By BOB MARTIN
Eagle Times Staff
CLAREMONT, N.H. — Rep. Hope Damon recently met with the Claremont City Council where she outlined bills that she was either the prime sponsor or co-sponsored that have been signed into statute.
“Hooray,” she exclaimed at the Aug. 28 city council meeting. “Work does get done.”
House Bill 182 has made it so employers may not penalize employees who leave work for volunteer firefighter or EMT services. She said this is maybe more of a concern in small rural towns with entirely volunteer departments, but she felt that it was an important step in the consideration that there are not adequate emergency services in local areas.
House Bill 1019 is the Interstate Compact on Military Education, which was requested by the Department of Education. This is to help when children in military families move because parents have been transferred, all of their education records, IEPS and special needs they have will transition efficiently. This is for more continuity, and Damon said to this point it has not always been the case.
“There’s a fair number of kids who are impacted by that who have folks in the military who are not residing locally because they’re deployed somewhere,” Damon said.
House Bill 1065 changes the requirements for automatic sprinklers when a person or developer is increasing the amount of housing units in an existing building. In the old statute, Damon explained that automatic sprinklers needed to be installed if there were more than two residential dwelling units. This new statute allows up to four.
“Given the cost of automatic sprinklers, the old statute was a disincentive to increasing housing, Damon said. “We worked with the state fire marshal. He was extremely helpful. I think, frankly, we should be very proud of the caliber of employees that we have. Sean Toomey is a good example of that.”
House Bill 1109 was valuable to her as a retired dietician who has a lot of work with eating disorders. It was brought forward last year and came back this year to finesse, she said. This puts the national help hotline for Eating Disorders Alliance on high school student ID cards so students have a source to get them started on a path to recovery. This was requested by a 15-year-old high school student, and she said this young man would impress anyone with his presence and consideration for his fellow human beings.
House Bill 1361 was passed and signed into law. It is a bill to increase where manufactured housing can be sited in communities, and to look at how it can be used to better address the housing crisis.
House Bill 1307 is a bill she brought forward on a constituent request. She said there is a population of about 800 people who are retired state employees or for limited other reasons on the state retirement plan, who are disabled people that retired because of their disability with less than 20 years of service. Due to this, they weren’t qualifying for supplemental allowances that were intermittently approved by the state legislature.
“We put forward this bill so they would qualify as disabled people who retired from state employment through no fault of their own,” Damon said. “They simply weren’t able to keep doing their work that they would qualify for the same supplemental allowances. The most recent one is $500. It’s not huge sums of money, but it’s very significant to these folks.”
