Starting July 2027, out-of-staters visiting New Hampshire might be required to pay at least twice as much for entries to state parks, and at least 10% more for state-run amenities like campsites and boat rentals.
That’s the intention of House Bill 1102, but a casual observer could be forgiven for having missed it. The proposal was tacked on by the Senate in mid-May to an unrelated House bill about research and development tax credits. And last week, House negotiators agreed to allow it.
On Thursday, HB 1102 and dozens of other bills will face their final voting tests before they can head to Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s desk. After a frantic five days of “committees of conference,” representatives of the Republican-led House and Senate have hashed out their disagreements.
Forty-nine bills made it through. Eight fell apart at the negotiating table. And six died due to technical issues: a lack of required signatures ahead of the deadline.
While the negotiators have spoken, they must now convince the full chambers. Here are the bills to watch as the House and Senate meet for one final time this spring to give their verdict.
Economic bills
In addition to charging higher state park fees for visitors, Republican negotiators also hammered out a compromise over business taxes.
As originally passed by the House, House Bill 155 would have lowered the state’s business enterprise tax from 0.55% to 0.5%, a change that the Department of Revenue Administration estimated could cost the state between $19.7 million and $22.3 million in revenue per year in its first two years.
But by the time the bill left the committee of conference last week, it had morphed into a version closer to what the Senate wanted. Rather than reduce the rate that all businesses paid, the final version of HB 155 would raise the threshold for which businesses would pay by exempting those businesses whose total gross business receipts or enterprise value tax base were at least $400,000 in the last year, up from $298,000 today.
Another economic bill had much more alignment between chambers. House Bill 639 would establish the “Blockchain Basic Laws,” aiming to make New Hampshire a “an attractive jurisdiction for blockchain-related business” by protecting digital currency use in the state, empowering state courts to oversee blockchain disputes, and more.
Housing
Other committee of conference agreements relate to housing.
House and Senate negotiators cobbled together compromises on two bills that would affect how municipalities follow a new law requiring that they allow multi-family housing in commercial zones.
One bill moving ahead, House Bill 1010, would require cities and towns to allow that housing only if the infrastructure — such as water and sewer access or traffic capacity — were adequate to sustain that housing. The resulting bill allows cities a veto option if studies show that any of that infrastructure is lacking.
But another, House Bill 1588, tightens the commercial zoning law by barring cities and towns from imposing special requirements on residential housing in commercial zones that go beyond the existing standards.
HB 1588 also allows cities and towns to create special assessment districts that would allow them to pay upfront for the infrastructure costs needed for more housing using a municipal bond, and to then pay off that bond with future property taxes from the new housing.
House and Senate leaders reached a compromise on legislation to bar cities and towns from stopping all new housing on dead-end roads. The latest version of Senate Bill 564 now requires municipalities to allow housing on such roads, as long as that housing complies with two fire safety standards: the state fire code, and the National Fire Protection Association’s “Standard 1141.” Both provide guidelines for safety such as firefighter access and water supply. Towns and cities would be free to stop housing that didn’t comply.
Finally, the House and Senate committees have agreed to a bill, House Bill 1709, that would bar rental housing to people who are undocumented, have committed a felony, and have left the country and since returned, and would require county sheriffs to arrest anyone in violation of those conditions.
Family law
Some House and Senate compromises centered on child welfare and divorce laws.
The committee of conference version of House Bill 1565 would make an intentional false report of neglect or abuse of a child to the Division for Children, Youth, and Families a misdemeanor offense.
Under the final version of House Bill 1376, a parent’s decision to raise a child according to their sex at birth could not on its own be deemed child abuse or endangerment in state law. In arriving at that version, House Republicans rejected a Senate amendment that would have permitted breast reduction surgeries for minors for medical or physical discomfort reasons — a provision that conservative groups such as New Hampshire Cornerstone has railed against and compared to gender affirming surgeries.
Meanwhile, the Senate failed to convince House negotiators to tack on legislation to House Bill 1260 that would make confidential any uncontested divorce records that did not include minor children.
