(Hour 3c) Rich spoke about Speaker Shawn Jasper’s statement from Friday regarding the process for appointments to the Children and Family Law Committee.  

He commented on the Speaker’s motives, opposition and more.

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House Speaker Details Process for Appointments to the Children & Family Law Committee
CONCORD – New Hampshire House Speaker Shawn Jasper today issued the following statement explaining the process for appointing House members to the Children and Family Law committee. On Wednesday, the House voted to reject an amendment to House rules that would have dissolved the committee and assign bills in that policy area to other standing policy committees dealing with Health and Human Services, Criminal Justice and Public Safety, and Judiciary issues.
Committee assignments for all House members had been previously published in the House Calendar on December 23, 2016. As a result of the House vote rejecting the change, it was necessary to move a small number of House members from the committee they had been assigned, to the now re-established committee on Children and Family Law. In the House Calendar, published Thursday, January 5, appointments for the committee were announced, after those members, whose assignment had been changed had been contacted by the speaker’s office.
House Speaker Shawn Jasper:
“We would never have decided to move forward with a rule proposal to remove the Children and family law committee as a standing committee without the consultation and endorsement of the rule change proposal from the minority leader. As it turned out only three members of the minority caucus ended up casting a vote for the rule proposal. That lack of support was not anything that I was expecting following discussions with our minority colleagues. I always respect the collective wisdom of the House and will implement its wishes.
Assigning members to our standing committees is always a challenge. We constantly endeavor to grant members their requests. This year we were able to achieve results that had most members being assigned to one of their three requested committee assignments over 90% of the time. Therefore, in order to reduce the upheaval of the previously assigned committees I exercised my prerogative as speaker to make the appointments to the reconstituted Children and Family law committee.
I utilized the members who so eloquently advocated, or voted not to amend the Children and Family law out of our standing committee roster, to serve on the Children and Family law committee and informed the minority leader of the assignments. We have already assigned bills to the committee and vacated others for assignment that were previously assigned to other committees. I trust the members assigned to the Children and family law committee will make the House and the General Court proud and give every issue assigned to it a thorough review and recommendation.”
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