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In 2002, the first Harry Potter movie hit the big screen, Gov. Jeanne Shaheen was making her first (unsuccessful) bid for U.S. Senate, and Nelly was singing it is “Hot in Herre.”

And the per-pupil school revenue for a New Hampshire public school student was $14,184.

Twenty years later in 2022, that number was $22, 738 — an increase of 60.3 percent and the third-biggest jump in inflation-adjusted revenue per student in the country. Only Illinois (61 percent) and  New York (81.4 percent) rose more.

And yet, despite the explosion in spending, New Hampshire Democrats at the state and local level say taxpayers need to pay even more.

In Nashua, the school board has approved a new $131,061,021 budget, a 4.49 percent increase over the prior year’s operating budget, on top of record spending.

In Concord, residents will see a 2.9 percent education tax increase thanks to the $107.9 million school budget. That total is 1.58 percent higher than Concord’s previous school budget — once again, already a per pupil record.

Manchester is also considering a record $227.9 million school budget. Mayor Jay Ruias calls the school total a compromise figure, and part of his overall effort to get the school and city budgets under control after years of former Mayor Joyce Craig’s leadership. 

At the state level, both former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig and Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington support even more tax dollars for public schools. Craig is running on a pledge to “boost the state’s investment in public education.” And Warmington wants to shut down Education Freedom Accounts entirely and add that funding to public schools.

Neither Craig nor Warmington responded to a request for comment about soaring school spending, or the fact that it coincides with standardized test scores that are flat or falling.

The reason for New Hampshire’s high rank in per pupil spending is its decline in enrollment.

“Since 2002, student enrollment numbers in the Granite State have dropped from 207,684 to 165,095, which represents a decrease of 42,589 public school students, or about a 20.5 percent decline during the past 21 years,” the state Department of Education reported last year. The state’s public schools lost another 2,262 students (1.4 percent of enrollment) in 2022 alone.

Drew Cline, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, says nobody should be surprised by these numbers.

All that spending for public school students comes as the state faces a potentially expensive court case on education funding. The ConVal decision, currently appealed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, almost doubles the state’s portion of per pupil spending.

The ConVal decision increases the state’s adequacy aid grant $4,100 per student to at least $7,300. If the decision stands, it would represent a minimum $500 million annual tax increase.

Both Craig and Warmington have been endorsed in prior political campaigns by the state’s two teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Educators Association. The union presidents, AFT’s Deb Howes and the NEA’s Megan Tuttle, also did not respond to a request for comment.

Warmington, Craig, and the unions, are all staunch opponents of New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Accounts, the school choice program that allows families to opt out of the public school system.

“We don’t take taxpayer dollars to subsidize private schools,” Warmington told WMUR last year. 

Both of Warmington’s children attended the elite Tilton School for secondary education, an independent boarding and preparatory school in New Hampshire. Tilton charges $38,500 for day school and nearly $67,000 for boarding school.

Craig said earlier this year if elected governor, her first budget would see an increase in spending for public schools.

“We need to fund public education in this state,” Craig said. “Right now, we are not.”

Former rising Democratic Party star Mark Brave once thought he could play the race card and beat the rap over his alleged mishandling of taxpayer funds.

After he was arrested, the former Strafford County sheriff appeared to believe he could leverage a sweetheart deal by rejecting plea bargains from prosecutors.

Instead, after delaying the case for months, Brave may now face even more criminal charges if he decides to face a jury.

Brave is currently facing up to 64 years in prison on Stratford County charges for allegedly stealing taxpayer money to pay for his extramarital affairs and then repeatedly lying about it to a grand jury.

Assistant New Hampshire Attorney General Joe Fincham told Rockingham Superior Court Judge Andrew Schulman in a June 12 motion he plans to seek more indictments against Brave if the case does go to trial as scheduled on Aug. 5. 

Brave, who made history when he was elected New Hampshire’s first Black sheriff, could get another record in the books by becoming the state’s first elected sheriff to go to prison. He was a progressive favorite who ran a pro-Black Lives Matter campaign to reform law enforcement before he was caught stealing money to pay for multiple out-of-state liaisons with many different women who were not his wife, according to court records.

