County Government

New Hampshire has ten counties: Belknap, Carroll, Cheshire, Coos, Grafton, Hillsborough, Merrimack, Rockingham, Strafford and Sullivan. Each is a unit of government with its own budget, its own elected officers and its own line on your property tax bill. Title II of the Revised Statutes is the law that governs them.

A county has no council and no mayor. Its legislative body is a group of people you already elected to something else.

County convention: the legislative body of a county. It consists of the state representatives of the representative districts of the county (RSA 24:1). Nobody is elected to it separately. A representative elected to the House from a district in Grafton County is, by that fact alone, a member of the Grafton County convention.

You will meet it under two names. The statutes say convention; legislators, county staff and county budget papers usually say delegation. They are the same body, and the statute itself uses both words in one sentence: RSA 24:9-a gives the chair of the county delegation the job of setting the time and place of the first meeting of the county convention.

A House district carries its county in its name — Rockingham 13, Hillsborough 44 — and that name is what places its members. In the present map every House district, floterial districts included, lies within a single county, so each representative sits in exactly one delegation.

At its first regular meeting the convention elects a chairperson, a vice-chairperson, a clerk and an executive committee, whose party balance has to reflect the balance of the convention itself (RSA 24:2). The first meeting is held during the week of the second Wednesday of December in each even-numbered year, after the general election (RSA 24:9-a). Later meetings are called by the chairperson or by a majority of the members, and the chairperson has to call one when the county commissioners ask in writing (RSA 24:9-c). Notice of the time, place and purpose goes to every member and to a newspaper circulating in the county at least 7 days beforehand (RSA 24:9-d).

The budget is the delegation's main business, and RSA 24 sets out the sequence. Two bodies act, in turn, and the order is what decides who can change what.

1. The commissioners propose. Before December 1 each year they deliver their recommended budget to every member of the convention, to the chair of the selectmen of every town and the mayor of every city in the county, and to the Secretary of State (RSA 24:21-a, I). A county on an optional fiscal year does this before June 1 instead (RSA 24:21-a, II).

   Before December 1 (June 1 on an optional fiscal year)

2. There is a public hearing. It is held not earlier than 5 nor later than 20 days after that statement is mailed, and the clerk of the convention publishes notice of it, with a summary of the budget, in a newspaper at least 3 days ahead (RSA 24:23).

   5 to 20 days after it is mailed

3. The executive committee examines it. The convention may designate the executive committee to sit as a subcommittee on the budget and report recommendations back to the full convention (RSA 24:2). That is where a county budget is gone through line by line, but the committee recommends: it does not appropriate.

4. The delegation votes. Raising county taxes and making appropriations are the convention's powers, not the commissioners' (RSA 24:13), so the figure the convention adopts may be above or below the one the commissioners recommended. The vote cannot be taken until 28 days have passed since the recommendations were mailed (RSA 24:21-a, III). Appropriations are itemized in detail and the clerk keeps the record of them (RSA 24:14, I).

   Not until 28 days after it is mailed

5. Missing the deadline has a consequence. The convention must adopt the budget within 90 days after the fiscal year begins if the county runs on a calendar year, or by September 1 if it is on an optional fiscal year. A convention that has not adopted one by then does not get an extension. The budget as recommended by the commissioners takes effect as the county budget (RSA 24:14, II).

   Within 90 days of the fiscal year’s start (September 1 on an optional fiscal year)

The delegation is still the body that has to be asked. Commissioners and county officers may not pay out money that has not been appropriated, or exceed what was appropriated (RSA 24:15).

Supplemental appropriation: a further appropriation made after the annual budget has been adopted. The commissioners may apply to the convention for one, or the convention may take one up on its own initiative. It needs notice to the members, towns and cities, a public hearing within 30 days of that notice, and its own vote of the convention (RSA 24:14-a). A narrower emergency route runs through the executive committee, again after a public hearing (RSA 24:15).

The convention also sets what the elected county officers are paid. It establishes their salaries, benefits and other compensation every two years, acting on the executive committee's recommendation, before the filing period for the next election (RSA 23:7).

These are the same people this site already holds pages for. A state representative has a second job most residents never see: the member who voted on a bill in Concord in the morning may spend the evening setting a county budget that arrives on the same property tax bill as the town's.

County commissioners: the county's executive, and the body that runs it day to day. RSA 662:4 divides each of the ten counties into three county commissioner districts, and one commissioner is chosen from each, so every county has three. In most counties each is elected by the voters of that district alone; in Carroll and Sullivan, each is elected from a district but by the voters of the whole county (RSA 653:1, VI).

