Finishing Up on 2025 Bills, Starting Up on 2026 Bills
While the Legislative Office Building is being renovated for the remainder of 2025 and through 2026, 1 Granite Place in Concord will be the new temporary meeting place for NH House committees.
When the calendar spills into September, it’s back to work for legislators even though no new legislative sessions have been scheduled yet. So what mischief and mayhem are we working on?
Setting the Scene
In the 2025 legislative session, a combined 1072 bills were filed in the House and Senate. Of these, 304 were passed and signed by the governor, 11 were vetoed by the governor, and 163 bills were retained in committee for more work.
While no additional work is required for bills that were signed, killed, or tabled, the full legislature must meet to decide whether or not to sustain the governors vetoes. Standing committees must also meet to continue working on bills that were retained (or set aside) for additional work earlier in the 2025 legislative session. Meanwhile the filing period for legislators to submit new bills for the 2026 session begins on Monday. And just to make things even more interesting, all legislative committee meetings and hearings for the remainder of 2025 and 2026 have been moved across town to Granite Place, while the Legislative Office Building is renovated and a new HVAC system is installed.
Dealing with Retained Bills
Bills are typically retained by a vote of the committee for a number of reasons.
To improve the bill. Sometimes members of the committee feel a bill needs more work and retaining it can add a few more weeks to work on it and build up consensus.
As a safety measure. Other times bills are retained as a back-up in case an identical or nearly-identical bill making its way through the process in the other chamber is killed or tabled.
Gamesmanship. Bills are also retained simply to delay making a decision on them. This sometimes can allow them to be killed more quietly when fewer people are paying attention.
Committee chairs may or may not decide to schedule work sessions for retained bills. When they do, it’s important to keep in mind that while work sessions are open to the public, it’s up to the chair to decide whether to consider any additional testimony or amendments. Amendments to retained bills are common. All retained bills, amended or not, will receive a vote from the committee and can be recommended as Ought to Pass or Inexpedient to Legislate. Retained bills are typically voted on by the full House in the first legislative session of the new year.
IMPORTANT: Meetings on retained bills are already taking place. You can view the times/dates committees are meeting and the bill they will be considering on the House Meeting Schedule.
The deadline for House standing committees to vote on and report out all retained bills is November 21.
Preparing to Deal with the Governor’s Vetoes
“Veto Day” is the day the legislature meets to consider whether to override or sustain the governor’s vetoes. While no date has officially been set yet, traditionally Veto Day occurs in October.
To override a veto, both the House and the Senate must vote by a 2/3 majority to pass a bill over the governor’s objections. While most vetoes are sustained by a fairly comfortable margin, veto votes on occasion can be very dramatic. For example, in 2019 the House and Senate overturned Gov. Sununu’s veto of a bill repealing the death penalty by exactly the required 2/3 margin in each chamber. Had a single state rep or senator voting to override the veto voted differently, the death penalty would still be on the books in New Hampshire.
Among the 2025 legislation vetoed by Gov. Ayotte that Senators and reps will vote on:
Book ban bill (HB 324): Ayotte vetoed a bill that would have required schools to adopt a complaint procedure allowing parents to request the removal of materials deemed "harmful to minors". In her veto message, Ayotte stated that current state law already provides a mechanism for parents to opt their children out of instructional material. She argued that the bill was an overreach by the state into local school matters and that it imposed subjective standards with monetary penalties for schools.
Anti-Trans bathroom bill (HB 148): Ayotte also vetoed a bill that would have allowed businesses and organizations to separate individuals by biological sex in facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms. Ayotte expressed concern that the bill was too broad and could create an exclusionary environment, while also raising concerns about the potential for litigation. Her predecessor, Gov. Sununu, vetoed a similar bill.
Religious vaccine exemptions (HB 358): Ayotte vetoed a bill that would have made it easier for parents to claim a religious exemption for childhood immunizations, stating that the state already had an established process.
Parental opt-in for surveys (HB 446): Ayotte vetoed a measure requiring schools to get explicit parental permission for non-academic surveys, such as the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. She cited concerns from public health officials that this "opt-in" approach would reduce participation and undermine the survey's reliability.
Mandatory video on fetal development (HB 667): The governor also vetoed a bill that would have required sex education courses to include specific computer-generated or ultrasound videos of fetal development, stating this was not an appropriate role for the state to mandate.
Other vetoes: Ayotte also vetoed bills related to partisan school district elections (HB 356), a less comprehensive cell phone ban (HB 781) than the one passed as part of the state budget, a bill (HB 319) relieving local school districts from their obligation to provide transportation for half-day kindergarteners, and a measure affecting town meeting default budgets (HB 475).
This Week: The House Bill Filing Period Opens—and Closes
This year’s House bill filing period starts on September 15th and ends at 4:00 p.m. on
September 19th. (This year, in a break from previous sessions where the Senate filing period ended much later than that of the House, this year’s filing period for the Senate’s has already ended).
During the filing period, legislators wishing to either file a bill or who have an idea for a bill they would like an attorney to draft for them use an online system to file a “Legislative Service Request” (or LSR) with the Office of Legislative Services (or OLS). Attorneys in OLS acknowledge the request, assign it an LSR number, and post the LSR number and the title of the bill online. You can find a searchable listing of all LSRs that have been entered into the system on the General Court website’s Public Listing of Legislative Service Requests for 2026 page. (LSRs for Senate bills have already started to appear. Because OLS attorneys are engaged in drafting the bill and final provisions aren’t available or haven’t yet been signed of on by legislative sponsors, unfortunately no additional public information about the bill is available while it is in the LSR stage. However, once a bill has been finalized and all sponsors have signed off, an actual bill number is assigned and the full bill can be posted online—a process that can sometimes drag on for weeks or months until all new bills have been posted.
Worth noting is that after the filing period ends, the only way for a new bill to be submitted is to receive a rare exemption from the House Rules Committee.
Bottom line: this week will be will a hectic race to the finish line for many legislators, including me.
Planning on Attending a House Committee Work Session or Hearing?
Make sure to come to the right place! With renovation work on the Legislative Office Building expected to continue for at least a year, ALL committee hearings and meetings have been moved to the first two floors of 1 Granite Place in Concord. To get there:
From I-93 N or S, take exit 15W.
At the lights, take a right to head north on Route 3 / Bouton St.
At the next set of lights, stay straight as the road turns into N. State St.
At the next set of lights, take a left on to Penacook St.
At the stop sign, take a right turn on to Rumford St. Granite Place is the next left turn.
There is ample parking in front of the building, with easy access to the front entrance. There is also parking available at the rear of the building.
The House of Representatives will continue to meet in Representatives Hall inside the State House on session days.