John Suiter’s first day was anything but unusual.
The new state representative from Hillsborough County District 36, a Republican from Mason whose district includes Brookline and Greenville, also serves on Mason’s select board, so he knew what to expect on Wednesday when he walked into the State House for the first day of the 2025 legislative session.
It was exactly what he expected, Suiter said, but the significance of his role isn’t lost on him. He said he has always seen the Capitol on the news and looked forward to walking into such a historic building.
“Now, I’ll be inside where it actually happens, and that’s going to be a cool experience,” he said.
Suiter spent the days prior to session dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s, making sure everything was squared away – from securing child care for his 3- and 7-year-olds, to getting his seat assignment, to attending caucus. Suiter said he wasn’t nervous at all.
On a frigid, blustery day last week, Suiter and the rest of the 400 state representatives gathered in a sea of familiar faces, greeting each other at the State House after months apart and voting on changes to House procedures.
As part of those changes, Republicans reinstated a rule that will remove the requirement for committees to post public notices of an executive, or closed, session for a specific date and time. Now, they can happen at any time with what Democrats criticized as a “boilerplate” announcement that closed session may occur on any given day.
Suiter declined to say how he voted on that resolution, saying he’s still learning about House procedures and “would have to go off” more senior members who know how the system works.
He also said he thinks public participation is important.
“I think the public should be able to know what we’re doing … and how we’re doing it and why we’re doing it,” Suiter said. “I think they should be informed on it, because we’re here representing them.”
GOP leadership also abandoned an amendment that would’ve cut public hearings for bills if three-fourths of a committee voted to table it.
In Suiter’s view, parties’ attempts to change House rules for every term can get tedious.
“Whoever’s in power … they want to do it this way, and this one wants to do it this way,” he said. “Why don’t you all make an agreement and split it in the middle? It should be a bipartisan thing on how the House operates.”
Suiter will serve on the Public Works and Highways Committee. It wasn’t his first choice; a veteran, he’d hoped for Veterans Affairs, but Suiter said he’ll still advocate for veterans and first-responders. He hopes to testify on some of those bills, too.
“They put their lives on the line for us every day, and we need to take care of them as a community,” Suiter said. “I look forward to being able to work with situations like that as much as I possibly can.”
Suiter said he ran for state representative because he wanted to help people. His priority in doing that, he said, is to figure out how to lower taxes. While picking up his campaign signs after the election, he said he came across a woman in Brookline who had to move out of her home after her husband died because she couldn’t keep up with the property taxes. That, to him, was “just silly” and “completely unacceptable.”
“That’s so un-American. That’s so, so far from where we’re supposed to be in America,” Suiter said. “We can’t let that happen.”
Suiter said he feels ready but acknowledges that he’s still very much a freshman lawmaker – and some more senior representatives have passed on their advice.
“Come in, learn the ropes, see what’s going on,” Suiter said. “Express your opinions, you know, talk with people. Try to understand what other people’s views are and just, you know, try to work together, because we’re there to help out the people of the state, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript and Concord Monitor in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.
