( - promoted by Dean Barker)
The "Granny D Commission" bill signing on Friday afternoon was done with whoopee -- as a group of a couple of dozen fourth graders touring the State House joined Granny's volunteers and friends and cheered as soon as Governor John Lynch signed House Bill 794, then presented Doris with the pen he used to sign it.
The Commission will consider how to create and fund a system for New Hampshire similar to the "clean election" laws already in place in 12 other states, including Maine and Arizona. It's not easy, but if we can find a way to fund campaigns for Governor, Governor's Council, and State Senate in a way that allows for candidates who don't want to go to lobbyists or other big contributors to raise money, our democracy will be all the better for it.
A large bipartisan group of House and Senate members have supported the concept, including some previous candidates for major office, including John Rauh, Walter Peterson, Jim Rubins, and Paul McEachern.
Also, a lot of things are happening in the Legislature -- in the House and the Senate -- concerning some of the other issues that all of us are concerned about -- such as lobbyist disclosure and influence, campaign finance, and the state's code of ethics.
As an update to what I've written about in previous Blog posts, House Bill 91 -- which would have allowed lobbyists a 10 day or two week "grace period" before even having to register, and allow some lobbyists 75 hours of free lobbying before they even had to register (lobbyist registration by the "honor system") --was defeated on Wednesday. Thanks to Secretary of State Bill Gardner and Paul McEachern who joined me on fighting that one. We stopped it.
And on Thursday, part of another bill -- Senate Bill 482 -- which would have repealed most of the state's code of ethics law and allow lobbyists to be placed as voting members onto state boards, committees, and commissions was taken out. After nearly a two hour debate, the vote was 163 to 100, with the majority representing a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans supporting an amendment I offered to "repeal the repeal" of the state's code of ethics. So, the majority of the House once again stood for honesty and openness in our state government.
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