Potential MBTA Southern NH Service

What does "report filed" mean? That they punted without recommendation?

That's the thing, I don't know either, I was kind of hoping somebody here would point out what it means, but I guess it would have been better to frame the sentence as a question. It does say this under Bill Docket, "Committee Report: Without Recommendation (Vote ; RC)", I am assuming this means that the Committee Report either failed to agree to recommend the bill or do not recommend it.

My simple take, from an online source.
" committee may table a bill or fail to take action on it, thereby preventing its report to the House. This makes adverse reports or reports without recommendation to the House by a committee unusual. "

It sounds like it will not move forward. But never say never.

I just checked on it again, the current "General Status" of the bill reads "HOUSE", the "Status" still reads "REPORT FILED", and it still says that the bill is "DUE OUT" by 3/10/2022. If the Bill was not recommended, how come it has moved up to the house, I guess that unusual occurrence happened this time, these anti-rail airheads must really be trying to push this to become a law.

HB 1432 will be voted on as part of the upcoming NH Legislative Session, March 31st is the deadline for it, along with all other bills

The Public Works Committee couldn’t decide whether to recommend HB 1432, which would have prohibited use of state funds for passenger rail projects. That would doom any federal money for rail that requires a state match. Business groups in the southern tier have been pushing to bring a rail line from Boston to Nashua and Manchester, and even Concord for years now.

https://www.nhbr.com/legislative-previe ... lawmakers/

Anti-rail writers clearly don't want this bill to die out on them in the house, so they have been writing articles in (what I guess is) an attempt to gain public support on their end, this is a new article on the NHJournal, mind you, by the same guy who thinks autonomous vehicles will replace all forms of public transportation in previous articles of his, but I guess he's finally realized that he made himself look like an idiot by saying that because there is no mention of that in this one: https://nhjournal.com/remote-work-makes ... ss-viable/

UPDATE: Apparently, on March 17, HB 1432 was voted down by the NH House of Representatives, the following is listed on Legiscan.com
"Motion Failed DV 152-182 03/17/2022 House Journal 8"
https://legiscan.com/NH/text/HB1432/id/2461843

It is also listed as "Fail" on Openstates.org
https://openstates.org/vote/e069ad0b-ea ... ecdddee7c/

I am assuming this means that this is it for the bill? Or am I wrong?
-Thanks

The motion voted on was to table the measure which means to put it off to be deliberated and voted on later. The motion to table failed.

The next part is a bit fuzzy to me, so the following is my understanding of what happened: It appears the bill was voted on in the House and passed. An OTP (ought to pass) report has been sent to the state Senate who will then take the matter up in their chambers. If the matter passes in the Senate, which it likely will, it goes to Gov. Sununu who will sign it into law.

It's all but certain now that NH will prohibit state money for rail and it will be up to the cities and/or feds to fund it. If you asked me, it's time to erect tolls on Route 3 and I-93 just south of the NH border.

This is really confusing. I would expect deliberate obfuscation in Massachusetts or Washington DC, but would expect NH to have a straightforward and user-friendly system. Probably is user friendly by comparison? As an aside it would be nice if legislatures like MA & DC adopted modern version control systems like git to manage laws...

It shows two votes on 3/17. from the openstates link it says it's source is http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/dynamic ... 1647846097 which shows:

2022|H|159|3/17/2022 4:16:47 PM|HB1432|152|182|24|32|||Table
2022|H|160|3/17/2022 4:29:18 PM|HB1432|187|144|27|32|||OTP

Mostly party line - Republicans for the bill, Democrats against. Move on to the senate.

In MA they usually seem to read bills three times in a row and pass stuff on voice vote so nobody is accountable.

The next part is a bit fuzzy to me, so the following is my understanding of what happened: It appears the bill was voted on in the House and passed. An OTP (ought to pass) report has been sent to the state Senate who will then take the matter up in their chambers. If the matter passes in the Senate, which it likely will, it goes to Gov. Sununu who will sign it into law.

Ah, ok, I guess I have been too optimistic about this bill and hoping it doesn't pass and all, but I guess all that talk of the "tides finally turning around" in NH earlier in this thread wasn't really true

It's all but certain now that NH will prohibit state money for rail and it will be up to the cities and/or feds to fund it.

I personally believe that if the state of NH doesn't fund this, it won't happen, not unless the cities of Nashua, Bedford (or MHT), and Manchester decide to take the burden themselves, which I am not sure is exactly something they would want to do themselves. This is why I cannot stress enough that this bill cannot become law, and now it seems like its up to the Senate, which I believe is Democrat-leaning (lets hope that helps) to act upon this. but I could of course be wrong about the cities not wanting to take the burden themselves in the case that this bill becomes law, which I hope I am.

This is really confusing.

I'm with you there!

