A look ahead to 2025: What’s in store for the next legislative session

By CHARLOTTE MATHERLY

Monitor staff

Published: 12-23-2024 4:01 PM

With a new Republican governor and expanded majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate, conservatives in the State House will have the chance to deliver on long-sought-after priorities in 2025.

While conversations around education and the state budget are likely to loom large in the next legislative session, bills on elections, energy and the environment and transgender-related issues are already surfacing, too.

Here’s what to expect from the State House in 2025.

Education funding

The stakes are high for the fight over state aid for schools and calculating what an adequate education actually entails. The state if facing two lawsuits – one from school districts and another from taxpayers – accusing the state of downshifting costs by failing to fund its schools.

Many lawmakers ran on a platform to fix the state’s education funding model, which currently relies heavily on local property taxes. Democrats say the state needs to contribute more instead of passing on costs to localities. The average cost per student exceeded $20,000 for the first time in 2024, and the state contributes about a quarter of that amount to local school districts.

Republicans, on the other hand, continue to prioritizing school choice. They’ll push to make Education Freedom Accounts – the state-funded vouchers for families who choose alternative methods of education, like private school or homeschooling – universally available by removing the income limit.

For Concord, the future of building aid could impact the school district’s decision to renovate or build a new middle school. While the district had originally requested $48 million in state aid for that project, that funding isn’t included in early state budget outlines and faces an uphill battle. Lawmakers generally support it, but it’s unlikely to see any increase from the $50 million that’s currently allocated annually for school construction and renovations across the state.

It’s not just about the budget, though – New Hampshire is likely to see policy changes, too. House Speaker Sherman Packard has already filed a draft request for a parental bill of rights, which eight other Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors. Packard has not yet been available for interview requests from the Monitor on what that legislation might include. Bills are still being drafted and will be made publicly available in late December or early January.

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Another draft request from Tuftonboro Republican Glenn Cordelli would prohibit “obscene or harmful sexual materials in schools.” It’s likely similar to a bill Cordelli sponsored this past year that would’ve banned schools from having books that contain sexual conduct, nudity and other content. That bill was killed in the House.

Building the budget

New Hampshire has until the end of the legislative session to build its budget for 2026 and 2027. The state faces a revenue shortfall, and Ayotte and outgoing Gov. Chris Sununu hope to cut the budget by about four percent and urged agencies to cut vacant positions.

When presenting their budget requests for the next biennium, however, state agency leaders underscored staffing shortages in some of the state’s largest areas, like the Department of Corrections, Department of Safety and Department of Transportation.

As legislators consider their options, several unknowns could have a huge impact on how they balance the budget: both the education funding lawsuits and hundreds of legal claims of sexual and other abuse at the former Youth Development Center could put the state on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Also on the list is a new men’s state prison, which could be the state’s largest capital project ever with an estimated $600 million price tag. After the state pushed off rebuilding the current men’s prison in Concord for years, corrections officials say its aging infrastructure is in dire condition.

Other items to watch

Republicans have already filed several bill draft requests on transgender-related issues, which could limit medication and surgery options for minors.

Another big topic is energy. With New Hampshire’s high energy costs in recent years, lawmakers are searching for a way to lower them. Ayotte and Republican legislators have their eyes on nuclear energy as an alternative to lower costs, but they’ve emphasized a need to have a variety of options available for residents to use. Democrats tend to oppose nuclear while favoring more traditional low-carbon energy production like solar and wind.

Several dozen bills requests have been filed on election law, spanning everything from election audits to campaign finance law to voter access.

Drafts of bills will be released publicly in late December or early January, before the session starts on Jan. 8.

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.