​www.laconiadailysun.com/newsx/local-news/112501-asserting-home-rule-corporate-personhood-threatened-by-rights-based-ordinances-1463
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​Michelle Sanborn, the president and coordinator of the New Hampshire Community Rights Network who also represents the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, holds a copy of the New Hampshire Constitution, which forms the basis for rights-based ordinances. Sanborn, a resident of Alexandria, initiated an RBO for that town, and assisted in crafting the ordinance that Ashland residents will be voting on next Tuesday. Behind her is the Alexandria Town Hall. (Tom Caldwell, Laconia Daily Sun)
By THOMAS P. CALDWELL, LACONIA DAILY SUN
ASHLAND — The Northern Pass hydroelectric project, like the prospect of wind towers on area mountaintops, has fueled an interest in rights-based ordinances, which empower communities to set limits on development that residents feel would adversely impact their health, safety, and welfare.
Whether such ordinances are legal in New Hampshire is an open question that has yet to be tested in court. A proposed constitutional amendment would settle the question by inserting the right to local self-government into the New Hampshire Constitution.
Plymouth recently adopted a rights-based ordinance, and Ashland has a petitioned RBO article on the Town Meeting ballot, both aimed at stopping projects like Northern Pass.
Opponents of the ordinance point to the denial of Eversource’s application for a permit from the state’s Site Evaluation Committee as evidence that the current system works, and say a rights-based ordinance can have unintended consequences and potentially pit towns and neighbors against one another.
Similarly, a House committee that heard testimony on Constitutional Amendment Concurrent Resolution 19, that would recognize RBOs, has deemed it inexpedient to legislate, which would effectively kill it instead of forwarding it on to voters for a decision.
Even without constitutional protection, rights-based ordinances are effective in fighting “corporate personhood” — the view that companies such as Eversource have a right to do what they wish, where they wish — according to Michelle Sanborn of Alexandria, who serves as president and coordinator of the New Hampshire Community Rights Network and represents the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Since persuading her town to adopt an RBO, she has assisted residents of other communities, including Ashland, in drafting their own rights-based ordinances.
Sanborn said Ashland would be the 12th community in the state to adopt an RBO. There are almost 200 such ordinances across the nation, she said.
“Here in New Hampshire, RBOs have been effective in stopping four industrial wind turbine projects and one corporate water withdrawal project,” she said. “Four communities are using them to oppose Northern Pass, and four new communities have expressed an interest in using RBOs to secure their right to decide about fossil fuel pipeline and liquified natural gas storage projects.”
She noted that Nottingham has held off USA Springs and its investors for 10 years after enacting an RBO. The company had gone through the standard regulatory process and was ready to tap into the town’s aquifer when passage of an RBO stopped the process.
Her own town of Alexandria, along with other Newfound/Mount Cardigan towns, has used RBOs to hold off industrial wind projects for the past four years.
Ashland’s ordinance
Each ordinance can be crafted to meet that particular community’s needs, Sanborn said. Ashland’s would prohibit land acquisition for “unsustainable” energy systems, defined in the ordinance as energy systems controlled by state and federal energy policies, rather than community policies; industrial-scale water and wind power that is not municipally owned and operated; and non-renewable energy sources or those that produce toxins or substances that are injurious to humans or ecosystems. The ordinance provides exceptions for non-commercial energy produced for on-site use.
One of the problems some people have with the ordinance is that, since state and federal government regulates virtually all power, the ordinance effectively defines any power source as “unsustainable” unless it is used on-site. There is an exception for utility companies operating under contract with the town, and those previously operating in Ashland.
Other provisions of Ashland’s ordinance ban toxic waste disposal and exploratory data collection, engineering and geotechnical work associated with an unsustainable energy system.
Sanborn said the ordinance does not require the town to enforce its provisions if the community decides it desires a particular energy project.
“What the RBO does is give the community a decision-making seat at the table, as a matter of right, that they do not currently have through any state regulatory process,” she said.
The idea behind rights-based ordinances is that both the United States and New Hampshire constitutions assert the right of self-government, but New Hampshire law operates on a top-down basis, saying that any municipal rights derive from enabling legislation by the state. Local control is a myth under such a system.
Corporations are able to navigate through the laws and regulations to achieve what they desire, and towns and cities can only impose restrictions. If a town wants to stop a project, it has to rely on the courts.
A rights-based ordinance bypasses the judicial system by bringing the decision to the local level.
Yet detractors argue that it will end up in court, anyway. Mardean Badger, in a letter to The Laconia Daily Sun, said, “The proposed ordinance may set neighbor against neighbor, townspeople against the town, the town against the state, and the town against the federal government. ... The Water and Sewer Department could be sued for filing for permits from NHDES or the EPA or for simply following state and federal regulations. You could be sued for cutting down trees on your property because your neighbor could claim that you are destroying an ecosystem or violating the rights of living things.”
Home rule
During hearings in Concord on CACR 19, which asserts that, “All government of right originates from the people, is founded in their consent, and instituted for the general good,” the constitutional amendment faced opposition from legislators who reminded speakers that New Hampshire is not a home rule state. Having a 400-member House of Representatives ensures that people have an adequate voice in setting policy, they said.
Sanborn testified, “This is a people’s amendment. It brings clarity to the people, the courts, and businesses. It gives people a right to protect themselves.”
Passing the amendment would give rights-based ordinance legal status, allowing people to challenge development that they believe would adversely affect their town. It would take the approval process out of the regulatory arena and make it a constitutional matter, proponents said.
Should the legislature pass the amendment, it still would have to be approved by two-thirds of the state’s residents.
A subcommittee voted, 3-2, to recommend passage of the bill, but when it went before the full Municipal and County Government Committee, Vice Chairman Franklin Sterling moved to label it as inexpedient to legislate.
Rep. Steve Rand (D-Plymouth) objected because the committee had not had a chance to offer its recommendation, but the chairman allowed the motion, leading to an 11-8 vote to “ITL it,” according to Vincent Paul Migliore (R-Bridgewater), a sponsor of the bill, who was the only Republican to support the measure.
“Obviously, it was predetermined that he would do that,” Migliore said. “The motion was seconded, so the discussion in committee was only on the ITL, rather than the report by the subcommittee.”
The bill was on the agenda for action by the full House on March 7 before that body recessed early because of the snowstorm. It is scheduled for action when the House reconvenes on March 15.
The House calendar states both the majority opinion and the minority view.
“Passage of this amendment would allow one community to forbid a highway construction or expansion in their community although the surrounding communities desired it,” the majority wrote. “When Planning Boards consider projects with ‘regional impact’ they consult neighboring communities that will be affected. This amendment would render that purpose impractical since a community would no longer need to consider how a project would affect their neighbors. ... The effect might be different rules from community to community relating to leash laws, taxi cabs, highway uses with different weight limits, municipal sales taxes, firearm controls and a myriad of other quality of life provisions guaranteed to us by the state.”
The minority wrote, “[I]t does NOT allow the establishment of ordinances that would remove or weaken any existing protections or rights of natural persons currently secured by local, state or federal law (such as second amendment rights). ... Within narrow limits, it gives towns the flexibility to address matters of local concern without needing state enabling legislation. The minority believes that this substantive matter must be decided by the people themselves as the ultimate stakeholders in our system of government, through the popular vote of the amendment process.”
Sanborn commented, “Almost a dozen towns over the past decade have enacted RBOs because the right of local, community self-government is an inherent and unalienable right expressed within the Declaration of Independence and carried over into state constitutions. If CACR 19 is not approved by the House to move to the Senate, then people are being denied the right to amend their own Bill of Rights, but that hasn’t stopped any towns so far and, if anything, it will inspire more towns to enact RBOs to correct the balance of power.
“This is not a sprint; it’s a marathon.”

