FOR THE MONITOR

Some New Hampshire lawmakers would like their free skiing back. For years, state-owned Cannon Mountain Ski Area gave away free passes for all New Hampshire House and Senate members. Two years ago, the Legislative Ethics Committee put a stop to the freebies, and now some our of elected representatives are fighting to restore their perks.

The ethics code for the New Hampshire Legislature bars lawmakers from accepting gifts valued at more than $25. In 2011, Rep. Edmond Gionet wrote to the Legislative Ethics Committee asking whether he could accept an offer from Cannon Mountain general manager for free skiing. House and members could get a free lift ticket for themselves and a guest any day that Cannon was open all winter. The public pays $68 for a day ticket, $45 for seniors 65 or over.

In the Legislative Ethics Committee Advisory Opinion, attorney Martin Gross writes that the free lift tickets meet the definition of a gift barred by ethics rules, unless the Legislature carves out a specific exemption for them.

FOR THE MONITOR

One day, a farmer falls into his well and can’t climb out. He’s down there for hours before an economist walks by and hears the farmer screaming.

“Help me! Help me climb out of this well,” pleads the farmer.

“That’s easy enough,” answers the economist. “First, assume a ladder.”

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Back in the Golden Age of Rail, railroads used to run things in New Hampshire politics. The votes may have taken place at the State House, but the real business of government was done across the street at the Eagle Hotel, where men who ran the Boston & Maine Railroad held court.

The B&M used to hand out free rail passes to all legislators, except the ones silly enough to oppose them. It was the railroad who decided who both major parties would nominate.

Back in 1901, the B&M decided that U.S. Sen. William E. Chandler had become too much of a nuisance and persuaded the New Hampshire Legislature to replace him with part-time judge Henry Burnham.

Since then, we’ve adopted direct primaries and direct election of senators to avoid such corruption. But from recent events in Concord, you might think the railroad tycoons are back in charge.

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Former Governor John Lynch’s favorite part of the job was giving tours to elementary school students. It showed in his performance. He was so averse to engaging in the legislative process that he seemed disinterested in the non-ceremonial work that came with the corner office.

The New Hampshire House and Senate are notoriously independent and wary of gubernatorial interference, but Lynch was especially tentative in his approach and would often refuse comment on controversial bills before they got to his desk.

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Gov. Maggie Hassan outlined her vision for New Hampshire government Thursday afternoon at the State House. It was a well-crafted speech, well delivered. Too often, such addresses devolve into an exercise in list-making, rattling through rote references to each core constituency and favored program. But inaugurals offer a chance to do more than that. They offer a chance for our freshly sworn officials to define how they would govern. Thankfully, Hassan did just that.

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“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” – Mark Antony, “Julius Caesar.”

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” – Dick the Butcher, “Henry VI, Part II”

Forgive me if the latest legal tussle over the Voting Rights Act reminds me of Shakespeare. I can’t decide if it’s tragedy or farce.

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New Hampshire loves elections. Between Town Meeting, the First in the Nation Primary, and our relatively high turnout, Granite Staters clearly like voting. Yet only one of our state officials is elected by the entire state. Two others are picked by not by voters themselves, but by the Representatives and Senators they send to Concord.

This week, State Treasurer Catherine Provencher and Secretary of State Bill Gardner were re-elected to their posts by the House and Senate. Despite the importance of these two jobs, neither was opposed, and their re-elections hardly caused a ripple in the media.

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Are you feeling lucky? I didn’t win last week’s $587.5 million Powerball jackpot, and neither did you. It’s just as well. After splitting the prize with the other winners, paying taxes, and taking the winnings in a lump sum, you’d probably clear $100 million. That hardly seems worth the paperwork. But I do know of one kind of sweepstakes where everyone’s a winner!

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No single issue will have a greater impact on New Hampshire’s next budget than Medicaid. The program is not just at the center of the federal budget crisis, as spending on entitlement programs threatens to drawf the rest of the budget. A series of long simmering state issues will come to a boil in 2013.

In New Hampshire, 165,000 people received some or all of their health insurance coverage through Medicaid in Fiscal Year 2010, the most recent year for which an Annual Report has been published.

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Every two years, one of my favorite rituals of New Hampshire’s peculiar form of democracy in the recount. With 500 races on the ballot statewide, most of them in relatively small districts, there are dozens of races that come down to a very small number of votes. And every election, a few seats change hands once we get a closer look at the ballots.

In fact, recounts in two State Representative districts have already resulted in new winners.

I volunteered to observe the District 9 State Senate Recount between Republican Andy Sanborn and Democrat Lee Nyquist. Watching a recount reminds me that voters aren’t partisan machines. I wonder what motivated someone to vote for Gary Johnson, Maggie Hassan, and Bill O’Brien. Or another to skip every race between President and State Representative.