New Hampshire
After spike in fatal crashes, NH announces ‘zero tolerance’ on I-95 during Thanksgiving
From Seabrook to Portsmouth, a “zero-tolerance zone” along the I-95 corridor will be enforced this holiday season by state police. The initiative is part of a state directive to reduce unsafe, distracted and impaired driving after a recent uptick in serious and sometimes fatal crashes.
All drivers pulled over on I-95 in the Seacoast this holiday season, regardless of the reason for the stop, will receive a ticket as part of the state campaign, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu announced Tuesday in Concord.
The state’s holiday season zero-tolerance policy on local stretches of the interstate comes in advance of Thanksgiving. Enforcement measures and increased state police patrols will begin Wednesday.
“If you’re pulled over on I-95, you’re getting a ticket. That’s it,” Sununu said Tuesday.
Sununu and representatives of state police agencies from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire spoke to the spike in crashes each state has seen this year and the New England-wide police effort to make cross-border holiday season travel safer for all motorists.
Fatal crashes increase during days around Thanksgiving
Five people have died in crashes on I-95 in New Hampshire this year, several of which occurred with at least one vehicle crossing the median into oncoming traffic.
Three recent Seacoast I-95 crashes resulted in three deaths and serious injuries to multiple motorists and passengers, which prompted the New Hampshire Department of Transportation to begin planning to add median barriers to the “most critical sections” of I-95. The project is still in the design phase and cost estimates have not been released, but construction will start in the summer of 2025, a Department of Transportation spokesperson said previously.
Since 2019, five people have been killed and nine more have been injured in all crashes on major New Hampshire roads during Thanksgiving week, with impairment playing a role in four of the crashes, state police reported. The agency defines the Thanksgiving period as the Wednesday through the Sunday during the holiday week.
From 2019 to 2023, 2,183 non-fatal crashes occurred on New Hampshire roads during the Thanksgiving holiday periods.
“This is a really important story. This isn’t sensational. People have been dying over the past few weeks at really alarming numbers,” Sununu said Tuesday. “The roads haven’t changed. The conditions haven’t necessarily changed. We’ve actually had pretty good weather, other than today, but pretty good weather out there. It’s all about driver behavior.”
The night before Thanksgiving has come to be called “Drinksgiving” and “Blackout Wednesday,” according to New Hampshire State Police spokesperson Tyler Dumont, as crowds descend upon hometown bars and drinking establishments in the hours leading up to the holiday.
“We are particularly concerned this year given the recent troubling trends on our roads across the state,” Dumont said.
2024 fatal crashes in NH on track to far exceed 2023
For the year to date, 127 people have died on major New Hampshire roads in fatal car crashes, according to state police Lt. Christopher Storm. That ties the entire death count from all 2023 crashes in New Hampshire, with over a month to go before the new year and without poor weather conditions having fully set in yet.
State police conducted a saturation patrol on I-95 on Wednesday, Nov. 20, with over 200 cars being pulled over. Hours after the patrol period ended, a 26-year-old Merrimack resident was sent to the hospital with life-threatening injuries after a series of multiple-vehicle crashes on I-95 in Greenland.
“Drivers, take note. If you are excessively speeding, driving recklessly or impaired on our roads, you will face consequences,” Storm said Tuesday. “Just a moment of carelessness can have lifelong repercussions for everybody involved.”
The New Hampshire Department of Transportation has recently installed 276 reflective markers around the area of the recent Seacoast I-95 serious and fatal crashes. The department is partnering with the state Department of Safety on safety messaging for drivers, with electronic billboards telling drivers to slow down, remain sober and stay alert during their travel.
Between 2018 and 2022, per data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly 500 drivers in the United States were involved in fatal crashes on Thanksgiving Eve, Dumont said Tuesday.
On Thanksgiving Day 2022, Drew Ceppetelli, a 21-year-old Barrington resident and student-athlete at Salve Regina University, was killed in a single-vehicle crash at the Portsmouth traffic circle. All six passengers in that speeding vehicle were transported to local hospitals after the driver lost control, skidded across the roadway, flipped several times and occupants were ejected from the car.