​www.fosters.com/news/20180306/another-view-bipartisanship-call-to-secure-rights-of-local-communities

We are calling for bipartisanship solidarity to recognize New Hampshire citizens’ right to self-government that CACR19 seeks to codify as it goes to New Hampshire House debate and vote this week.
Granite State citizens have asked for CACR 19 to recognize and protect in New Hampshire’s Bill of Rights the authority of New Hampshire communities to enact local laws by majority vote to ban harmful corporate projects in order to protect NH citizens and the air, water, and soil on which they depend—so long as local laws wouldn’t limit existing state and constitutional rights of natural persons.
In short, CACR 19 addresses inequality. New Hampshire citizens have neither binding voice nor equal standing against harmful corporate activities and “personhood” that consistently appeal to state preemption to remove any recourse New Hampshire citizens have to prevent their communities and ecosystems from becoming sacrifice zones to profit marketed as a “greater good”.
CACR 19′s 9 bi-partisan sponsors, including 2 Republican NRA members, understand that the language of the amendment ensures that local rights-based laws could not weaken real persons’ existing rights—including 2nd Amendment rights—under state and federal constitution and law but could be used only to expand rights. Moreover, 2008 and 2010 U.S. Supreme Court precedents declared that 2nd Amendment rights are individual constitutional rights, which are protected by CACR 19′s language.
Because rights are not gifted by but recognized and enumerated within constitutions, CACR19 is not a proposed law but a proposed constitutional amendment seeking to enumerate the right of local community self-government within New Hampshire’s Constitution the same way freed slaves’ equal rights were recognized within the U.S. Constitution.
If CACR 19 passes through both New Hampshire’s House and Senate with 3/5 votes, then New Hampshire’s people get to decide if they want the right to elevate and protect people and planet over profit. A 2/3 vote by New Hampshire citizens would codify this right in New Hampshire’s Bill of Rights.
CACR19 co-sponsor Rep. Steven Rand (D) outlines this process for legislators and citizens: “We represent constituents to create statutes, but the people represent themselves constitutionally. The constitution is higher than statutes. Giving them the chance to vote on CACR19 is the one thing we can do to support their ability to protect their health, safety, and welfare. It will help them expand, not decrease their rights.”
Rep. Ellen Read (D), CACR19′s proposer, asks her fellow Representatives to understand the worth of this expansion of rights: “I truly hope my colleagues join me in supporting CACR19 because it means doing exactly what we came to Concord to do—protect the people and ecosystems of NH. This Amendment places the power back into the hands of the governed, the very thing our Revolutionary ancestors fought for.”
The Revolutionaries of this country fought for something intangible but rich—the right to pursue a self-determined life of honesty and goodness. For our legislators to deny us an enlightened, democratic, constitutional path to access this self-determination is to admit their doubt in their constituents’ ability to understand, trust in, and make decisions in the best interest of the goodness in ourselves and in the ecosystems around us. CACR19 will secure our right to protect this goodness for a new future honoring people’s and nature’s natural right to sustainability.
CACR 19 supporter Rep. Bruce Tatro (D) believes in this constitutional path to self-determination: “CACR 19 is an amendment to a constitution that was formed by the people of the state. The people should have the opportunity to vote this amendment up or down. I’m not in favor of short-circuiting that.”
As NH Community Rights Network (NHCRN) board members, we support CACR 19′s effort to amend our NH Bill of Rights to recognize the individual and collective right of local self-governance in order to secure and protect the inherent and unalienable rights of all NH inhabitants to economic, social, and environmental justice.
This week, we hope New Hampshire representatives vote in support of CACR 19 by voting NO on the current inexpedient-to-legislate (ITL) recommendation for CACR 19. Overturning ITL on CACR 19 would give the House the chance to vote that CACR19 ought-to-pass (OTP), sending it on to the Senate, and hopefully to New Hampshire citizens.
Learn how you can support protecting people, places, and principle over profit by contacting info@nhcommunityrights.org or visiting www.nhcommunityrights.org.
— Douglas Darrell is from Center Barnstead and Monica Christofili lives in Newmarket.

www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/let-the-people-decide-on-their-own-laws-by-janice/article_a1acd68c-40b1-54c8-8403-fbca80ce0f63.html

On Feb. 27, the N.H. House's Municipal and County Government Committee met to determine what to do with proposed Constitutional Amendment Concurrent Resolution 19 (CACR19), "related to the right to govern, PROVIDING THAT: the people of the state may enact local laws that protect health, safety and welfare."
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CACR19 had already been discussed at prior subcommittee work sessions. A resulting 3-2 vote prompted a recommendation to the full committee that CACR19 "ought to pass," bringing it one step closer to allowing the public to vote on the proposed amendment. Unfortunately, the panel voted 11-8 to recommend deeming CACR19 "inexpedient to legislate."

In a growing chaotic atmosphere, various members of the committee in bold opposition to CACR19 stressed claims of: loss of individual rights; the fear of competing regulations across the state; and that the N.H. Constitution gives power to representatives, not the public. Some reps vehemently insisted that supporting the recommended ought-to-pass tag would lead to chaos and total anarchy.

On the contrary, the proposed amendment is clear: "Local laws adopted pursuant to this article shall not weaken existing protections, or constrict the fundamental rights of, natural persons, or their local communities, or nature, as those protections are secured by local, state, federal or international law."

Thanks to Swanzey Rep. Bruce Tatro and Keene's David Meader for their support. Tatro and Meader, along with Reps. Vincent Migliore and Steven Rand (both cosponsors of CACR19), were among the eight lawmakers favoring encouraging the people to "educate themselves" and "let the people decide" what they want. The latter was enough to convince Rep. Susan Treleaven to change her vote to support "ought to pass."

The N.H. Constitution, Article 8, notes: "All power residing originally in, and being derived from the people ..." confirming final decisions should be made by the voters. Let us get started exercising that right in our own communities. Rep. Rand reminded everyone, "Each legislator took an oath. The people are the authority; we are their representatives."
Follow CACR19's progress at: www.nhcommunityrights.org, then contact your representative and share your opinion.
JANICE SEVENE

