The honorable members of the House should reconsider HB 1552 for the good of all residents of the state of New Hampshire.

My name is Laura Colquhoun and I am a resident of Nashua NH. I became involved with the City of Nashua’s assessing department in late 2018 and found that the State of New Hampshire DRA had very little control on the City of Nashua assessing department and I found this very distributing.

After reviewing HB 1552 I felt that it was in the best interest of the New Hampshire residents to create this legislation to move the certification and oversight process of the state assessors from the Department of Revenue (DRA) to the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification (OPLC). The Asb voted to unanimously bring this legislation forward to create a more transparent and fair method of credentialing assessors and addressing disciplinary matters.

In listening to the House Finance Committee meeting last week, I was very disappointed that the legislation voted ITL on a 12-9 vote. I am therefore requesting that this bill be reconsidered. This legislation would be so helpful to all New Hampshire residents.

Assessors are the only certified professionals not under the governance of the OPLC. This creates a conflict of interest because the DRA is responsible for certifying their own employees but also serves as the disciplinary board should ethics violations occur within their office. Here again the DRA will only go back 180 days when one must realize that all towns/cities websites only show information that is already 1 year old. This makes no sense and a resident cannot get any answers from the DRA.

In 2019 and 2020, I submitted PA-71’s to the DRA regarding Nashua Assessors. After waiting months and months I received no answers from the DRA. I finally found out that the DRA only works on things that are not over 180 days. I found this unacceptable because the complaint submitted showed that the City of Nashua assessors actually altered documentation and they were going to get away with it because the DRA did nothing to correct it.

The DRA did find some sanctions on the City of Nashua; however, because of the way it was treated by the DRA the City of Nashua Mayor Donchess considered it insignificant. Per Mayor Donchess it was no big deal. Well maybe it is not a big deal to the DRA and/or the City of Nashua’s mayor however it is a big deal to the residents.

The fact that the DRA does nothing to make sure that the towns/cities are actually doing their jobs currently. This could be seen with the City of Nashua because it had not done a complete revaluation in over 30 years. It was the BTLA that got involved and made the City of Nashua do the revaluation because the DRA failed to do their job. The optics and fairness of assessor oversight would improve if the DRA was out of the picture. However, if the OPLC was established as an independent board it would have more fairness and would be more transparent then the DRA with residents.

The state of New Hampshire leads with one of the highest property tax rates in the country. Given this fact it is very important that New Hampshire assessors are monitored for their performance in order to prevent conflict of interest, improve transparency and be more accountable to the public.

I ask you to reconsider HB 1552 because it is important for all New Hampshire residents.

Laura Colquhoun is a resident of Nashua.