It’s a cherished State House maxim in New Hampshire: Every bill gets a public hearing, and every bill gets a vote on the House or Senate floor.

But a series of scheduling woes, time constraints, and partisan machinations just upended that tradition.

Facing the need to pass 344 bills over two days — and a midnight Thursday, March 12, calendar deadline to do so — House Republicans made a decision: They structured the calendar so that bills recommended to pass by committees would receive votes in the floor first. Bills that committees recommended to be killed or shelved would be taken up afterward.

The effect: The bills favored by Republicans, the majority party, jumped to the front of the line. And after two days of voting, and some Democratic obstruction, House leadership chose to adjourn the chamber on Thursday afternoon with 74 bills still waiting for a vote.

Those 74 bills, many from Democrats, died automatically when the Thursday deadline struck, without any debate on the floor.

The parliamentary fiasco sparked notable moments of frustration. Democrats blasted Republicans, arguing they intentionally deprived their opponents’ bills of a chance of passage and that better scheduling ahead of the deadline could have provided time for all of them.

Republicans fumed over a series of moves by individual Democrats Wednesday that slowed down the voting process, accusing them of dilatory obstruction.

In the end, the House adjourned around 4:30 p.m Thursday leaving dozens of bills in an unusual fate: No chamber vote in favor, no vote against, their outcome officially labeled under the puzzling category “miscellaneous.”

Housing-related bills that died included:

• A bill to tighten the requirements to build accessory dwelling units, House Bill 1136, proposed by critics of the 2025 expansion of ADU rights;
• House Bill 1218, a bill to require clearer communications between sellers of manufactured homes and buyers; and
• A bill to prohibit landlords from charging more than one application fee a year per tenant, House Bill 1375.

The House’s failure to meet its deadlines — and collapse of tradition — is unusual; the last time bills were left behind without a floor vote came in 2021, when COVID-19 kept lawmakers away from Representatives Hall and complicated meeting logistics. Recent speeches and conduct suggest a major decline in trust between the parties.

But there is hope of a better near-term future. Thursday’s legislative deadline required the House to pass all single-committee bills, which constitute the vast majority. The next major deadline is March 26, “Crossover Day,” when the House must pass all remaining bills it intends to send to the Senate. But that deadline, and future legislative deadlines, are less daunting. There will simply be fewer bills that need a vote.

The 74 bills marked “miscellaneous” made sure of that.

New Hampshire Bulletin staff writers William Skipworth and Molly Rains contributed to this report.

A longer version of this story was first published on The New Hampshire Bulletin. It is being reproduced here under a Creative Commons license.