Most all that attended House Hearing opposed Patten sponsored bills

To the Editor:

On Jan. 14, we attended some hearings on proposed House bills that were sponsored by our State Representative Betsy Patten. Observing and participating in the hearings was certainly a learning experience and well worth the trip to Concord. HB72 would increase tenfold (from 5 to 50) the number of voters that must sign a petition and also be present in order to have a secret ballot on any warrant article, at town meetings. That applies to any town in NH and includes SB2 towns during their deliberative sessions. We were not alone at these sessions, nor in our opposition to the bills. In all, nine people chose to speak, two of them (myself included) from Moultonboro. Of the others, there was a State Senator, another NH House Representative, a town moderator, a former selectman and elderly advocate, a School Board member and a few citizens from other towns. All spoke against HB72. The only person who spoke for HB72 was our representative who sponsored the bill. It was a veritable avalanche of opposition from all corners that made Rep. Patten seem out of touch with her constituency. She was obviously ill-advised by whoever asked her to propose this bill. Her inference that she sort of just picked the number of 50 and would be satisfied with 10 or

20 is very difficult to comprehend. A 1000 percent increase did not strike her as a bit over the top? But wait, there’s more. Oops, she did it again with HB71. This one will increase from $100,000 to $1,000,000 municipal bonds that would require a public hearing, another tenfold increase. For example, a bond of $950,000 would not require a public hearing. Outrageous, but at least she’s consistent. To me $950,000 is one fantastic pile of money. Rep. Patten introduced the house bill and said the $1,000,000 is a number she selected and it would be okay for the committee to drop it to $200,000 or what ever they wanted. See what I mean about consistency? Seems she puts out a very high numbermand hopes she gets at least something lower. Something is wrong with that method of proposing House Bills. We are hopeful both bills will be killed in committee.

On the last bill sponsored by Betsey Patten, HB114, she smartly threw in the towel and withdrew it.HB114 was an effort to weaken SB2 by eliminating the deliberative session. SB2 by the way is the way more than half the townspeople in New Hampshire vote. Rep. Patten said that she would cease trying to change (weaken) SB2 and would leave SB2 as is. It is known that Rep. Patten has been actively against SB2 for a number of years and it was good to hear her say she is going to cease trying to change it. Thank you Rep. Patten! I would like to remind Rep. Patten that she was elected to represent all of Moultonboro, not just the few who influenced her to propose these bills. Remember in 2008, 58 percent of Moultonboro voters cast their ballots for the SB2 voting initiative and we believe that the voters will exceed the 60 percent threshold this year.

Jim Leiterman

Moultonboro