This week on State House Watch we let you in on details of how the 2020 legislative session is wrapping up, with an audio postcard from the UNH Whittemore Center and interviews with Senator Martha Hennessey and Amanda Sears.
The NH House met last week at the Whittemore Center, normally a hockey arena at UNH in Durham but transformed for a day into a venue for almost 400 State Representatives to meet while safely spaced apart. Members of Raise Up NH were there to prod lawmakers to re-establish and raise the minimum wage to one that enables workers to meet essential needs. Maggie and Arnie were there, too. Arnie captured the sounds of legislators getting health screenings on the way in an spoke to Representatives Mary Jane Wallner, Howard Moffett, Suzanne Vail, Ryan Buchanan, and Judith Spang. He also spoke with some of the activists, including Viola Katusiime of the Granite State Organizing Project and the Rev. David Grishaw Jones from the Community Church of Durham. As Maggie and Arnie describe, Republican legislators blocked most bills from approval. They’ll be back in two weeks, with some of the same issues incorporated into bills now in the care of the Senate, which meets on June 16.
Senator Hennessey, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, described the process by which Senators have been assembling omnibus bills with multiple provisions attached to ones already approved by the House. One of them, covering several criminal justice issues, bars police from using chokeholds, requires law enforcement officers to report malfeasance committed by other officers, and in most cases blocks the state from privatizing its jails and prisons.
Amanda Sears of the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy provides an update on proposals to create a system of family medical leave, the importance of which has been made more apparent by the coronavirus pandemic. The bill has already cleared the House and Senate, which means after some paperwork gets done it will move to the governor’s desk. Last year, he vetoed a similar bill and made deceptive claims that the financing mechanism for the program is an “income tax.”
The pandemic and the exposure of police brutality against African Americans has stimulated an outpouring of creativity. This week we’ve got several powerful new songs plus a couple of old ones reminding us that the fight against fascism never ends.