​www.eagletimes.com/articles/readers-forum-21/

I am concerned by the underhanded treatment NH Community Rights Amendment, CACR19, received during its Feb. 27  House Municipal & County Government executive session.
At CACR19’s original hearing on Feb. 6 , I testified as a mother and Alliance for Newmarket Citizen & Ecosystem Rights member determined to say an effectively resounding NO to projects that would contaminate the water my son drinks.
CACR19 was proposed to recognize and protect in our NH Bill of Rights the authority of N.H. communities to enact local laws by majority vote in order to protect themselves (and the air, water, and soil on which they depend) from harmful corporate projects — as long as local laws wouldn’t limit existing state and constitutional rights of natural persons.
CACR19’s nine bi-partisan sponsors — including two Republican NRA members — believe CACR19 is needed because N.H. citizens currently have neither binding voice nor equal standing against harmful corporate interests that consistently and unfairly appeal to state preemption to take away any real recourse citizens have to prevent their communities from becoming sacrifice zones to profit marketed as “greater good” for the larger state.
After its initial hearing, I watched CACR19 move through Feb. 13 and 14 subcommittee work sessions resulting in a 3-2 bi-partisan vote recommending that it ought to pass. The next step was CACR19’s executive session where protocol would have the full House Municipal & Government committee chair open by calling the subcommittee chair to report to the full committee the outcome and reasoning behind this ought-to-pass recommendation.
Not only was this protocol not followed at CACR19’s Feb. 27  executive session, but the senior Republican chair of the full committee ignored the first hand that went up. It belonged to a CACR19-supporting Republican subcommittee member seeking to motion that CACR19 ought to pass as recommended.
The full committee chair looked at him, looked away, and instead called on the subcommittee chair — a fellow senior Republican voting against CACR19 who not only neglected reporting the ought-to-pass subcommittee recommendation vote but also immediately motioned that CACR19 be inexpedient to legislate.
This subcommittee chair should have reported on and motioned that CACR19 ought to pass so that it could be seconded and voted on by the full committee. If it did not garner majority support as such, then it could have been motioned inexpedient to legislate, seconded, and voted on accordingly.
Point of order was called to have the inappropriate inexpedient to legislate motion withdrawn, but to no effect. This prompted additional protest from six bi-partisan committee members — one of whom is registering formal objection, all of which decreased their time to actually discuss CACR19.
Meanwhile, representatives opposing CACR19 ignored the amendment’s language, which clearly states local laws protected under the amendment would go through town majority vote procedures and would not limit but expand citizen rights. They hyperbolically characterized the amendment as a harbinger of anarchy and chaos.
The only approach to anarchy I see associated with CACR19 is that of senior committee members believing their opinions supersede the process deserved by each piece of legislation that comes before them.
Ultimately, the vote tallied 11-8 in favor of recommending to the full N.H. House that CACR19 be inexpedient to legislate (one absent representative supporting CACR19 would have made it 11-9).
Before the vote, committee member Rep. Rand (D), one of CACR19’s co-sponsors, asked fellow committee members, “Who are we to make a decision for the people? If we do not allow voters the chance to establish their will, we are not honoring the principles of our constitution, which provides that the people’s authority can supersede the state when seeking to reform government.”
Sometime next month, CACR19 heads to the N.H. House floor and anticipated heated debate to overturn the committee recommendation of inexpedient to legislate.
I urge N.H. voters to visit www.nhcommunityrights.org to learn more about CACR19 and to call their representatives to ask them to support the amendment.
Monica Christofili
Newmarket

​www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters/112034-k-hridaya-sivalingam-2-26-675-perhaps-northern-pass-is-falling-to-our-fatigue-but-my-generation-has-had-enough-we-re-done

To The Daily Sun,
Friends and neighbors have asked me why I am voting yes to Article 29, the Community Rights-Based Ordinance in Ashland. The reasons are many, but the simplest is that I’m tired.
I’m a resident, a taxpayer, and a mother raising children here and I’m just plain tired. I’m tired of watching large corporations use their size, power, and money to overrun local interests and destroy our environment. I’m tired of being told by state (and perhaps more sadly local leaders), that projects like Northern Pass are inevitable, beyond our control, and that we just need to suck it up and prepare for it. I’m tired of the “let’s make the most of it” argument or the argument for “let’s try to just mitigate the inevitable.” I’m tired of being told we have no say, no power, all while watching corporations claim massive rights and future lost profits and dodge responsibility for harm after harm.
Perhaps Northern Pass is falling victim to my fatigue, perhaps my lens isn’t 100 percent open to their claims of inevitable benefits of their project and articulated efforts to mitigate harm... but if this is the case, I’m not sorry. They are the straw that is breaking the camel's back for me and many in my generation. We’re done.
No, you cannot expect us to rejoice that you’re offering us free testing of our watershed and lagoons so that IF you cause harm we can prove it and attempt to receive a settlement. No. Just stay away from our watershed. Don’t dig there, don’t test there, don’t put towers there, just leave one of our most precious facilities and resources alone for us to manage as a community.
With respect to my fellow community members that argue that a community rights-based ordinance goes too far, I say, no, its corporate rights that have extended too far and it’s time for us to begin the process of curtailing them. With respect to my fellow community members who argue a community rights-based ordinance is risky or invites a lawsuit, I say, I’m tired of being bullied and feared in to compromise or flat-out forced in to decisions from forces beyond our control. I remind them that having a rights-based ordinance in place WHEN Northern Pass adjusts its proposal and requests reconsideration is a potentially valuable tool, one that we together can choose to enforce or not. We can assess if the danger of trying to implement it feels riskier or costlier than the risk of allowing towers across our land.
I see it as akin to going in to battle armed. We don’t leave the tanks at the base in hopes we don’t get shelled.
With respect to my fellow community members who argue a community rights-based ordinance makes them fearful of how individuals in the community would make use of the ordinance, I encourage them to read it in its entirety and recall that it does not take away any existing rights. Further, I assert that I’d much rather work together as a small community to address and protect each other’s interests and assure individual fears are alleviated than to be the victim of external forces dictating what happens in our community.
With respect to my fellow community members who argue we should wait to see if the Community Rights Amendment (CACR19) passes and lends legal credibility to such ordinances first, I invite them to share with me when in our history they’ve experienced the law leading the change?
As disenfranchised and powerless as we feel, we must always remember that the laws are our creation, and that every amendment to every law has begun with a person, a people, a community asserting that the law as it stands should be challenged. We assert our sincere will and the legislators and law follow that will. So, I will be voting YES to Article 29, and I hope to find among my neighbors others who are tired and ready to claim what has always been ours.
K. Hridaya Sivalingam, PhD
Ashland, NH

The NCRN hosted a webinar on February 1, 2018:
To those who were able to join us and to those who have requested a recording of the webinar. We believe that this webinar is an excellent way to introduce new people and groups to the Community and Nature Rights Movement. It is also a catalyst for long-time activists to escape the "Hamster Wheel" that dictates our engagement and influence on political and fundamental change in our community...
 
Click Here to Read Entire Article and View Webinar
​One Year Anniversary of our
"Rights of Nature" Solidarity Call
A year ago, February 2017, we hosted a Solidarity call with Mari Margil on the Rights of Nature. We hope you will take the time to listen to this 26 minute video to learn more about why our laws do not protect our environment and actually legalize the harms that our communities are exposed to by the corporate/government state.
 
Click Here for Solidarity Call Recording
Thank You for your activism.
Together we can create a movement worthy of nature,
our children and future generations!

​www.fosters.com/news/20180223/to-editor-let-people-vote-on-cacr19

​To the Editor:

On Feb. 6 the N.H. Community Rights Amendment, CACR 19, inspired so many supportive citizen testimonies that its House Municipal & County Government committee hearing ran 90 minutes rather than the scheduled 30. The following week, CACR 19 left its subcommittee with a 3-2 bi-partisan vote recommending it ought-to-pass.