Northwood resident Tyler Troy, the impaired driver at the wheel during the incident, recently pleaded guilty to negligent homicide while under the influence and four other charges, resulting in a minimum six-year state prison sentence.
In 2024, 10 motor vehicle operators under the age of 21 have been killed in crashes on New Hampshire’s major roadways, up from three deaths among the same demographic this time last year, according to state police data.
For all of 2022, a total of 146 people died on New Hampshire roads in fatal motor vehicle accidents, according to state police data.
Law enforcement officials from the four New England states on Tuesday urged drivers to buckle up, stay sober, remain awake while traveling, put down phones and handheld devices while driving, and to report unsafe and distracted drivers they view on the road.
Anyone planning to drink this holiday week, and in the future should always utilize a designated driver to get home afterward, the speakers in Concord said. Doing so could save lives.
“The ‘zero-tolerance’ policy that I’m really driving into effect over the holiday season is to bring some awareness, to make people wake up. (It’s) to make people realize, ‘Holy cow, this is real. It could be me, my kid, my neighbor, my dad.’ It could be anybody out there. It’s an absolute zero-tolerance policy on the I-95 corridor, where we’ve just had over the past few weeks an inordinate number of unnecessary crossings, specifically into the median,” Sununu said.
New Hampshire State Police expect to increase their presence on state roads the entirety of this week with between 50 to 100 patrols, according to Storm.
New Hampshire
Electioneering accusation against high-ranking N.H. Democrat cleared – The Boston Globe
The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office has closed a complaint after finding that Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill did not engage in illegal electioneering.
At issue were a series of emails Liot Hill, a Lebanon Democrat, had sent from her official government account to help the partisan Elias Law Group connect with voters impacted by a new state voting law.
Republican lawmakers said that was an inappropriate use of official resources, threatening to impeach Liot Hill over her correspondence. James MacEachern, chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, reported his concerns to the Attorney General’s Office in August.
In August, the Elias Law Group, which represents Democrats and progressive causes, represented three visually-impaired plaintiffs who sued New Hampshire officials over the constitutionality of a new law that would tighten photo ID requirements for voters seeking an absentee ballot. That case was recently dismissed by a New Hampshire Superior Court judge.
This week, the Attorney General’s Election Law Unit released its determination that Liot Hill’s emails did not constitute illegal electioneering, in a Dec. 18 letter to MacEachern.
The Election Law Unit said it reviewed five emails from Liot Hill’s official government account that MacEachern had provided.
It found the content of the emails did not meet the state’s definition of electioneering, “because it does not relate in any way to ‘the vote of a voter on any question or office,’ i.e., something to be voted on at an election,” Brendan A. O’Donnell, senior assistant attorney general in the Election Law Unit, said in the letter.
“Moreover, it is not uncommon for elected officials to use their official capacity to take a position on the constitutionality of an enacted law that is being challenged in court,” O’Donnell said.
However, the letter noted that Liot Hill’s emails did raise the risk that its recipients — including two executive branch officials — could interpret her requests for help as commands.
“All executive branch officials should use care to avoid acting in any way that would create an appearance of impropriety,” said O’Donnell.
But, he continued, his office did not find in this case that there had been a misuse of position or that the emails otherwise violated the executive branch ethics code.
MacEachern said he still has concerns about Liot Hill, when reached for comment on the Election Law Unit’s findings.
“This report, among others, continues to raise serious questions about Councilor Liot-Hill’s judgement and brazen willingness to push ethical boundaries with her conduct,” he said in an email.
But Liot Hill said the findings “underscore the partisan nature of the ongoing attacks” against her, including the impeachment proceedings Republicans have failed against her.
“I am being impeached not for wrong-doing, but for being a Democrat,” she said in an email.
Amanda Gokee can be reached at amanda.gokee@globe.com. Follow her @amanda_gokee.
New Hampshire
NH Republicans push to allow guns on college campuses
CONCORD — The recent fatal shooting at Brown University shows that banning guns on campus makes students more vulnerable to violence, state Rep. Sam Farrington, a University of New Hampshire senior, told reporters Dec. 17 in promoting legislation to end such bans.
