How a protectionist shipping law could leave New England in the cold

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By Jonathan Helton

Will New England have enough fuel this winter?

The region’s six governors have their doubts, and in July they wrote U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to ask for relief from a 1920 shipping law that has limited the region’s supply of fuel, particularly oil and natural gas.

The governors asked the Biden administration to “explore the conditions under which it might be appropriate to suspend the Jones Act for the delivery of LNG [liquid natural gas] for a portion or all of the winter of 2022-2023.”

They flagged the 102-year-old Jones Act because it requires that goods shipped between U.S. ports be carried on ships that are U.S. flagged, U.S. built, and mostly owned and crewed by Americans.

Since New England uses natural gas to meet nearly half of its electricity needs, this old law puts the region in a precarious position.

A shortage of natural gas pipeline capacity makes it challenging for New England to get enough fuel during periods of peak demand, such as the coldest days of winter and the hottest days of summer.

Importing domestic natural gas by tanker ship offers a possible solution. But the Jones Act gets in the way. Its requirement that New England energy companies hire domestic ships to transport fuel between American ports actually prevents New England from shipping fuel from Texas or Pennsylvania to Boston.

How?

There aren’t any American LNG tankers, despite America being the world’s largest LNG exporter, with major export terminals on the Gulf Coast.

No LNG tankers have been built in the U.S. since 1980. This is largely because U.S. shipyards do not construct competitively priced ships. In 2015, the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated it would cost up to three times the world market price to buy an LNG tanker from a U.S. shipyard, assuming one could be built at all.

In general, most of New England’s LNG arrives via pipeline. Pipeline capacity, however, cannot be added quickly.

As New Hampshire Consumer Advocate Donald Kries wrote in August: “The interstate pipeline network does not have enough capacity to supply the region with all of the natural gas it needs to heat all the homes and businesses reliant on that fuel while supplying all of the [natural] gas generators that would need to fire up in an extended cold snap.”

The Jones Act leaves foreign imports as the best alternative. Unfortunately, imports from abroad often run counter to U.S. foreign policy. Before the war in Ukraine, for example, New England and Puerto Rico bought LNG from Russia on occasion. Similarly, Hawaii imported as much as a third of all its oil from Russia, mainly because the Jones Act made it too expensive to buy U.S. oil. But President Joe Biden’s ban on Russian fuel imports put an end to that.

Energy Secretary Granholm met with the New England governors on Sept. 15 to talk about their Jones Act waiver request, but according to Reuters, the outcome wasn’t great.

“In the event that there is an issue where additional supplies of heating fuels are needed, we would work with the states as appropriate to see what tools are needed,” a U.S. Department of Energy official told the news service.

Such obfuscation is unfortunate because a Jones Act waiver would be a win for everyone. New England residents could have a reliable supply of fuel, and probably would save on electricity costs, which already are extraordinarily high.

A Jones Act waiver also would unlock a new market for Gulf Coast LNG exports. And U.S. maritime interests should have no reason to complain, since there aren’t any LNG tankers that comply with the Jones Act anyway.

Beyond a waiver, Congress could reform the Jones Act in more substantial ways. The law has failed in its mission to ensure a healthy maritime industry in the name of national security, and an update is long overdue.

Today, only four U.S. shipyards build large oceangoing commercial ships, and only 93 such ships are Jones Act-compliant — down from 257 in 1980. Since 2020, those shipyards have produced only two large, oceangoing vessels, with one other large cargo ship set to be completed later this year — and it is not an LNG tanker.

Perhaps the best initial reform would be to repeal the law’s U.S.-built requirement, even if only for LNG tankers. This would put more LNG tankers into service for the American people, make it easier for U.S. carriers to expand their fleets and markets, provide more jobs for U.S. mariners, and help keep New England warm during the coming winter.

Everyone would win.

If we maintain the status quo, the odds of New Englanders running short of fuel this winter remain elevated. Why court such a disaster when a solution is as easy as reforming a single bad shipping regulation?

Jonathan Helton is a research associate at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.

 

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The gubernatorial candidates’ housing plans: An assessment

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By Jason Sorens

Gov. Chris Sununu and his opponent, Sen. Tom Sherman, have proposed reforms to alleviate New Hampshire’s severe housing shortage. How do those proposals compare, and how effective would they be? A brief overview of each suggests that neither would solve New Hampshire’s housing shortage, but Gov. Sununu’s initiative would be likely to result in more housing construction.

