April 2023 BNL

APRIL 2023 Brentwood Newsletter

To all those who have reached out with messages of support and concerns, I want to express my deepest gratitude. Your voices and opinions matter to me, and I am grateful to have you as allies in this fight. I will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that your voices are heard, and that the legislation in question is approached with the utmost care and consideration. 

One problem I've been working on is reducing onerous occupational licensing. I've introduced several bills in this area, and this term Governor Sununu has also attempted to streamline licensing boards and eliminate redundant licenses to save money in his budget. While these efforts have been popular, the details are complex and some current practices didn't have the necessary foundation for such a broad change, so the efforts had to be scaled back. However, there's one notable repeal related to my work on this issue: HB 217 & HB 218 from last term tried to repeal the State license for hawkers, peddlers, and itinerant vendors. I tried to repeal it because there were no training or qualification requirements - people only had to pay a fee and undergo a background check. However, the license was still granted regardless of the background check results, so it was just a bureaucratic process without any real benefit. Even so, my bills did not pass last term, but I'm pleased that those repeals are included in the Governor's budget this time and will be removed as there is no real complexity in their repeal. I also expect a speed up of the elimination of the Interest and Dividends Tax to be part of any final budget with a complete repeal by the end of the budget duration (2 years). The State budget is set to be voted on by the House on April 6th and with the economy on the verge or in recession the revenue estimates for the State keep shrinking the Senate will need to make some additional cuts to the budget to meet those lower revenue targets since New Hampshire must pass a balanced budget.

As always, feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns.

Hon Rep Josh Yokela

Representing Brentwood, Danville, and Fremont

Josh.Yokela@leg.state.nh.us