The General Court

400 representatives and 24 senators, paid $100 a year. The largest state legislature in the country, and the page everything else here hangs off.

The General Court is the legislature: a House of 400 representatives and a Senate of 24. It is the largest state legislature in the country, and the districts are correspondingly small.

Members are paid $100 a year plus mileage. Almost none have staff. Most have other jobs, and the session is arranged around that: the House meets on a small number of full days, and committee work fills the rest.

Four hundred is the number of seats, not the number of members. Seats fall vacant and are filled at by-elections through the term, so the working size of the House moves.

A term is two years

The General Court sits in two-year terms beginning in odd years. Bill numbers are unique across the whole term, so there is only ever one HB 84 in 2025–2026 — and there will be another in the next term. That is why every address on this site carries the year.

Most bills are settled in the year they are filed. Some are not: a committee can retain a bill for further work, or the chamber can send it for interim study, and it is taken up again the following year. Those show as carried over here, and they are the ones people most often fail to find, because they search the current year for a bill filed in the previous one.

Every bill gets a public hearing

This is unusual. In most states a committee chair can decline to hear a bill and it dies without anyone speaking on it. In New Hampshire every bill introduced is referred to a committee and given a public hearing that anyone may attend and speak at. That is why the hearing recordings matter here more than they would elsewhere: the hearing is where the substantive argument actually happens.

Bills and resolutions are not the same thing

Which chamber a measure starts in follows from its prime sponsor: a representative's bill begins in the House, a senator's in the Senate.

HB	House Bill — begins in the House, must pass both chambers, goes to the Governor
SB	Senate Bill — begins in the Senate, otherwise the same
HR / SR	A resolution voted on by that chamber alone. It does not go to the other chamber or the Governor and does not change any law.
HCR / SCR	Concurrent resolution — introduced in one chamber, voted on by both
CACR	A proposed change to the state constitution, which works differently from everything else here. See The Constitution.

Committees do the work

Every bill is referred to a committee chosen by subject, and the committee holds the hearing, votes on a recommendation, and writes a report explaining it. The chamber is not bound by that recommendation, but it usually follows it.

In the record

The 2025–2026 term filed 2,234 bills: 1,564 House bills, 566 Senate bills, 31 constitutional amendments and 73 resolutions.

The House is 400 seats and 382 sitting members as this was written, with 18 vacant. The record shows that moving: roll calls this term were taken with as many as 399 members seated and as few as 384.

There are 203 House districts and 24 Senate districts. Of the 162 ordinary House districts, 75 elect a single member and 42 elect two; the largest elects ten. The other 41 are floterial — see Finding your representatives.