These possible new indictments would likely cover Brave’s alleged misdeeds as sheriff in Strafford County and his lies to Rockingham County court officials after he was charged. According to Fincham, Brave knew he could be charged with more by turning down a deal and going to trial.

“During prior hearings in this matter, the state informed the court and counsel for the defendant that in the event a plea agreement was not reached in this matter, the state would consider superseding the Strafford County indictments currently pending in this matter, as well as potentially seeking additional indictments in Rockingham County for conduct that has occurred during the litigation of the Strafford County indictments,” Fincham wrote. 

While he was being investigated last year, Brave accused members of the Strafford County Commission of targeting him because they were racist. All three members of the commission are elected Democrats.

Once he was indicted, Brave’s case was moved to Rockingham County to avoid a conflict of interest. It’s in Rockingham County where Brave is accused of lying to court officials about his income and his place of residence. 

Brave was assigned a free public defense attorney last year when he claimed he was essentially broke following his divorce. However, it came to light Brave was, in fact, flush with cash after the sale of his marital home in Dover. He had enough money to buy a 1968 Porsche and pay a year’s lease on an apartment in Massachusetts, according to court records.

On top of hiding the money from the court, Brave also violated an order from Schulman to live in New Hampshire pending trial. Brave got around that order by telling the court he was living in a Dover apartment while he was really living in Massachusetts. 

When Brave’s lies were discovered, Fincham threatened to charge him with theft for receiving his New Hampshire sheriff’s salary while living out of state and revoke his personal recognizance bail. According to Fincham, Brave is required to live in New Hampshire as an elected official. Brave had been collecting his salary while out on paid administrative leave.

Brave got out of that jam by resigning his position in December in exchange for not going to jail right away.

Brave turned down a plea agreement offered by prosecutors earlier this year, and refused to sign on to a mediated plea agreement reached last month. That forced Schulman to schedule a trial for the first week of August.

Fincham’s motion seeks to hold the trial schedule since there’s still a chance the case can be resolved with a negotiated plea. According to Fincham, talks between prosecutors and Brave’s attorney are ongoing.

If those talks fail and the case goes to trial, Fincham said the new indictments he plans to seek could come weeks before the jury is selected, giving little time for either side to file any necessary motions on the charges.

Fincham notes he will also need more time than Schulman has scheduled to call the numerous out-of-state witnesses he has planned. 

The Rockingham County venue for the trial is another issue that needs to be resolved before trial, according to Fincham. Brave has the constitutional right to have the trial on the original charges held in Strafford County. So far, there’s been no court finding that Brave cannot have a fair trial in Strafford County, and Brave has not formally asked to change the venue from his home county, Fincham wrote.

New Hampshire’s Supreme Court ruled this week that Granite State courts have seen enough of Portsmouth attorney Justin Nadeau, disbarring him after he was caught doctoring evidence in his ethics case before the Professional Conduct Committee.

“It’s difficult for me to imagine something worse for a lawyer to do,” one PCC member said, according to the court records.

Nadeau, once a Democratic candidate in the First Congressional District, was brought before the PCC after he allegedly got a client who was impaired by a traumatic brain injury, Exeter woman Shawn Fahey, to give him $300,000 in loans in 2018. Nadeau allegedly secured the loans with a condo he did not own, tax liens, and the anticipated proceeds from a pending defamation lawsuit he had against the Portsmouth Police Department.

Nadeau allegedly told Fahey until the defamation lawsuit was resolved he was “strapped for cash.”

The lawsuit against Portsmouth’s police stems from an arrest of Portsmouth man Christian Jennings. Jennings was allegedly found with quantities of marijuana, Ecstasy, amphetamines, a loaded gun, and $42,000 in cash. According to police, Nadeau was handling an $85,000 marina investment for Jennings before the arrest, though the marina deal never closed. Nadeau brought the lawsuit when police opened an investigation into whether or not he was laundering drug money. The defamation case was settled in 2019.

Nadeau also allegedly hid the $165,000 he collected after he sent Fahey to a Massachusetts attorney to handle her injury case. Nadeau reportedly collected referral fees from the Massachusetts attorney as well as other money related to Fahey’s case.

According to the Supreme Court’s disbarment order released Tuesday, Nadeau slow-walked producing documents related to the case to the PCC. The Democrat even destroyed his computer before the hearing. Nadeau claims he made all the appropriate conflict of interest disclosures and eventually produced printed copies of the letter he claimed he sent her.

