While NH Democrats are a minority in the NH House by only a few votes, we were able to prevail on some key education and energy policy bills during our session on February 23, because for several hours in the afternoon we became the majority after many Republicans left for the day.
We were able to reconsider a tabled bill from the previous week that prevented students in private, religious or home school programs from accessing Education Freedom Account money for at least one year. Democrats were opposed to this bill because the Education Freedom Account (EFA) takes public tax dollars and helps pay the tuition for students in private programs and is a deliberate effort to continue to weaken public education in NH.
The program has been much more expensive than anticipated with Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut predicting the program costing about $3.2 million this biennium but to date has cost about $25 million, and he asked for $30 million in each of the two years of the next biennium. The Governor wants to appropriate $56 million from the Education Trust Fund over the next two years.
On Thursday February 23, 2023 this bill HB 430 was taken off the table by the Democrats and passed by a 176-169 vote. This bill now goes to the Finance Committee and will come back to the full house for another vote but there is no guarantee that it will pass again.
It is important to point out that showing up and doing our job is important and effective.