Democrats will have a primary contest in September to choose a successor to outgoing Grafton County Attorney Lara Saffo.
Marcie Hornick, a public defender from Littleton, N.H., has filed to run for the job, which paid $82,200 in fiscal year 2018. She started work in the New Hampshire Public Defender Program in 2003 and soon became the managing attorney in the Littleton office.
She said her experience in courtrooms and working with defendants and police officers would make her “a good fit” as county attorney.
“I believe in accountability, but I also have an understanding of the realities and complexities that come with mental health and substance abuse issues within the criminal justice system and the overall impact that crime in general has on the community, on families, on law enforcement, on victims and on the accused,” Hornick said in an email on Wednesday.
Hornick graduated from the University of Maine School of Law in 2002 and serves on the Littleton Conservation Commission and the board of the Littleton Food Coop. She also has been a library trustee in town. Natch Greyes, a 29-year-old Sugar Hill, N.H., resident who works as a prosecutor for the towns of Littleton and Sugar Hill, previously had announced his bid for the office.
No Republicans have filed for the seat.
Independent Voice
While 51 Republicans in the Vermont House voted this week to sustain Gov. Phil Scott’s veto in the ongoing budget stalemate in Montpelier, six of the chamber’s seven independents voted to override, including state Rep. Ben Jickling, I-Randolph.
The 23-year-old Jickling, who has gained bipartisan praise for his thoughtful approach in his first term, said he believes Scott’s five-year plan to reform and curb education spending has suspect math and insufficient detail to be reliable.
“I’m not looking to create significant holes in the following (year’s budget) just to say we didn’t raise taxes and fees this year,” said Jickling, who backed Scott’s plan on teachers health care last year.
Jickling also noted that what had been a major projected increase on residential tax rates had been averted by lawmakers and that constituents want policymakers in Montpelier to compromise and solve the problem. “They aren’t saying ‘do this’ or ‘do that.’ They are saying, ‘come on, guys, did you figure this out yet?’ ”
Different Sides of the Issue
Two leading — and normally allied — conservative activists are on different sides when it comes to Republican Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto of legislation that would require utilities in the state to buy electricity from six biomass plants around New Hampshire.
Sununu said the measure would cost ratepayers about $25 million a year for the next three years and doesn’t guarantee that wood-chip plants, which are facing competition from less expensive hydro and natural gas, would stay in business.
But Orford tree farmer Tom Thomson has been advocating for the legislation and recently met with Sununu in an unsuccessful effort to get him to back the measure. Thomson said that the forestry industry puts at least $1.4 billion into the New Hampshire economy, and that grows to $3.8 billion when recreation on forestry lands, such as snowmobiling, and other multipliers are factored in.
When he does a timber harvest, Thomson said, up to 65 percent of the wood still is considered low grade, and landowners need the markets provided by the biomass plants, which include locations in Bridgewater and Alexandria, N.H., to sell to.
“If I have no market and can’t sell my wood, I’m going to be growing house lots instead of trees,” Thomson said he told the governor. “It’s as simple as that.”
Thomson happens to be the honorary chairman of Americans for Prosperity-New Hampshire, the state chapter of the free-market political group funded by the Koch Brothers, among others.
AFP strongly backs Sununu’s energy vetoes (a second bill involves net metering for solar power), and AFP state director Greg Moore sent out a tweet on Tuesday that read, “Thank you, @GovChrisSununu, for protecting New Hampshire ratepayers from massive new energy subsidies that would hurt those least able to afford it, to benefit cronyist business interests.”
In a phone interview on Wednesday, Moore said he was referring to solar developers in the other energy bill Sununu vetoed, and not to Thomson, when he cited cronyism. And both men note that they have testified on opposite sides of the biomass issue but remain on good terms.
“Obviously, Tom knows our organization’s position on working to provide the most economical energy (options) for the state, including making sure our energy costs are more competitive as a way of presenting more growth opportunities for New Hampshire,” Moore said.
John P. Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com.