There’s plenty on the minds of NH lawmakers this year, but Covid tops the list
Businesses generally don’t like to be told what to do, and most don’t care if it’s by Democrats or Republicans. That might be a lesson to be learned this legislative session.
Most often Democrats are the ones who raise the issue of employee rights, and they still do, when it comes to wages and benefits. But when it comes to Covid-19, Republicans are suddenly posturing themselves as the worker’s champion. They have filed some 20 bills in reaction to federal vaccine mandates — for large employers, healthcare providers and government contractors — that are now being fought over in the courts.
Some, like House Speaker Rep. Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry, would simply prohibit state enforcement of the federal law.
“My opinion is that’s just political,” said David Juvet, senior vice president of public policy at the Business & Industry Association.
On the other hand, what else can you expect in an election year? “It’s going to be highly partisan. Both sides are trying to make the other party look bad, and the rest of us have to deal with the fallout,” Juvet said.
What concerns Juvet and other business groups most is the push by some state lawmakers to impose mandates of their own — forbidding, or in some cases punishing, employers that insist their workers get vaccinated.
“The House seems especially focused on prohibiting employers from doing what they feel is in the best interest of their employees and their customers,” Juvet said.
“In general, Republicans have usually avoided establishing unhelpful mandates. This is an obvious exception.
Juvet was quick to add it remains to be seen how many Republicans back the proposal.
Take House Bill 1224, a bill sponsored by Rep. Al Baldasaro, R-Londonderry, one of the party floor leaders.
It would, among other things, prohibit “employers and places of public accommodation from discriminating on the basis of vaccination status.”
“It’s their right not to get a shot of an experimental vaccine,” Baldasaro told NH Business Review, though the Pfizer vaccine hasn’t been experimental since last August, when the Food and Drug Administration fully approved it. Full approval of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are still pending.
Even when approved, Baldasaro still doesn’t believe it is safe or effective.
“I feel it’s just feel-good bull---t. All those people vaccinated are still getting Covid,” he said, even though a much larger percentage of the unvaccinated get the disease and usually much more severely.
Baldasaro isn’t alone. Rep Norman Silber, R-Gilford, has a similar bill, HB 1351. Other bills discourage employee vaccination requirements in other ways. HB 255 — ironically amended from a bill left over from last year that would have protected businesses from Covid liability suits — would exempt employees who object for reasons of “conscience.” It was tabled, but only because the House’s first day of the year was cut short by snow.
Two others, HB 1260 and Senate Bill 300, would make vaccination status a protected class, like race under state human rights laws.
HB 1143 would require employers to pay six months’ severance if an employer leaves as a result of company’s vaccination policy. HB 1377 would give such workers unemployment insurance, raising a company’s experience rating and taxes. HB 1089 would render any noncompete agreements unenforceable if employment ended over vaccination status. HB 1410 would make employers liable for the side effects if an employer suffers as a result of the vaccination, while HB 1352 would make those employees eligible for workers’ compensation.
Still another, HB 1495, mirrors the federal mandate that its contractors require employees to be vaccinated, but this one threatens to pull state contracts with companies that do require a vaccine. Then there’s HB 1490 and the aforementioned HB 1224, which prohibit companies from requiring that customers get vaccinated. And HB 1415 would require that employers pay for health screening (Covid tests) that are a condition of employment.
And that’s not even getting into restrictions on healthcare facilities and educational institutions.
The NH Hospital Association opposes “any bill that will impact employers’ ability to require vaccines, because it impacts the state’s ability to address the pandemic,” said Paula Minnehan, the organization’s vice president of government affairs.
“We don’t like mandates, but we also don’t like prohibitions on what we can do,” said Curtis Barry, a lobbyist for the NH Retail Association. Employers don’t want to lose any workers by requiring vaccines, he said, so any business “ought to weigh a decision against that,” but the important thing is that it’s the company’s decision to make.
Meanwhile, there are a handful of bills encouraging, but not mandating, the vaccine.
SB 229 would permit certified pharmacy technicians to administer the vaccine “so pharmacists’ time and resources are freed up,” explained Sen. Cindy Rosenwald, D-Nashua, the sponsor of the bill as well as SB 319, which would require that insurers give a financial incentive to members who are fully vaccinated.