However, James Berriman, the computer expert hired by the PCC, looked through Nadeau’s office server and found the dates on the documents Nadeau gave to the committee were fake, and the documents were created well after he took the money from Fahey.

“As a member of the PCC observed at oral argument before the PCC, ‘the Berriman Report and the spoliation of evidence, in my mind . . . is one of the most significant violations I have seen in decades of practice before the ADO before joining this committee,’” the court ruling states.

Nadeau argued that disbarment is too harsh a penalty, but the Court found that his “deliberate, multi-year effort to deceive the disciplinary authority” and the ethics complaints involved in Fahey’s case make un-lawyering him appropriate.

Nadeau’s father, J.P. Nadeau, agreed to resign from the New Hampshire Bar Association in 2009 after he was investigated for a conflict of interest for representing a construction company involved in a dispute with Justin Nadeau.

Nadeau once had hopes of higher office, running an ultimately unsuccessful campaign against then-Congressman Jeb Bradley (R). Nadeau’s campaign was spearheaded by Steve Marchand, Portsmouth’s former mayor who ,himself went on to unsuccessful runs for higher office. In recent years, Marchand has been warned by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office for skirting campaign laws.

After taking heat for picking the $180 million design for the proposed new Strafford County Nursing Home over a $50 million bid, and then saying he never saw the less expensive bid, Commissioner George Maglaras said Wednesday the low bid wasn’tould work.

“The commission picked the firm we thought had a track record of building larger nursing homes and there are other written responses required within the answering of the RFP,” Maglaras told NHJournal.

Republican members of the Strafford County Delegation blasted Maglaras, a Democrat, and the two other Democratic Commissioners this week after learning about the lower bid from EGA Architects. Rep. Cliff Newton said the Commission kept him and other delegates in the dark about the lower-cost bid on the 215-bed proposal.

“Strafford County Commissioners and administration never informed the delegation of the EGA’s lower cost plan. Instead, they chose a much more expensive and institutionalized building plan without exploring different options that would have been acceptable to the entire delegation,” Newton said.

When contacted Tuesday about the EGA bid, Maglaras initially told The Rochester Voice he never saw EGA’s bid. That’s despite the fact the NHJournal found records showing the Commission was presented with all six bids, including EGA’s, on the project in 2022 when they voted to go with Warrenstreet. By Wednesday, Maglaras blamed politics for the kerfuffle, and said he was misunderstood.

“I said that there was never a $40 million proposal put before us,” Maglaras said. “These claims by some of the Republican members are misguided and are inflammatory and political in nature.”

According to Maglaras, the EGA bid quoted the Commission a cost of $350 a square foot to build the new home. But that number was never going to work, he said. EGA cited its work building the Carroll County Nursing Homes 10 years ago in its bid to Strafford. However, the construction company hired by EGA in Carroll told a slightly different story, Maglaras said.

“I brought in Bonnette, Page and Stone who was the contractor that actually built the Carroll County Nursing Home designed by EGA and they told the entire delegation in a public meeting it would cost $600 a square foot to construct a similar facility today and that the (Carroll County) home does not meet present federal design standards,” Maglaras said. “Architects don’t build buildings, construction companies do. You need to compare apples to apples not apples to cherries.

Comparing Maglaras’ math, that means the EGA bid would have cost as much as $83 million at $600 per square foot, instead of the $50 million the company quoted. The Warrentstreet project costs close to $1,300 per square foot.

The Republicans on the delegation have twice blocked the Commission from getting bonds for the $180 million proposal, and the Nursing Home project is currently stalled out. Maglaras wants to see the project get back on track.

“We have offered to meet with all the parties to see if we can’t move the process forward. The offer still stands and we will be reaching out to them,” Maglaras said.

A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money, the saying goes.

Unless it’s taxpayer money. 

Strafford County’s quest for a new nursing home stalled out last year when members of the county legislative delegation balked at the astronomical $170 million proposal pushed by county commissioners. Representatives like Cliff Newton (R-Rochester) blocked the commissioner’s request to take out a massive bond for a 215-bed nursing home proposal complete with a golf course and waterfall.