The next step is CACR 19′s executive session on Tuesday, Feb. 27, at 9 a.m. in room 301 of Concord’s Legislative Offices Building. The complete House Municipal & County Government committee will vote how to recommend CACR19 to the full NH House. If recommended ought-to-pass and approved in both NH House and Senate by three-fifths majority, then a two-third vote by the NH people would establish CACR19 as Article 40 of New Hampshire’s Bill of Rights.

Supported by nine bipartisan co-sponsors, CACR19 seeks to codify the recognized constitutional right of NH citizens to pass local laws by majority vote to protect their human communities and the natural ecosystems (e.g. air, water, soil) on which they depend — so long as any locally-made laws do not infringe on real persons’ existing rights under state and federal constitutions and laws.

CACR 19 would give New Hampshire citizens real voices against harmful corporate interests that routinely and successfully lobby legislatures and petition courts to apply state preemption to nullify local ordinances and any say NH people have over where they live and what projects come into their communities.

Plymouth’s Rep. Steven Rand (D) outlines the solution CACR19 would offer legislators and constituents: “We represent constituents to create statutes, but the people represent themselves constitutionally. The constitution is higher than statutes. Giving them the chance to vote on CACR19 is the one thing we can do to support their ability to protect their health, safety, and welfare. It will help them expand, not decrease their rights.”

Rep. Vincent Migliore (R) of Bridgewater, a self-identified conservative, believes that “In lieu of revolution, CACR19 offers a peaceful way for people to self-govern when the need arises.” To those worried over CACR19′s scope, the NRA member quotes the amendment itself: “Local laws adopted pursuant to this article shall not weaken existing protections for, or constrict the fundamental rights of, natural persons, or their local communities, or nature, as those protections and rights are secured by local, state, federal, or international law.”

Jaffrey’s Rep. Franklin Sterling (R) shockingly retorts that “New Hampshire is not a democracy, it is a republic. This amendment changes our form of government to democracy and we are not a democracy.”

In response, Swanzey’s Rep. Bruce Tatro (D) asserts that New Hampshire indeed is a democracy: “CACR 19 is an amendment to a constitution that was formed by the people of the state. The people should have the opportunity to vote this amendment up or down. I’m not in favor of short-circuiting that.”

For more information on CACR19 and the community rights movement in New Hampshire, please visit www.nhcommunityrights.org/.
Adam Tardif, Newmarket

The NH NRA Chapter Targets Right to Protect
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The NH Chapter of the NRA, Gun Owners of NH (GONH) opposition to CACR19 targets our individual right to protect our children, our property, and the natural resources upon which our lives depend. The GONH has resorted to intentional misrepresentation and fear-mongering tactics to dissuade this intelligent body of legislators to turn on its people and natural environments and protect corporate special interests over the well-being of Granite-Staters.

CACR19 – The NH Community Rights Amendment – would secure the right of local community self-government to be exercised only to expand, not to lessen, the rights of people as secured by state and federal constitutions.

1. GONH claims the proposed amendment would authorize local laws that restrict individual constitutional rights. The language in CACR19 is clear. The right of local self-government is precisely what the proposed amendment seeks to protect – which is in fact an individual right.
2. CACR19 would PROTECT all rights for natural persons – including 2nd Amendment gun rights – that are recognized in state and federal constitutions.
3. CACR19 codifies that the individual people of New Hampshire have the recognized constitutional right to pass local laws in their county, city, municipality and town to protect their human communities and natural resources in the face of corporate harm, so long as local laws do not infringe on real persons' existing rights under state and federal law including the 2nd Amendment.

 
Republican Representatives who are NRA members and sponsors of the NH Community Rights Amendment have consistently directed amendment naysayers to study CACR19's language: "Local laws adopted pursuant to this article shall not weaken existing protections for, or constrict the fundamental rights of, natural persons, or their local communities, or nature, as those protections and rights are secured by local, state, federal, or international law."

The right of local community self-government is a fundamental, individual political right – exercised collectively – of people to govern the local communities in which they reside.
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The current list of “protections” individuals can exercise at the local level for themselves, their communities, and environments are few. Yet, corporations enjoy a long list of state-permissible legalized harms they can carry out against us: corporate water extraction; mining activities; industrial contamination of waterways, air, and land; large-scale storage and applications of toxic chemicals; superfund sites; harmful and unnecessary commercial energy projects; and so many more. Not only do corporations enjoy our individual personhood rights, they also use Dillon’s Rule and preemption to infringe upon our individual rights as enumerated by our constitutions.

The people living in these affected communities are the ones who most understand what is at stake for the supposed “greater good” of the rest of the state. What negatively affects any one community will have a negative impact on neighboring communities. Cumulatively, the negative impact then becomes no longer for the “greater good” of the State, but for the good of the corporate entities exploiting New Hampshire communities for profit.
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Don’t give in to fear-mongering. Let the people decide if they want to protect their health, safety, and welfare by enumerating within the NH Bill of Rights the right of local community self-government. Government of right originates from the people which is why CACR19 should be put to the voters of New Hampshire.

Michelle Sanborn
President - NH Community Rights Network (NHCRN)

www.laconiadailysun.com/newsx/local-news/111490-lawmakers-express-skepticism-about-constitutional-amendment-for-local-rights
NHCRN Comments: The committee scheduled 30 mins for the hearing, not an hour-and-a-half, and the hearing went on for almost 2.5 hrs, not 3.5 hrs. Also, it was the AFP lobbyist that said the 400 NH-member House is sufficient and therefore local control is not needed, not the committee members. 