>but would expect NH to have a straightforward and user-friendly system

Tell me you know nothing about NH without telling me you know nothing about NH.

Let the people drive their SUVs.

Nobody is telling people to stop driving their SUVs, why do people always act like this is a matter of Highways vs Railroads when the reality is that they are both meant to compliment each other, this is not the correct way of thinking about this.

Anyway, looks like there is a new article on the Union Leader regarding this bill, but its behind a paywall: https://www.unionleader.com/news/busine ... 01ee1.html
If anybody here is subscribed to them, a full-article copy and paste, rundown of the article, or even just a few quotations would be appreciated.

It says there is a "development phase" study which is expected to have findings at end of year that will update the costs. Unclear from the article whether this will kill the study or just make it moot. Manchester has a $25M grant for lipstick for downtown and layover yard. NH would be eligible for up to $125M according to Buttagieg. Sununu says he isn't opposed but doesn't know how to pay for it and criticized idea of hiring the MBTA.

Also refer to https://jbartlett.org/2022/01/the-case- ... ven-years/

Article by Kevin Landrigan seems well written.

I found the article on yahoo here, without a paywall (I wonder how the Union Leader would feel about that): https://news.yahoo.com/proposed-spendin ... 00027.html
I must say that I too was impressed by the good writing and unbiased tone of the article, it feels refreshing to read an article on this topic that isn't just more biased anti-rail garbage for the first time in a few months.

"This will eliminate the prospects of investing in rail," said E.J. Powers, speaking for N.H. Businesses for Rail Expansion against this bill (HB 1432) at a public hearing. "This would squander this potential economic opportunity."

Powers is right here, and it was quite a pleasant surprise to see him mentioned and even quoted here, I had thought that the NH Business for Rail coalition had faded away, but it turns out they're still fighting the good fight, good for them.

Rep. Mark McConkey, R-Freedom, supports the bill and agreed this legislation would be decisive.

"No passenger rail service in the world operates without extensive public subsidies," McConkey said.

It is so funny how they always mention this, but quietly (and conveniently dishonestly) leave out the fact that neither does any other form of human-oriented transportation infrastructure, that's why we refer to them as services, not businesses, but we all know that they have no idea what that means.

GOP for ban, Dems against it

No surprise here.

Rep. Marty Jack, D-Nashua, said polls showed three-fourths of residents supported commuter rail with strong support from all parts of the state and all demographic groups.

"This would send a terrible message about how willing the Legislature is to listen to its citizens and businesses," Jack said.

And they say the vast majority of NH residents don't want it.

"If we end up funding this, we are going to lose the advantage for the people who find their home here and work in Massachusetts,"

They always mention this "advantage" of theirs, so I am going to quote the words of a comment by a user named "Wintercat" underneath this article: https://manchesterinklink.com/aldermen- ... rail-line/

WHAT "New Hampshire" advantage? Out of control property taxes that will be raised further by the cut to the meals tax? A rapidly greying population as the young talent flees to Greater Boston for far higher wages and to be closer to employers that pay commensurate with talent?

Tell us what this "advantage" is. Go on!

They're getting all the high tech and financial industries that bring money to the community. New Hampshire is only getting low wage service, warehouse logistics and some low paying dirty manufacturing now. MHT is dead but for industrial cargo operations. The only corp that's shown any interest in New Hampshire in recent years is Amazon looking to bulldoze Hudson's 400 acre wooded golf course on the river and put down a 2.5 million square foot eyesore of warehouses that will pay garbage wages and turn Hudson into a truck stop. They're already turning abandoned anchor stores at Pheasant Lane into Amazon warehouses that will pay garbage wages. Is that the future you want? The poor, backwoods cousin of Massachusetts? The dirty factory and warehouse location for more prosperous Massachusetts?

What part of "Boston salaries spent on New Hampshire local businesses" is so hard to understand?

For many, many years, NH has been the poor, backwards cousin of MA. I-495 turns sharply south largely because NH didn't want to pay anything, and people from Plaistow still whine that MA won't build a Rt. 108 interchange in Haverhill, or widen Rt. 125. But they won't have commuter service to Plaistow, because of the people they might meet.

Should we ever follow in MA's footsteps by making the Legislature a job, rather than an expensive time sink, things might change. But the status quo is that the only people who can afford to be NH legislators are the kind of business owner who doesn't need to show up at the office for days on end. Thus, no income tax.

jbvb wrote: ↑Sat Apr 09, 2022 8:12 pmShould we ever follow in MA's footsteps by making the Legislature a job, rather than an expensive time sink, things might change.

So you want a corrupt legislature that works part time but gets paid full time? A state that makes NH residents pay MA income tax even if they work from home in NH? Be careful what you wish for! Oh and they hand out committee posts like candy to all their friends.