They choose a chairman and a clerk from among themselves (RSA 28:1). They have the custody and care of all property belonging to the county (RSA 28:4), run its departments from day to day, and prepare the budget the convention votes on. The county treasurer pays money out only on their orders (RSA 29:1).

Five county officers are elected by the voters of the county at the state general election: a sheriff, a county attorney, a county treasurer, a register of deeds and a register of probate. The term is two years, except in Rockingham County, which moved to four-year terms in 2022, and Coos County, which did so in 2024 (RSA 653:1, V).

Sheriff: the sheriff and the sheriff's deputies serve and execute writs and other process directed to the department, and the department's bailiffs provide security in every state court except the Supreme Court (RSA 104:5). Sheriffs and deputies have the same authority throughout the state as in their own county to serve process, investigate crimes and apprehend, and may enforce civil orders issued by any court (RSA 104:6).

County attorney: the county's prosecutor. The office acts under the direction of the Attorney General, performs the Attorney General's duties for the county in the Attorney General's absence, and prosecutes or defends suits in which the county has an interest (RSA 7:34).

County treasurer: has custody of all money belonging to the county, pays it out only on the commissioners' orders, keeps the account of what comes in and goes out, and reports at the end of the fiscal year (RSA 29:1).

Register of deeds: keeps the registry of deeds, which is the county's record of who owns which land. Deeds, mortgages and the other documents that affect title to land are recorded there, and a deed that has not been recorded does not hold against a later buyer who paid for the land in good faith (RSA 477:3-a, 478:4). The register keeps the records safe in the office the county provides (RSA 478:1).

Register of probate: still elected, though almost all of the duties are gone. On July 1, 2011 the probate court became the probate division of the Circuit Court (RSA 490-F:3), and the registers' duties passed to the circuit court clerks, apart from a few the statute leaves with the register (RSA 490-F:13). Among those, the register works with the Secretary of State and the administrative judge of the Circuit Court on preserving closed files that may be of historical significance, and keeps an index of any files removed from the court (RSA 548:5). The office is named in the constitution, in articles 71 and 81 of Part Second, so removing it takes an amendment and not a bill: CACR 21 (2022) would have struck it out, passed both chambers, and went to the voters, where it did not reach the two thirds of those voting an amendment needs. In 2026 the legislature sent the question to the voters again, as CACR 13 (2026), at the general election of November 3, 2026.

Coroner: New Hampshire elects none. Sudden, unexpected or unnatural deaths are investigated by medical examiners of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, a state office within the Department of Justice, rather than by a county officer (RSA 611-B:2, 611-B:11). RSA 611-B replaced RSA 611, the earlier medical examiners chapter, which was repealed in 2007.

Two things dominate a county budget. A county may provide, keep and maintain facilities for the confinement of prisoners, administered by a county department of corrections (RSA 30-B:1); that is the jail. And long-term care is a county liability: counties reimburse the state for nursing home and other long-term care Medicaid spending on the residents each county is answerable for, to the extent of the whole non-federal share of it, subject to a limit on how fast that bill may rise (RSA 167:18-a). Counties also run nursing homes of their own. No chapter of Title II creates them, but the statutes treat them as a given: the commissioners of each county appoint an administrator for the county nursing home (RSA 28:11). The registry of deeds, the sheriff's department and the county attorney's office are on the county payroll as well.

No county collects a tax directly. The county treasurer issues a warrant to the selectmen of each town in the county, requiring them to assess and collect that town's share of the county tax and pay it over (RSA 29:11). The town raises it in the property tax. That is why a tax bill carries a county line beside the town, school and state education lines, and why a budget the delegation adopts turns up on a tax bill months later.

Every member of both chambers has a page here, with the county and district they were elected from. The House members from a county are that county's convention, so the roster is the membership list.

Every town and ward is listed by county, with the districts that cover it.

This site is the record of the state legislature, and county government is not in it. There are no county budgets here, no minutes or warrants of a county convention, no county election results and no county officers' accounts. What it does hold is the roster: the representatives who make up each county's delegation have pages here because of the other office they were elected to. The county's own record is kept by the county.

• Find your representatives

• New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotatedgc.nh.gov
• County government, county by county (New Hampshire Association of Counties, a membership body)nhcounties.org
• Secretary of Statesos.nh.gov