But now, Newton is flabbergasted to learn commissioners ignored a $50 million bid when they originally opted for a grander vision.

“It boggles my mind they did that,” Newton told NHJournal.

When the commissioners voted unanimously to go with the extravagant bid submitted by architectural firm Warrentstreet in May 2022, it passed over the $49 million bid from EGA Architects. The lower bid was never shared with the delegation, Newton said.

“They did it without notifying the delegation of anything,” Newton said.

Commission Chair George Maglaras denied ever seeing the lower bid, telling The Rochester Voice on Tuesday, “That proposal never came before us.”

However, the EGA bid was presented to the commission at the May 26, 2022 meeting, according to meeting minutes on file. Maglaras did not respond to a request for comment from NHJournal.

The county’s all-Democrat commission has been working for years to put together a winning proposal for a new nursing home. Twice the delegation stopped its plans over cost concerns. Newton fully supports a new nursing home for county residents, but said the expensive plans favored by the commission don’t make sense for taxpayers.

Frustrated by a lack of a new, lower-cost proposal, Newton and others took a trip to Carroll County to tour the nursing home there. Impressed by that facility, put together by EGA, they spoke to company representatives about doing the same for Strafford County. That’s when Newton and other delegation members found out EGA, in fact, submitted the $50 million bid.

“I knew that we were not being told the whole story on the county nursing home project,” Newton said.

Rep. Joe Pitre (R-Farmington) said commissioners wasted time and taxpayer money pursuing the high-cost project. So far, the county has spent close to $2 million developing the upscale Warrentstreet proposal.

“When I spoke with [EGA] they said yes, they could build one, but would have to adjust for inflation to a cost of approximately $64 million, or $15 million more because of the delay,” Pitre said.

Newton and Pitre started digging and found the EGA bid submitted in April 2022, as well as the record on the May 2022 vote.

“Strafford County commissioners and administration never informed the delegation of the EGA’s lower cost plan. Instead, they chose a much more expensive and institutionalized building plan without exploring different options that would have been acceptable to the entire delegation,” Newton said. “As a result of their actions, we have not approved a bond for an extravagant nursing home. We have gone nowhere in two years. We have spent $2 million of taxpayer money with nothing to show for it, and that is just plain wrong.”

Newton believes the commissioners want to build a facility that can compete with the many private nursing homes already in Strafford County. The county home is a service for county residents, and it is supposed to be there for the people, he said.

“Instead, they’re chasing revenue by trying to compete with private nursing homes,” Newton said.

The state’s second domestic abuse trial against former Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jeffrey Woodburn ended in a hung jury Thursday.

Jurors were unable to come to a unanimous guilty or not guilty verdict following the one-day trial in Coös Superior Court, forcing Judge Peter Bornstein to declare a mistrial.

Woodburn’s lawyer, Mark Sisti, told NHJournal he suspects jurors could not agree on whether or not his client acted in self-defense when he bit the alleged victim during a 2017 altercation.

“Most of the facts were already stipulated. The real question is whether it was self-defense,” Siti said.

One of the jury’s questions to the court during deliberation sought clarification on what constitutes a criminal assault.

“Is grabbing someone’s phone considering the time, place, and circumstances an act of assault or confinement?” a juror asked.

Bornstein responded that the facts were up to them to determine based on what they heard at trial and that they should look at the incident in total.

The judge wrote back, “You should consider all the facts and circumstances at that time and place based on the evidence presented.”

The vote split among jurors was not known Thursday, and Sisti said he would not be able to communicate with any jurors for 30 days following the trial. What’s also unknown is if the state plans to try for a third trial against Woodburn.

Reached for comment, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella’s spokesman, Michael Garrity, told NHJournal no decision on a potential third trial has been made.

“We have not made any decision on whether to retry this matter. We will make that decision after due consideration,” Garrity said.

Sisti is prepared to keep fighting if there is a third trial, saying Woodburn has no intention of backing down.

“We’re going all the way. This is a case he’s not going to drop,” Sisti said.

Thursday’s mistrial shows the strength of Woodburn’s position, according to Sisti. The state likely cannot prove the case to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, he believes.

The New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, which has commented on the case in the past, did not offer a take on Thursday’s mistrial. Instead, it sent NHJournal a statement reminding all survivors of domestic violence that help is available.

