State legislators are scheduled to meet in Concord on Oct. 10 to consider overriding Gov. Chris Sununu’s vetoes of more than a dozen bills they passed on subjects ranging from driver’s licenses to face masks to gender-specific places.
It’s not clear that lawmakers can garner sufficient support for any of these measures to reach the two-thirds majority required to override a veto. The four-term governor is a Republican, and his party controls the N.H. Senate, 14-10, and the N.H. House, 197-191.
On July 2, Sununu vetoed Senate Bill 501, sponsored by Sen. Donovan Fenton, D-Keene. The bill would have clarified an existing law to make it clear that driver’s licenses can be issued to people with valid work permits even if they are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
Sununu said in his veto message there was a “lack of specificity within the bill’s text.”
He said he was also concerned about portions of the bill that said it would apply in some cases to people living in the U.S. on a “conditional” or “temporary” basis.
“Given the ongoing and ever-evolving crisis of illegal immigration our country currently faces, such terms must be especially well-defined,” Sununu said. “This bill introduces harmful confusion.”
Fenton said the bill actually would have cleared up confusion in the existing law. He added that he thinks the governor was just looking for an excuse to veto the legislation.
“Immigrants are the backbone of our country, and from our founding have been an integral part of the United States of America,” he said at the time of the veto.
“Disappointingly, we have seen efforts to cast aspersions on our immigrant communities in recent years, and the designs of some to change our country from being welcoming to immigrants to shunning them.”
The Senate passed the bill on a voice vote, and the House passed it 191-169. Most Republicans were against the measure, and all Democrats present were in favor of it. Rep. Joe Schapiro, D-Keene, was a co-sponsor.
On July 3, Sununu vetoed House Bill 1093, which would have prohibited school boards from requiring students to wear face masks.
He noted in his veto message that when he rejected a nearly identical bill in 2022, he stated that disagreement with school boards’ decisions does not justify removing their decision-making power on the issue.
“One of the state’s foremost responsibilities is to know the limits of its power,” he said. “This is as true now as it was then.”
The Senate passed HB 1093 on a voice vote, and the House passed it, 187-184, on March 28, with most Republicans in favor and most Democrats against.
In a written statement to the House before it took up HB 1093, Rep. Kristin Noble, R-Bedford, argued that forcing children to wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic had a range of negative impacts, including on their learning, social development and emotional well-being.
“School boards are not qualified to make these types of decisions,” she said.
Rep. Peggy Balboni, D-Rye, wrote a statement against the bill.
“The intent of masking was to best protect our public students from infection, to allow for more students and families to return to in-person instruction and provide the safest environment for everyone in our public schools,” she said.
On July 19, Sununu vetoed House Bill 396, which would allow private and public organizations to use “biological sex” to classify people when it comes to athletic competition and for access to gender-specific spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms and prisons.
“The challenge with HB 396 is that in some cases it seeks to solve problems that have not presented themselves in New Hampshire, and in doing so invites unnecessary discord,” Sununu wrote in his veto message.
The bill passed the House, 192-184, with most Republicans in favor and most Democrats against. The Senate also approved it on a partisan basis, 14-10.
A full list of the governor’s veto messages can be found on his website — www.governor.nh.gov.
Rick Green can be reached at 603-352-1234, extension 1435, or RGreen@keenesentinel.com.
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