Democratic Sen. Sherman released his housing plan for New Hampshire in July, calling it a longer-term fix than incumbent Republican Gov. Chris Sununu’s “federal band-aid,” the InvestNH Housing Fund approved in May. Of course, InvestNH is not the sum of Gov. Sununu’s housing policy, nor has he yet released a detailed plan for the coming term. Therefore, a direct comparison of the two candidates’ housing policies is imperfect at this time, but we can still assess what is good, bad, and mediocre in each set of proposals: Sherman’s housing plan and Sununu’s InvestNH Housing Fund.

Gov. Sununu’s InvestNH plan

The governor’s InvestNH program consists of $60 million in grants for owners and developers, and $40 million in grants for municipalities. In an ideal world, taxpayer dollars wouldn’t be used to subsidize a private industry at all. Yet government has created housing scarcity by strictly regulating home-building, not in the interest of health or safety, but simply with the explicit goal of preventing new people from living in the area. The obvious solution is to remove the unnecessary regulations that limit residential construction. But those regulations rest at the local level, and legislators have proven reluctant to overrule them with state laws. Using financial resources as incentives to work around or relax local regulations is a compromise that attempts to produce quick results while accepting the political reality that no statewide fix is achievable this year.

Still, if the state is going to subsidize home-building, it had better be done in efficient and effective ways. Grants to municipalities to encourage them to lift regulatory restrictions on new homes might be the most easily justified way of deploying financial resources because they attack the problem at the source: the tangle of local regulations that prevent building.

The InvestNH municipal grants consist of three streams: $30 million in grants to municipal governments on a per-building permit basis, $5 million in grants to assist with regulatory evaluation and redesign, and $5 million to cover the costs of demolition of vacant or dilapidated buildings.

Towns will get $10,000 for every building permit they issue within six months of application for new rental units constructed in projects made up of five or more units. Because of the short timeline, this money is not going to incentivize changes to zoning ordinances. Projects of this size almost always require a variance from the local board of adjustment, so this money mainly works as an incentive for those boards to approve more projects, or at least cooperate to speed them along.

The $5 million will go to municipalities for consulting on their housing needs, reviewing current regulations, and rewriting regulations. The primary goal of requests must be to increase housing stock.

The $60 million for capital grants goes directly to developers and the nonprofit New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority. Only multifamily rental housing is eligible. For projects with 15 or more units, applicants must demonstrate an “affordability commitment,” holding rents below market for lower-income tenants for at least 20% of units.

The main advantage of Sununu’s plan is that the money should indeed incentivize new housing construction in a relatively short time frame. By tying the municipal grant money to the issuance of building permits, Sununu’s plan creates a strong incentive for boards to issue more building permits. The state would, in effect, pay municipalities to issue new building permits.

The bulk of the Sununu plan, $60 million for capital grants to stimulate the construction of multifamily housing, might incentivize developers to go forward with projects that contain a higher percentage of lower-priced units than would have been profitable without the grants. Ordinances that require projects to set aside a certain percentage of units for rent at below-market rates tend to discourage development and lead to less new construction. But this cash incentive might do the opposite. It will be difficult to know, however, whether these projects would have been built anyway.

Paying municipalities to consult on housing needs and review regulations might produce better land use regulations, but that outcome is not guaranteed, and this portion of the plan lacks a strong incentive to achieve the desired result.

The strength of Sununu’s plan – that it is focused on stimulating development in the short term – is also a drawback. It does very little to change the long-term dynamics of repressed supply. It also focuses solely on larger multifamily rental projects, as opposed to single-family starter homes and “missing middle” construction.

Sen. Sherman’s plan

Sen. Sherman’s plan is less detailed, but it has these features:

  1. It adds staff to regional planning commissions and the state’s Office of Planning and Development;
  2. It funds municipal review of local land-use ordinances;
  3. It reviews state-level regulatory hurdles to development;
  4. It assesses under-used state lands for development potential;
  5. It promotes model zoning ordinance elements;
  6. It subsidizes loans for water, sewer, and transit infrastructure;
  7. It creates an incentive program for municipalities to adopt more pro-housing ordinances;
  8. It increases community development tax credits;
  9. It increases the affordable housing fund;
  10. It creates a historic rehabilitation tax credit;
  11. It doubles funding for contractor job training.

