Legislative Update: Budget - April 18, 2025 Windham Independent

Legislative Update - Budget

On April 10 (deadline day), the House adopted the state budget for the next two fiscal years, sending it to the Senate after a session filled with twists and turns.

We first adopted our last House bills for 2025, with HB66 (Right to Know improvement), HB115 (expanding the Education Freedom Account program) and HB511 (cooperating with federal immigration authorities) being the most notable.

The day continued with the budget bills, HB1 (which includes only account numbers/descriptions and dollar amounts) and HB2 (which consists of the legislation changes needed to implement the budget). Here are some notable HB2 amendments:

Amendment 1529h added the language of two very important House bills to HB2 - one that allows direct pay medical practices to operate in New Hampshire, and one that defines a few limited situations where classifying persons based on their biological sex is permitted in order to protect the privacy rights and safety of such persons and others. 

Amendment 1499h removed the provisions of HB675 (Property Tax Relief Act) from the budget, despite the bill having been adopted by the House earlier this year.

Amendment 1569h reversed the planned elimination of the Housing Appeals Board, which the Finance Committee recommended because of the very high cost of solving a dispute through the HAB instead of the court system.

Amendment 1561h (Medicaid Direct certification) failed by ONE vote only, despite a similar Democratic bill having been tabled earlier in the year by a significant margin. Such bills have been failing for years now, since no testimony was offered to even establish the fact that any K-12 student is denied food in school due to their inability to pay, let alone establish this is such a huge problem that spending 100 million dollars per biennium would be an effective way to address it.

Amendment 1566h removed from the budget the provisions creating a Group III for our retirement system, which would have reduced our long term pension liability. On average, most government employees never qualify for out Group I/II defined benefit retirement plans, so they lose both the employer contributions and the opportunity to invest those funds. Offering new state employees that currently fall under Group I a defined contribution retirement plan instead would have made state employment more attractive. 

Here is a summary of the votes mentioned above:

At this point in the day, HB2 got tabled and the two parties caucused. After returning to session, HB2 was removed from the table, all but one of the remaining amendments were defeated, then HB2 was finally adopted as amended.

I will stop here to keep this letter brief, but this won’t be the end of these discussions - the decision of a few Republicans to work with the Democrats to remove critical portions of the budget will have long term, negative consequences for us all. 

Please reach out to me at 603 267 4142 (call or text), or by email at dpmwindham@gmail.com (a quick call or text after emailing me would ensure I never miss an email from you) with any questions or concerns. 

Daniel Popovici-Muller

Windham State Representative,

Vice Chairman, Finance II Committee

Education Funding Committee