.
If successful, the place could be very familiar to her.
Of the 20-person panel, only three aren't running again.
Tax-break report
Local property tax breaks for veterans are the only breaks that have kept pace with property values from 2000-06, according to a report this week from the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies.
During that time, the overall value of property tax exemptions for veterans in cities and towns grew by 20 percent, while those for the blind and disabled went up only 4 percent.
Senior citizens get the most (41 percent) from these exemptions, which grew by 9 percent.
Over the same time period, property values in the state went up 13 percent, the report added.
The center also released its annual "data book'' on financing local governments across the state. This contains a treasure trove of information about each community's relative reliance on the local property tax, state education aid support and spending on school and municipal programs.
While spending on schools gets much of the attention - and taxpayer outrage at times - the report confirms from 2001-06 that overall spending in cities and towns for municipal services per person went up 5.3 percent.
Over the same period, per person spending on schools went up 4 percent.
The same measure for spending on county government rose 3.7 percent.
Now you know, and all reports of the center are available at www.nhpolicy.org.
Lynch opens headquarters
Lynch attended the grand opening of his campaign headquarters Tuesday at 379 Elm St. in Manchester, and at week's end, finally launched a re-election campaign Web site, www.lynch08.com.
His Republican opponent, Wakefield State Sen. Joseph Kenney, this week hired Bob Dinsmore, of Merrimack, to serve as his field director to help Casey Crane, of Nashua, who had been doing everything.
First District gets feisty
The First Congressional District GOP primary is now feisty and going to stay that way, following the second "debate'' between former Congressman Jeb Bradley and ex-Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen.
Stephen laid the first leather some weeks ago on Bradley's flip-flop over drilling for oil in Alaska. Bradley now supports it, after having voted against it as a member of the House.
Bradley has shot back that Stephen, as HHS boss, presided over increased spending, threatens to put the state on the road to an income tax, in the state's largest agency.
WMUR-TV is already making plans for its own primary debates just before the Sept. 9 primary.
The second-quarter reports from these two GOP combatants will be critical.
Stephen is expected to disclose that he had another good showing, slightly below the first quarter, when he took in about $160,000.
A key question is whether Bradley has had to dip into his own resources to keep the campaign financially flush.
Bradley has held the clear cash edge over Stephen to this point, but 26 percent of Bradley's money ($150,000) came from his own checkbook.
The ex-two-term Rep. Bradley got 31 percent ($176,000) of his money from political action committees. Some of them are ideological or GOP-related party PACS that either have already maxed out for the primary or may just sit a spell and watch this race develop.
This quarter will also show what immediate benefit was there for Shea-Porter's change of heart. She agreed to take legally bundled money sent for targeted incumbents through the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Gilmour makes the rounds
Senate Democratic candidate Peggy Gilmour continues to make the rounds in Dist. 12 and in Concord, where she visited Friday with Sen. D'Allesandro.
Former Democratic Sen. Mary Nelson accompanied Gilmour on her visit.
Correction
This space incorrectly identified the new, co-chairman of Gov. Lynch's judicial selection commission.
It's Emily Rice, a former state prosecutor and now a private lawyer with Orr and Reno in Concord.
The AG's office is not represented on the commission that's co-led by Colebrook lawyer Phil Waystack.
Other members are Nashua lawyer Anna Barbara Hantz, Hollis lawyer Kathleen Brown, Epsom lawyer and longtime Democratic activist Paul Twomey, Manchester lawyers Jack Middleton and Elliot Berry, Kathy Beebe of Portsmouth, Joseph Diament of Newfields, Arthur Nichols of Keene and Alexander Scott of Claremont.
Quote of the Week
"Never before in modern history has New England faced the prospect of so many residents unable to heat their homes as there will be in this coming winter.''
- New England Govs. Deval Patrick (Mass.), Donald Carcieri (R.I.), John Baldacci (Maine) and Lynch (N.H.) in a joint statement.
Kevin Landrigan can be reached at 224-8804 or klandrigan@nashuatelegraph.com.
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