By THOMAS P. CALDWELL, LACONIA DAILY SUN
CONCORD — Supporters of a proposed constitutional amendment to grant New Hampshire communities the right to determine what is in their best interests for health, safety, and welfare got an intense grilling from members of the House Municipal and County Government Committee on Tuesday.
The panel had scheduled an hour and a half for the hearing on Constitutional Amendment Concurrent Resolution 19 (CACR 19), but after moving to a larger room to accommodate all those who wanted to speak, the hearing went on for more than three and a half hours.
Proponents argued that current law leaves towns powerless to stop projects that could drain resources, hurt the environment, and introduce toxic chemicals into their food or water.
Opponents expressed concerns that giving towns the power to halt projects that could provide an overall benefit to the state would disrupt the economy and undermine the state legislature and regulatory agencies.
Late in the day, as committee chairman James Belanger urged people to be concise with their comments, Stuart Leiderman of Center Barnstead asked for three minutes of oral testimony to accompany his written comments. His impassioned arguments in support of the bill had Belanger finally stop him: “I understand the idea behind the bill, and don’t want to be disrespectful, but he asked for three minutes and he spoke for 13 minutes.”
Leiderman was attempting to settle several questions that arose during earlier testimony. Rep. Francis Gauthier of Claremont repeatedly asked the various speakers how the current system of regulatory laws has failed to provide protection to communities. He cited his own activism in fighting an incinerator project in Claremont that the state Department of Environmental Services had “sanctified” and he said they finally won by taking it to the state Supreme Court.
“That shouldn’t be necessary,” Leiderman said. “This amendment would bring a consensus, not drive it to the court for a resolution.”
Leiderman said the state constitution has been amended 213 times, which he termed “extraordinary.”
“It’s not the monolithic document that a lot of people think it is,” he said. “Citizens look to the constitution for freedoms. It’s a composite to meet the overruling forces, and this amendment should be looked at in that light.”
He said that, instead of looking at government as an entity that operates by opinion — “that I’m right and you’re wrong” — in order to survive, the government must respond to “the kinds of things New Hampshire cities and towns chronically face — contamination, for instance.”
The state and federal government, Leiderman said, often rely on “natural attenuation” to deal with landfill sites, contamination at Air Force bases, and Superfund toxic sites. “Do nothing and let nature take care of it,” he said.
“Those approaches are diminishing the chances for New Hampshire in the future,” he said. “This amendment goes to the beginning of the constitution. It provides checks and balances between governments. … We’re not talking about insurrection.”
Home rule
CACR 19 is based on the constitutional principle that “All government of right originates from the people, is founded in their consent, and instituted for the general good,” according to the language of the resolution.
Committee members pointed out that New Hampshire is not a home rule state where municipalities can make their own laws; instead, the 400-member House of Representatives ensures that people have an adequate voice at the state level.
Rep. Richard Tripp of Derry suggested that legislative authority would be undermined by allowing towns to make their own rules through rights-based ordinances, and then it would be the courts that end  up with the ultimate authority.
Members of the committee kept asking the speakers how they would define “welfare” as outlined in the bill. They suggested it was too broad a term and is subject to individual interpretation.
Henry Ahern of Plymouth agreed. He said he opposed the bill not because of what it seeks to do but because of possible unintended consequences.
“Terms like ‘welfare’ and ‘health’ and ‘public safety’ change in meaning over time,” he said.
“I own a deer farm,” Ahern said. “I work land in two towns. If this passes, one town can say I can’t plant certain seeds in that town. The same goes for the spreading of biosolids. Instead of facts, there can be an emotional reason for making these decisions.”
Greg Moore, state director of Americans for Prosperity, argued that home rule would mean the state doesn’t need a 400-member House, and it would take power away from the legislature.
“I have a lot of faith in the General Court,” Moore said, noting that he once served in the legislature. “When you look at a constitutional amendment, it not what it’s intended to do, but what it can do.”
He said the amendment would allow individual towns to enact a sales tax. It also would open up the possibility of corruption, he said, arguing that it is difficult to bribe 201 legislators in order to have a majority on one’s side, but getting a majority on a three-person board of selectmen would mean bribing just two people.
Michelle Sanborn of Alexandria, the president and coordinator of the New Hampshire Community Rights Network who also represents the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, testified that the amendment represents only limited home rule and would not override state and federal law.
“This is a people’s amendment,” she said. “It brings clarity to the people, the courts, and businesses. It gives people the right to protect themselves.”
Several speakers spoke of out-of-state businesses that know how to navigate the state’s regulatory laws to get what they want, and towns are powerless to stop them. Rights-based ordinances, they said, would take the process out of the regulatory arena and make it a constitutional matter.
Several speakers asked the committee for support so the amendment could go to the voters for a decision.
Before that can happen, both the House and Senate would need to agree to support the amendment. A House subcommittee will be reviewing the resolution on Feb. 13 and 14, at which time it will make a recommendation on its future.

​inthesetimes.com/rural-america/entry/20896/community-rights-new-hampshire-corporate-power-self-government

BY JOHN COLLINSWhen you combine an economic system that requires constant growth in order to function, with a legal system that mistakes corporations for “people”—you inevitably wind up with a few extremely powerful corporations and a lot of powerless citizens. Furthermore, when that same system regards nature as property, thus allowing those in control to do whatever they see fit with a given area’s natural resources, long-term ecological health takes a backseat to short-term profits. For decades, communities across the country have been learning this lesson the hard way.
In recent years, for example, energy development projects in New Hampshire have sparked resident concerns over contamination of local water supplies. In addition, according to the EPA’s latest Toxics Release Inventory Program ​data, the small state is home to 127 of the 21,600 toxic sites monitored by the agency. Maintaining that a weakening of citizen’s rights at home has left their communities defenseless against ever-worsening corporate abuses, a group of Granite Staters are challenging the legal ​system that in effect grants corporations a license to pollute by denying local governments the right to control what occurs within their jurisdictions.
When citizens determine that the actions of a corporation pose an economic, environmental or public health threat to their community—whether it’s a new pipeline, a factory farm, a facility generating industrial waste, a mining operation etc.—and they try to stop that entity from setting up shop in their community, they’re often surprised to learn that (despite what the Declaration of Independence says about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) they are powerless to do anything about it.
This is by design. Over time, one state legislature after another has passed preemption laws—legal doctrines restricting a city, town, or county’s legal authority to regulate its economy or protect its environment—that prioritize corporate interests over those of local communities. In other words, corporations usually get what they want because the law, as it is written, is on their side, not yours.
Instead of fighting each and every corporate assault—on people or on nature—on a case-by-case basis, the community rights movement, a grassroots network of people who’ve had-it-up-to-here with corporate power, is working on the local, state and federal levels to address the problem at its source. The National Community Rights Network (NCRN) and its affiliates in states across the country are attempting to end government-sanctioned corporate exploitation by amending state and federal constitutions in order to “codify a community’s inalienable right to self-governance.”
This can be difficult. In many cases, before a proposed constitutional amendment can even get on a state’s ballot, supporters must first convince state legislators to allow it. On Tuesday, February 6, members of the New Hampshire Community Rights Network (NHCRN) met with the state’s House Municipal and County Government Committee in Concord in an attempt to do just that.
NHCRN organizers and about 50 of their supporters, including Thomas Linzey, the executive director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (and a Rural America In These Times contributing writer), gathered to urge the committee to consider Constitutional Amendment Concurrent Resolution 19 (CACR19). This is NHCRN’s second attempt to give New Hampshire voters a chance to decide for themselves whether or not to add a community rights amendment to their state’s constitution—an amendment that would allow local municipalities to enact laws to protect their people and environment from corporate harm.
The full text of the bill can be found here, but reads in part:
Be it Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring, that the Constitution of New Hampshire be amended as follows:
I.  That the first part of the constitution be amended by inserting after article 39 the following new article:
[Art.] 40.  [Right of Local Community Self-Government.]  All government of right originates from the people, is founded in their consent, and instituted for the general good; the people have the right and the duty to reform governments when those governments manifestly endanger public liberty; and sustainable environmental and economic development can be achieved only when the people affected by governing decisions are the ones who make them; therefore, the people of New Hampshire have an inherent and inalienable right of local, community self-government in each county, municipality, city, and town to enact local laws that protect health, safety, and welfare by recognizing or establishing rights of natural persons, their local communities, and nature; and by securing those rights using prohibitions and other means deemed necessary by the community, including measures to establish, define, alter, or eliminate competing rights, powers, privileges, immunities, or duties of corporations and other business entities operating, or seeking to operate, in the community.  Local laws adopted pursuant to this article shall not weaken existing protections for, or constrict the fundamental rights of, natural persons, or their local communities, or nature, as those protections and rights are secured by local, state, federal, or international law.
While about a dozen New Hampshire towns already have ordinances geared toward ensuring the health, safety and welfare of their residents, municipalities cannot technically enact any laws the state doesn’t allow them to. This is because, like all but 11 states in the country, New Hampshire follows the so-called Dillon’s Rule—a doctrine that since 1868 has been a “cornerstone of municipal law” and holds that local governments can only enact laws that are approved by their state Legislature.
Twenty-six states, as well as Washington, D.C., offer initiative and/or veto referendum rights for their citizens—the ability to petetion a new statute or constitutional amendment through the collection of a minimum number of registered voter signatures—New Hampshire is not one of them. (Infographic: ballotpedia.org)
 