Sherman touts the fact that his plan features permanent programs rather than a one-time infusion of money. This might not be quite fair to Sununu, since the InvestNH program came out of a unique opportunity to spend federal grants, and the governor has strongly supported legislation that offered some structural changes, including a “housing champion program” that would reward municipalities for changing their ordinances to allow more housing density. Still, Sherman’s plan is intended to be a comprehensive menu of permanent policy changes. The question is whether they would achieve the intended goal of stimulating the construction of more housing.

Some of Sherman’s ideas can be expected to have a greater impact than others. The strongest part of Sherman’s plan is the proposal to tie increases in state transportation and environmental funding to “the adoption of zoning or infrastructure that allows reasonable opportunities for housing.”

Gov. Sununu supported a similar housing champion program that was initially included in Senate Bill 400 this year, but that part of the bill did not pass. Depending on how such a program is designed, it could have considerable long-term impact. A well-designed program will reward municipalities for actual housing unit creation as well as regulatory changes, and will reward regulatory changes that allow for single-family and “missing middle” in addition to statute-defined “workforce housing” (buildings of five units or more).

Expanding sewer access helps the environment and allows more housing and commercial density. It’s unclear how important an obstacle it is to new construction, but it could be a factor.

Sen. Sherman’s proposal for a state job training fund for the construction trades is not likely to relieve the shortage of skilled construction labor, as the funds will surely be a drop in the bucket compared to what the private sector already spends on training, and training is rarely the decisive hurdle discouraging someone from entering a manual-labor occupation.

The CDFA tax credit, which Sen. Sherman would expand, is widely alleged to favor politically connected businesses and nonprofits and doesn’t focus on housing.

The rest of Sen. Sherman’s plan would do little to stimulate new housing development. The bulk of the senator’s plan would fund studies and reviews, or give municipalities and planning commissions additional financial resources that are not tied to the issuance of new building permits or the passage of new, housing-friendly ordinances.

Whereas most of Gov. Sununu’s plan is focused on directly financing new housing construction, most of Sen. Sherman’s plan is focused on providing additional financial resources to local governments, planning commissions, and construction industry labor.

Overall, Gov. Sununu’s plan contains stronger immediate incentives for developers to propose multi-family housing, and for municipalities to issue new permits. Sen. Sherman’s plan also contains some of these incentives, but until funding details are available, it’s impossible to know how much of an impact they will have. Setting up a permanent housing champion program, as both candidates appear to support, would have the potential to change the game.

It’s worth noting that neither candidate is talking about state preemption of local regulation. Zoning preemption bills are becoming more common, and are generating more attention, in the Legislature. One nearly passed the House this year (House Bill 1177, sponsored by Rep. Ivy Vann, to legalize fourplexes wherever water and sewer are available), and several others were proposed.

With both candidates for governor backing programs to incentivize local governments to allow more housing, look for similar proposals to be introduced in the Legislature next year. But if those incentives fail to produce meaningful changes in local regulations, and the state’s severe housing shortage continues to frustrate voters, the pressure for direct preemption of local regulatory barriers will continue to build.

Dr. Jason Sorens is director of the Center for Ethics in Society at St. Anselm College.

Download a pdf copy of this analysis: Gubernatorial Candidates Housing Plans

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Modest changes to housing regulations take effect

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On August 23, a handful of state laws crafted to address New Hampshire’s housing shortage take effect. Though the big reforms were left on the Legislature’s cutting room floor, these modest changes might prove helpful. 

The splashiest change, which might prompt some warrant articles next spring, applies zoning exemptions carved out for 55+ communities to workforce housing as well. 

Most of the changes are more technical fixes to ensure that municipalities don’t stick proposed developments in a legal limbo simply by delaying or refusing to act on applications. 

These changes amount to mostly modest improvements in the system that will make it slightly less antagonistic to new housing construction. But with home prices and rents remaining at record levels, pressure to pass more powerful reforms is likely to prompt more legislation next year. 