“The vast majority of Covid hospitalizations are among unvaccinated people. And hospitalization costs for Covid are incredibly expensive; for example, an up to fourday ICU stay at (Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center) costs the hospital $50,000,” she said. While it’s against federal law to charge higher premiums on the unvaccinated, “a financial wellness incentive” is legal, she said.
Then there’s HB 1369, which proclaims that performance venues have the right to insist that both employees, performers and customers be vaccinated.
Rep. Matthew Wilhelm, D-Manchester, who worked in the music industry, said that those “with the greatest job security are the ones whose employers have instituted mask, vaccine and/or testing requirements.” His bill would ensure that the “show goes on and our state’s vibrant arts economy continues to thrive.”
And HB 1481 would repeal a law passed last year forbidding local governments, including school districts, from manding vaccines.
“Covid-19 vaccines are just as necessary and just as safe as any other vaccine,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Tim Horrigan, D-Durham, who introduced HB 1088, which not only gives workers the right of vaccination but also personal protective equipment.
Workforce
There are other subjects besides Covid on the minds of lawmakers this year, including some that have been introduced and defeated many times.
There’s Manchester Democratic Sen. Donna Soucy’s perennial and $15-an-hour minimum wage bill. New Hampshire has stuck with the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour for a dozen years now, the only state in New England to do so. Surrounding rates now range from $12.55 (Vermont) to $14.25 (Massachusetts). Few workers get paid the minimum, but both sides agree that a higher minimum pushes up wages, particularly at the bottom.
The tight job market and rising wages weaken the argument against the minimum wage, but few think the Republican-dominated Legislature will budge on this issue, or on variations like HB 1478, which would require employers with over 100 workers to either pay a $15 hourly minimum or a higher business profits tax rate.
The sponsor of that bill, Rep. Joshua Adjutant, D-Enfield, also proposed HB 1053, which instead of requiring more notice to a change in shift schedules, would require that companies pay time and a half for the change. That bill immediately caught the attention of several business groups “You can imagine the difficulties for construction if you have to schedule seven days in advance. It’s usually dayto-day, based on the weather,” said Gary Abbot, executive vice president at Associated General Contractors of New Hampshire.
“It would be a huge problem,” said Jasen Stock, executive director of the NH Timberland Owners’ Association.
“You get a shot of rain, and say, ‘Take the afternoon off, let’s work all day on Saturday,’ and they’ll say, ‘Pay me overtime, it wasn’t scheduled.’” “Being asked to cover a shift or two every now and again is reasonable, but on a regular basis it disrupts a worker’s family life and their ability to plan a schedule outside of work,” argued Adjutant. His bill would “guarantee that the employee is adequately compensated for their sacrifices, and ensures an employer absolutely needs that person to come in by raising the incentive.”
HB 1094 also requires advance notice of schedule changes for companies with 10 or more employees or two or more locations, and it also requires at least a 10-hour “rest period” between consecutive shifts, so workers won’t be so exhausted.
HB 1076, another Adjutant bill, would ban production quotas for gig workers that don’t provide enough time for bathroom breaks and safety. Employers are “pushing their employees harder and harder, and making basic labor protections, such as the right to use the restroom, a right they only have on paper,” he said.
Most lobbyists don’t expect any of this to pass. “We are comfortable, given how the Legislature has acted on HR issues,” said Bruce Berke, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business in New Hampshire.
Some other measures would ease certain employment laws, such as SB 345, which would allow 15- and 16-yearold workers to be employed in more occupations (like manufacturing) and for more hours.
“We’ll probably weigh in on that,” said Mike Somers, president of the Lodging and Restaurant Association.
There are also two bills that would repeal Gov. Chris Sununu’s yet-to-be-implemented voluntary Paid Family Leave Plan, which was an alternative to a previous mandatory Democratic plan that the governor vetoed. There seems to be no effort to revive that mandatory plan, so it will be interesting to see if Democrats will rally to save the governor’s. Both the BIA and NFIB are neutral on the voluntary plan.
Energy
On its first day in session, the House unanimously backed HB 549, sponsored by Rep. Michael Vose, chair of the House Science, Technology and Energy Committee, to fix the state’s most pressing energy issue: keeping alive the NHSaves utility-run energy-efficiency program. The programs are mainly funded through the Systems Benefit Charge on all utility bills. Under a proposal before the Public Utilities Commission, it would have been doubled — a change that was backed by utilities and energy-efficiency advocates. The commission not only nixed the proposal but rolled it back, bringing the state’s energy-efficiency programs to a halt and threatening hundreds of jobs.
