House members should reconsider HB 1552 for the good of all residents of the State of New Hampshire. As a resident of Nashua, I have been involved with the City of Nashua’s assessing department and found that the State of New Hampshire DRA has very little control on Nashua and I found this very distributing. After reviewing HB 1552 I felt that it was in the best interest of the New Hampshire residents to create this legislation to move the certification and oversight process of the state assessors from the Department of Revenue (DRA) to the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification (OPLC).
The Asb voted to unanimously bring this legislation forward to create a more transparent and fair method of credentialing assessors and addressing disciplinary matters. So why was this bill tabled? This legislation would be so helpful to all New Hampshire residents. Assessors are the only certified professionals not under the governance of the OPLC. This creates a conflict of interest because the DRA is responsible for certifying their own employees but also serves as the disciplinary board, should ethics violations occur within their office. The optics and fairness of assessor oversight would improve if the DRA was out of the picture. OPLC would be more transparent than the DRA with residents. Please reconsider HB 1552.
Laura Colquhoun
Nashua