The New Hampshire Liberty Alliance cordially invites you to its 2022 Liberty Dinner on Saturday July 23rd from 6:00 to 11:00 PM. Formal attire please.
We will unveil this year’s Liberty Rating and award the Legislator of the Year and Activist of the Year. In addition to a buffet dinner and an evening with both old and new friends, there will be a silent auction of various items – many of them liberty themed!
Get your tickets at libertydinner.com!
The April 2022 Board election is complete.Voting invitation was sent by email to all Full and Life Members for a total of 381 possible voters. 91 members cast votes for the election of these BOD positions. 24% voter response.
For Political Director
Matt Santonastaso – 80 votes (89.89%)
None of the Above – 7 votes
Various Write-ins – 3 votes
For Membership Director
Larry Borland – 82 votes (92.13%)
None of these options – 5 votes
Various Write-in – 2 votes
For IT Director
Andrew Prout – 84 votes (95.45%)
None of these options – 2 votes
Various Write-in – 2 votes
Regrettably, although Mr. Prout had accepted the nomination for IT Director prior to having his name appear on the ballot (in accordance with normal board practice), he has declined the position.
Therefore the IT Director position is OPEN. If you would like to be considered for this position, please contact the Board at board@nhliberty.org
We are kicking off the first bill review training session of the 2022 legislative season in Nashua on October 30th. Please sign up and learn how you can help us to hold the NH legislature accountable.
The 2021 Liberty Dinner was a big success!
Thank you to all who attended. We released our 2021 Liberty rating. 74 Representatives got an A+ and in total 176 representatives and senators received a B+ or higher.
The Legislator of the Year was the Honorable Michael Yakubovich representing Hooksett – district Merrimack-24. He is a member of the Executive Departments and Administration committee.
He was first elected to office in 2018 and he has received an NHLA Liberty rating score of A or higher for each year he has been in office.
Our activist of the year was Kate Baker Demers. Kate has been working tirelessly for education freedom in New Hampshire for more than 15 years across a number of organizations.
Our keynote was done in a talk show/interview format with the topic of Solutions to Big Tech censorship.
Thank you to all of our sponsors, all those who donated and everyone that attended.
The New Hampshire Liberty Alliance cordially invites you to its 2021 Liberty Dinner on Saturday July 24th from 6:00 to 11:00 PM. Formal attire please.
We will unveil this year’s Liberty Rating, announce the Legislator of the year, and announce the Activist of the year. In addition to a buffet dinner and an evening with both old and new friends, there will be a silent auction of various items – many of them liberty themed!
Get your tickets here!
2021 Mid-Term Rating
This is an unweighted mid-term rating based on roll call votes on pro-liberty and anti-liberty bills.
Pro-liberty bills protect individual freedom of choice and personal responsibility; recognize the superiority of freedom over coercion; respect the citizen’s right of self-ownership; promote governance that is transparent, accountable, and adheres to the Constitution; and recognize the value of voluntary economic decisions.
Anti-liberty bills replace self-governance with interventionist regulation; assume rules made by agencies backed by force are superior to voluntary choices backed by personal accountability; and assume a better economy can be managed by a central authority that compels people and businesses to pay for policies they may not willingly support.
The Liberty Rating is the result of hundreds of hours of work by many volunteers who have read and analyzed bills, testified before committees, called and written their representatives, worked on our other signature publication, the Gold Standard, and culled extensive data from legislative voting records. We encourage New Hampshire citizens to learn the facts about how their elected representatives are voting in Concord and to use this tool to hold them accountable. Final year end ratings may differ in as in the final rating, bills are weighted by their impacts and thus the raw scores here may differ from final scores.
Remote Hearings – Senate
At this time, the General Court is conducting legislative activities remotely with the exception of publicly noticed sessions in the House or Senate Calendar. If you would like to attend remote public hearings, here are some helpful guidelines to help you navigate the process.