Business groups like the BIA and the NH Homebuilders Association were aghast, uniting both sides in Vose’s proposal to freeze the program in place. The bill also includes a provision endorsed by conservatives to take such decisions out of the PUC’s hands. And that may cause some difficulty once it goes over to the Senate.
Despite the PUC’s sudden turnabout, energy advocates would rather put their faith in it than lawmakers.
“We still think it is not a political process and shouldn’t be,” said Sam Evans Brown, executive director of Clean Energy NH.
If the House bill stalls, there is always SB 270, sponsored by Sen. David Watters, D-Dover, which would do the same thing without giving up PUC control. SB 270’s original language, still in the bill, is important in its own right. It’s designed to fix a low-income solar program that is “such a huge pain in the butt to qualify for,” said Evans Brown, and because of that no project has yet been approved. The bill would start a pilot project allowing people who already qualify for fuel assistance to participate in community solar power projects.
And there will be another attempt to expand net metering, this one introduced by Sen. Kevin Avard, R-Nashua. SB 262 “will help reduce transmission loads and energy costs with cleaner energy. I also believe that these bills will spark business development and innovation,” Avard said.
The bill expands the threshold for small generators — who get a better net metering rate on excess electricity they produce — from 100 to 500 kilowatts. It would also increase the net metering from one to five megawatts for larger projects, something that now is restricted to projects built by governmental entities. The bill does have a clause restricting the benefit to a business that consumes its own power. Clean Energy NH’s Evans Brown contends that this provision should satisfy Sununu, who has vetoed net metering expansion before, because he says it would put some generators at a competitive advantage.
On the other hand, there are a number of bills that would reduce that larger commercial net metering rate — currently a compromise rate until the PUC decides a final rate that would avoid any cost-shifting. Another Vose bill, HB 1599, would avoid users from getting reimbursed for the costs of Renewal Portfolio Standard, and HB 1629 would only give them the electrical energy portion. Advocates say they should get more, since net metering lowers the need for some distribution and transmission costs.
Rep. Eric Gallager, D-Merrimack, would like the PUC to consider other factors besides ratepayer costs alone, so HB 1250 requires it to take into account climate change. “It ought to be more expensive for them to supply dirty power instead of clean power,” he said.
The other major energy debate concerns how to deal with electric vehicles, since they don’t pay the gas tax, which funds maintenance and construction of roads and bridges. HB 1675 would simply slap a 50-cent surcharge on them when they go through the tolls.
“You are talking about penalizing someone for not using gas,” said Rep. Peter Somssich, D-Portsmouth. “That’s just crazy.”
Somssich’s bill, HB1656, would replace that lost money with a registration surcharge based on weight and mileage, since those are the two factors that damage the roads, he said. This of course would benefit lighter vehicles, but “if it weighs something, it pays something.” He would increase the state portion of the current registration fee already based on weight, which hasn’t been done in 15 years, and make it more nuanced, breaking it into five categories rather than three, and include milage. By doing this, he said, the state could raise between $80 million to $100 million for the highway fund.
Of course, any increase would make contractors happy, said Abbott, though there is no rush on that front since electric vehicles still make up a small percentage of vehicular traffic. And the state is getting a flood of cash, thanks to the recently passed federal infrastructure bill.
That infrastructure bill will mean a lot more money going to the creation of charging stations, and Watters’ SB 447 establishes an electric vehicle and infrastructure fund to spend it.
Taxes
Tax cuts are on the minds of some lawmakers again, but not to the same extent of previous years.
HB 1221 would reduce the business profits tax from 7.7 to 7.5 percent, and the business enterprise tax from 0.6 to 0.5 percent. And HB1204 would cut the rooms and meals tax from 8.5 to 7.9 percent, but increase revenue sharing to towns and cities from 30 to 40 percent.
Both reductions would be nice, said Juvet of the BIA and Somers of the Lodging and Restaurant Association, but neither said they had much hope of major tax changes in a non-budget year.
Bob Sanders can be reached at bsanders@nhbr.com.
Republicans have filed some 20 bills in reaction to federal vaccine mandates.
NH has stuck with the federal minimum wage for a dozen years now, the only New England state to do so.
