Legislative Update: Bill rescue ends - May 29, 2026 Windham Independent
Legislative Update - Bill rescue ends
On April 15, I wrote about HB1574 (relative to the extension of free and reduced price breakfast and lunch for students under the age of 22) being saved from a certain death in the House and passed on to the Senate, where a non-germane amendment was attached to it. This is the rest of the story.
On May 14, the House voted on the amended HB1574 (relative to the extension of the free and reduced price breakfast and lunch programs and supporting administrative costs for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and making appropriations therefor).
The House had three choices: Concur (and pass it to the Governor for their signature as amended by the Senate), non-concur and kill the bill, or Non-Concur and request a Committee of Conference (CoC), which is what the House did.
The House Speaker appointed Reps. Ladd (Education Funding Chairman), Erf (Finance 2 Chairman), Popovici-Muller (Finance 2 Vice-Chairman), Luneau (Education Funding minority ranking member).
The Senate then had the choice of whether to kill the bill by not acceding to the House request, or to accede to the House request (which they did, appointing Senators Gray (Finance Chairman), Ward (Education Chairman), Rosenwald (Education Finance)).
A CoC’s only job is to reach an agreement on the bill. Choices are limited to only the topics included in the amended bill, so no new topics can be introduced at this stage.
If an agreement is reached, it becomes the CoC report. IF, and only if ALL the CoC members sign the report by 4pm on Thursday, May 28, then both the House and the Senate need to vote on the amended bill, and if both the House and the Senate approve it, it goes to the Governor for her signature.
Unfortunately, the Senate amendment to HB1574 was a policy that the House had already considered in HB1750, which did not pass. Since no compromise was found during yesterday’s CoC meeting, there will be no CoC report and HB1574’s legislative journey ended for this term.
HB1574 solves a real issue, and the language to address it has been fully vetted through the legislative process, so I plan to work with Rep. Weinstein (the prime sponsor) to resubmit the bill for next term, when I hope it will be allowed to pass on its own merits instead of being amended with completely unrelated legislation like it did this year.
I wish I had better news to report on this topic, but one doesn’t control the outcome of the legislative process - only the time and effort we put into it. We’ve done all we could. Didn’t make it. We’ll start from a better place next year.
Please reach out to me at 603 267 4142 (call or text) or at dpmwindham@gmail.com (a quick call or text after emailing me would greatly help) with any questions or concerns.
Daniel Popovici-Muller
Windham State Representative,
Vice Chairman, Finance II Committee
Member, Education Funding Committee