Soucy’s plan specifies a number of violent felonies that upon arrest would require someone to go before a judge before they qualify to be released on bail.

Soucy added a sweetener to her amendment — a $1 million program to create a Department of Safety database that would help local police determine in real time whether someone they have arrested is already out on bail for another offense.

House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee Chairman Terry Roy, R-Northwood, had gotten this reform into the House-passed state budget.

Last week, the Senate Finance Committee took it out of its spending plan.

“This means this bill is the only place where this program can survive,” Soucy said. “This can be a win-win for the House and Senate. I hope they can agree.”

Roy made the argument that bail reform is not going to pass the closely divided House this year.

The House committee retained two Senate bills on bail reform for study this summer and fall.

In the coming weeks, House and Senate leaders will create a conference committee to determine whether a compromise is possible.

To underscore the importance of this issue to the Senate, the three names on the bail reform amendment were Senate President Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, Senate Majority Leader Sharon Carson, R-Londonderry, and Soucy.

The Senate added another Senate-passed proposal to this bill, one that sets a limit on how much THC can be contained in hemp that is offered for sale in New Hampshire.

Game-camera reform

The House and Senate appear to agree the Legislature should change state law to give landowners the right to refuse someone’s request to place a hunting video camera on their property (SB 14).

Now the issue has become a pawn, as House and Senate leaders have messed with two versions of the plan.

A House committee took the first step, tacking onto the Senate-passed camera bill an unrelated proposal to reduce criminal penalties for first-time drug offenders.

On Thursday the Senate responded by attaching the camera bill to a House-passed bill dealing with agricultural rights held by the state of New Hampshire (HB 221).

Debit cards bill returns

The state Senate was very busy last week in its campaign to keep alive bills the House had killed or was about to.

Next week, the House likely will kill a Senate-passed bill (SB 46) to allow employers to pay their workers with debit cards if the worker does not have direct-deposit capability.

Keeping the ball in the air, the Senate approved Majority Leader Carson’s effort to tack the bill onto another.

Special ed nominee

Gov. Chris Sununu has nominated a familiar political spouse to serve as the state’s first special education advocate.

Kristen Mansharamani of Lincoln is Sununu’s pick to receive a five-year term in the post, which pays $100,250 annually.

Her husband, Vikram Mansharamani, was a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in 2022. Some have promoted him for federal office in the future.

A undergraduate of Yale University, Kristen Mansharamani has a law degree from Harvard and worked for six years in the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray, specializing in corporate litigation in state and federal courts.

In 2007, she founded the Torit Montessori School in Boston and grew the K-6 program from a staff of three to 40.

She said her experience in special education has been personal rather than professional.

“I would bring to the position the very personal and emotional experience of being the parent of a child with special needs who has navigated school, care and recreational/social environments for my daughter over the years,” she wrote in her application for the job.

“As she grew, her needs and relative capabilities vis-à-vis her environments changed. However even while advocating for her, I have viewed myself as an educator for the past 15 years and therefore have always had a ‘foot in each camp’ when it comes to the struggles of parents and schools to assess, plan and implement the best individualized solutions for each child/family.”

On social media, many of Sununu’s critics from the left pressed the Executive Council to look into whether she has the qualifications for the job.

“I wonder how many students with special needs attend that Montessori School,” wrote the Mont Vernon Dems. “Parallels with the ‘it’s who you know and the experience doesn’t matter’ of the Trump administration.”

The Legislature created this position in 2022 as part of a bill that lowered the burden of proof parents of special education students must meet when appealing school district decisions about their children.

Executive council scramble

Count on a scramble for the Democratic nomination for the Executive Council District 2 seat after Concord incumbent Cinde Warmington declared she will run for governor in 2024.

Democratic Party sources have confirmed that businessman Michael Liberty of Loudon could be the first one in the hunt.

More will follow. This is the only one of five council seats that is deep blue by party registration.

Prominent Democrats expected to give this a look include Senate Assistant Democratic Leader Becky Whitley of Hopkinton, Merrimack County Commissioner Tara Reardon of Concord, Sens. Donovan Fenton of Keene and Sue Prentiss of Lebanon, as well as former Sen. Deborah Reynolds of Plymouth, former Claremont Mayor Charlene Lovett and Rep. Amanda Toll of Keene.

Picture the possible

It was recently reported elsewhere that legislation related to the first portrait to honor a Black legislator in the State House was headed for the political dumpster.

Not yet.

A few weeks ago, the House Legislative Administration Committee voted to retain separate legislation (SB 28) honoring the late Rogers Johnson, a former House member, Bush administration Department of Education official and chairman of Sununu’s council on diversity and inclusion.

The House panel made this decision in deference to a legislatively created Historical Committee, which traditionally makes all decisions about the hanging of State House portraits.

But nothing is dead in the Legislature until the session comes to a close.

Last week, Senate Majority Whip Regina Birdsell, R-Hampstead and sponsor of that Senate bill, had the provision tucked into the budget trailer bill.