The new laws will:

  • Require the Office of Planning and Development to create and offer training to planning and zoning boards. The initial idea was to require board member training, but that was dropped in favor of making the training available at no cost to board members. 
  • Require that any fee imposed by a local land use board be published “in a location accessible to the public during normal business hours.” Any fee not published at the time an application is submitted shall be waived. 
  • Require that by July 1, 2023, any local incentive established for housing older persons “shall be deemed applicable to workforce housing development.” Many communities exempt 55+ communities from certain zoning requirements. The idea is to create exemptions that allow housing to be built only for people who don’t have school-age children. This change would apply those restrictions to workforce housing as well. 
  • Require that local land use boards issue a final written decision for all applications, and require those decisions to “include specific written findings of fact that support the decision.” Failure to offer specific, written findings of fact would be grounds for automatic reversal by the Superior Court.
  • Require zoning boards of adjustment to issue a final decision on an application within 90 days of receiving the application. 
  • Require planning boards to determine whether submitted applications are complete at the next regularly scheduled meeting, or within 30 days after receiving the application. Boards must then act on an application within 65 days of determining that it’s complete.
  • Require selectmen or city councils to certify approval of a plat if the planning board fails to act within the allotted time. Failure of selectmen or city councils to act will constitute grounds for the Superior Court to act if petitioned to do so by the applicant.
  • Allow municipalities to acquire land for use as workforce housing, but not by eminent domain.
  • Allow municipalities to lease basements, ground and second floors of public buildings for residential use, negotiate the sale or lease of property for residential use, and acquire, improve, operate, maintain or promote residential developments “aimed at increasing the available housing stock within the municipality.”
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New Hampshire makes emergency health care licenses permanent

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One of the most consequential laws of the 2022 legislative session received next to no media coverage. But thanks to its passage, you might get to keep seeing your doctor, or have a nurse the next time you go to the hospital.

During the pandemic, health care facilities found themselves with sudden, critical shortages of providers. But by law they couldn’t bring out-of-state providers here to fill the gaps. Those providers lacked New Hampshire licenses.

New Hampshire does not automatically recognize out-of-state professional licenses. So the state had to tell hospitals and other employers that they couldn’t fill their staffing needs with qualified, licensed health care professionals because those professionals had licenses issued by the wrong state.

Gov. Chris Sununu responded quickly by issuing emergency orders that let these providers come to New Hampshire under an emergency license. Thousands did.

But here’s the problem with emergency licenses. They end when the emergency ends.

An emergency license is like a life raft that deflates when the storm ends.

Even if you Haven’t reached shore, that raft is gone. Now what?

New Hampshire issued emergency licenses to 22,328 health care professionals during the pandemic. Those licenses were set to expire in March.

What’s the big deal; those are just temporary helpers, right?

The 22,328 emergency license holders total 26% of all licensed health care providers in the state. They included 951 mental health counselors, 1,064 social workers, 1,114 psychologists, 2,104 Advanced Practice Registered Nurses, and 14,920 physicians.

Emergency license holders represent 36% of licensed alcohol and drug counselors, 39% of licensed advanced practice registered nurses, 44% of licensed independent clinical social workers, 45% of licensed clinical mental health counselors, 47% of licensed marriage and family therapists, 63% of licensed psychologists and 65% of licensed physicians.

To prevent a sudden and massive reduction in access to providers, the state needed to prevent the expiration of those licenses.

The solution was Senate Bill 277, which made those emergency licenses permanent. It also restored the Office of Professional Licensure’s authority to issue emergency licenses, and created an option for issuing emergency licenses going forward.

The bill preserved Granite Staters’ access to thousands of providers who had been offering care safety in the state for two years. But its long-term impact is even more important.

By granting permanent licenses to out-of-state providers, the bill undermines the argument, often made by industry trade associations, that out-of-state occupational licenses are inherently inferior and must not be recognized by New Hampshire.

In one fell swoop, the state just granted permanent licenses to more than 22,000 health care professionals licensed by other states. During two years in which those professionals practiced in New Hampshire, the Office of Professional Licensure recorded no serious health or safety violations from those practitioners.

Unfortunately, the state didn’t follow through to the obvious logical conclusion and simply grant automatic license reciprocity for practitioners licensed in other states. Legislators were not quite ready to go that far.

New Hampshire’s experience with emergency health care licenses during the pandemic showed that universal recognition of occupational licenses is a safe and effective way to increase access to medical care for Granite Staters. Why wouldn’t it also be a safe and effective way to increase access to all licensed professionals?

