Letter: HB 1114 is critically important
Throughout the course of New Hampshire’s 2025 legislative session, the voices of Granite State citizens were silenced, as thousands of public comments on a wide variety of bills submitted via the legislature’s remote sign in system were disregarded, ignored or thrown in the trash by leadership of House and Senate committees.
This is not the way our government is supposed to function. Citizen participation has always been the bedrock of the New Hampshire legislative process. Our state Constitution – which legislators are sworn to uphold– demands that public officials are, at all times, accountable to the people, not the other way around.
In order to restore the voices of New Hampshire citizens, Rep. Janet Lucas, prime sponsor, and 10 co-sponsors have introduced a bill for 2026, HB 1114, which would require standing committees of the New Hampshire House and Senate to produce reports of public comments for each bill referred to the committee that would explain clearly how the committees considered public comments in determining their recommendation on the bill. The reports would be overseen by the committee chair and ranking member or their designees, and would become a part of the permanent record of the bill.
This is the same reasonable requirement that the legislature placed on state agencies in regard to administrative rules, when it almost unanimously overrode former Gov. Sununu’s veto of HB 1622, 2024, now law.
New Hampshire lawmakers of integrity and good conscience, on both sides of the aisle, should welcome this critically important bill.