[fatlazyless]

Starting on the front page of today's Dec 11 Laconia Daily Sun, there's an article titled

Boat speed bill has yet to pick up Senate sponsor

by Michael Kitch


CONCORD - The effort to impose boating speed limits on New Hampshire lakes which was amoung the heaviest lobbied and hotly contested issues of the last legislative session, will be renewed early this year.
On Friday, at the request of the Winnipesaukee Family Alliance for Boating Safety (WinnFABs), the grass roots organization that has spearheaded the campaign, Representative Sid Lovett (D-Holderness) introduced a bill to set a day time speed limit of 45 mph and a night time speed limit of 25 mph, on all lakes.
Last spring similar legislation (House Bill 162), sponsored by Representative Jim Pilliod (R-Belmont), passed the House of Representatives by a margin of 193 to 139 only to fail in the Senate by 15 to 9, as only three members of the Republican majority voted for it.
This year, WinnFABs encouraged that the election returned a Democratic majority to the Senate, planned to file the bill in the upper chamber, but with the deadline for senators to introduce legislation a week away, has yet to find a senator to sponsor it. Sandy Helve of WinnFABs declined to comment, beyond indicating that efforts to enlist support for a bill in the Senate have not been exhausted.
Newly elected senators Deb Reynolds (D-Plymouth) and Kathy Sgambati (D-Tilton), who represent the western and southern shore of Lake Winnipesaukee, said they had not been approached about sponsoring legislation.
"I don't know anything about the bill," Reynolds said, "but I would like to see what Sid's (Lovett's) bill says and I would certainly consider supporting it."
Sgambati recalled that she discussed several issues at length with representatives of the New Hampshire Lakes Association (NHLA), but speed limts "never came up." However, she said that "I have no problem supporting a speed limit on Lake Winnipesaukee,"though she had reservations about imposing a uniform speed limit throughout the state.
Jared Teutsch, president of the NHLA, confirmed that although the organization "supports speed limits 100-percent,"the bill was not part of its legislative agenda. He said that the NHLA was encouraging municipalities to petition the New Hampshire Department of Safety (DOS) to invoke its authority to restrict the speed of boats through rule-making. He said that while the NHLA supports "45/25", the standard may not be the most appropriate for all lakes.
At a hearing held in Meredith last September after residents of the eight municipalities surrounding Lake Winnipesaukee petitioned the DOS to use its administrative power to set speed limits on the lake, Reynolds and Sgambati, who were then senate candidates, spoke in favor of the proposal. Over the weekend, both said they were waiting the outcome of the petition process at the DOS. "I am hoping to see what the commissioner will do," Reynolds said adding that she would be asking Commissioner Dick Flynn for "a status report."
The election results would appear to have shortened the odds in favor of a speed limit bill, without however making it a sure bet. When the bill passed the house, where Democrats now hold the majority, 114 Democrats voted in favor and only 14 against.
In the Senate, six of the 13 Republicans who voted against the bill last spring - Rob Boyce, Dick Green, Bob Flanders, Tom Eaton, Andre Martel, and Chuck Morse - lost their seats in November while two of the three Republicans who supported it - Joe Kenney and Bob Odell - were re-elected. Carl Johnson was the lone supporter of the bill not to be re-elected.
Amoung the Democrats, the two senators who opposed the bill - David Gottesman and Lou D'Allesandro return.
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Thankyou Laconia Daily Sun and Michael Kitch and this is the entire article.