“Survivors should not feel alone in New Hampshire. An advocate is available 24/7 and is a phone call away. The statewide hotline is 1-866-644-3574.”

The charges stem from Woodburn’s actions related to three separate incidents, according to court records. In the first instance, Woodburn and the woman arrived in separate vehicles at a Dec. 15, 2017, Christmas party. The woman agreed to drive him home so that Woodburn would be able to drink at the party. During an argument on the drive home, Woodburn had the woman pull over, and during a struggle over his phone, he bit her hand, according to court records.

On Christmas Eve of that same year, Woodburn kicked the door to the woman’s house after she refused to let him inside. Earlier that year, in August 2017, he reportedly kicked her clothes drier, breaking the appliance, according to court records.

The woman went on record telling Bornstein that during one of her struggles with Woodburn, she tried to grab his phone without permission.

Woodburn was convicted in 2021 on two counts of criminal mischief, one count of domestic violence, and one count of simple assault. Last year, the New Hampshire Supreme Court overturned the simple assault and domestic violence convictions, ruling Woodburn was denied a fair trial because he had been prevented from arguing self-defense in front of the first jury.

The criminal mischief convictions and 30-day jail sentences are both still pending another appeal to the state Supreme Court. 

Woodburn was formally charged in August 2018 but still ran for reelection to the state Senate despite calls for his resignation. He won the Democratic primary but lost in the general election.

At the trial of alleged FTX fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried on Monday, former executive Nishad Singh admitted to being a “straw donor” who helped SBF distribute millions of stolen dollars to Democratic candidates and committees across the country.

Among them: All four members of New Hampshire’s federal delegation and the state Democratic Party (NHDP).

And according to the available records at the OpenSecrets website, all four candidates still have stolen cash on hand.

“My role was to click a button,” Singh testified. Those “clicks” included $5,000 to the Granite State Democratic Party and $2,900 to each of New Hampshire’s four congressional Democrats last year. And SBF funneled thousands more to Hassan and the NHDP during the hotly-contested 2022 campaign.

In fact, Hassan accepted a total of $30,800 between her campaign and her PAC from Bankman-Fried, while the NHDP collected $20,000. That ranks the two as number five and six on the list of Democrats and Democratic organizations to total campaign cash from FTX and its affiliates.

And those aren’t the only problematic donations for New Hampshire Democrats. Hassan also received a $10,000 contribution last year from disgraced U.S. Senate Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), currently facing bribery charges after cash and gold bars were found in his home. Hassan has declined to return the money or answer any questions about it.

Not to be outdone, Shaheen’s PAC gave Menendez a $5,000 donation just three days before his more recent indictment. Her staff blames a “clerical error” but declines to say if she’s going to ask that the money be returned.

“It’s another colorful data point of the bigger picture that a culture of brazenness has taken hold,” says Dan McMillan with the campaign finance reform organization Save Democracy In America.

The fact Hassan and Shaheen haven’t made a greater effort to distance themselves from Menendez shows they are now part of a system that largely ignores voters and treats campaign donors and lobbyists as their real constituents, McMillan told NHJournal.

“‘We, the people,’ are now a nuisance, a necessary evil, an obstacle to [politicians] getting done what they need to get done.”

Bankman-Fried wanted to get things done, too. According to this week’s testimony, he saw donating to Democrats as a way to raise his profile, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Singh said the contributions, largely to center-left recipients, were made in his name for optics purposes. ‘It was useful for my name to be associated with some donations, even if the end recipient understood they were really coming from something else,’ he said.”

McMillan said these are all examples of a system that rewards politicians who can raise the most money. The money gives the politicians greater access to the levers of power, and it buys favorable treatment for the donors, he said. The lax federal regulation of the cryptocurrency market is, in part, a result of donations like the ones Bankman-Fried made, McMillan believes.

Save Democracy In America is promoting a taxpayer-funded campaign system, and McMillan argues it’s necessary because donors have too much power.

“Donors have become the gatekeepers, they are picking the candidates people are allowed to vote for,” McMillan said.

For example. Democratic donors are starving any candidate who might challenge President Joe Biden despite Biden’s deep unpopularity. “Donors all closed ranks and now Democratic voters are not going to have a choice this cycle on a presidential candidate,” McMillan said.

