NH News

After sailing through the Senate, a bill that would have created a ‘Sexual Offender Management Board’ hit a wall in the House today.

The bill calls for the creation of a 19-member board that would evaluate policies toward sex offenders.

Advocate Chris Dornin told the House Criminal Justice Committee that laws are often rushed through after a high-profile child murder or molestation.

A Senate Committee has recommended killing a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would make it easier to challenge voters at the polls.

The most recent State budget slashed funding for legal services for the poor. Last week, the House passed a bill that would put even more aid at risk.

The legislation would change how something called IOLTA works.

IOLTA stands for ‘Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts’.

When a client hands money over to a lawyer for a short period of time, say, while a real estate deal is being closed, the lawyer puts the money into a pooled account. That account earns interest.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice moved to join a federal lawsuit suing New Hampshire over its mental health system.

Government lawyers allege without adequate community-based services, the state is violating the American with Disabilities Act.

The federal government says people with mental illness in New Hampshire are too often forced into institutional settings due to a lack of resources.

New Hampshire’s mental health system isn’t the first state to catch the attention of the federal government.

The Executive Council has delayed a vote on the controversial new $2.2 billion dollar managed Medicaid contract.

That's welcome news for many New Hampshire healthcare providers who are concerned about the deal.

Executive Councilors say they too want to know whether managed care will compromise services for the some 130,000 Medicaid recipients in the state.

Dan Gorenstein: Executive Councilor Ray Burton says he’s got thousands of reasons why he wants to slow down signing off on this contract.

Gambling in New Hampshire ran up against a stacked deck in the Statehouse today. 

The House has voted to kill a bill that would have brought four casinos and 14,000 video slot machines to the state. The bill would have used gambling revenue to reduce business taxes.

Supporters urged quick action to offset the recent approval of three casinos in Massachusetts.

"Since Massachusetts passed its own expanded gaming bill, doing nothing is no longer an option," says Representative David Campbell, a Democrat from Nashua.

The House rejected that plan by 40 votes. 

The Department of Transportation announced that the cost of EZ pass transponders will drop by more than half starting in April. The transponders will soon cost $8.90 cents, down from $20.95.

DoT Spokesman Bill Boynton says the drop in price will not only help new EZ pass users, but anyone needing to replace a transponder as well.

The Republican-controlled New Hampshire House has overridden Democratic Governor John Lynch's veto of the House redistricting plan.

The House voted 246-112 Wednesday to send the bill to the Senate which traditionally leaves it to the House to come up with its own plan.

Districts must be redrawn to adjust for population changes over the past decade.

House Speaker Bill O’Brien says more people will get direct representation.