The Senate Calendar will be updated on the state website weekly (usually Thursday or Friday). On the calendar, you can locate all the public hearings scheduled for the following week. Look specifically for the “Remote Hearings” header. Once you have located the bill you are interested in, go to http://gencourt.state.nh.us/remotecommittee/senate.aspx to register to testify. Select the date of the hearing, the committee and the correct bill number. Next, select whether you are an elected official, lobbyist, state staff or a member of the public. Then you will indicate your position on the bill (support/oppose/neutral) and select if you wish to speak on the bill. On the next page, enter your name, email and phone number. Select continue to go to the confirmation page. Here you will see the date and time of the hearing. You will also receive instructions to email any written testimony or other documents you wish to share with the committee.
Sign-in data will be compiled one half hour prior to the start of the Committee’s hearing. If you sign in after that time, the Committee may not have your name before them; however, the Chair will provide an opportunity for you to speak once they have called through the list of names. On the day of the hearing, you will access the meeting using the Zoom Webinar link or the dial in telephone numbers on the Senate Calendar. You can also simply view/listen to the hearing on YouTube, the link is on the Senate Calendar directly under the bill details.
Detailed information on how to register support/opposition for remote Senate hearings is available here.
Remote Hearings – House
The instructions for the House remote hearings are essentially the same as the Senate. The House Calendar will be updated on the state website weekly (usually Thursday or Friday). On the calendar, you can locate all the public hearings scheduled for the following week. Look specifically for the “Committee Meetings” header. Once you have located the bill you are interested in, go to http://gencourt.state.nh.us/house/committees/remotetestimony/default.aspx to register to testify. You can also simply view/listen to the hearing on Zoom, the link is on the House Calendar directly under the bill details.
Detailed information on how to register support/opposition for remote House hearings is available here.
As the New Hampshire state election recounts come to a close over the next week, one of the next key events in state government will be Organization Day. Pursuant to Part II, Article 3, of the New Hampshire Constitution, this will occur on December 2nd – the first Wednesday in December. While no legislation will be heard that day there are important activities that will occur including the election of the Speaker of the House and Senate President.
While these are important positions and can influence the outcome of legislation through actions such as committee assignments, the NHLA has historically chosen to not get involved in endorsing candidates for House Speaker or Senate President and this year will be no exception. The selection tends to be dramatically partisan and therefore not aligned with our mission. More importantly, members of the General Court will be selecting individuals for these roles based not only on their positions on liberty but also on their ability to plan and execute general court business in a fair and efficient manner. Neither our candidate survey nor prior legislative voting record provides objective information that would inform us as to the suitability of an individual for the role. As a result, we will be taking no position on the candidates for these positions. As always, we do of course encourage NHLA members to engage with the legislative process and make their opinion known to their representatives if they have reasons for supporting or opposing individual candidates.
This November, “The most important election of our lifetime”TM will take place. No – not that one. I of course speak about the election for the NH Liberty Alliance Director of Research. Though clearly the opening statement is tongue-in-cheek, it is fair to say that the selection of board members for our organization is important not only to our members, but also to the prospects for long term liberty in the state. According our bylaws, the duties of the Director of Research shall include, but not be limited to: bill review oversight; documentation of NHLA position on key legislative issues; developing the Liberty Rating for board approval; developing candidate surveys. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss these duties in a little more detail to help prospective candidates for the role understand the nature of the position.
When we talk about bill review oversight, the first thing that comes to mind for most people is the technical expertise required read and understand complex legislation. In a typical year, nearly 1,000 bills will be generated that require review and the fact is that a majority of these are quite simple to read and often are only a few sentences or at most a couple of pages. While even apparently simple bills can have hidden underlying technical complexity, the truth is that the most challenging portion of this aspect to the role is not technical complexity but rather the effort required to coordinate the activities of a diverse pool of bill review volunteers. As luck would have it, this is also one of the more rewarding aspects of the role.
