New Hampshire lawmakers opened the 2024 State House session Wednesday by tackling a long list of bills left over from 2023. Here’s a summary of some of what they accomplished:
Drug testing
A bill legalizing the possession of drug-checking materials will head to the New Hampshire Senate after passing the House Wednesday. Those materials allow people to test drugs for adulterants before taking them and can reduce the risk of overdosing on an unknown substance.
The Legislature already legalized test strips for fentanyl and the animal tranquilizer xylazine last year.
Rep. David Meuse said the bill passed Wednesday would allow people to react more quickly when a new drug hits the streets.
"We can’t turn people around, we can’t get them in recovery, after they’re dead,” he said.
The bill would also allow harm reduction organizations to test drugs with lab equipment and inform people about the drug supply. It also decriminalizes possessing trace amounts of drugs to enable testing.
Opponents argued that would send the wrong message and have unintended consequences.
Bail reform
The New Hampshire House and Senate both passed bills to overhaul the state's bail system.
The House voted overwhelmingly to improve pay for bail commissioners and create new court magistrate jobs to expedite bail hearings when judges aren’t available. The House also backed a measure to require hearings before bail is granted for some violent crimes.
The Senate, meanwhile, gave preliminary approval to a bill requiring people charged with any one of 13 specific violent crimes to be held without bail until they go before a judge.
Democratic Sen. Donna Soucy is among a bipartisan group of lawmakers from Manchester who are prioritizing bail policy. She said she’s optimistic the House and Senate will act on bail issues this year.
"There are going to be some differences of opinion but I'm confident that we can resolve those, and we are all united and concerned,” she said.
Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais joined his city's lawmakers in Concord ahead of Wednesday’s votes. Ruais said he wanted to give the House bills a boost but declined comment on the bill pending in the Senate.
Primary day
The House strongly backed a plan to move the state’s primary election day to August, from its traditional spot in early September, in the latest attempt by lawmakers to lengthen New Hampshire’s short general election window.
The House vote was by a more than 3-1 margin and came without debate.
Backers of holding earlier primaries say they give lesser known candidates and non-incumbents more time to build support against better known incumbents. Critics of changing primary day, meanwhile, cite tradition and concerns that an earlier election day could lower voter turnout.
Some states hold primaries as early as March, but most state primaries are held in June or August.
Lawmakers have rejected previous moves to hold the state primary in June. Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed a bill to move the primary to August in 2021.
