The sprawling District 2 of the Executive Council covers most of the Connecticut River valley with an extension into the Concord area, but the main issues its two candidates face are relevant everywhere: Building things and appointing good judges.
Incumbent Karen Liot Hill, the only Democrat on the five-person council, is facing Tobin Menard of Newport, a Republican political newcomer.
The Executive Council’s two main jobs are approving all state contracts over $10,000, including the state’s 10-year Highway Plan, and approving people in certain positions after they are nominated by the governor, including state judges.
Councilors serve all year round for two years. The salary is $18,699.
The highest-profile issue facing the council involves the state Supreme Court, following the sudden resignation of Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald over payouts to a staffer and questions about what the other justices knew about the case. The council will have to agree to his successor.
Liot Hill argues that the situation is reflective of a larger problem.
“I think that this is directly connected to the fact that we have had Republican governors for the last 10 years and they have departed from the previous practice — of both Democratic and Republican governors — to make nominations to the Supreme Court with a partisan balance in mind … to ensure that there would be differing perspectives on the court and support the integrity of the court,” said Liot Hill.
She argues the recent Judicial Conduct Committee report shows that court justices approached the current scandal “as a political problem” rather than from a legal perspective. She has pushed for public hearings on the matter.
Menard said that while “obviously the system failed somewhere” he argued that closer attention to candidates can improve things.
“I will be giving special attention to what connections they have had in the past,” he said. He also said he would “only appoint judges who apply the constitution and statutes as written” rather than “those who treat the bench as a second legislature looking to make laws.”
“There’s no perfect system. It’s a case-by-case basis,” he said.
One very big-ticket item that the council will have to vote on in coming years involves the men’s state prison in Concord, which faces serious problems. One analysis said a new 1,500-bed prison would cost at least $750 million. The legislature has funded a study and any action would require the Executive Council’s approval.
Liot Hill said she wanted to look at options, including the possibility of a “two-campus option,” involving a smaller upgrade in Concord and an addition to the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in Berlin.
“The council was not satisfied with the options that were presented in an initial report,” she said. The Corrections Department is developing alternatives, as well as “costing out” alternatives and the cost of maintaining the status quo.
“I’ve toured the prison a couple times now,” she said. “We need to address the deterioration — the dysfunction, inadequacy of the current state prison.”
Menard said that while he agreed that “something has to get done,” he needed more study to have an opinion. “I will have to dig in a little more, see if it needs have remodeling or we do need to build a new one.”
Both agreed that the dilapidated jail and recent high-profile problem with highway bridges in Manchester and Nashua, reflected a need to spend more on maintenance of infrastructure as part of the 10-Year Highway Plan and elsewhere.
“I don’t want to put more on the taxpayer than we have to but I also have to look at the future and what the increased costs will be, long term, if we don’t attend to problems now,” said Menard.
Liot Hill said a deeper issue was what she called a “self-imposed austerity” inherent in recent state government that gets in the way of planning.
“It is cheaper in the long run to keep roads good. Preventative maintenance is more effective in the long run,” she said. “For too long we have been barely keeping up with the crises as they come up.”
Both candidates praised the legislature’s overturn of Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s veto of the 10-Year Highway Plan that allows raising of tolls on out-of-state vehicles, the money to go toward transportation funding.
Menard, 48, is an Air Force veteran who worked in retail and manufacturing, and was treasurer of the Upper Valley Libertarians.
Liot Hill, 47, is a former waitress and small business owner who ran a downtown diner, and previously served as a Lebanon City Councilor, mayor of Lebanon and Grafton County treasurer. She was first elected to the post in 2025.
