Rep. Brodie Deshaies: Catch and release is for fish, not violent criminals

To The Daily Sun,

We have been busy this month in Concord. We have voted on over 200 bills. I also cosponsored a few bills that passed the New Hampshire House.

HB 1613 ​​allows a liquor manufacturer distilling less than 1,000 cases of liquor per year to sell its liquor for off-premise consumption. In layperson terms, this bill would allow smaller businesses to manufacture small amounts of liquor for sale to the public. HB 1613 opens NH to the new and growing microdistillery industry. This is an excellent opportunity for our communities’ small businesses.

Another bill is HB 1454. This bill was relative to the permits for the siting of new landfills. Rather than the Department of Environmental Services using arbitrary distances to decide the siting of new landfills, a bipartisan group of lawmakers decided to make the standards more scientific and objective. We used standards already developed by private industry and codified them into law. HB 1454 will have DES use different calculations to determine the landfill’s seepage into neighboring land and bodies of water. This will help protect neighboring landowners, drinking water, and our environment from landfill seepage.

A bill we have coming up is HB 1587. This bill modifies the average final compensation calculations for Group II retirement system members who commenced service on or after July 1, 2011, or had not attained vested status before January 1, 2012, including the highest five years of service. The actuarial cost of the change is funded from general funds of the current biennium. In layperson terms, this bill restores our first responders’ pensions that were partially defunded about a decade ago. We will pay for the restoration with money from the general fund, currently home to a massive surplus.

I would also like to note another bill we voted on this month that I did not cosponsor. HB 1476 would update our bail system in NH. If a person commits an offense while on bail (either a felony, a class A misdemeanor, or two class B misdemeanors), this bill requires that the person be detained without bail pending a hearing before a judge. The judicial hearing must happen within 36 hours, excluding weekends and holidays.

HB 1476 is very similar to Sen. Jeb Bradley and my bill, SB 294. The goal is to prevent the catch and release of violent criminals who have high recidivism rates and pose a significant threat to victims of their previous crimes. We should only catch and release fish in NH, not violent criminals.

Rep. Brodie Deshaies

Wolfeboro