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HB 1224 Eliminates the default budget mechanism — if a warrant fails, the previous year's budget just rolls over.

Education Dead

Eliminates the default budget mechanism — if a warrant fails, the previous year's budget just rolls over.

Impact Score — How Does This Bill Affect You?

3

Overall Impact Score

Harmful

Scale: 1 (harmful) to 10 (beneficial)

3
💰

Your Wallet

Frozen budgets ignore rising costs for legally mandated services like special education

3
🏘️

Your Community

Creates incentive for organized groups to vote down budgets to force spending cuts

3
⚖️

Your Freedom

Removes the safety valve that accounts for contractual and legal obligations

Status

Killed in committee. ITL vote 18-0 on Feb 3, 2026.

Sponsor

Rep. Bill Ohm (R-Nashua)

The Short Version

Under current law, when a budget warrant fails, a "default budget" accounts for contractual obligations and adjustments. This bill would have eliminated that safety valve — if the warrant fails, schools simply get last year's exact budget with no adjustments for new contracts, cost increases, or enrollment changes. Killed unanimously in committee (18-0 ITL), but it reveals the intent: punish schools for any budget vote that doesn't go the way anti-education forces want.

Who's Behind This Bill?

Who Benefits

  • ▲ Groups seeking to force school spending cuts

Who Pays the Price

  • ▼ School districts (frozen budgets ignore rising mandated costs)
  • ▼ Students (program cuts when budgets fail)

Roll Call Detail (1 vote)

Every recorded floor vote on this bill, with each legislator's individual vote. Click a name to see that rep's full record.

Who actually supports this bill?

Across the 1 recorded vote on this bill — counting each legislator's net direction and treating kill motions as opposing the bill — Republicans supported it ( 185 for , 7 against ) , and Democrats opposed it ( 1 for , 153 against ) .

"Supporting" means voting for passage OR voting against a kill motion. "Opposing" is the inverse. Concurs and amendment-only votes don't count.

Ought to Pass with Amendment 2026-03-12
Passed

YES = Pass the bill with the attached amendment. NO = Reject the bill (as amended).

185R + 1D
Voted to Pass (186)
7R + 153D
Voted Against (160)
21
Absent
25
Not voting
Show all 392 individual votes

Voted Yea (186)

Republicans (185)
Democrats (1)

Voted Nay (160)

Republicans (7)
Democrats (153)
Absent (21)

Dale Swanson (D) , Gaby Grossman (D) , Geoff Smith (D) , Jaci Grote (D) , James Spillane (R) , Jay Markell (R) , Jeanine Notter (R) , Jennifer Rhodes (R) , John Janigian (R) , Jonathan Smith (R) , Joseph Hamblen (R) , Kevin Verville (R) , Linda Haskins (D) , Mark Warden (R) , Mary Ford (R) , Matthew Hicks (D) , Peter Lovett (D) , Peter Varney (R) , Robert Harb (R) , Russell Muirhead (D) , Thomas Buco (D)

Full Analysis

Rep. Bill Ohm (R-Nashua) — who also sponsors HB 1817 (the EFA unfunded mandate bill) — introduced HB 1224 to eliminate the default budget mechanism entirely. Under this bill, when a school budget warrant article fails, the district would simply receive the previous year's exact budget with zero adjustments.

No adjustment for new teacher contracts. No adjustment for increased special education costs. No adjustment for enrollment changes. No adjustment for legally mandated services. Just last year's number, frozen.

This would create a perverse incentive: organized groups could vote down budgets specifically to force a rollback, knowing that the resulting budget would be inadequate to meet the district's legal obligations. The district would then be forced to make mid-year cuts or violate contractual and legal requirements.

Like HB 1575, this was killed unanimously (18-0 ITL). But both bills came from the same playbook: manipulate the budget process to guarantee that school spending goes down, regardless of what voters or school boards want.

Read the Actual Bill → See All Bills

Bill statuses as of May 2026. Check LegiScan or NH General Court for the latest.