Additional commentary by
Timothy Horrigan
(member of the House Petitions & Redress
Committee)
last revised January 30, 2012
See Also:
As of late January, 2012, I am still a member of the New Hampshire House Petitions & Redress Committee. I will not be surprised if I get kicked off the committee eventually. On January 6, a somewhat threatening letter went out over the signature of committee chair Paul Ingbretson. You read it (along my reply and some other information) at:
I have treated my committee like any other committee and I treat its petitions like I treat all other legislative vehicles. I am respectful and objective, but I am also skeptical. I also assume that everything the committee does is— and should be— in the public domain.
I have been showing up at the public meetings and doing the people's work, which is more than I can say for the rest of the committee. About half the committee— Republicans and (to a lesser extent) Democrats alike— have stopped showing up. I can't blame my absentee colleagues. Ours is a frustrating committee assignment. We hardly ever make any actual decisions, we never know what's really going on, and it is unclear what our powers are. But it is still an important assignment.
I hope to stay on the committee even though my late father's last piece of political advice to me was that I should request a different committee assignment if the people returned me to the House after the 2012 election. He didn't like my committee assignment at all (although I actually enjoy it, most of the time.) We talked about this on his deathbed about three weeks before he passed on September 25, 2011.
Be that as it may, here is a list of the petitions introduced in 2012. The first one, Petition #11, was technically introduced during the 2011 session, which lasted three calendar years, beginning in December 1, 2010 and not officially ending until we adjourned just before lunch on January 4, 2012.
The sponsors are all Republicans. I have put up HTML pages about each petition, and I put several of them in some context. I will be fair to the petitioners— but I will also be fair to the other parties involved in these petitions, and I will be fair to all the people of my state. If I am tossed off the committee as a result, so be it. Here they are:
Petition 22: grievance of Joseph Haas
Petition 25: grievance of the Community Action Group to Save CMC Again
"CMC" = "Catholic Medical Center" (on the West Side of Manchester, NH) Back in the mid-1990s, CMC tried to merge with a secular hospital, Elliot Hospital. The effort failed, mostly because of CMC's religious traditions. More recently, beginning in 2009, CMC tried to merge with the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. The prime sponsor Rep. Kathleen Souza (R-Manchester) is strongly "pro-life"
Petition 29: [withdrawn]
Petition 32: grievance of 300-plus citizens of the City of Rochester
You can also download a PDF of each petition (just the petitions themselves) by clicking on the appropriate link in the following list:
PDF of Petition 25: grievance of the Community Action Group to Save CMC Again
PDF of Petition 32: grievance of 300-plus citizens of the City of Rochester
Some other petitions will be coming in "through Rules": that is, the sponsor will go before the House Rules Committee and ask permission to file the petition after the deadline. (That deadline was way back in June 2011.)
See Also:
Chairman Ingbretson's January 6, 2012 letter to Rep. Timothy Horrigan
Chairman Ingbretson's November 15, 2011 letter to DCYF Director Maggie Bishop
May 18, 2011 Nashua Telegraph editorial "Let's not confuse the law with ethics"
Official Petitions & Redress committee page (not much to see here)
January 26, 2012 NHPR story: "Budget Cuts Threaten Parental Rights" (low-income parents now no longer have lawyers in family court)
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