Farrington, R-Rochester, and other House Republicans, also said in the Statehouse news conference that the shooting that killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia on Sunday, illustrates that Australia’s restrictive gun laws don’t protect the public.
Rep. Joe Sweeney, R-Salem, the deputy House majority leader, said gun control restrictions leave people “unable to defend themselves, their families, their peers.”
Farrington said violence similar to what occurred at Brown University in Rhode Island, which left two dead and nine injured, could occur in New Hampshire, where universities also prohibit guns on campus.
“UNH, Plymouth State, Keene State, the list goes on, they all have one thing in common — these are public universities that are infringing on the Second Amendment rights of college students right here in New Hampshire,” said Farrington.
“They claim to be gun free zones. Well if we know anything about gun-free zones, looking at Australia and Brown, we know that they are not violence free zones. They are only defenseless zones where victims are left hopeless, without any hope of defending themselves.”
He is the prime sponsor of House Bill 1793, which the Legislature will consider next year. It would prohibit public colleges and universities from regulating the possession or carrying of firearms and non-lethal weapons on campus.
Under the bill, if a college or university that received federal funds instituted such a ban, they could be sued.
Democrat speaks against legislation
State Rep. Nicholas Germana, D-Keene, a history professor at Keene State College, said Thursday he wouldn’t feel any safer if people coming on campus were packing firearms.
Any police response to an active shooter on a college campus would be fraught if armed bystanders became involved and crossfire broke out, he said.
“All the sudden police come on that campus and it’s a shootout at the OK Corral,” Germana said. “How do police know who the good guy is and who the bad guy is?”
He said the tragedy in Australia last weekend is an anomaly that doesn’t alter the fact that gun violence rates in that country decreased after strict firearm regulations were passed almost 30 years ago and remain much lower than U.S. rates.
“We can look around the world to see examples of this where the number of guns in the population at large corresponds to gun violence,” Germana said. “It’s clear that when Republicans say in this country that gun control measures do not decrease gun violence, it is demonstrably false.”
The University System of New Hampshire said in the fiscal note of House Bill 1793 that the measure could cost it as much as $500,000 because insurance premiums and liability claims would increase, more security measures would be required, firearm storage systems would be needed, expected lawsuits would create attorney fees and the ability to attract students and faculty would decrease.
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New Hampshire
NH attorney general clears top Democratic official of ‘electioneering’ charge
The New Hampshire Attorney General’s office has concluded that Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill did nothing wrong when she used her government email to assist a law firm that was suing the state over its voter ID law.
Assistant Attorney General Brendan O’Donnell wrote that Liot Hill’s use of her state email to assist a national Democratic law firm find plaintiffs didn’t amount to “electioneering” under state law.
The state Republican party alleged in August that Liot Hill — the only Democrat on the five-member Executive Council — misused her position by involving herself in a lawsuit against the state.
From the start, Liot Hill called that claim baseless, and the Attorney General’s office said Liot Hill’s conduct didn’t warrant sanction.
“This Office cannot conclude that the e-mails constituted a misuse of position or otherwise violated the executive branch ethics code. This matter is closed,” the office wrote.
In a statement Friday, Liot Hill, from Lebanon, welcomed the conclusion of the case.
“The AG’s findings underscore the partisan nature of the ongoing attacks against me: I am being impeached not for wrong-doing, but for being a Democrat,” she said.
The lawsuit challenging New Hampshire’s voter ID recently failed in state court. But this issue may not yet be over: A top House Republican has filed a bill to explore Liot Hill’s impeachment next year.
As the lone Democrat on the Executive Council, Liot Hill is her party’s ranking member in the State House. That profile has made Liot Hill, who spent two decades in local politics before winning election to the council last year, a regular target for Republicans, who argue that her approach to the job, which she says honors the state’s volunteer spirit, has crossed ethical lines.
The New Hampshire Republican Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment to the Attorney General report Friday afternoon.
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