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A small shot of relief for N.H. brewers this year

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If relief from burdensome regulations could be measured in pint glasses, this year’s relief for New Hampshire’s beer industry wouldn’t fill a 2 oz flight glass. 

New Hampshire alcohol laws are a twisted knot of post-Prohibition restrictions pocked with favoritism and special protections for incumbent players. Reforms come slowly and gradually. This year, Granite State brewers got just a shot of relief.

Craft breweries that survive the start-up process face enormous obstacles to success. Think of the shelf space in the beer aisle at your local grocery or convenience store. It’s mostly national brands and larger regional breweries. 

To get on a retailer’s shelf requires negotiating that space with the retailer (who has to clear space already occupied by an existing brand), lining up distribution to the retailer, ensuring a steady supply of ingredients and packaging (including cans and bottles), and keeping production steady and consistent.

Many small-scale manufacturers don’t *have to* navigate such hazards because they have the option of opening their own retail outlets. If you make T-shirts or cupcakes, you can open your own branded stores and sell directly to the public. 

But not if you make beer.

Brewers classified as “beverage manufacturers” (as opposed to brew pubs or nano breweries) have long been restricted to selling their beer on-site or at a licensed retailer. The state prohibited them from opening  their own retail store in a location separate from their brewery.

Legislators not long ago created a separate legal entity called a “beverage manufacturer retail outlet,” but the law described such outlets as places where beverage manufacturing took place. So brewers were technically not allowed to open their own stores unless they also brewed there. 

This year, the Legislature passed and Gov. Chris Sununu signed House Bill 1039, which fixed that mistake and finally let beer manufacturers open a stand-alone retail outlet not connected to the brewing operation.

“This beverage manufacturer retail outlet allows a brewery such as ourselves to open a separate location that’s basically just a tasting room that doesn’t have to have a manufacturing facility,” Kirsten Neves of Tuckerman Brewery said in an interview.

There’s a catch, though. The law allows beer manufacturers to open a single retail outlet.

If you make beer in the North Country, you’re limited to opening one and only one branded retail outlet below the notches. If you want to create a series of branded outlets to provide customers a consistent retail and beer-tasting experience in Manchester, Nashua, Salem, Londonderry, Keene and Portsmouth, well, tough. You have to pick one. 

One is a big improvement over zero. But the public safety justification for limiting brewers to a single self-operated retail outlet is a mystery considering that the state is covered in licensed retailers. What possible public safety danger is created by a brewer operating a retail outlet instead of delivering product to a third-party retailer like a grocer or convenience store?

Though state beer regulations impose pretty severe burdens on brewers, the only other legislative change this year was a bill by Sen. Regina Birdsell, R-Derry, to allow dogs on brewpub patios. 

Some towns had been allowing people to bring their dogs when seated outdoors at a brewpub, but the state Department of Health and Human Services cracked down on the practice, saying it wasn’t allowed by statute.

So legislators actually had to pass a law to allow towns to allow dogs in outdoor seating areas. Birdsell’s Senate Bill 17 originally covered only brew pubs but was amended to cover all restaurants.  

To illustrate just how long it can take to make a small and reasonable change such as letting dogs sit on restaurant patios, the bill passed the Senate in February of 2021, but took almost another year before passing the House. Gov. Chris Sununu signed it into law this past February.

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Some gambling regulations relaxed, facilitating expansion, in 2022

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While the state was accumulating a record budget surplus this year, legislators were busy finding ways to raise more money from people who don’t mind handing cash to the state. Those would be gamblers.

How to raise more money from people who like to bet? Give them more opportunities to bet.

Until last week, charitable gaming venues were allowed to operate only from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Senate Bill 318, sponsored by Sen. Harold French, expanded that to 20 hours a day, and Gov Chris Sununu signed the bill last week. It took effect immediately.

Now, poker rooms can run from 8 a.m. to 4 a.m. 

None of the 18 poker rooms in the state has switched to the new hours yet. But almost all of them stay open until 1 every night of the week. (Some close earlier on weekdays.) So it’s a safe bet that they’ll continue operating for as long as the law allows, provided they can find staff to work the extra hours.

During the Senate hearing on the bill, no one testified in opposition. Among the few questions was one from Sen. Cindy Rosenwald, D-Nashua, who asked why, if the state is OK allowing operations for 20 hours a day, it bothers to set any limits at all?