Urging Granite State residents to get behind their amendment, NHCRN organizers wrote the following in a letter-to-the-editor of Seacoastonline, an online news agency based in Portsmouth:Such recognition has been a long time coming to strengthen and restore “We the People’s” right to self-determine the future of the communities we live in. This right has been all but suffocated by corrupt corporate privilege that has been woven into law and upheld by judicial precedents. Together with state preemption, this weakening of citizen rights at home has left us with no defense when corporate projects come to develop or to extract resources in our towns—much less when these projects contaminate where we work and live, often with toxic waste. We’ve seen this happen all across our state. We should be able to have a recognized right to local decision-making authority to determine whether or not we want these projects in our communities.
By empowering people with authority to use this self-determining voice, CACR19 would reinforce the viability of our civil rights by supporting our democratic right to cultivate communities founded in peace and civility in which no person or entity has free pass to violate the health, safety, or well-being of another person or of nature, and certainly not for profit. Each day that our government denies us full participation in determining this cultivation, we are discriminated against—blocked from accessing and engaging in our rightful democratic process to protect our basic and inalienable rights that are not limited to but which include our right to clean air, water, and healthy ecosystems.
These inalienable rights were the ideals that birthed this nation’s experiment in democracy. And what is democracy if it is not the civic employment of people’s inalienable right to have democratic authority over what happens in their communities? When we cannot protect ourselves through the self-government so integral to the principles of our Revolutionary ancestors, then we are not living in a democracy. We must not let this right to self-government go un-championed by a disengaged sense of civic duty, nor can we afford to lose it amidst the animosity found in our divided political aisles. Now is the time to unite both community and bi-partisanship solidarity and action to recognize our right to self-government.
What the Revolutionaries of this country fought for was not something they could buy. It was the right to pursue a self-determined life of honesty and goodness. For our legislators to deny us an enlightened path to access this self-determination is for them to admit doubt in their constituents’ ability to reason over and to trust in the goodness that is in ourselves and in the ecosystems around us. CACR19 will secure our right to protect this goodness for a new future honoring people’s and nature’s natural right to sustainability.
Before the bill can go anywhere, the House Municipal and County Government Committee must vote OTP (“Ought to Pass”), at which point the amendment could continue to the House and Senate. If approved, only then would it be placed on the ballot for voters to decide. CELDF’s Thomas Linzey tells Rural America In These Times the public turnout on February 6 was good despite the fact the flu was “running rampant up there.” “We have nine co-sponsors who are committed, so we’re in a better place than last year at least,” he says. The next subcommittee hearing is scheduled for February 13.
Below is an interview in which Tom Groover, vice-president of the National Community Rights Network’s (NCRN) board of directors, speaks with CELDF organizers Michelle Sanborn, Monica Christofill and NHCRN member, Douglas Darrell, about their effort and why they feel it is more important than ever that they succeed in putting the measure before New Hampshire voters.
For more information about the NHCRN or the proposed constitutional amendment, contact info@nhcommunityrights.org or visit www.nhcommunityrights.org.

​nhpr.org/post/local-governance-advocates-try-again-amend-state-constitution#stream/0

Advocates for more local control in New Hampshire are trying again to amend the state constitution, this time to let municipalities pass laws protecting people's health and the environment.
A dozen New Hampshire towns already have ordinances geared toward ensuring locals’ health, safety and welfare, sparked by big energy developments or water quality concerns.
But Granite State municipalities technically can’t enact any laws the state doesn’t allow them to. So supporters say those ordinances wouldn't hold up in court – which is why they need a constitutional amendment.
They tried to pass the so-called Community Rights Amendment two years ago, but failed amid concerns it would give municipalities too much power and undermine state government.
Like most states, New Hampshire follows what’s called Dillon’s Rule, where municipalities derive all their governing abilities from the state Legislature.
A minority of states has varying degrees of the opposite – home rule, where towns and cities can govern freely as long as they follow state and federal law.
Lobbyists for the Community Rights Amendment told the House local governance committee Tuesday the proposal only creates a narrow degree of home rule in New Hampshire. They were joined by dozens of residents and families who support the bill.
Rep. Wayne Burton, a Democrat and co-sponsor, says the amendment would give citizens recourse for when they don't feel the state has their best interests at heart – such as when it permits an unwelcome local land use.
"When the character of the town is severely threatened, the people in local level ought to have an ability to pass a law or regulation under this,” Burton says. “That's what this is for."
The amendment is scheduled for several work sessions before it can go to the House floor. (Read the full text of the bill here.)
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that about 10 states follow Dillon's Rule. In fact, about 40 do.

​nhpr.org/post/plymouth-latest-try-blocking-big-energy-projects-local-ordinance
By ANNIE ROPEIK • 3 MINUTES AGO
The town of Plymouth, N.H.

New Hampshire has put the brakes on the Northern Pass energy project for now, but some towns are still prepared to block it with local laws asserting their view on big utility development.
Plymouth is the latest municipality to approve an ordinance saying certain energy projects, while allowed under state law, are harmful to local health and environment.
When such laws are enforced, developers either have to go elsewhere, or sue to build in town.
Eversource didn’t respond to a request for comment on how they’ll handle the handful of community rights ordinances along Northern Pass’s route if the project wins its forthcoming appeal to the state Site Evaluation Committee.  
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund has been helping write these ordinances in New Hampshire since 2006. Organizer Michelle Sanborn says they've been sparked by Northern Pass, large wind farms and other concerns.
"It's basically withdrawing their consent to be governed in the manner that the state is dictating that they be governed,” she says of Plymouth’s ordinance.
Sanborn's group is also lobbying for a state constitutional amendment to affirm towns' right to pass these ordinances.

That proposal gets a hearing in the state House of Representatives’ Municipal and County Government Committee, Tuesday at 2 p.m.

​www.unionleader.com/energy/Plymouth-residents-take-aim-at-Northern-Pass-with-new-ordinance-01312018&source=RSS

PLYMOUTH — Residents have adopted an ordinance they believe will give them the authority to ban Northern Pass from building within town borders.

During a special town meeting on Thursday, residents voted by secret ballot 132 to 19 to adopt a Community Rights-Based Ordinance designed to strip legal power from corporate entities that seek to force unwanted activities on a town.

Richard Hage of Concerned Citizens of Plymouth, who helped spearhead the development of the ordinance, urged its adoption, telling townspeople to “invoke restorative justice to broken law.”

“It’s our next best shot at banning Northern Pass,” he said.

The $1.6 billion project to bring hydroelectric power from Quebec into New England has a 192-mile route through more than 30 communities; 60 miles of the transmission lines would be buried.

Northern Pass work along Plymouth’s Main Street could last over two construction seasons; dozens of businesses have expressed fears about financial losses during the construction. 

The Site Evaluation Committee is currently considering whether to approve the project.

Henry Ahern, who raises red deer at his local farm, expressed his concern that if the Rights-Based Ordinance passed he would be forbidden to use bio-solids as fertilizer on his fields or precluded from planting certain seeds.

He proposed an amendment sun-setting the ordinance after eight years.

