R and J in the USA

While touring the New Hampshire state capitol, we walked into the Governor’s suite and asked the woman sitting behind the reception desk if the governor was available. We do this in some of the state capitols we visit on the off chance we get to have a conversation with a governor. It hasn’t worked for us yet (though it did work for Ryan in Montana in 1997). While we didn’t meet the governor, we had a wonderful conversation with Dee.

Dee is a former New Hampshire state representative who currently works in the Governor’s office as Policy Director. Dee was open, engaging, and nice. What shone through most about Dee was that she loved her state and loved being part of the government that served its citizens.

After some general conversation that included our trip and her background, we asked her about life in New Hampshire and what it was like having an inside view of the state government. She gave us a few examples of the “of the people” character of New Hampshire state government.

One example was the New Hampshire House of Representatives. The house has 400 members. This makes it the 4^th largest legislative body in the world, behind only the United States House of Representatives (435 members), India’s Lok Sabha (543 members), and the United Kingdom’s House of Commons (650 members). Those three bodies represent populations of 333 million, 1.4 billion, and 67 million, respectively. New Hampshire’s 400 member House of Representatives, on the other hand, represents a population of 1.4 million. This translates into roughly one state representative for every 3500 New Hampshire citizens. By comparison, if the United States House of Representatives were to have that same representative to citizen ratio, it would need to have over 95,000 members.

Another example was the state’s Executive Council, which consists of the Governor and five elected councilors. The Executive Council has to approve any contract above $10,000. That’s a pretty in the weeds executive requirement for a state with a $3 billion dollar budget.

These are but two examples of how New Hampshire values the notion of citizen government.

We really enjoyed our conversation with Dee and she made an impression on us as one of the most engaging, knowledgeable and enthused representatives of a state that we would encounter in a capitol building and we left with a little bit of our own inspiration of what it might be like to be so involved in the affairs of the local and state of which we are a part. It was safe to say, New Hampshire had already started working a little bit of its magic on us, and Dee was a definite catalyst of it.

When Ryan commented that the size of the House of Representatives would seem to be unwieldy, Dee responded with a smile of appreciation and left us with the perfect response. “That’s part of our charm.”