By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org
LITTLETON – Residents of six Grafton County communities have lost representation of their freshman Republican Representative on a House Committee because he has been removed from it by Republican House leadership.
It comes after state Rep. David Nagel, R-Gilmanton, the only physician on the House Health and Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee, was removed because he said he refused to vote along party lines.
“It seems like an epidemic,” said Nagel, who voted against ending the NH Vaccination Administration on the House floor which narrowly passed 189-181 (HB 524). In his second term, Nagel represents Gilmanton, Gilford and Laconia’s Ward 2 voters and is no longer on any committee, like state Rep. Joseph Barton, R-Littleton.
Barton said he was removed from the House Legislative Administration Committee after he voted with Democrats, so he could hear what their proposed amendment would do on March 12 during an executive session. They never got to a vote on that before he was removed.
House leadership did not immediately reply to a request for an explanation on the removal.
A videotaped portion of the meeting where the bill is discussed is here, beginning about 1 hour and 50 minutes into the meeting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwPytjjDKRg&list=PLfTxvjbRJcUJwXVF-xiC-VWKZRgX_cHSb&index=2.
Barton said Speaker of the House Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry “stacks committees I suspect based on the voiced intention of the member. I will no longer reveal my voting intentions to the Speaker for that reason. I think it allows for manipulation and abuse of the legislative process, and ought not to be promoted. Certainly this is the case with Rep. Greg Hill,” who chairs the House Legislative Administration Committee. Not all committees operate like this. Committees should be making bills before them passible if possible, especially those having bipartisan support. Instead. Rep. Hill wanted to ITL all the bills on his docket from the get go.
“The more I see how things work as a freshman legislator, the more disappointed I am. It seems if we don’t vote the way the Chair wants us to, he’ll recess the session, waste taxpayer money by rescheduling calling everyone back needlessly paying their mileage for a second time unnecessarily, just to affect the outcome of the Committee’s recommendations.
“I need to hear the public testimony, I need to hear from my constituents. I do listen to my conscience, but I’m really taken aback by the kind of gerrymandering of the committees to change the outcome of the committee’s recommendation,” he wrote to InDepthNH.org in response to a request for information on the incident.
Barton was replaced this past week by Republican Rep. Jeanine Notter.
The bill was a fairly non-controversial and bipartisan one to create a study committee to examine ways to improve usefulness of fiscal notes in bills, HB 157 https://gc.nh.gov/bill_status/results.aspx?adv=2&txtbillno=HB%20157
“When we met for our executive meeting on (March) 12th, I changed my position on a bipartisan bill the chair wanted to kill; in fact an ITL motion was already lined up so as to prevent a draft amendment from being considered (It’s of the opinion of Clerk that House Rule 45 prevents subsidiary motions (including amendments) from being introduced on a main motion of ITL. Because I wanted to hear oral arguments and other amendments on the bill regarding an oversight committee on fiscal notes, I voted against the motion resulting in a 6-6 split defeating the motion and allowing an amendment to be considered.
“The chair IMMEDIATELY called a recess so he could pull me in front of the Republican members of the committee and chastise me, for my vote, and for not attending a late-night SUNDAY zoom caucus called with little notice. No one asked if we were able to attend,” he said.
Rep. Alice Wade, D-Dover, who serves on the committee Barton was removed from, explained the incident from her perspective.
“The first two bills of the day went by without issue, but when the executive session opened for HB157, a motion was immediately made to ITL the bill despite the Democrats on the committee wanting to present an amendment that addressed some of the issues brought up during the hearing. A few of us pointed out that we wanted the chance to discuss the amendment with the committee before the bill was killed, but Chairman Hill prevented us from bringing it forward. Joe Barton originally seconded the ITL motion but said he wasn’t aware there was an amendment and wanted to hear it out.
“After a bit of deliberation, the vote on the ITL motion was held and Joe Barton voted with the Democrats, not necessarily because he supported the bill but because he didn’t like the idea of not hearing out an amendment that might improve the bill. Since the vote was tied 6-6, the motion failed, and Chairman Hill seemed surprised.
“We brought forward the amendment and discussed it for a short while, but just before the vote on the amendment happened, Chairman Hill called for a five-minute recess for the Republicans to discuss the vote which wasn’t unusual.
“After around 10 minutes into the recess, Joe Barton left the room where they were meeting and told us that he’d been yelled at for messing up the Republican’s strategy. He said he was an independent-minded guy and didn’t want to be forced to do something he disagreed with. A short while later, Steven Smith (Senior House Republican Leadership), joined the Republican meeting in the other room. Around 30 minutes after the recess began, they came out of the meeting and Chairman Hill recessed the entire session for the rest of the day and told us that we’d be meeting again the following week to finish the rest of our bills.”
Wade continued: “The Dems expected at the time that they had recessed our session to replace Joe Barton, and I was later informed that he was sent to the Speaker’s Office and was yelled at again for not following their strategy.
“The following week, we were told that Joe Barton was replaced with Jeanine Notter. Joe Barton was extremely frustrated by this and sent a few emails to the entire committee arguing against his replacement. The following week, another exec session was held to finish off the rest of the bills and they forced the Dems to do a reconsideration vote on the bill that Joe Barton had tied the ITL vote on. I was also told later that Joe Barton was removed from the Liberty Caucus as well.”
“This pattern of removing members for voting against the party started with David Nagel refusing to vote for anti-vaccine bills in HHS, but we didn’t expect them to crack down so hard over a single vote for a freshman member (Especially on a bill that wasn’t that important) prior to this incident. It feels like to a lot of people they’re trying to create an environment of fear where Republicans aren’t allowed to vote against any party priorities or they’ll face intimidation or retribution,” Wade said.