The news from the State House halls is that Gov. Kelly Ayotte and state Senate President Sharon Carson have cut a deal that will allow the legislature to pass a budget on schedule. No continuing resolution (CR) and no “special session.”
Granite State politicos say that is very good news.
Anticipating a possible statement, Ayotte asked the Executive Council on Wednesday to approve a request for a special session. It agreed, but only if lawmakers could not reach a state budget agreement ahead of Thursday’s vote.
If the talks had failed — and they still can — the next option would be to adopt a continuing resolution to keep the state government fiscally afloat for 90 days, with a final compromise budget due by September 25.
“We must continue to do the people’s work and deliver on our promises for all of New Hampshire,” Ayotte wrote in her formal request to the Executive Council. “That means keeping our state open, especially during the summer months, to serve the people of our great state.”
Special sessions of the New Hampshire legislature are rare. The last one was called by Gov. John Lynch (D) when the Democrat-controlled State House ended the regular session with a $295 million budget shortfall.
And even if the last-second budget deal falls through, it’s unlikely there would be a special session this year, either. The legislature could instead pass a continuing resolution (CR) on Thursday to keep the government funded rather than go into special session.
CRs are fairly common. The state government needed one when Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed the Democrat-passed budget in 2019, for example.
Part 1, Article 50, of the New Hampshire Constitution grants the governor the ability to call the legislature into a special session. However, that requires Executive Council approval, and the session cannot include topics or initiatives outside the governor’s stated purpose.
Once the session is declared, the process is fairly cumbersome. It begins with a roll call of the House, with the name of each member read out — a lengthy process in a 400-seat chamber — and then rules would have to be voted on and adopted for how the new session would be run.
“They’ll probably adopt the current rules,” said former House Speaker Bill O’Brien, the Republican who presided over the lower chamber from 2010 to 2012. He faced off against Gov. Lynch several times.
Asked about what would happen if lawmakers a thrown into a special session in the budget battle, O’Brien was blunt.
“Well, what would happen then is whatever the legislature wants to happen,” he said. “Gov. Lynch, at one point, threatened to do it to me, and I told him, ‘You know, I would just open the session and then accept a motion to adjourn and we wouldn’t vote.’”
But that fight was between a Democratic governor and a GOP-led legislature. The scenario in 2025 is completely different, O’Brien acknowledged, since Republicans hold the Corner Office and majorities in both chambers.
Doug Scammon Jr. (R-Stratham), who first joined the legislature in 1968 and twice served as House Speaker (1987-1990, 2004-2006), said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so dramatic” as events in Concord this week.
“I’ve never been in a fight in my life, but I’ve always worked to get to a solution to the problem we were trying to solve in a way that was reasonable.”
Asked if he had any advice for Ayotte, House Speaker Sherm Packard (R-Londonderry), or Senate President Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry), Scammon said he thinks “it’s just best for them to go through it together and figure out how to achieve the best results.”
“There’s a way to get things done and it’s simple — you just have to sit down together and negotiate, get in agreement, and move on. That’s it.”
O’Brien was surprised by talk that Ayotte might have been willing to veto a CR if the budget deal failed.
“I want to be very careful with what I say,” he added. “You can veto the state budget, and if you can’t work it out, you can do a continuing resolution while you’re continuing to discuss things. But you don’t basically say, ‘I’m the one who’s going to be blowing off budgetary nuclear bombs all over the place until somebody agrees with me.’”
Those hardball tactics were at play at the end of last week when Ayotte promised to veto the budget largely because the legislature’s committee of conference decided not to adopt the full Group II benefits package she had promised.
The package is not small potatoes. Critics say it will cost the state about $340 million over the next decade and only applies to roughly 1,500 first responder employees.
Ayotte spent much of the debate denouncing the conference committee’s compromise package as a “backroom deal.”
“You can say that about negotiations within every committee,” O’Brien countered. “I know these individual legislators and I think they would very much like to include the governor and make sure, as best they can, there’s a compromise between different perspectives.”
If the wheels did come off and a special session were needed for a Republican governor and legislature to pass a budget, it wouldn’t be the first time, notes Salem Republican and former Speaker of the House Donna Sytek.
“In October 1977, my very first vote as a newly-elected legislator was for a budget developed in a special session called in July after Republican Gov. Meldrim Thomson vetoed the budget passed by the Republican House and Republican Senate.”
