NH committee hears hours of testimony on proposed limits for local welfare aid

The House Municipal and County Government Committee on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025, heard more than three hours of testimony on House Bill 348, a proposal that would let municipalities adopt residency requirements for recipients of local welfare aid.

Representative Rhodes, the bill's prime sponsor, told the committee the measure is intended to preserve the original purpose of local welfare: neighbors helping neighbors. "House Bill 348 ... [is] to say that the beneficiary that is receiving local welfare funds lives in the said town that they are receiving the funds from," Representative Rhodes said.

Supporters including some town administrators and elected officials urged committee members to allow towns flexibility to protect limited municipal budgets. Michael York, who described himself as chairman of the Swansea Richmond Troy Republican Committee and a local planner, said municipal taxpayers are bearing rising costs from sheltering and services. "Property taxes have gone sky high in almost every community in the area," York said as he urged the committee to allow towns to limit benefits to local residents.

Local officials described administrative burdens and rising emergency costs. Michael Brantley, town administrator for Swansea, said the current local-welfare system is "broken" and that counties and towns lack resources and predictable billing tools. He urged either local reform or for the state to assume the obligation.

But a broad coalition of social-service, legal-aid and homelessness organizations urged the committee to reject durational residency limits, saying the proposal would create dangerous gaps for people in crisis. "Those discharged from designated receiving facilities are discharged to the streets," Holly Stebbins, director of public policy at NAMI New Hampshire, told the committee. "If they are discharged and need local assistance, they have absolutely not a single town in the state of New Hampshire to go to if this bill were to pass."

Steve Tower, director of the Local Welfare Project at New Hampshire Legal Assistance, warned the committee that time-based residency rules have repeatedly been struck down in federal courts. "The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled several times that a durational requirement for public benefits is unconstitutional," Tower said, arguing that the bill would expose towns to costly litigation and deny people essential aid while legal disputes play out.

Advocates for older adults and people experiencing homelessness described data trends they said make the proposal especially harmful. Rebecca Skye, executive director of the New Hampshire State Commission on Aging, cited rising poverty and homelessness rates among adults 65 and older and said imposing a 30- to 90-day rule would deny urgent help to seniors on fixed incomes.

Representatives of municipal welfare administrators said they are open to improving rules but objected to elements of the draft. Todd Marsh, president of the New Hampshire Local Welfare Administrators Association, said his group had been working with the sponsor and stakeholders and favored a substantially different drafting path; the association opposed the bill in its initial form but supported further discussions.

Other testimony stressed near-term operational detail: local officials said some towns already provide temporary assistance and that a better tool would be clearer state guidance and faster reimbursement mechanisms. Freeman Toth of Belknap–Merrimack Community Action Program said prevention funds and shelter capacity are exhausted in many places; he said making local welfare harder to access would not reduce need but shift it to understaffed shelters, emergency services and community action programs.

Chair Diane Power closed the hearing after receiving 11 in-person signups to speak and noted the committee had received large numbers of remote comments opposing the bill. The clerk reported the blue sheet for the bill showed 2 in support, 5 opposed and 1 neutral; remote sign-in totals were 112 opposed and 9 in support.

The sponsor told the committee she expected to file amendments and favored keeping many decisions at the municipal level, including waivers for domestic-violence survivors and other exceptions. The committee did not take formal action on HB 348 during the meeting; committee members signaled they would hold additional drafting conversations and that amendments were expected before any committee recommendation.

The hearing included multiple requests from committee members for technical drafting and for clearer accounting of how the changes would intersect with other state programs. Several witnesses asked that committee members consider the real-world effect of any durational rule before voting.

Ending: Committee staff and stakeholders agreed to continue drafting discussions. The chair asked members to submit proposed amendment language well ahead of any executive session so the committee could review changes in advance.