The House and Senate teams working on the budget agreed on how to fix $270 million of a nearly $300 million shortfall, but neither is budging on the final $30 million. Gov. John Lynch has said he’ll keep lawmakers working until the job is done.

Lynch has also said he’ll refuse to sign any legislation that calls for expanded gambling before regulations are in place to manage it. The Senate has taken a very strong stance in support of new gaming ventures this session, while the House has voted it down three times.

Budget aside, there’s still more at stake on Wednesday, with final votes due on more than 60 bills that went to Committees of Conference two weeks ago to find a compromise between House and Senate positions.

In the meantime, several bills relating to health insurance, family law and the criminal justice system have already made it through the Committee of Conference process and await Lynch’s signature.

health insurance
Health insurance providers will have to include both hearing aids and certain autism treatments in their coverage plans, thanks to House Bills 561 and 569. They were sponsored by Rep. Susan Emerson (R-Rindge) and Rep. Suzanne Butcher (D-Keene), respectively.

Mandated coverage requirements like these apply to Health Maintenance Organizations and Health Service Corporations, but not to any self-funded health insurance policies, such as those the state operates for its own employees. Therefore, the state would not necessarily take on any increased costs if these bills become law.

But some skeptics still have concerns.

Rep. Neal Kurk (R-Weare) spoke during a brief floor debate on the hearing aid bill.

“In the past, even though by law (mandates like these) don’t need to apply, they get adopted,” he said.
Kurk and Rep. Sherman Packard (R-Londonderry) both questioned how much these requirements would cost the state in that case, and Packard also asked how much they will cost policyholders whose plans will be subject to the mandates.

The answer: up to $17 per year per policy for the hearing aids, according to Rep. Edward Butler (D-Harts Location). He delivered both bills’ Committee of Conference reports to the House. The potential increase to premiums under the bill mandating autism treatments would be a bit lower, at $9 to $10 per member per year, according to Rep. Susi Nord (D-Candia), who assisted Butler with the reporting.

Dollar limits to the autism benefits were added by the Senate and ultimately agreed to in the Committee of Conference. These helped keep the projected premium increases down to about .2 percent, Nord said, as opposed to a potential .4 percent increase.

“It’s minimal to the amount of benefit for families who are paying the premiums but not getting the benefits for their children,” she argued. Butler also maintained that the benefits could ultimately save schools and communities millions of dollars because children with autism would get more health care from insurance.

Nord said an independent study suggested 300 to 350 families would benefit from the mandate, which includes a treatment approach called “applied behavioral analysis.” The practice is said to produce significant improvements in functionality with life skills, communication and socialization. Prescriptions and counseling, as well as speech, occupational or physical therapy, would also be required under HB 569.

family law
Divorced parents will no longer have to go to court to recalculate child support when one child in the family turns 18, provided Gov. Lynch signs House Bill 1420. Sponsored by Rep. David Bickford (R-New Durham), the new law will allow child support to be automatically recalculated for remaining children when an older child becomes an adult.

“(It) keeps people from having to go to court as much and takes some of the burden off the courts,” Bickford said.

The House and Senate also have voted in a new task force on work and family. Proposed in House Bill 1271 and sponsored by Rep. Mary Gile (D-Concord), this will replace a similar task force that was created in 2007. The new 29-member body will try to identify ways the state can help citizens attend to both work and family in a productive way.

The task force will hold a series of public hearings throughout the state to get feedback on the issue from workers and employers, as well as state agencies and interested organizations.

The task force will also collect data on employers’ family-related policies and practices, develop an incentive-based program to reward employers for offering family-friendly benefits, and offer public education on how such policies can help the state’s economy prosper.

criminal justice
The Justice Reinvestment Initiative that passed the Legislature this spring has potential to bring comprehensive changes to criminal justice codes. It aims to simultaneously lower recidivism rates and save the state money by reducing jail time and increasing community supervision for nonviolent criminals. Senate Bill 500, sponsored by Senate President Sylvia Larsen (D-Concord), benefited from wide support in both the House and Senate.

The Parole Board, however, expressed grave concerns about public safety if current practices change. According to John Eckert, executive assistant to the Parole Board, who spoke out against SB 500, it would be a mistake to grant parole according to a formula. He says the Parole Board should instead be allowed to exercise judgment regarding whether or not an offender is safe to release.

The Parole Board itself will be the subject of a special study created by House Bill 1167. Sponsored by Rep. Laura Pantelakos (D-Portsmouth), the committee will compare New Hampshire’s Parole Board to those of other states to gauge its effectiveness. They’ll look particularly at the board’s make-up and procedures for hearings, with a report due in November.

In his 14 years as a New Hampshire legislator, Rep. David Bickford (R-New Durham) has seen efforts to re-calculate child support come and go. Many—about a dozen each year—make their way through the House or the Senate, but few succeed.

