As the State House voting chambers lie empty this summer, Gov. Chris Sununu’s desk has been flooded. Hundreds of bills passed by lawmakers in late spring have circulated from the Office of Legislative Services to the Secretary of State’s Office to the House speaker, the Senate president, and finally over to Sununu, who has signed the majority that have reached him.
Some signings, such as a group of bills in July limiting transgender rights in the state, have attracted plenty of attention. Others have slipped by with hardly a comment.
Here are some of the bills Sununu has signed that you may have missed.
Prohibition against racial profiling by police
New Hampshire police officers will soon be explicitly prohibited from racial profiling.
House Bill 596 is the first statute to define “profiling” – “the practice of relying solely on race, ethnicity, color, national origin, nationality, language, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, political affiliation, religion, socioeconomic status, or disability” in order for law enforcement to interview, detain, search, or stop a person. And it is the first state statute to formally ban the practice.
The bill would also prevent judges from factoring race or ethnicity into their sentencing decisions.
The legislation came out of a recommendation by the Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability, Community, and Transparency, the 2020 state panel tasked by Sununu to review the state’s policing laws and practices following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
But the bill does not detail direct penalties for police officers who commit profiling. Instead, officers found to be profiling may be disciplined by the Police Standards and Training Council, the state agency that trains and certifies law enforcement officers, said Rep. David Meuse, the Portsmouth Democrat who sponsored the legislation. Meuse testified that he had not included penalties in the bill so as to avoid political opposition. The bill narrowly passed the House, 186-185, but received a unanimous vote in the Senate.
Democratic lawmakers argued the bill would send a message, even without penalties.
“The experience of racial profiling is real for so many BIPOC Granite Staters,” said Rep. Linda Harriott-Gathright, a Nashua Democrat, referring to Black, Indigenous, and people of color. “I am proud to say that to be stopped by law enforcement purely because of the color of one’s skin is no longer an acceptable practice in New Hampshire.”
Guardrails on AI in elections
This month, Sununu also signed a law that would bar any person, campaign, corporation, or other entity from using artificial intelligence to produce a “deepfake” of a candidate within 90 days of an election in New Hampshire.
House Bill 1596 defines “deepfake” as “a video, audio, or any other media of a person in which his or her face, body, or voice has been digitally altered so that he or she appears to be someone else, he or she appears to be saying something that he or she has never said, or he or she appears to be doing something that he or she has never done.”
The bill makes an exception when the person creating the deepfake creates a clear disclaimer. That disclaimer must say: “This (fill in the blank) has been manipulated or generated by artificial intelligence technology and depicts speech or conduct that did not occur,” with the blank space to be filled with either “image,” “video,” or “audio” if it applies. The disclaimer must be in large and legible text for videos and still images, and clearly spoken audio for audio files.
The new law also doesn’t penalize a person who distributes a message created by AI if the person “did not know and had no reasonable way of knowing” that the message was a deepfake. And it gives protections for the press – media outlets are allowed to report on deepfake attempts and show them to viewers, as long as they are clearly labeled, and networks and publications that run political advertisements that include deepfakes will not be punished for doing so.
The law took effect Aug. 1 and currently affects New Hampshire’s elections; both the Sept. 10 primary and the Nov. 5 general election are fewer than 90 days away.
An expansion of medical cannabis qualifiers
Even after lawmakers scuppered prospects of legalized cannabis in New Hampshire this year, they did continue a yearslong expansion of medical marijuana.
This month, Sununu signed a bill that would allow people with debilitating or terminal medical conditions to be approved for therapeutic cannabis. House Bill 1278 , which takes effect Oct. 1, would allow those patients to receive cannabis if their doctor or provider feels that the benefits of cannabis would “likely outweigh the potential health risks for the patient.”
In order for the patient to receive a therapeutic cannabis card, the medical provider would need to sign a statement that details the condition or symptom and attest to their clinical opinion.
A bill aimed at child and adult hunger
After months of political wrangling that saw the bill’s ambitions reduced, Sununu has signed the final version of Senate Bill 499 . The bill, once dubbed the Hunger Free NH Act, brings two federal programs to the Granite State.
The first program, the Summer EBT program, allows parents whose children already participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program at their public school to receive $120 per child per summer in food assistance. That program is expected to bring about $4.5 million in federal funding into the state, according to New Hampshire Hunger Solutions, an advocacy organization that had pushed for the bill.
The second initiative, the Elderly Simplified Application Project, removes some of the application requirements for adults over 60 who are eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps. Those people will no longer need to interview to recertify for SNAP, will have more flexibility in verifying their income, and will need to reapply only every three years, according to the new law.
The bill began as a broader effort to try to reduce hunger in schools, in part by requiring that schools serve breakfast as well as lunch and promoting a “breakfast after the bell” initiative in which schools allow students to eat breakfast in class to help improve breakfast takeup rates. But while the Senate voted for the changes unanimously, some of those provisions were removed after the bill made it over to the House.
Trespassing changes
Starting Jan. 1, property owners who are receiving a “current use” tax credit will be allowed to post specific anti-trespassing signs that some Republicans say will help curb illegal immigration at the northern border.
Currently, landowners may receive a 20 percent reduction in the assessed value of their land – and with it a 20 percent reduction in property taxes – if they decide to designate their land for current use. That means they allow anyone to engage in “skiing, snowshoeing, fishing, hunting, hiking, or nature observation” on their property, unless it would interfere with agricultural operations.
House Bill 1018 allows those property owners to continue benefiting from that tax reduction. But it also allows them to set up “no trespassing” signs that say “No trespass except for skiing, snowshoeing, fishing, hunting, hiking, or nature observation.”
Supporters of the effort such as Senate President Jeb Bradley, a Wolfeboro Republican, argued the signs would help federal and local law enforcement agencies to better intercept undocumented migrants who might be using a property under current use to travel or camp.
A program to incentivize teachers – minus the funding
Sununu signed another law that would create the framework for a program intended to eventually help incentivize teachers to take jobs in rural and underserved areas.
House Bill 1079 would create the Rural and Underserved Area Educator Incentive Program, which would allow teachers who take jobs in eligible school districts to receive state incentive grants for up to four years.
The program would give those teachers $1,500 in their first year and increase the annual amount each year until the fourth year, when they would receive $4,500. Eligible rural schools would be determined by the state Department of Education based on the number of students enrolled per square mile, the income level of students, and whether the regional public health network in the school district has been deemed “rural” by the Department of Health and Human Services.
One thing missing: actual funding for the program. HB 1079 sets aside $1 of state money to pay for the grants – a placeholder that allows the governor to appropriate money later. According to the new law, the state may only disburse grants if there is money to do so; lawmakers are hoping to design the rules for the program and find funding for it in the next budget in 2025.
This story was originally published by the New Hampshire Bulletin .
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Racial profiling ban, AI guardrails, trespass signs: Bill signings you may have missed
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