As long as politicians like  Menendez, Hassan, Shaheen, Kuster, and Pappas are incentivized to get money from donors, they will do just that. McMillan wants to use campaign money to leverage power back into the hands of voters. He’s hopeful it will work.

“We’re not a country like any other. This is the only country on Earth that stands for something. Being an American is about ideals,” McMillan said.

All four Democrats have declined to respond to repeated questions about these donations.

Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave is facing his arraignment on eight felony charges this week with confidence and determination.

But with no legal counsel.

Brave, on leave from his job since he was charged with allegedly stealing $19,000 in taxpayer money to fund his secret love life, still has no attorneys representing him. But he hopes to close the sale on his $1.1 million four-bedroom Dover home in time to pay lawyers.

“I plan to rehire Shaheen and Gordon on Friday, following the final closing on the sale of my house,” Brave told Foster’s Daily Democrat. “I have a call into them and am hoping they will represent me on Thursday, and I can settle up with them on Friday after the sale has been finalized and I have funds wired.”

As of late Tuesday afternoon, court records showed no lawyers had entered an appearance to represent Brave. 

Attorneys with the politically well-connected Shaheen and Gordon law firm represented Brave earlier this year while the state attorney general and local police were investigating Brave’s behavior. But that relationship seemed to have taken a break before New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella charged him.

Brave’s case was preemptively moved to the Rockingham Superior Court to avoid any potential conflict of interest in the Strafford Superior Court. Brave’s arraignment is scheduled for Thursday at 12:30 p.m.

The home Brave shared with his wife, Jamie Brave, is listed for sale with a $1,150,000 price tag. Real estate websites indicate a sale is pending. Records on file with the Strafford County Registry of Deeds showed Brave and his wife are not married at this time. Janie Brave goes by her maiden name, Jamie Spencer, in the records. 

Brave is accused of using county money for travel to Florida, Maryland, and Boston to spend time with different women. At one point, when Brave was confronted with video evidence that he used taxpayer funds for a romantic weekend with one woman in Boston, Brave was unable to recall her name, according to court records.

“Her name is … um … Let me see, I forget which one this is. I’ve been dating a lot of people,” Brave testified before the grand jury.

Brave is accused of stealing the money and lying to the grand jury. He is charged with eight felonies, including theft, perjury, and falsifying evidence, and could be sentenced to up to 64 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

County officials contacted the attorney general this spring when irregularities with Brave’s spending were discovered. Brave has maintained his innocence throughout the investigation, blaming the accusations on political bullying from the county commissioners.

Like Brave, all three elected commissioners, George Maglaras, Robert Watson, and Deanna Rollo, are Democrats. At one point, Brave accused Maglaras of racism. Brave told the Rochester Voice that Maglaras called him “the token Black guy, and the token’s gonna be up soon.”

Brave is New Hampshire’s first Black elected sheriff, taking office in 2020 on promises of police reform. However, The Boston Globe reported this month Brave misrepresented his education credentials and law enforcement experience when he ran for office.

Brave claimed to have completed a master’s degree in forensic psychology, as well as bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) in forensic psychology. However, The Globe found Brave did not earn any of those degrees and that he was never even enrolled in SNHU’s forensic psychology program. 

Despite years of trying to push remote legislating, Granite State Democratic lawmakers must show up to do their jobs.

United States District Court Judge Landya McCafferty this week dismissed the long-running lawsuit against Speaker Sherman Packard (R-Londonderry) over House rules requiring in-person attendance for representatives.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, New Hampshire Democrats have aggressively pursued policies to both mandate behavior in the cause of public health and to rewrite rules to accommodate those in fear of the virus. Mask mandates have proven to be largely ineffective in stopping the spread of COVID, and there is little evidence that restricting the behavior of healthy Americans had any benefit on health outcomes.

But that hasn’t stopped Granite State Democrats, who have past three years in court pushing to override House rules requiring in-person attendance to conduct the people’s business.

Packard has maintained the ultimate authority to set the rules lies with the House and not the courts. Judge McCafferty agreed.

“The order speaks for itself,” Packard said in response to the ruling. “It reaffirms our belief there is a democratic process by which the House adopts its rules, and that process is not subject to court intervention.

