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NH Legislature Begins 2012 Session
The NH Legislature began the 2012 session, with the House meeting on 1/4, to handle vetoes from the 2011 session, and 1/5, to consider retained bills from 2011. The Senate meet on 1/4 to consider bills passed by the House last fall.
NH CAN will again be tracking legislation important to our Partners. The tracking will be available again on Google Docs in Excel and in PDF formaton our website. The files will be updated weekly, based on updates from our NH CAN network. If there are bills you think we should be tracking, please forward the information to me at johndejoie@yahoo.com, and forward updates or alerts as they occur. We will be attempting to issue a NH CAN newsletter each Thursday during the legislative session.
NH CAN will be following new and retained legislation. Retained bills such as HB 296 which is a 2011 NH CAN Priority, as well as SB 309 which would remove many parts of private insurance coverage that consumers enjoy today. HB 309 is a 2012 Priority to maintain insurance parity for those with Autism Spectrum Disorders. New House bills have bill numbers and many have been scheduled. Senate bills are still in LSR format and will be updated as bill numbers become available and hearings are scheduled.
Stay tuned for updates and alerts as they become available.
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UPDATE: DHHS Proposed Rule Change to Home Visiting NH
We alerted you a few weeks ago about a proposed Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) rule change for the Home Visiting NH program. We asked for your support and boy did we get it! Prompted by Partner requests from Sue Watson (Family Resource Center - Berlin/Gorham) and Becky Berk (Children's Trust Inc.), you made sure the public hearing on this rule change was well attended. Now, we are giving you a heads up about the next public hearing.
The Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules (JLCAR) will consider the rule changes proposed by DHHS, and we suspect this will occur on January 20, but the date is not yet final. JLCAR will be considering whether DHHS has the statutory authority to make this change and will take public testimony on the proposed changes.
For more information or questions, please contact NH CAN Partners:
Becky Berk
Children's Trust
bberk@nhchildrenstrust.org
or
Sue Watson
Family Resource Center - Gorham, Berlin
Sue.Watson@frcberlin-gorham.org
466-5190 ext 303
For the full text of Rulemaking Notice, click here. |
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Accountability Committee Needed
As was mentioned at the Summit, NH CAN will be issuing a legislative report card at the end of this legislative session. We are looking for Partners to work to identify key legislation for children that we can utilize to rate legislators' support of children.
The committee will meet a few times over the next month to identify legislation we will evaluate legislators on. We will also meet later in the spring to review the data on these bills and to develop a format to report out the results to Partners and other interested parties.
The initial meeting will be on Tuesday January 17, at 10 AM. Continuing with NH CAN's efforts to make our events more accessible to those around the state, we will be tele-conferencing this meeting. We welcome you to join us in at 2 Delta Drive in Concord, but we also welcome you to join us through dial in. I will make the dial in number available as we get closer to the meeting date. Please forward questions or interests to me at johndejoie@yahoo.com.
NH CAN needs your involvement to make this report card as thorough and effective as possible
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