State House Dome: Political operative leaving NH for Florida college job | Statehouse Dome

Wealthy Killion of Bow has labored on many presidential campaigns and for years headed the political motion committee that helped preserve Senate Republicans within the majority.

Only some months in the past, Killion left the legislation agency of Gallagher, Callahan and Gartrell, the place he had run a political technique store, Elevare Communications, to take a put up with the New Hampshire Faculty and College Council.

Killion has now accepted a put up with the Leesburg, Fla.-based Beacon Faculty to be its vice chairman of institutional development.

Created in 1989, the college accepts solely college students who’re disabled.

He begins that put up on the finish of this month.

“We’re near being empty-nesters so this appeared like the proper time to make a change,” Killion mentioned. “I’m going to overlook New Hampshire, as a result of I’ve had only a nice community of pals and colleagues right here. It’s been an awesome, 20-year run.”

For Killion, the transfer from Bow to the Sunshine State is a reunion.

Beacon Faculty’s president is George Haggerty, the educator whom Killion got here to New Hampshire to work for at Franklin Pierce Faculty.

“George reached out to me about this chance, and it was simply too good a suggestion to refuse,” Killion mentioned. “I wasn’t trying to go away New Hampshire, however I couldn’t move up the prospect to work with George once more.”

Final week’s assembly of the Home Guidelines Committee raised the chance the Home session Thursday on the College of New Hampshire in Durham may very well be a really quick one.

If Home Republicans don’t associate with the request of Home Speaker Stephen Shurtleff, D-Penacook, to increase the deadlines for appearing on payments, then just about all of them may die.

This might short-circuit makes an attempt to behave on just a few dozen payments on the Home agenda this week.

The listing contains the state’s 10-year freeway program (HB 2020), an impartial redistricting fee (SB eight) and Reasonably priced Housing Initiatives (HB 1632).

The refusal of Home Democrats to confess a invoice to forestall enterprise tax hikes early subsequent yr clearly has put the Home GOP in no temper to accommodate the desires of the bulk.

Gov. Chris Sununu mentioned final week he would preserve combating to revive that measure, sustaining that is the worst time to be elevating enterprise taxes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid waste to state coffers right here and throughout the nation.

In consequence, efforts by lawmakers to spend any important cash on new proposals for 2020 have gone down, one after one other.

Final week, state officers reported Could revenues $100 million beneath forecast tax and price collections with one month left within the state’s fiscal yr.

In contrast with a yr in the past, the state has collected $187 million much less in income.

Till this collapse, supporters had been hopeful this is able to be the yr that New Hampshire would undertake a legislation giving college districts cash for training assist as quickly as they started a public kindergarten program.

At present, the formulation relies on two-year-old enrollment figures, which implies a metropolis or city that adopts kindergarten should pay for it the primary yr.

However the Home Methods and Means Committee is recommending that invoice (HB 1691) die as a result of it isn’t even clear whether or not the present Schooling Belief Fund that pays for state assist to colleges “is solvent.”

Senate Democratic leaders proceed to place collectively packages of payments on precedence matters they hope to behave on later this month.

This week’s trigger was making it simpler for folks to vote within the wake of the pandemic.

The Senate Election Legal guidelines and Municipal Affairs Committee endorsed including to a Home-passed invoice (HB 1627) a number of modifications that embody permitting voters to register to vote on-line, allowing anybody to get an absentee poll while not having an excuse, and letting native officers course of absentee ballots earlier than Election Day.

“It’s of everybody’s curiosity that we do all the pieces in our energy to guard public well being, guarantee free and truthful elections, and work with our native election officers as New Hampshire continues to passionately take part in our democracy,” mentioned Sen. Melanie Levesque, D-Brookline, panel chair.

Sununu has stayed disciplined through the pandemic, ignoring the each day bashing state Democratic leaders have directed at him.

Final Friday, he snapped again in response to the declare of Democratic major rival Dan Feltes that Sununu has didn’t seek the advice of with Democratic legislative leaders.

Sununu mentioned that was “completely false,” noting that he has hosted weekly phone convention calls with any state legislators who need to query him concerning the disaster.

“You bought a man sitting on his sofa sending out video blogs attempting to get headlines,” Sununu mentioned on New Hampshire Right now with Jack Heath Friday, referring to Feltes.

A short while later, Feltes fired again on Twitter.

“We’ve got one of many worst long-term care crises within the nation, an unemployment system that was mechanically denying 1000’s of Granite Staters who lately misplaced their jobs, and we now have employees who’re afraid to return to work resulting from a scarcity of protections,” Feltes started.

“What is going on throughout this state and throughout this nation is heartbreaking and Governor Sununu must be extra targeted on the issues going through Granite Staters and fewer targeted on press conferences and taking part in politics.”

Given these unprecedented instances, it’s no shock that candidate filings had been unusually gentle when the sign-up season began final Wednesday.

Candidates could seem in particular person at Secretary of State Invoice Gardner’s workplace so long as they arrive in a gaggle of lower than 10 and all put on masks.

State election legislation already allowed candidates to enroll remotely by faxing or emailing their submitting kinds, together with the modest price to run.

The submitting interval runs by subsequent Friday.

Many anticipate extra aggressive primaries to floor on the Republican aspect as supporters and opponents of President Trump determine it is a good time to enter the fray.

Within the northernmost State Senate District, first-term Sen. David Starr, R-Franconia, faces a problem from State Rep. Erin Hennessy, R-Littleton.

Hennessy is a robust Sununu supporter who has served on the Home Finance Committee and was a gubernatorial appointee on the Legislative Advisory Board that recommended the administration on how finest to spend COVID-19 federal grant cash.

A shock candidate emerged within the particular person of retired Supreme Court docket Chief Justice Robert Lynn, who’s operating for a Home seat in Windham.

Earlier than turning into a decide, Lynn was referred to as a principled, conservative Republican. He’s operating in a city that has been reliably Republican.

“I really feel strongly that, as a way to protect the New Hampshire benefit, the Legislature should make a concerted effort to regulate the scale and price of state authorities, and I pledge to work with Governor Sununu to just do that,” Lynn mentioned in an announcement.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court docket final week accepted the enchantment of state prosecutors of the Hillsborough County Superior Court docket determination that struck down a Republican-sponsored voter residency legislation (SB three) as unconstitutional.

The legislation at subject equates registering to vote with state residency necessities.

The New Hampshire Democratic Occasion and League of Girls Voters maintained the legislation intimidated younger and new resident voters.

The excessive court docket suggested either side they’d till the tip of the month to determine whether or not to enter mediation to aim to resolve the dispute.

That’s not occurring. The Supreme Court docket later this summer season will announce a schedule for the enchantment to proceed.

The state misplaced certainly one of its fighters for essentially the most weak with the passing of Mary Mongan of Manchester.

Mongan, 94, rose from a U.S. Navy-trained nurse to commissioner of the Division of Well being and Human Providers underneath each Governors John H. Sununu and Judd Gregg.

Whereas in that place, she was referred to as somebody who demanded a excessive degree of efficiency and didn’t undergo fools.

She went on to change into the primary director of Hillcrest Terrace, a senior residing neighborhood in Manchester.

Mongan and her late husband, former Manchester Mayor John Mongan, had been a traditional energy couple who served their neighborhood in numerous methods.