“Over the last two terms under my administration, we have worked tirelessly to keep legislative business moving forward. My hope is that we continue to work together and make some positive changes to benefit all New Hampshire citizens.”

McCafferty showed deference to Packard’s legal position, which was bolstered by a First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling issued last year. The authority to set attendance rules belongs to the House.

“The court is not unsympathetic to plaintiffs’ legitimate concerns. But it cannot base its decision on whether it agrees with the procedures voted upon by the New Hampshire House of Representatives,” McCafferty said.

Lawmakers have been meeting in person since the start of the 2022 House session, and all votes are done in person. There are remote options to participate in hearings, but that does not include the ability to cast votes remotely.

Democrats sued Packard, claiming he used the attendance rules in order to gain a partisan advantage during the pandemic. Several Democratic lawmakers, like Rep. David Cote (D-Nashua), simply refused to attend House sessions out of fear of the virus. But because Cote continued to run for reelection — and the voters of Nashua reelected him — he “served” without casting a single vote on behalf of his constituents for three years. In fact, he was never even sworn into office after his 2022 reelection. 

Cote eventually resigned in July.

Fall is here, and students are back in their classrooms, but Somersworth’s Assistant School Superintendent Dana Hilliard is still not in the building.

Hilliard, who is also the city’s long-time Democratic mayor,  was scheduled to return to his school job Monday after months of leave over alleged unethical conduct. That was until last week, when 94 percent of the local teachers union, the Somersworth Association of Educators, voted against him coming back.

There are currently no calls for Hilliard to leave his elected position as mayor despite allegations of conflicts of interest. In Somersworth, the mayor and city council have the final vote on approving the school budget, meaning Hilliard essentially votes to pay tax dollars to himself.

“If he were a Republican, people would be after his hide,” said Ken Hilton, a Republican who made an unsuccessful bid to unseat Hilliard.

The union’s no-confidence vote does not have any force of law on Hilliard’s job. But the resolution makes clear the tension in the community over Hilliard.

“I do not have confidence in Dana Hilliard’s ability to be an effective leader in the Somersworth School District,” the union’s resolution reads. “I do not want Dana Hilliard to return to work in the Somersworth School District because his history of behavior shows that he makes it more difficult for educators to achieve the District’s mission, which is ‘to inspire all students to excel, to develop a thirst for knowledge, and to teach the essential skills necessary to be caring, contributing, and responsible individuals in an ever-changing world.’”

Hilliard went on paid leave this spring after district employees filed a complaint over his treatment of staff. Superintendent Lori Lane, also named in the staff complaints, also went on leave. Lane resigned this summer. 

Interim Superintendent Lou Goscinski declined to discuss details of Hilliard’s job status when contacted by NHJournal on Tuesday.

“He remains out on leave, but I cannot discuss the type of leave,” Goscinski said.

Goscinski confirmed Hilliard is on paid leave, meaning he is still collecting his taxpayer-funded school salary, which clocks in at more than $100,000 a year.

Hilliard declined to respond to requests for comment.

Hilton said Hilliard and his family are well-known and liked in the community, and the situation surrounding the mayor is sad. Hilton claimed that Partisan politics of power override what’s best for the city residents.

“Democrats never resign in disgrace; they just keep going,” Hilton said. “If you’ve no standards, who’s to say that’s wrong?”

An independent report found Hilliard and Lane yelled at and belittled staff members in private meetings after those staffers voiced opposition to proposed budget cuts at public school board meetings. One teacher told the investigator she was afraid of Hilliard. Other staff members said Hilliard was known to yell and throw things at people when he was angry.

Teachers also told the investigator Hilliard was mired in an obvious conflict of interest in his job and his position as the mayor. According to the report, Hilliard kept his elected city position in mind when he made budget decisions for the school. Hilliard would cut staff and programs at the school rather than make those cuts in the city or raise taxes, the report states.

Hilliard, director of operations for the district, reports to the school superintendent, not the school board. That means the board is unable to fire him. Lane could have fired Hilliard, and now Goscinski can fire him.

Hilton said there is still time for Hilliard to do the right for the people of Somersworth. It might be time for someone else to step into the city leadership role.

“I have been praying Dana would repent and choose to do what is right and good,” Hilton said. “You want to see good leaders in there.”