SDGA Legislative Initiatives
We have initiated these bills to make budgets and collective bargaining much more transparent. We ask for your help in supporting them.
HB 348 Making Collective Bargaining Public
requiring public entities to negotiate collective agreements in public
HB 206 Public Notice of Collective Contracts
The language of this bill was serious mangled by the Office of Legislative Services and requires an immediate amendment to get back to its original intent of requiring 30 days public posting of a collective contract before it is signed by a public body.
HB 243 Relative to the form of municipal budgets
All municipal, district, and school administrative unit budgets shall use a full line item detail in industry-standard electronic spreadsheet format, which shall include all the budget lines used to comprise the complete budget.
HB 454 Relative to the requirement that certain governing bodies submit recommendations to the budget committee.
Duties of Governing Body and Other Officials. The governing bodies of municipalities adopting this subdivision, or of districts which are wholly within towns adopting this subdivision, shall review the statements submitted to them under RSA 32:4 and shall submit their own recommendations to the budget committee, together with all information necessary for the preparation of the annual budget, including each purpose for which an appropriation is sought and each item of anticipated revenue, at such [time] times and in such detail as the budget committee shall fix.
HB 415 Relative to municipal estimates of expenditures and revenues
32:4 Estimate of Expenditures and Revenues. All municipal officers, administrative officials, and department heads, including officers of such self-sustaining departments as water, sewer, and electric departments, shall prepare statements of estimated expenditures and revenues for the ensuing fiscal year, and shall submit such statements to their respective governing bodies, at such times and in such detail as the governing body may require, but no fewer than 30 days prior to the public hearing for its budget. The governing body shall publish the draft budget and revised versions, after making any updates to the budget, within 5 days. Budgets shall be published in full line item detail, and made available in CSV and PDF formats for easy viewing and use by common spreadsheet programs.
How We Need You to Help
Our bills are now assigned to committees who will conduct public hearings, though dates in January and February are still to be determined. We will need SDGA members to testify via Zoom at these public committee meetings or write letters of support for these bills. Comments are generally kept to three minutes and if we coordinate them in advance we can make quite a considered argument. The number of people who testify in support or in objection to bills does weigh considerably on the hearing committee members. Opponents to these bills will be out in force, please do not doubt that. Contact me to keep informed. I will also send out an email to the membership when hearing dates are known. Please help change history in NH. We can get this done!
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