That’s the right question. Under the new law, poker rooms are forced by the state to close for just four hours a day. Why? What’s the public health or safety benefit in closing them for about the same time it takes to watch half of the Ocean’s 11 movies?

Heavy regulations on gambling businesses are designed to protect the public from whatever spillover crime there might be and from the ravages of addiction. If those externalities are easily manageable, or are less costly than believed, then the case for such heavy regulation diminishes. 

Legislators seem to have decided that the pros (revenue) far outweigh the cons. But there remain understandable residual cultural reservations about the effects of gambling on the population, and this creates a reluctance to throw the doors wide open.

So the state moves mostly in the direction of maximizing revenues while holding onto a shred of the appearance of concern about ill effects. 

The same dynamic played out in the Keno debate this year. 

Keno brings in a lot more money ($47.9 million last year vs. 7.1 million for charitable gaming and simulcast horse racing). Keno has always been limited to places that have liquor licenses, but House Bill 335, sponsored by Rep. Tim Lang, expands Keno to any vendor that has a license to sell lottery tickets (provided the community has approved Keno sales).

The bill passed the Legislature and has yet to see action from the governor. 

These moves to expand gambling options are good evidence that the number of legislators deeply concerned about the potential ill effects of gambling is shrinking.

Two groups that favor gambling expansion are growing. One consists of those who want additional revenue. The other consists of those who think adults should be free to wager on games of chance if they want to.

A fun test of the strength of these factions could come next year. All someone would have to do is introduce a bill to let poker rooms operate 24/7.

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In last half century, Manchester limited its own growth by limiting new housing

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In 1970, Manchester had more than enough rentals for all who needed one. Over the course of the next half century, the city created its own housing shortage. 

It’s a story repeated in many communities throughout New Hampshire. Manchester offers a case study based on Census figures.

Manchester had 36,024 total housing units in 1970, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. In 2020, the city had 49,445 housing units. That’s an increase of 37% in 50 years. 

By comparison:

  • Salem’s housing units grew from 6.795 in 1970 to 12,005 in 2020, an increase of 76%. 
  • Nashua’s housing units grew from 20,984 in 1970 to 37,933 in 2020, an increase of 80%.
  • Derry’s housing units grew from 4,279 in 1970 to 13,539 in 2020, an increase of 216%.
  • Total statewide housing units increased from 280,962 in 1970 to 638354 in 2020, an increase of more than 127%.

Those are total units, not just rentals. But you can see the rental shortage in the vacancy rate. Manchester’s rental vacancy rate fell from 5.4% in 1970 to below 1% today. 

(New Hampshire suffers from a similarly low vacancy rate, also caused by a shortage of rentals. Local planners in many communities have preferred to approve single-family homes rather than rentals.)

Because Manchester did not allow the construction of enough housing, the city’s population growth rate lagged the rates in some other municipalities. 

From 1970-2020, Manchester’s population grew by 32%. During the same period, Nashua’s population grew by 64%, Derry’s by 95%, and Salem’s by 342%. New Hampshire’s population grew by 87%. 

Because city officials chose to limit growth, Manchester’s population and economy have grown at a slower rate than the rest of the state as a whole. Artificially limiting the city’s housing supply created a drag on the city’s economic growth and cultural life.

If city leaders want to stimulate Manchester’s economy, revitalize its public schools, increase its tax base, and enhance its cultural life, goal No. 1 should be to approve a lot more housing, with an immediate emphasis on rentals. 

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Recycling more plastics is bad? Some activists say so

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Companies have been working for years on new ways to recycle plastics, and they think they have a breakthrough concept: chemical, or “advanced,” recycling. If the technology is perfected, it has the potential to increase plastics recycling and decrease solid waste. 

Naturally, environmental activist groups hate it. 

In the Legislature this year, a popular, bipartisan bill to speed the development of advanced recycling in New Hampshire drew little opposition — except from some green activists.

Why? They prefer to abolish the production of single-use plastics. It’s a classic case of the perfect being the enemy of the good.

A General Accounting Office report last fall concluded that advanced recycling created tremendous new opportunities for:

  • Resource conservation. Chemical recycling can produce raw materials of virgin quality, thereby decreasing demand for fossil fuels and other natural resources.

