When New Hampshire lawmakers return to Concord this week to open the 2026 State House session, they’ll have a long list of bills ahead of them.
Here’s a peek at just a few.
Bring back the death penalty?
New Hampshire hasn’t executed an inmate since 1939, and the state’s death penalty was repealed in 2019. But multiple bills have been filed by Republican lawmakers to bring it back next year.
Lawmakers will consider bills to make sex offenses against children punishable by death, as well as a bill to restore the law as it stood prior to its repeal, which allows capital punishment in cases involving the killing of a police officer or judge, for murder for hire cases, and for some drug crimes.
Laconia Rep. Mike Bordes is sponsoring that bill, which he says is needed to send a message.
"Giving people life in jail is kind of a reward for brutally murdering a law enforcement officer — you really need to be held accountable,” he said.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who led the prosecution against Michael Addison — the state’s lone inmate on death row — when she was New Hampshire attorney general, has said she favors restoring the state death penalty.
Capping local spending
The relationship between state and local governments will be hotly debated in Concord this coming legislative session, as lawmakers will again consider imposing limits on local spending power.
One bill would require a supermajority vote for towns to raise local taxes. Another would require cities to document their compliance with local tax and spending caps.
Rep. Ross Berry, a Republican lawmaker from Weare, says Republican leaders are looking to correct what they see as a growing political imbalance.
"You have the desire to protect local control on one side, but you also have people abusing the local control process to tax people out of their homes,” he said. “And what makes it fascinating is you have the low turnout elections, maybe 15 percent telling the entire electorate, ‘You need to pay more in property taxes.’ ”
Republican leaders in the New Hampshire House tried and failed to impose limits on local government spending in the last legislative session — such as by trying to include a local spending cap in the state budget.
A push for plug-in solar
Lawmakers will consider a bill that would make it easier for New Hampshire residents to use small plug-in solar panels in their homes.
Those kinds of solar panels, sometimes called “balcony solar,” are popular in other countries, but they’re just picking up traction in the United States. They’re smaller and produce less electricity than typical rooftop arrays, but they don’t require having a roof, and they can be plugged directly into a standard wall outlet to help limit the power a home draws from the grid.
Sen. David Watters, a Democrat from Dover who is sponsoring the legislation with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, said these small plug-in solar panels could be especially helpful for renters or for business owners looking to make a smaller investment than traditional solar.
“There’s an opportunity for people who want to perhaps save money on their power costs, and perhaps be able to have the freedom to generate their own power supply,” he said.
Utah was the first state to pass legislation that allows for plug-in solar to be used without a utility interconnection agreement, one of the hurdles to installing these systems. The New Hampshire bill would also exempt plug in solar from that regulation, as long as systems meet other safety requirements.
Landfill rules — again
New Hampshire lawmakers will try once again to create policy on one of the most divisive environmental issues in recent years: rules for how the state deals with trash.
The disagreement over landfill policy has been charged by a proposal from Casella Waste Systems to build a new site in the town of Dalton, near Forest Lake State Park. Ayotte’s proposal for a moratorium on new landfills and a new committee to evaluate their sites seemed to bring lawmakers closer together last session, but discussions broke down after disagreements between the House and the Senate.
Ahead of the upcoming session, House and Senate lawmakers have each refined proposals to move forward. Senators have amended a House bill from last session, which will come before the Senate for a vote in early January.
The amended bill would pause new landfill permits until 2027 and give state regulators sole authority to approve landfill expansions, rather than the municipalities they are located within. It would also create a new siting committee for landfills. Advocates for stricter solid waste policies have argued the amended legislation is not protective enough of communities where landfills are situated and of the environment.
The House is putting forth a proposal of its own to create a site evaluation committee, with different rules for the makeup of that committee and the means of evaluating landfill impacts. That bill does not remove municipalities’ authority over landfill expansions.
Separate proposals from lawmakers include new regulations for how far away landfills must be from bodies of water, requirements for landfill owners to staff their sites 24 hours a day, and efforts to limit waste coming in from out-of-state.