Medicaid expansion soon

House Deputy Speaker Steve Smith, R-Charlestown, said Friday the House will embrace a seven-year extension on Medicaid expansion included in the Senate’s proposed budget.

“A seven-year extension of the Granite Advantage Healthcare Program makes logical and fiscal sense,” Smith said in a statement to The Sunday News.

“N.H. gets the financial benefit of a full contract period, a continued drop in uncompensated care costs — which is a hidden tax, and it stabilizes the market allowing for more competition to help further drive down health care costs in our state. House Republican leadership fully supports the budget compromise of seven years. Let’s get it done.”

Ex-candidate gets a nod

Bruce Crochetiere of Hampton Falls has been nominated to a seat on the Community College System Board of Trustees.

In 2020, Crochetiere announced a run for the 1st Congressional District seat but bailed out before the the filing period. Matt Mowers won that primary and then lost to U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas in the general election.

Crochetiere’s business experience includes 30 years working in corporate and start-up IT sales.

If confirmed by the council, he would replace former Manchester Mayor Bob Baines.

Battle over benefits

There are many differences between the two-year state budgets that cleared the Senate Finance Committee last week and the House of Representatives in late March.

Clearly the biggest is a House change to Group 2 retirement benefits for about 1,800 police and fire employees who work for local, county and state governments.

Senate President Bradley said the restoration of cuts made to benefits in 2011 is too significant to be slapped onto a state budget bill.

“This needs the review of actuaries, lawyers, financial experts. We are not doing this on the fly,” Bradley said.

The Senate budget would create a study commission to analyze retirement system benefits and determine whether additional cost-of-living adjustments or other changes are needed to recruit and retain public employees.

The 2011 change meant benefit cuts for those in public employment who had less than the 10 years of service needed to be “vested” into the pension system.

According to the New Hampshire Retirement System analysis, the change reduced the typical annual pension for a police employee from $48,793 to $38,468.

Parking garage to advance

One of the last bills the state Senate will move forward this week is among the most popular with House Speaker Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry.

This (HB 346) would provide$25 million needed to complete a legislative parking garage across the street from the State House.

The 345-space garage will replace the building that houses the Department of Justice, which is being moved into leased office space owned by Concord developer and former GOP State Chairman Steve Duprey.

The proposed Senate budget trailer bill (HB 2) provides $21 million for the state to purchase Duprey’s Granite Place 2 in Concord for the Department of Justice and other agencies.

It also contains another $13 million to buy the adjacent Granite Place 1 complex for additional office space for state government.

Bradley wanted this second purchase to be made with proceeds from the sale of the former Laconia State School property.

Education funding tweak

Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Tim Lang, R-Sanbornton, believes the education funding formula he has come up with will find favor with House negotiators who will work on a compromise state budget later this month.

House Education Committee leaders applauded last-minute changes Lang made to boost grants going to some property-poor towns by $12.2 million.

Lang said he already has received a request from House Leaders to add another $4 million in grants related to math and science programs, but he has said that can’t be part of the formula.

Senate negotiators responded that the money should be part of a discretionary grant program school districts can apply for rather than automatic money.

Another special election

House Democrats are hoping to pull off another upset and edge closer to getting the majority now that the Executive Council has approved a special election in Rockingham County District 1.

The race is to replace Benjamin Bartlett IV, of Nottingham, who resigned his seat after missing every House session after the first one in January.

According to published reports, Bartlett could have violated the federal Hatch Act by holding elective office and simultaneously being employed in the federal government.

This district, which elects three seats, has a 6% Republican plurality by party registration, according to the latest voter checklist totals.

Despite this edge, Democrats nearly pulled one out in November, as Keith McGuigan of Northwood lost out for the final seat to Jacob Brouillard of Nottingham by only 10 votes after a recount.

Bartlett had finished second, only 47 votes ahead of McGuigan.

The filing period for this seat is this Monday through Friday.

If there’s a primary, it will be held on Aug. 1m with the special election on Sept. 19.

Should there be only one Democratic and Republican candidate, the general election will be Aug. 1.

On Wednesday, Sununu swore in the latest House member — Nashua Democrat Marc Plamondon, who won a special election in Ward 4.

Plamondon served six terms as a city alderman.

A rerun in 2nd CD

Lily Tang Williams of Weare, a Chinese-born professor, has confirmed she will launch a second bid for the 2nd Congressional District nomination.

In 2022, she finished third in the three-way contest won by Bob Burns of Pembroke.

“I have experienced firsthand the transformative power of freedom, opportunity, and hard work. The radical leftists rooted in Marxism who use identity politics to divide our people, destroy American values, weaponize our children through indoctrination remind me of the same tactics that Mao used when I was growing up,” she said. “I fear the country I love is becoming like the country I left.”

Some Republican leaders are hoping Keene Mayor George Hansel decides to run again next year.

Hansel got a late start in 2022 and lost to Burns, despite getting Sununu’s endorsement.