Josh Rogers

The GOP-led legislature is sending Governor Chris Sununu a $11.7B dollar budget and a bill to fund full-day kindergarten via Keno.

The outcomes are big wins for a governor who hasn’t always gotten his way with the legislature.

Governor Sununu says this year’s budget process has kept him busy meeting with Republicans, talking to lawmakers one-on-one, and trying to stick with the sales approach he’s learned works best.

Governor Chris Sununu’s pick to join New Hampshire’s Supreme Court, Bobbie Hantz, was questioned by the Executive Council Monday.  

House and Senate negotiators say they have a deal on a two-year state budget that spends less than the $11.8 billion plan passed by the Senate, which trimmed money from than the $11.9 billion proposal backed by House leaders that failed to win approval in April.

New Hampshire's legislative budget writers have until Thursday to reach agreement on a spending plan so the full House and Senate can vote next week. They have lots more work to do, but a decision that doesn’t involve money could shape the trajectory of this debate.

Update: 12:55 PM:

This bill has passed the New Hampshire House by a vote of 186-170. We will continue to update this story.

--

The New Hampshire House votes Thursday on a bill that would allow fetuses older than twenty weeks to be considered people in cases involving murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide. The debate over what are often called fetal homicide laws isn’t a new one in Concord, but with Republicans controlling the legislature and the governor's office, this year the bill is expected to become law.

Governor Chris Sununu thinks the state and Dartmouth-Hitchcock have cleared the air over their dispute about mental health staffing at New Hampshire hospital.

That was Sununu's take after a meeting Wednesday with Dartmouth-Hitchcock CEO Jim Weinstein.

The House finance committee has given its unanimous backing to a full-day kindergarten proposal tied to the lottery game Keno.

Under the bill, the state would send school districts that have full-day kindergarten an extra $1100 per pupil starting in 2019.

The bill would also authorize cities and towns to allow Keno. The state's take from the video lottery game would be deposited in the state's education trust fund. The account the new Kindergarten aid would be drawn from. Neal Kurk is chairman of the House Finance Committee.

Budget writers in the N.H. House are eyeing the lottery game Keno as a way to fund full day kindergarten. The state senate has always opposed Keno and Governor Sununu says he's yet to see the details of the plan.

The Senate Ways and Means committee has adopted revenue figures for the next state budget.

The numbers are higher than the senate's earlier forecasts, but about $20 million shy of what Governor Sununu proposed.

In the context of a $12 billion dollar budget, a $20 million difference may seem small, but reaching agreement was a challenge.

The final vote added $53 million dollars to what the senate projected last week by bumping up estimates on businesses taxes, real estate transfers, and the tax on interests and dividends.

Budget writers in the New Hampshire Senate are predicting Medicaid caseload will drop over the next two years.  But underestimating caseloads in the program that benefits the poor helped cause the current state budget shortfall.

Charlie Arlinghaus is expected to win confirmation as New Hampshire’s next Administrative Services Commissioner. Right now, Arlinghaus is serving as Governor Chris Sununu’s budget director, but for years he’s run the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy.

That free market think tank has deep - and increasingly conspicuous - ties to the Governor.

When Charlie Arlinghaus had his Executive Council confirmation hearing last week, Councilor Andru Volinsky noted something conspicuous about Arlinghaus’s resume.

A legislative committee is set to begin its review of controversial online comments of two members of the New Hampshire house.

 Laconia Republican Robert Fisher, who was outed as the founder of the misogynistic forum on Reddit called 'The Red Pill," will get his hearing Tuesday.

Ohio Governor John Kasich visited St. Anselm College today.

The former presidential candidate says he was glad to be back but says he's not here to lay the groundwork for another presidential run.

It’s a pregnant moment for state education policy. Republicans control Concord, and Gov. Chris Sununu ran on a promise to change how education is delivered here. Key aspects of that debate – full-day kindergarten, broad school choice, and the power of the state education commissioner were all debated Tuesday by lawmakers. But the message was mixed, and decidedly less conservative than last year's election results would suggest.

  Gov. Chris Sununu wants lawmakers in the New Hampshire house to get behind a bill strengthening New Hampshire's rape shield law.

The legislation is also backed by the family of Lizzi Marriott, the UNH student murdered 5 years ago by Seth Mazzaglia.

This bill springs from the legal strategy of Seth Mazzaglia’s defense team,  which sought to introduce evidence about Marriott’s sexual past during Mazzaglia’s murder trial.

The state’s highest court initially suggested that lMazzagia might be able to use such evidence during his appeal, before ruling it inadmissible.