The House also prevailed over Senate Bill 481, which involves what to do with proceeds from the sale of the Sununu Youth Services Center. While the Senate had proposed allowing the proceeds to help pay victims of abuse at the center who have sued the state, the House’s version directs all funds into the state’s General Fund.
Voting
Negotiators for the two chambers agreed to several bills that could change election laws.
Under one agreement moving forward, House Bill 1062, the Secretary of State’s Office would be required to conduct a “statistically sound” random audit of voters to verify those voters’ citizenship status using available databases.
A compromise on another bill, House Bill 158, would require the Secretary of State’s Office to review absentee voting data every two years to look into who is requesting absentee ballots. The office would be directed to forward any suspicious absentee ballot requests to the Department of Justice’s election law unit, including any case where multiple people requested a ballot to the same address.
That is a departure from the House’s original version, which would have required the list of all absentee voters be made public for 60 days after the election. During negotiations, the Senate prevailed.
Another voting bill that changed dramatically from its original version is House Bill 317. While originally that bill would have removed the ability for polling officials to verify a voter’s identity by confirming that they knew them — thus tightening the voter ID law — the final compromise version instead creates a new mechanism allowing nursing home administrators to verify their residents’ identities if they do not have ID.
Education
In addition to voter qualifications, Republicans this year have been focused on scrutinizing local school budgets, and some of the bills emerging out of committees of conference follow that goal.
The negotiated final version of House Bill 1807, for instance, would require school boards to list the salaries of the top-10 paid administrators in the district on the annual budget proposal, as well as any employee paid more than $100,000.
The committee of conference version of House Bill 1816 would impose oversight over school districts facing “financial emergency,” by allowing the Department of Education to request and oversee a recovery plan from that school district. While the Senate had pushed to empower the State Board of Education to set hard rules over school business administrator vetting procedures, the compromise bill changed those rules to recommendations.
Then there are the compromise bills dealing with school finances.
House Bill 1300, which would require a measure on the November general election ballot asking voters whether they would like to impose an ongoing, annual tax cap on school board budgets, is moving forward. If three fifths of voters opted to do so, the cap would move ahead, under the bill.
The final version of HB 1300 would require the ballot question in the 2026 and 2028 general elections, and no other ones, and it states that any tax caps passed by voters in those elections would expire by 2032.
A last-minute Republican compromise in House Bill 751 requires all school districts to allow at least 10% of their students to leave the district for an open enrollment school, and for those sending districts to pay the open enrollment school’s district tuition.
And House Bill 1374, as approved by negotiators, would allow individual school districts to unilaterally withdraw from a cooperative school district if three-fifths of voters in the departing district chose to do so. Currently, a majority of voters in all school districts in the cooperative district must approve such a measure.
Negotiators also agreed to final version of three parental rights bills: House Bill 1184, which would prevent school boards, select boards, and the school or municipal authorities from imposing emergency trespass orders against individuals for more than 35 days without a three-fifths majority vote of the governing body; House Bill 1584, which makes applying for religious and medical childhood immunization exemptions easier and requires the state to prominently publicize those exemptions; and Senate Bill 429, which will allow schools to film and stream sporting events, safety events, and other scenarios without parental permission, in a fix to a hiccup in last year’s parental rights bill.
Energy and environment
When Gov. Kelly Ayotte vetoed a sprawling bill to allow utilities to invest in nuclear energy last month, she wrote in her veto message that she did not agree to all the bill’s provisions. But Ayotte, a proponent of nuclear power, also wrote that there was a bill she preferred that had entered negotiations.
That bill, which cleared negotiations, was House Bill 1775, and whether it satisfies Ayotte’s demand remains to be seen. But the final committee of conference bill does allow utilities to own or invest in nuclear or natural gas facilities and seek recovery from ratepayers.
House and Senate negotiators also advanced a bill that would reduce the amount the state invests into renewable energy. Senate Bill 599 would bar the state’s renewable energy fund from going to fund individual residential solar initiatives, and it would limit the amount that could go to thermal and other renewable initiatives to $1 million per year. It would also require the fund be used to pay for Department of Energy administrative costs before any of the $1 million went to renewables.
The House had tried to stop the ban on residential solar grants, but Senate negotiators won the day.
New Hampshire Bulletin is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com.