“We’re just Johnny-come-lately to make a change,” Bickford says. “We hire people, they work like dogs and come out with good reports, and the legislators say, ‘It’s over my head. We’ll study it and then get back to it maybe,’ and then we don’t. I see more interest in making changes. I’ve just never seen anything move so slow.”

Bickford, a member of the House Child and Family Law Committee, sponsored six of the 11 bills relating to child support this year, including House Bill 1474, which passed the House March 17. It would create a commission to move child support guidelines toward an “income shares” model.

States use one of three models to calculate child support payments. On paper, New Hampshire adopted the “income shares” model in 1988 to comply with federal child support regulations issued that year. It determines child support payments based on both parents’ incomes.

However, the actual formula used is closer to the “percentage of income model,” which sets child support as a flat percentage of the paying parent’s income, regardless of income level. (A sample child support calculator is online at http://www4.egov.nh.gov/DHHS_calculator/calc_form.asp).

“We should’ve been income shares,” Bickford says. “That’s what we said we were doing.” According to Bickford, that 1988 committee picked the wrong guideline.

Correcting that mistake has proven difficult. Legislative committees and outside studies—including a 2009 study conducted by the University of New Hampshire that advised a complete move to the income shares model—have recommended changes, but lawmakers have been slow to respond.

The most likely culprit, according to Bickford, is that child support is an issue many lawmakers just don’t understand. The subject is dense, and with hundreds of other bills to consider, legislators simply don’t have the time to devote to an issue that mixes heavy emotions with complicated formulas and legal minutiae. New Hampshire is one of the few states in which the Legislature is responsible for changes to child support guidelines; usually, it’s left to the courts or state agencies.

“They don’t get time to try and understand it, and that may have a lot to do with it,” Bickford says. “A number of people on the committee didn’t even know we were required to have guidelines by federal law.”

The commission established by HB 1474 would also look at the Melson Formula—a method developed by Delaware Judge Elwood Melson in 1989 that takes into account each parent’s income, establishes a “self-support allowance” for the parents, and factors in medical and child care expenses, plus standards of living.

A commission like that may be able to sway the overall formula eventually. In the meantime, even when change does come, Bickford says, it comes slowly.

On March 3, the House passed House Bill 1491, which revises the child support formula in cases where divorced parents have equal time with a child. Vermont adopted this provision in 1988 and other states have long had it on the books.

“Other states are so forward on these things,” Bickford says.

Multiple Support Orders

Bickford also sponsored House Bill 1420, which adjusts child support according to the number of children involved. For example, if a support order covers three children, the rate currently might be set at 40 percent of the paying parent’s income. When one of those children turns 18 and “ages out” of the support order, the rate remains the same. Parents must go to court to request changes—something they can do once every three years.

House Bill 1420 would allow judges to write future changes into the original child support order. Judges could specify, for example, that when one child ages out, the support rate drops to 30 percent, and so on. Texas uses similar regulations, on which Bickford based HB 1420. It passed the House March 17.

“[It] keeps people from having to go to court as much and takes some of the burden off the courts,” Bickford says.

Records Access

The Senate Commerce, Labor and Consumer Protection Committee currently is looking at House Bill 1165, which would add records from cell phones, Internet service and satellite TV providers to what the Dept. of Health and Human Services uses to locate people who aren’t paying child support. Sponsored by Rep. Edward Moran (R-Nashua), the bill was requested by DHHS, according to Timothy Frazier, the department’s legislative liaison.

While some lawmakers have expressed concerns about privacy, Frazier said the records are limited to a person’s name, address and employer.

Updating the law to include contemporary utilities is a “necessary part of what the child support office does,” Frazier says. “Without being able to locate responsible parents, we can’t do our jobs at all.”

Other News

The House Resources, Recreation and Development Committee will once again take up the issue of groundwater withdrawals in public hearings Tuesday, April 6. Senate Bill 56 adds considerations of financial responsibility to the purview of the legislative commission that looks at groundwater withdrawal issues. Senate Bill 411 would allow only the Department of Environmental Services to issue permits for large groundwater withdrawals.

One effort to repeal the “LLC tax” failed last week when House members voted 190-150 to instead study the tax further. The Senate is working on its own bill to repeal it, and Gov. John Lynch has indicated repeal is part of his soon-to-be-released deficit reduction plan.

The Senate will vote March 24 on Senate Bill 489 to expand gaming in up to six locations across the state. A successful amendment to that bill by Sen. Kathleen Sgambati (D-Tilton) would direct the first $50 million in revenue to public services recently cut from DHHS. The Senate Finance Committee voted 5-2 on March 18 to recommend the bill should pass.

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