New Hampshire

Radio Free New Hampshire: An Expert Opinion

Published

3 weeks ago

February 9, 2026

Radio Free New Hampshire: An Expert Opinion

Confession: I don’t know how computers work. When mine goes south, I stab random buttons. I turn it on and off. I swear out loud. It usually works again after a while and then I move along. Ditto for my phone, ditto for my car, ditto for the other machinery on which I rely any given day.

Ditto for our social systems. Though I studied both politics and economics in school, I read as widely as I can, and I listen as much as I can, this column still proceeds on more thin ice than I prefer to admit. To be truthful is to be profoundly modest. A peasant from the tenth century, living in a world lit by fire, understood more of that world than I do of my own, with every bit of artificial light I can find. He was just more afraid of the dark.

Modernity requires experts and we live and die by them. They keep our phones humming, they keep our bodies working, they keep our businesses prospering. So when those experts fail, we feel pain: physical, social, economic.

Donald Trump became president because our experts have been failing lately. Economic experts not only impoverished our workers for the benefit of China, they also paid for Wall Street crashes with taxpayer funds, ensuring the rich would stay rich while the poor stayed poor. Technology experts fractured our nation into a thousand rabid pieces, then invented AI to fling our future into the whirlwind. Even our medical experts have caused harm. They’ve given us long lives capped with years of dependent misery and myriad new procedures to plaster over our spiritual poverty and make us want painkilling of every sort imaginable.

Our experts have also stopped talking to each other, or to us, or to even make sense on their own terms. Academia took all the progress we’ve made in civil rights and used it to propagate the most egregious example of dead-end thinking a satirist could imagine: gays for Hamas.

It’s therefore no wonder that he has stacked his administration with passionate amateurs instead of lukewarm professionals. As always, his most valid role is to act as the measure of past neglect. For every doctor who told us to mask up and stay home, except if you were protesting George Floyd, a vaccine denier was born. For every economist who explained why the good of our country required free trade, who wore silk ties from France while the rest of us choked on cheap plastic, a class warrior came to be. And for every politician who ignored these developments, an election denier gained credibility.

Hegseth at Defense, Kennedy at Health, Musk, whatever he did before he quit, and more. Most have been awful (Kennedy couldn’t put a band-aid on a child’s knee). Some have done okay (two cheers for Caroline Leavitt, whose politics are raw but who does her job with flair). William F. Buckley’s old jab about preferring to be governed by the first two hundred names in Boston’s telephone directory than by the professors of Harvard College comes to mind. Common sense is worth more than any degree and real world experience helps too.

Yet not just avoiding but vilifying expertise is a dangerous game to play. Our president’s line on scientific research makes zero sense and hands China an open promise; his energy policy is similarly short-sighted; his tariff threats make our allies doubt our sanity. As those things are all abstractions, though, their true effect won’t be felt for years. It has taken Minnesota to drive it home.

As a criminal defense attorney, I watch police video regularly. I see our officers show tremendous patience. I see them lose their temper. I see them take down suspects with speed and force, sometimes for good cause, sometimes for less. I see them show a fairly complete range of human emotion; but importantly, I don’t see a complete range. Far from it. While there are always exceptions, our police officers largely hold themselves in check. They pride themselves on being professional. They pride themselves on self-control.

The video coming out of Minneapolis shows the opposite. Undisciplined, trigger-happy, violence-prone men, seeking their own safety in cowardly anonymity while seething with contempt for the people around them. This is not law enforcement. It’s amateurism run amok. It’s also childish behavior in a grown-up world.

Take this as Trump’s gays-for-Hamas moment. His underlying theory of governance must give way to common sense before more people die. And once that happens, let’s hope that common sense takes root. Our world needs leaders who are not afraid of the dark.

Davidow writes Radio Free New Hampshire for InDepthNH.org. He is also the author of Gate City, Split Thirty, and The Rocketdyne Commission, three novels about politics and advertising which, taken together, form The Henry Bell Project, The Book of Order, and The Hunter of Talyashevka, Chanukah Land can be found here. And his latest novel Interdiction can be found here.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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New Hampshire

New Hampshire employment law in 2026 – NH Business Review

Published

3 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

New Hampshire employment law in 2026 – NH Business Review

What employers are getting wrong, and how to fix it before it becomes a claim

New Hampshire’s employment law landscape heading into 2026 may not be dramatically different from last year, but the real risks lie in implementation missteps. From the initial setting of wages, to calculating and distributing wages, employers will likely find a specific statute and/or labor regulation governing the transaction. Failure to follow these detailed wage and hour laws can result in significant back wages and other penalties being imposed by the state or federal Department of Labor following an audit. Fortunately, however, this area of employment law is relatively easy to master, once you are familiar with the basics.

Notice compliance

One of the most common pitfalls for employers in New Hampshire is misunderstanding the wage and hour notice requirements under RSA 275 and the related New Hampshire Department of Labor Administrative Rules.

