Republicans will hold a 44-seat majority in the New Hampshire House of Representatives when lawmakers kick off the 2025 legislative session next week. But under proposed rule changes backed by GOP leadership, the House could also have fresh tools to assert the majority’s prerogatives.
These include proposals to codify subpoena powers, and new procedures to hold anyone who fails to comply “in contempt of the House.” Under a separate bill, sponsored by House Speaker Sherman Packard, the Legislature would be empowered to seek civil or criminal remedies against people deemed to be in contempt.
The proposals are expected to generate significant debate when lawmakers gather Wednesday for the first formal day of the 2025 session. But during a House Rules Committee meeting last month, GOP leaders were quick to characterize the new policies as a codification of existing House prerogatives.
‘It's generally recognized, at the federal level and the state, that the Legislature has the authority, the inherent authority, to issue subpoenas and compel compliance with subpoenas,” Rep. Bob Lynn of Windham testified. Lynn, who serves as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was previously chief justice of New Hampshire’s Supreme Court.
Lynn told fellow legislators that directing law enforcement to arrest people who failed to comply with a subpoena “is a proper way for the Legislature to operate,” before emphasizing that he could only foresee the House contemplating that kind of action in “an extraordinary circumstance.”
Democratic Rep. Lucy Weber of Walpole, who sits on the Rules Committee, acknowledges the House has subpoena power, and says codifying it might help lawmakers in the event they needed to use it. But Weber says enacting a rule about it — including provisions to empower a House speaker to enforce non-compliance — is premature.
“The issue of ‘failure to comply’ is all new, and I don’t understand what power the speaker has to make anybody do anything,” Weber said in an interview Friday. “We don’t have a jail. What are we going to do — lock people up in the nurse’s office?”
The push to spell out the Legislature’s power to require cooperation — be it from a state official or a member of the general public — comes in the wake of the GOP securing its largest House majority in a decade. It’s just one way Packard, who has represented Londonderry in the State House since 1990 and often stresses his respect for procedural tradition, is working to modify longstanding House policies.
Another proposed House rule change Packard backs would empower legislative committees to table bills — which often effectively kills them — without holding a public hearing. Right now, every bill gets a public hearing before a committee of lawmakers, and only the full House can vote to table bills. Under this proposed rule, committees could also table bills, with the support of three-fourths of its members.
Packard said the goal is to limit the time committees spend considering longshot legislation.
“We are going to have trouble getting members to sit on a committee, and it’s going to get more and more difficult if we don’t find some way to reduce the number of bills,” Packard told the Rules Committee last month. “I just feel this is just one first step. If it doesn’t work we can get rid of it.”
Packard and other Republican leaders are also backing instituting a House dress code to require lawmakers to wear “proper business attire” while at the State House. He acknowledged that opinions will inevitably differ about what “proper” constitutes. But he says incidents where lawmakers have allegedly worn T-shirts with offensive slogans or shown up to House sessions clad in “farmer jeans” are emblematic of eroding norms in Concord.
“I think this is just a way for us to stop the egregious stuff we have seen over the past few years,” Packard said.
While some top Democrats have indicated support, in theory, for trying to raise the fashion bar in Concord, they also warned that formalizing a dress code for lawmakers could be easier said than done.
“My concern is how this will be fleshed out,” said House Democratic Leader Alexis Simpson. “I’m concerned about who is going to make the decisions on what ‘proper business attire’ is.”
The full House will vote on proposed rules Wednesday.
