NHLA President on House Bill 1529

The 2022 NHLA President shared this information today about HB 1529:

Dear Colleagues,

Below are the talking points that NHLA has come up with to address concerns related to House Bill 1529. These were compiled by Randy Brough, Lori Fisher and myself.  The time for the hearing has been set for February 10^th at 11 am at the Legislative Office Building.  This information has also been shared with the Trustee Association as well.  Feel free to have your Trustees reach out to any reps you or they may know on the Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services Committee. This house bill is aimed at Trustees so they would be the best ones to make statements!

As Lori shared last week on NHAIS there is also a process that folks can now use to submit comments to House Committees: 

New Process for Submitting Written Testimony to House Committees

The Legislature’s website was updated recently to allow written testimony to be submitted to House Committees. Previously, submitting written testimony required finding the appropriate committee and clicking the link to “email all committee members.” Now, those wishing to submit written testimony can simply navigate to the front page of the Legislature’s website and click the link for the “House Testimony Submission Form” below the header “Links to Meeting Schedules.”

Suggested talking points regarding House Bill 1529:

• Libraries support background checks on employees and volunteers, many already conduct the State Background check, which is fairly streamlined and affordable especially for smaller libraries.
• Moving to the Federal check, which does not cover all 50 states, will delay the timeliness of hiring and planning events that utilize volunteers.
• More burden is being put on those who wish to help NH libraries as volunteers will need to schedule finger printing sessions before they can help our library with (Fill in the BLANK with an example of volunteer usage for your library!!)
• The bill states that that volunteers are also to be considered employees for this particular section of the law.  Yet volunteers are not considered employees anywhere else in State Law so this statement could lead to other interpretations blurring the legal lines between volunteers and employees.
• The bill is an unfunded mandate with almost a 50% increase in costs for NH libraries as they do their due diligence. Passing the financial burden on to members of our communities who wish to volunteer or be employed by a library will hurt community engagement and limit hiring in an already tight job market.

Hope this helps the library community!

Sincerely,

Denise

Denise M. van Zanten

Library Director/ NHLA President 2022
Manchester City Library
405 Pine Street
Manchester, NH 03104
603-624-6550 X3329
dvanzant@manchesternh.gov