Todd I Selig: The contract circus no New Hampshire town asked for

HB 1704 would turn every Town Hall in New Hampshire into a contract circus. Those of us who run local government day‑to‑day ― town and city managers, selectboards, councils, aldermen ― are not exactly known as automatic allies of organized labor. Our job is to protect taxpayers and keep government predictable and efficient. From that perspective, looking at what HB 1704 would do, this bill should not pass.

The sales pitch behind HB 1704 is simple. It claims to give public employees the “freedom” to negotiate directly with their employer over pay, hours, and working conditions, so each person can speak only for themselves without a union in the middle. It sounds like empowerment, but in practice, it’s how you build a contract circus in every city and town.

Right now, municipalities rely on a basic structure we’ve built over decades: pay scales, benefits, and work rules that apply consistently to people doing the same job. Employees know where they stand, voters can see what we pay, and we can budget with some confidence. HB 1704 blows that up. It would give large groups of public employees the ability to demand individual terms and push municipalities to negotiate even when they prefer to work through a certified bargaining agent.

We also could no longer simply say, “If you do this job, here’s the scale and here are the rules.” HB 1704 would bar municipalities from setting terms for non‑union employees that match an existing collective bargaining agreement covering employees doing the same work. In circus terms, you don’t have one ring with one show anymore. You have a different act in every corner of the building.

Picture a department with a couple dozen people in the same role. Today, they’re on one scale, under one set of rules. After HB 1704, some could have one salary, others a slightly different one, another person might negotiate unique leave provisions, someone else a special grievance process. You end up with a tangle of one‑off deals for people doing the same job. That’s not freedom. It is confusion.

It also creates a power problem for employees. One worker who worries about their job, health insurance, and mortgage is not on level ground with a management team backed by HR and legal counsel. Breaking people into isolated negotiators doesn’t make them stronger. It makes them easier to pressure. Collective bargaining is far from perfect, but it aims at clear, shared rules and some balance of power.

And then there is the carve‑out. HB 1704 exempts police officers, firefighters, EMS, and corrections officers from this individual bargaining scheme. In other words, the people with the strongest unions and the most political clout are spared the “freedom” this bill creates, while teachers, DPW workers, and town hall staff are pushed into the experiment. If this model really produced fairness and efficiency, you would expect it to apply to everyone.

For taxpayers and small‑government conservatives, the trouble shows up in cost and complexity. Every individual contract has to be negotiated, tracked, and, when necessary, defended. Human resources staffing goes up. Legal bills go up. The risk of pay‑equity and discrimination claims goes up as soon as two people in the same job are treated differently in ways no one can clearly justify. Those costs land in the property tax rate.

Here’s what really doesn’t make sense about HB 1704. While it’s marketed as expanding “freedom,” it actually narrows the NH tradition of local control. Today, towns and unions can negotiate who belongs in a bargaining unit, how flexible management needs to be, and where privatizing or contracting out might make sense. Those are local choices, made by people who live with the results. HB 1704 would impose a statewide rule that pulls municipalities into one‑off bargaining whenever an eligible employee demands it, with all the extra costs and risks that follow.

HB 1704 would trade a “not perfect, but mostly working” system for a contract circus in every town hall, dressed up as freedom. New Hampshire doesn’t need that. It needs coherence, responsibility, and rules that treat people, and local taxpayers, honestly. The Legislature should turn down HB 1704 and leave local officials and local voters in charge of how we manage our own employees.

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Originally from Laconia, Todd Selig is the longtime town manager in Durham.