Chris Wood, who is also involved in agriculture, shared Ahern’s concerns, but said he would rather see the amendment exclude farmers than include a sunset provision.

Hage told voters the ordinance’s language on prohibitions “makes it clear we are trying to protect farmers, not attack them.”

The amendment was defeated.

Resident Frank Miller read from a copy of the New Hampshire Constitution, which he noted predates its federal counterpart. He said the ordinance mimics the document and its assertion that all men are free, sovereign and independent.

“It’s a function of self-determination, of how we are going to be,” he said.

David Moorhead said he opposes Northern Pass. He said plans to bury a stretch of the Northern Pass transmission line along Main Street would be the death knell for some businesses. But he also expressed concern that the ordinance would make the town subject to a lawsuit.

State Rep. Steve Rand, D-Plymouth, said he is one of six sponsors of a constitutional amendment that if passed “would not only make these types of ordinances OK, but desirable.”

If adopted, Rand said, the town would likely be sued. But he said a constitutional amendment “would provide an umbrella, making it immune from legal challenge.”

The ordinance became effective immediately and as written will apply to any and all actions that would violate it, “regardless of the date of any applicable local, state, or federal permit.”

​www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters/111237-pamela-martin-1-30-383-community-rights-amendment-is-necessary-to-stop-evil-corporations-that-want-to-defile-our-environment
January 31, 2018To The Daily Sun,
Women have finally decided “time’s up” when it comes to sexual harassment and assault. An old commercial used to tell us “Membership has its privileges” and the elite moneyed membership has been using its privileges way too long in disgusting and heartbreaking ways.
Now it’s time for all people to stand up to corporations which wish to assault and defile the environment for their own personal benefit that their time is up, too. Whether it’s the EPA announcing it will suspend environmental protections for an area of Alaska that is home to the world's most valuable wild salmon fishery. the doing away with a decades-old clean air policy that scientists say will result in more pollution and lung disease, or any of the other toxic attacks on our environment, people need to get angry and take action to stop a system that allows these assaults.
In New Hampshire people are fighting one of their own corporate abusers, Northern Pass. Gov. Sununu is enormously pleased that the Northern Pass Transmission plan was selected as the only project in the Massachusetts Clean Energy Requests for Proposal. Northern Pass was selected over 45 other projects that were much less destructive to the environment and private property, less expensive and engendered none of the seven-year controversy that is attached to the Northern Pass project.
There’s an old saying, “The only way for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.” Evil corporations are all around us and the only way to defeat them to is do something.
The N.H. Community Rights Amendment, CACR19 (Constitutional Amendment Concurrent Resolution), will be considered at a public hearing by the House Municipal & County Government Committee in Concord on Tuesday, Feb. 6, at 2 p.m. in Room 301 in the Legislative Office Building. This bill would give power to communities to protect themselves from harmful corporate activities that would destroy the natural world for their profit. If you can’t attend this hearing, please writehousemunicipalandcountygovt@leg.state.nh.us and ask the members to support this bill. People can’t keep fighting one bad project after another. We have to change the system that allows these corporations more authority to harm people and the natural environment than people have to protect themselves and the ecosystem. This bill would make that happen.
Pamela Martin
Plymouth

​www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters/110998-tejasinha-sivalingam-1-21-517-let-s-not-wait-for-the-legislature-to-us-permission-to-self-govern

To The Daily Sun,
The Ashland deliberative session on Feb. 3 will be of historic significance due to its consideration of a petitioned warrant article for a Community Rights Based Ordinance (CRBO). Ashland’s deliberation on this Community Rights Based Ordinance is part of a larger Civil Rights movement to acknowledge and provide for the right to local community self-government. In brief, a community affected by governing decisions has the right to make those decisions. The Municipal and County Government Committee of the New Hampshire House of Representatives is discussing Constitutional Amendment Concurrent Resolution 19 (CACR 19), which would provide for local community self-government. However, since rights are natural, it might be more suitable to say that adoption of CACR 19 would codify this right. Additionally, there have been 11 towns which have adopted similar Community Rights Based Ordinances.
The immediate political significance of this proposed Community Rights Based Ordinance is that it will be the first time the people of Ashland will be implicitly asked: Do the people of Ashland want Northern Pass?, and it may be the last opportunity for the people of Ashland to directly say ‘NO!’. However, the greater significance is that the people of Ashland will be asked: "Do you believe local community self-government is your right?" Ashland’s response to this question will likely have a meaningful impact on the legislative discussion, which could further or delay this significant change in the way we govern.
As the Ashland deliberative session approaches, it is noteworthy that there will be efforts to stop the Community Rights Based Ordinance from being considered as it was intended, as legally binding and enforceable. These efforts will likely call upon legal advice to declare the CRBO as "advisory only," in effect pre-empting the community’s inalienable right to peacefully “reform the old” government (NH Constitution, Article 10) through a legally binding and enforceable CRBO. Ultimately, efforts to deem this ordinance "advisory only" at the deliberative session will be motivated by a fear and anticipation that the Community Rights Based Ordinance will pass if voted on by the people as petitioned. This fear is based on the concern of an anticipated unfavorable judicial decision declaring the CRBO illegal and unenforceable, however, I trust that an “...impartial interpretation of the laws...” (NH Constitution, Article 35) will ultimately uphold the right to local community self-governance.
Those who attempt to make the Community Rights Based Ordinance "advisory only" will argue that it is much more proper to give an advisory vote, and then to wait for the Legislature to act on CACR-19. However, every inalienable right gives an inalienable power to act. For example, you have the inalienable right to speak, and therefore the inalienable power to speak; no one gives you the power to speak, it is natural. Likewise, the community has the inalienable right to self-government, and therefore has the inalienable power to affirm this right of self-governance by the self-governing act of adopting a Community Rights Based Ordinance. To wait for the Legislature to give us the permission to self-govern would be antithetical to the assertion that the right to do so is inalienable.
Tejasinha Sivalingam
Ashland

​www.unionleader.com/Northern-Pass-a-likely-target-of-ordinances

By BEA LEWIS
Sunday News Correspondent
January 27. 2018 9:41PM
As now planned, a portion of the Northern Pass transmission lines would be buried along Plymouth's Main Street. Plymouth voters will decide at a special town meeting Wednesday whether to adopt a Rights-Based Ordinance designed to challenge the legal power of corporations, which can now proceed with projects despite local opposition. (BEA LEWIS/Sunday News Correspondent)

PLYMOUTH - The push is on to adopt Rights-Based Ordinances in two Grafton County towns with Northern Pass the probable target.

Plymouth voters will attend a special town meeting Wednesday to decide whether to adopt a Rights-Based Ordinance (RBO) designed to challenge the legal power of corporations. In neighboring Ashland, residents will have the chance to discuss an RBO at the deliberative session of their SB2 town meeting Feb. 3, and then vote March 13.

"The question is who has the right to decide what happens in our town," said Plymouth resident Richard Hage.

As it now stands, Hage said, corporations are given "personhood rights" under state and federal laws and can override a community's attempt to protect itself from corporate projects within its boundaries. According to Hage, an RBO confronts this structure of corporate legal privilege by asserting the community's right of local self-governance.

"We're trying to return those rights to the folks in the local community, who are closest to it. The RBO movement is trying to put self-regulation back where it belongs," he said.

