The leaves have only just begun to fall, but New Hampshire’s Department of Transportation is already raising concerns about snowplowing season. For years, the agency has struggled to recruit plow drivers and has turned to private contractors to make up the gap.  On Wednesday, the department presented its latest maneuver to the Executive Council: a […]

About $1 million in grant funding for electric vehicle charging stations is up for grabs in a program the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services and Department of Business and Economic Affairs said is intended to boost the state’s economy and air quality. Locations with significance for New Hampshire’s tourism industry will be the focus […]

As they passed legislation to end New Hampshire’s vehicle inspection program last year, state lawmakers made a gamble.  Ending the inspections would mean ending annual emissions testing, violating New Hampshire’s decades-long approach to comply with the Clean Air Act. And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had not granted New Hampshire permission to withdraw from those […]

Out-of-state visitors to New Hampshire will soon pay double the fees to use state parks and double the tolls on non-New Hampshire transponders. And convicted felons who maintain their innocence will soon be able to request a retrial even after the state’s three-year deadline if there’s new evidence contradicting their guilt.  Those laws will take […]

A week before Veto Day, leaders in both parties are hoping to overturn Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s veto of the Ten Year Transportation Improvement Plan. And some like the odds.  “I think there’s a pretty good chance,” said Deputy House Speaker Steven Smith, a Charlestown Republican, in an interview Wednesday.  “It’s the type of thing that’s […]

It was an idea decades in the making — and decades in the unraveling. In 1993, New Hampshire Executive Councilor Ray Burton unveiled the “Conway bypass”: a planned extension of Route 16 to circumvent Conway and North Conway and reduce traffic.  The plan targeted congestion concerns dating back to the 1950s, according to the Conway […]

Nearly two years into her tenure, Gov. Kelly Ayotte has become comfortable with a veto pen.  The Republican governor vetoed nine bills Thursday, many of them lightning-rod political issues and priorities of lawmakers in her party. Months before the November general election, she took a red pen to conservative proposals to increase book removals in […]