At the time of hire, employers must notify employees in writing of their rate of pay and the day and place of payment. This notice is traditionally delivered to employees by way of an offer letter or some sort of “New Hire Rate of Pay” form. (A sample form is available from the New Hampshire Department of Labor website.) What surprises most employers, however, is that Lab. 803.03(f)(6) also requires employers to request and obtain their employees’ signatures on this written notification of wages, and employers must keep a copy of the signed written notification of wages on file. Further, employers must notify employees in writing during the course of employment of any changes to wages or day of pay prior to such changes taking effect, and the employer must obtain the employee’s signature on this subsequent notification as well. (See RSA 275:49; Lab. 803.03.)

Employers are further required to notify employees in writing, or through a posted notice maintained in a place accessible to employees, of:

• employment practices and policies with regard to vacation pay, sick leave and other fringe benefits.

• deductions made from the employee’s payroll check, for each period such deductions are made.

• information regarding the deductions allowed from wage payments under state law. (RSA 275:49; Lab. 803.03.)

Policies regarding vacation and sick leave should inform employees whether or not the employer will “cash out” unused time at year end or at the end of employment, and if so, under what terms. Again, if any changes are made to vacation pay, sick leave and other fringe benefits during the course of employment (all of which are considered “wages” under New Hampshire law), employers must request and obtain their employees’ signatures on the written notification of the change, and must keep a copy of the signed form on file. (Lab. 803.03.) Importantly, notification by way of pay stub alone is not sufficient, and, these requirements apply to both increases and decreases in pay.

Two-hour minimum (reporting pay)

Another frequently overlooked obligation is New Hampshire’s two-hour minimum reporting pay requirement. Under RSA 275:43-a, non-exempt employees who report to work but are sent home early must generally be paid for at least two hours. Weather-related closures, client cancellations or operational slowdown days can trigger this rule. Employers should also note that the New Hampshire Department of Labor currently applies this law to remote-based employees. Consequently, employees who “report to work” at an employer’s request from a home office may likewise have a right to two hours of pay, depending on the circumstances.

Salaried vs. hourly employees

Misclassification of employees as exempt from overtime remains a significant source of compliance exposure. The position’s job duties — not the titles or label such as “salaried” — determine whether an employee qualifies for an overtime exemption.

Employers, particularly in nonprofits, health care and small businesses, unintentionally misapply exempt classifications to roles such as administrative staff, office managers, executive assistants, program coordinators or hybrid jobs that involve significant non-exempt tasks. Over time, as organizational needs evolve and employees take on broader responsibilities, job duties can drift outside of an exemption’s scope.

Best practice is to periodically review job descriptions and actual job duties to ensure continued compliance with exemption criteria, particularly following any significant restructuring or job redesigns.

Peg O’Brien is chair of McLane Middleton’s Employment Law Practice Group. She can be reached at margaret.o’brien@mclane.com.

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New Hampshire

New photo released in unsolved 1997 homicide of a N.H. woman

Published

15 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

New photo released in unsolved 1997 homicide of a N.H. woman

Local News

“Our family wants to know what happened, who did this and why,” said the family of the victim.

A new photo has been released of the victim in a nearly 30-year-long unsolved murder case, in the hope of finding any new potential witnesses in the cold case, New Hampshire officials said.

“Our family wants to know what happened, who did this and why,” the family of Rosalie Miller said in a press release. “We miss her and want to give her peace.”

Miller was last seen on December 8, 1996 at her apartment in Manchester. At the time of her disappearance, Miller had plans on meeting friends in the Auburn, New Hampshire area, officials said.

Her body was found on January 20, 1997 in a partially wooded spot on a residential lot along the Londonderry Turnpike in Auburn, officials said in the release.

The autopsy report declared Miller’s death a homicide by asphyxiation due to ligature strangulation, N.H. officials wrote.

As part of a new effort to garner public help with the case, an “uncirculated” photo of Miller, 36, is being distributed “in hopes it may jog the memory of someone who saw or spoke with her in the winter of 1996,” Attorney General John M. Formella and New Hampshire State Police Colonel Mark B. Hall announced on behalf of the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit in a joint press release.

Investigators are especially hoping to talk to anyone who was in contact with Miller in December of 1996 or anyone “who may have seen her in the vicinity of the Londonderry Turnpike in Auburn during that time,” officials said in the release.

The newly released photo of Rosalie Miller, 36, who was strangled to death nearly 30 years ago. – Attorney General John M. Formella and New Hampshire State Police Colonel Mark B. Hall

“We are releasing this new photograph today because we believe someone out there has information, perhaps a detail they thought was insignificant at the time, that could be the key to solving this case and bringing justice for Rosalie and those who loved her,” Senior Assistant Attorney General R. Christopher Knowles, New Hampshire Cold Case Unit Chief said in the release.

The New Hampshire Cold Case Unit encourages anyone with any amount of information to contact the group at [email protected] or (603) 271-2663.