While conceding that Plymouth has been "quite animated" in its opposition to Northern Pass - the proposed 192-mile transmission line project that will carry hydropower from Canada - Hage said adoption of an RBO has the broader effect of maintaining local decision-making on issues of health, safety, welfare and protection of the environment.

"Northern Pass is certainly on people's minds, and this is one effort that would help prevent our Main Street from being dug up," said Hage.

As now planned, a portion of the Northern Pass transmission lines would be buried down Plymouth's Main Street, a process that could take as long as six months.

When the town updated its own utilities, two businesses couldn't survive the downturn in traffic and folded, Hage said.

Northern Pass spokesman Martin Murray said an application and permitting process is already in place for such projects and that Northern Pass is still involved in that process at this time. The company is willing to work with any communities to help lessen the impact construction will have on traffic and related issues and already has signed memorandums of understandings with some municipalities, Murray said.

Michelle Sanborn of Alexandria is the state coordinator for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which has partnered with residents and municipal leaders in several communities to draft RBOs. She said 11 communities in the state have already adopted them. In 2006, Barnstead became the first municipality in the nation to adopt an ordinance that prohibited water extractions by asserting the rights of residents over the decision-making process.

According to Sanborn, Barnstead's vote to adopt an RBO was a proactive measure spurred after the state issued a 10-year large groundwater extraction permit to USA Springs Inc. in Nottingham, and the municipality had spent about a quarter of a million in tax dollars in an effort to keep the water bottling company out. The towns of Barrington and Nottingham followed suit.

Alexandria, Atkinson, Barrington, Danbury, Easton, Grafton and Sugar Hill also have adopted RBOs. In 2012, Plymouth adopted an RBO but it was later declared to be advisory only as a result of a procedural error - just a summary had been printed in the warrant instead of the entire ordinance. When residents gather at the Plymouth High School Auditorium at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday they'll find printed copies of all nine pages.

However, none of the RBOs now in place have faced a court challenge.

North Country lawyer Alan Baker, who ardently opposes Northern Pass, said he has no ax to grind with the grass-roots, self-rule motives of RBO supporters, but believes their efforts are better served by bringing RBO sentiments directly to the attention of state legislators who can work to modify existing state law or propose a Constitutional amendment, if they concur.

"I just think their methods of trying to effect global change at the municipal level by proposing local ordinances that conflict with state law won't work in practice," he said.

As a general rule, Baker said, federal and state law take precedence over municipal ordinances and regulations when they are in conflict.

"My 40 years of legal experience tells me that conflicts between state law and local municipal regulation is not a good thing. It often leads to wasteful disputes, litigation and, God forbid, staggering attorneys' fees for both the winners and losers alike. Often both sides lose in monetary terms."

Adopting an RBO does not mandate that a town must enforce it, Sanborn said, and communities that have them on the books can still benefit if a corporate entity that might be considering a project in a community perceives an RBO as an obstacle, and decides to move on.

Rep. Vince Migliore, R-Bridgewater, sent a letter to community leaders in Alexandria, Ashland, Bridgewater, Bristol and Grafton (the five towns in Grafton District 9), urging them to hold community educational forums on RBOs.

A member of the House Municipal and County Government Committee, Migliore will be hearing a bill, CACR 19, that proposes to amend the state Constitution to allow the enactment of local laws to protect the health, safety and welfare of residents. He said he wants to hear the views of constituents.

Speaking during a meeting of the Ashland Board of Selectmen last month, Migliore said amending the Constitution was needed to give RBOs teeth.

"An RBO may or may not give you the protection that you expect. It depends on how it is worded and needs to be tailored for each community," he said.

Tejasinha Sivalingam of Ashland, who helped get the issue on the warrant by petition, said for him, adoption of an RBO is a peaceable method of reforming the government made necessary as all means of redress have become ineffectual.

"I don't want my children growing up in a community that is jeopardizing healthy soil and water," he said.

Adopting an RBO will give residents the right to decide whether a project has reached a threshold that impacts the health, safety, welfare and environment of the community. That question, he said, needs to be answered by local people.

The House Municipal and County Government Committee will hold a public hearing on CACR 19 at 2 p.m. Feb. 6 in Room 301 of the Legislative Office Building.

​www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters/110926-tejasinha-sivalingram-1-17-592-every-ashland-resident-should-read-proposed-crbo-before-feb-3
​To The Daily Sun,
I would like to offer my comments on the discussion that took place at the Ashland Board of Selectmen meeting on Tuesday, Jan.16, regarding a petitioned warrant article for a Community Rights Based Ordinance (CRBO).
To start, I would like to say that I agree, every Ashland resident should read the CRBO in its entirety prior to the Ashland deliberative session on Saturday, Feb. 3. A full copy of the Community Rights Based Ordinance (CRBO) can be accessed online at: https://goo.gl/fpJnmv. Further, residents should be able to get a full copy of the CRBO from the Ashland Town Office. Ashland residents are also welcome to call me at 603-960-4127 for the purpose of respectfully requesting a printed copy of the CRBO, and to the best of my ability I will provide one printed copy of the CRBO. Additionally, a summary of the CRBO can be accessed online at:https://goo.gl/ZhPFb5.
Now, let's deal with a very concerning element of the dialogue that took place at this meeting. There was the use of imagery and ideas which I felt were alluding to socially and physically violent outcomes, and this made me uncomfortable. I am concerned about the use of the words "bloody," "weapon," the idea of "neighbor against neighbor," and reference to "seceding from the Union," obviously reminiscent of the Civil War. Were these meant to insinuate that the Community Rights Based Ordinance might be used for violent purposes? If so, they demonstrate misunderstanding. I support the adoption of the CRBO, and as a husband, father and a deeply religious man, I will assure you that I am firmly committed to nonviolence and peace. I believe any idea that the CRBO would incite violence is uninformed, at best. Yes, the CRBO mentions Article 10 of the New Hampshire Constitution, i.e. Right of Revolution, but I interpret the words “...the people may, and of right ought to reform the old...” as a Right of Evolution, or a peaceful revolution of mind! Page six and seven of the CRBO even gives the definition of direct action as the following “...shall mean any non-violent activities or actions...”.
There were so many rebuttals to the proposed Community Rights Based Ordinance that demonstrated firm opposition; it will be impossible for me to address them all in the remainder of this letter. However, my wife and I both submitted a citizen comment form to the Board of Selectmen to be read as public comments at the Jan. 16 meeting; which may have, if actually given due consideration, given a more well rounded picture of the CRBO.
I will offer a few points here. First, there will be an informational, educational, and discussion session for Ashland residents on the CRBO, held on Sunday, Jan. 28, at 2 p.m. at the Common Man Restaurant in Ashland. Please bring your concerns, and questions about the CRBO. Second, yes, the CRBO is, in my understanding, a claim that there is a harmful discrepancy between our inherent constitutional rights and our government's current statutory mandates and judicial interpretations. However, this happens from time to time. We, as a people, broaden our sense of the rights provided for us in our Constitution, which protect our human dignity and, as our understanding of our rights broaden, they come into contrast with the current legal limits. Every civil rights movement has had both people in the legislature working for change, as well as local people pushing the outer limits of the status quo. This is not irrational; this is the people being the sovereign power of this country.
Tejasinha Sivalingam
Ashland