  • Reduced landfill use. A significant amount of plastic waste ends up in landfills. New technologies could reduce the need for landfills, which may reduce the release of harmful chemicals into the environment.

  • New markets. Developing advanced recycling technologies could promote domestic business and employment. Chemical recycling creates a market for plastic waste and a new way to reuse some plastics.”

A New York recycling investment fund last year concluded that the technology had real promise for investors and as a recycling technology. 

A McKinsey study out this week concluded that advanced recycling “could satisfy 4 to 8 percent of total polymer demand by 2030….”

Obviously, there are no guarantees. Some advanced recycling plants have struggled to make a profit and have closed within a few years of opening. It might never achieve its stated goals, as is true of any expensive new technology.

Among its obstacles are state regulations, which tend to classify such facilities as solid waste disposal operations.

Senate Bill 367 classifies advanced recycling facilities as manufacturing, subjecting them to laws and regulations that apply to manufacturers rather than to solid waste disposal centers. 

The Department of Environmental Services supported the bill and testified in favor of it. 

At the request of the department, the bill authorizes state inspectors to “enter and inspect any advanced recycling facility to ensure compliance with all applicable statutes and departmental rules relative to air, water, waste, and land use and take any enforcement actions necessary.” 

The bill received a unanimous 4-0 “ought to pass” recommendation from the Senate Environment and Agriculture Committee and passed the Senate unanimously on a voice vote.

Sen. David Waters, a passionate environmentalist from Dover, co-sponsored the bill along with Sen. Kevin Avard, R-Nashua. Senate Minority Leader Donna Soucy, D-Manchester, also was a co-sponsor. 

In the House, however, opposition appeared. The House Environment and Agriculture Committee split on the bill, voting 4-3 in favor. The House passed it by 70-vote margin, but still 128 members voted against it. 

Some environmentalists worry that the new recycling process could cause unforeseen environmental problems. They don’t want it allowed until exhaustive testing and research can be done to guarantee safety. 

But that would delay the development of a promising new recycling technology indefinitely, and possibly smother it in the cradle. 

And that is exactly the point, for some activists. The Conservation Law Foundation opposed the bill, saying in a statement that it “disguises burning plastic as recycling and will spread toxic pollution into New Hampshire’s communities while keeping single-use plastic in production.”

The group’s stated goal is to end the production of single-use plastic. Making more of it recyclable is seen as an obstacle to achieving the end goal. 

As with natural gas power generation, some activists are hoping to block an incremental improvement to speed the arrival of a hypothetically perfect outcome. 

A GAO analysis of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data from 2018 found that 75% of plastics wind up in landfills. Advanced recycling might have the potential to decrease that percentage substantially. But it can’t do that if environmentalists block it with a web of regulations.

Advanced recycling might not live up to its promise. But it definitely won’t if it’s never allowed to start. 

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How N.H. could increase access to justice through occupational licensing reform

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New Hampshire could become one of the earliest states to enable low-cost legal assistance by loosening occupational licensing regulations on the practice of law. If House Bill 1343 passes, paralegals would be able to provide limited legal representation to lower-income individuals in district, circuit and family court. 

Paralegals have some legal training but are not attorneys and do not have law degrees. They are prohibited from practicing law or representing clients in court. 

Restricting the practice of law to attorneys only, no matter how simple the legal matter, creates a shortage of legal representation and increases the cost of that representation.

As a result, 80%-90% of people who appear in family court in New Hampshire have no legal representation, bill sponsor Rep. Ned Gordon, R-Bristol, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month. 

Only 13% of alleged domestic violence victims have legal representation in court, according to the Domestic Violence Task Force.

HB 1334 bill would let paralegals who are directly supervised by licensed attorneys represent lower-income clients in family, domestic, stalking and landlord-tenant cases. Paralegals could serve clients whose family income is no more than 300% of the federal poverty level.  

Testifying in favor of the bill, Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald said that allowing paralegals to represent clients in these types of cases would be “one of the most meaningful steps” the state could take to increase access to justice in the court system.

Other states have begun making similar changes for the same reasons. 

  • Arizona allows “Legal Paraprofessionals” to represent clients in family law and some limited civil, criminal and administrative law matters.
  • The State Bar of California is moving forward with a plan to allow “Legal Paraprofessionals” to represent clients in family, housing and some other limited legal matters. 

