GSIL

The House Judiciary Committee will be holding on a public hearing on HB 1032 next week on Wednesday, January 21st at 1:00pm in Room 230 at 1 Granite Place, Concord, NH 03301! This bill will allow people with disabilities and household members that care for someone with a disability who serve on government-formed boards, councils and other public bodies to be counted as attending in person when participating in a meeting electronically.

Why is this bill important? Though it’s increasingly common for meetings to be held over online platforms such as Zoom, NH law requires that a certain number of a public body’s members (usually a simple majority) attend their meetings in person. When less than that number are physically present, the group is unable to move forward with official business. Public bodies with strong representation from the disability community often struggle with this, as their members may may live with health conditions or have other circumstances that make it difficult to travel and be physically present at meetings on a regular basis.

HB 1032 will ensure that public bodies represented by and serving the disability community can work without interruption and will encourage more people with lived experience in the disability world to get involved in guiding public policy.

Those who aren’t able to attend and testify at the hearing in person can submit written testimony through the House’s online submission form. Written testimony must be submitted in PDF format, no larger than 2MB. You can also reach out to individual members of the House Judiciary Committee.

The public hearing can be watched online on the NH House of Representatives Committee Streaming YouTube channel. It will be titled House Judiciary (1/21/26).