Great news: The NHLA Bill Review system has been updated—new legislation for 2010 is now loaded on our website for your review.

There are currently over 650 bills awaiting review from our volunteers, including 138 retained from the 2009 session. Of these, 40+ amendments have been added in the interim since last June. That is always worrisome; some of these amendments may be anti-liberty and need to be vetted by NHLA volunteers.

You can visit our Bill Viewer to see the list of pending bills. If you’re not already signed up as a Bill Reviewer in our system, you can email research@nhliberty.org to be added to the list. Once you’re a Bill Reviewer, you can go to the unreviewed bills list in order to see all the bills that still need to be reviewed.

Our Bill Review system has several new features this year, including per-committee and per-bill email alerts. You can read all about the new features here.

The Legislature meets on January 06, 2010 to begin hearing and voting on legislation, so we need to begin reviewing right away. As you know, much of the proposed legislation each year strips away your liberties and costs taxpayers more money. We must stand our ground! NHLA Bill Review and citizen lobbying efforts are our best defense.

If you’ve never done Bill Review before:

There are three Bill Review Training sessions scheduled. The first is Saturday, December 12 in Manchester, from noon to 3:00. Veteran reviewers and first-timers alike are encouraged to attend.

The other two training sessions will be Wednesday, December 16 in Concord, from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m., and in Hopkinton on Sunday, January 10 at 1:00 p.m. Come to one or all. Email chair@nhliberty.org for more details or to sign up for one of the training sessions. More classes will be added; check the NHLA calendar periodically.

Thank you for your support of liberty in New Hampshire!

A note about the retained bills:

Many of the 2009 retained bills were reported out of committee as “inexpedient to legislate,” which means they don’t need to be re-reviewed this year. The ones that need to be re-examined are the ones that are listed in the State House calendar as “ought to pass with amendment,” or “OTP/A”.

So that no one accidentally re-reviews a bill that doesn’t need it, we’ve marked all of these retained bills as “reviewed” in our system. If you’d like to help out reviewing these bills, visit the State House calendar first (the second one has the amendments):—

http://gencourt.state.nh.us/house/caljourns/calendars/2010/houcal2010_02...
http://gencourt.state.nh.us/house/caljourns/calendars/2010/houcal2010_01... (amendments)

Once you’ve found one with a good or bad amendment that you’d like to review, go to the reviewed bills list and click on the bill. You’ll be presented with a page containing a “fake” review that merely contains a note about the above in the review notes field. Click the “Review this bill” link at the top of that page and you’ll be able to review the bill and its amendment.