The push to remove needless barriers to the practice of law is not restricted to the United States. In the United Kingdom, barristers are attorneys who represent people in court, and solicitors generally do legal work for people outside of court. In 2020, the Legal Services Board approved a proposal to reduce the entry-level requirements for solicitors and broaden the number of people who can take the solicitor’s qualifying exam. 

In many countries, law degrees are offered at the bachelor’s level. The United States is an outlier in making graduate school the standard path to a law degree. 

HB 1343 would take a small step toward allowing people to purchase qualified legal representation at a lower cost than is available now. That it is supported by N.H. Legal Assistance and the N.H. Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence shows a general consensus that such representation is needed. No law firm testified against the bill. 

If this small step passes, two obvious next steps could follow:

  1. Removal of the income restriction so that qualified paralegals can represent anyone. 
  2. The creation of a University of New Hampshire bachelor’s or master’s degree in legal studies that would lead to passage of the state bar exam. 
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From vaccines to banks, N.H. sees misguided efforts to restrict freedom in the name of liberty

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“While the talk is about free markets and private property—and it is more respectable than it was a few decades ago to defend near-complete laissez-faire—the bulk of the intellectual community almost automatically favors any expansion of government power so long as it is advertised as a way to protect individuals from big bad corporations, relieve poverty, protect the environment, or promote ‘equality.’”

— Milton Friedman, introduction to “The Road to Serfdom” 50th anniversary edition, 1994

 

The right-of-center movement in the United States is shifting toward statism in a way even many of its self-proclaimed liberty activists don’t realize. 

Responding to relentless left-wing provocation, people on the right think they’re defending liberty by using the state to block or punish private-sector actions they dislike. Instead, they’re expanding state control over private behavior. 

The “Live free or die” state is not immune to this shift. Here, lawmakers who believe themselves to be righteous champions of liberty are trying to extend state control over private contracts and decisions. 

To pick one example, consider House Bill 1210, relative to exemptions from vaccine mandates. The bill requires any employer that receives any public funds, including grants or contracts, to allow a “right of conscience” exemption from vaccination.

Framed as a defense of individual liberty, the bill actually would reduce liberty. 

If enacted, it would weaken the right of free individuals to associate only with others who accept their dedication to fighting infectious diseases through vaccination. 

Vaccination status is not an immutable characteristic like race or sex. It is a choice, and not a purely individualistic one. It can have profound, even life or death, consequences for others. 

Were the bill to pass, health care facilities such as nursing homes and hospitals would be required by law to hire employees who refuse to vaccinate themselves against any and all infectious diseases. The bill covers all vaccines, not just those for COVID-19.

The bill restricts freedom of association in the name of “bodily integrity.” But someone who refuses to vaccinate is making a choice to give up bodily integrity. 

A virus is a foreign living organism that invades a body and uses it as a host. Viruses cannot replicate by themselves. They infect host cells and use them for reproduction, usually killing them in the process. Vaccines are designed to protect cells against invasion and destruction by alien organisms. Their purpose is to preserve bodily integrity. 

Viruses aren’t libertarian. They’ll infect anyone they can. People have a right to choose to associate with others who agree to vaccinate. This bill would violate that right in pursuit of a non-existent right to join a group without agreeing to its terms.

Conservatives can easily see that it would be a violation of individual rights for the state to require religious employers or ideological organizations to hire anyone regardless of their beliefs. This bill violates the freedom of association in a similar way. 

Should HB 1210 become law, a cancer patient would be unable to seek medical care in New Hampshire in a facility with a fully vaccinated staff. That’s not protecting people’s rights. It’s forcing people to associate with others who might be a danger to themselves.

The libertarian saying that your rights end where my nose begins applies here. Going unvaccinated (or not) is not a lifestyle choice like getting tattooed or piercing one’s nose. It can have a direct, potentially catastrophic effect on others. And others have a right to protect themselves against that through their associations.

Like House Bill 1469, which seeks to restrict the free association rights of all New Hampshire businesses under the guise of regulating banks, HB 1210 would expand the power of the state to regulate economic transactions in new ways. 

Supporters of such market interventions honestly think they are taking steps to protect individuals. But they’re mistaken. Unwittingly, they are moving to empower collectivism and weaken the liberty of the individual. 

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