In 2020, at least 50 NHLA members volunteered their time to complete at least one bill review. Some completed just a handful of reviews while others pushed deep into double or triple digits for the number of reviews. Every one of these reviewers is volunteering a portion of their time to help the organization and advance the cause of liberty. At times, there can be disagreements on positions in certain bills and a key portion of the role is to approach each of the inputs with an open mind and understand the perspective of the individual reviewers. Much is often made about the level of disagreement within liberty learning circles but over the years I’ve found that vast majority of our review volunteers are level-headed but passionate about their positions and it has been very rewarding to work with a group of such dedicated volunteers. Bill review season typically kicks off in December as the first pieces of text for the following year’s session start to appear in the state system and continues throughout the legislative season until ~June as bills are amended as they make their way through the process.
Ultimately, the inputs from the bill reviewers along with information from recorded or live witnessed public hearings and summary data from the legislative committees must be distilled into an NHLA position for each impactful bill and documented in the Gold Standard publication. Here again, you will be aided by a smaller core group of volunteers including current and former legislators to formulate the liberty position on key legislation. Mentoring and training that of the bill review volunteers can pay off significantly each week as you work pull together a concise set of recommendations for each bill. This role typically requires weekly investment of time from about January through June. The NHLA has a great group of dedicated volunteers who distribute the Gold Standard each week at the state house (when sessions are run at the state house!) thus while having availability to go to Concord to support the distribution could be helpful, it is by no means a requirement of the job. The regular tempo during the legislative season can certainly be challenging but at the same time, this fast-paced work is also exciting.
As the season comes to an end, the position requires developing the Liberty Rating that scores legislators based on roll-call votes on matters that appeared in the Gold Standard. While the rating is the world’s easiest ‘open book test’ development of the rating is key as scores from the rating along with scores from the candidate survey developed by the Director of Research are key inputs to the Political Director to help determine endorsements in future elections.
Finally, any role in an all-volunteer organization ends up with a non-trivial portion of the effort falling into the “but not be limited to” category of the by-law role definition. While some tasking is very directly aligned with the role (e.g. supporting the political director and chair in the generation of the weekly activist alert heading into bill public hearings), other aspects may vary substantially based on the interests and amount of time that a person can dedicate to the position.
Ultimately, serving on a public-facing volunteer board is likely to be both more challenging and more fulfilling than you might initially imagine. It also is likely to help hone skills that will be useful in other aspects of your life. Most importantly, serving in a role like this can be one possible realization of a personal goal to apply the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of individuals’ rights to life, liberty, and property.
After careful consideration, NHLA has decided not to hold the annual fundraiser, Liberty Dinner, in its traditional form. This decision wasn’t taken lightly, and due to many factors, we believe it is the right course of action. We hope that you will continue to support NHLA and consider a donation to support our future endeavors.
In light of this change, NHLA has turned its focus to fundraising for liberty candidates in the 2020 elections. This year has brought about unique circumstances. In response, we will be hosting many fundraisers over the next few months at local venues and private homes all over New Hampshire. Similar to Liberty Dinner, each event will be sponsored, have a silent auction, 50/50 raffle, theme and a guest speaker. We held our first event on July 5th in Manchester, NH, and have many more scheduled through the general election in November. Please take a look at the NHLA events calendar here for information on upcoming fundraisers in your region! Keep an eye out in your inbox and on social media for more details. Thank you to all of our fundraiser sponsors. Your dedication to protecting liberty in New Hampshire is greatly appreciated!
If you already donated a silent auction item for Liberty Dinner, please know that we would still like to feature your item and/or service at one or more of our fundraisers. Each event will have a silent auction and items will be featured in a program. If you would like to donate an item to the silent auction to promote your product or service, or sign up as an event volunteer, please contact volunteer@nhliberty.org.
If you would like to host or sponsor a fundraiser at your home or know of an available venue, please reach out to political@nhliberty.org.
If you are not able to attend any of the events, please consider a donation here.
NHLA remains excited to host Liberty Dinner next year, 2021. Your support and understanding are greatly appreciated.
