The following op-ed by Ossipee Lake Alliance co-founder David Smith appeared in the NH Union Leader.
Concord—October 11, 2024—Have you ever wondered how your local legislative officials are perceived outside your area? The question arises for me after another year of Republican success in blocking bills to address the deterioration of state lakes.
While it’s the aggregate vote that counts, in lake communities like ours, far from Concord, it’s the individuals who take the lead in the “just-say-no” votes who become the faces of obstructionism.
Thus was the Ossipee Lake community introduced this year to heretofore unknown-to-us legislators Rep. Joe Sweeney (R-Salem), Sen. Denise Ricciardi (R-Bedford), and Sen. Tim Lang (R-Sanborton).
On Google, Rep. Sweeney is best known for last year’s “Bozo the Clown” write-in campaign, where he encouraged Democratic primary voters to write in Bozo instead of Joe Biden. On Ossipee Lake, he’s known for spiking two wake boat bills that would have benefited our lake.
HB 1301 proposed creating a petition process to restrict wake surfing in environmentally vulnerable areas (we have a few), and HB 1390 would have established a 300-foot setback for wake surfing to prevent shoreline damage (we have first-hand experience).
As soon as the bills were introduced, Joe successfully moved to “lay them on the table,” meaning making them go away without a discussion.
Joe was just doing his party’s bidding, but by appearing to relish his role he came across as petty. Gratuitously offering his opinion that HB 1390 was an “awful bill,” he went on to say that it would “destroy the culture present on countless New Hampshire lakes.”
Considering that HB 1390 was created to address a documented environmental issue, it’s not clear what “culture” Joe was trying to protect by blocking discussion. But let’s move on to State Senator Denise Ricciardi of Bedford.
Like Joe, Denise played an important role in the goal of ensuring no new wake boat regulations this year.
Senate Bill SB 431 proposed adopting the watersports industry’s 200-foot shoreline setback for wake boats. Lake communities organized to ask the House to amend the Senate bill to 300-feet, a research-supported metric. In a surprise, the House did so, putting the Senate in a bind.
Senate leadership tapped Denise to ensure that the body would “non-concur” with the change and the bill would die. She accomplished that with a head-scratching statement expressing confidence that marinas and tourism officials would take care of the problem with boater education.
In a let them eat cake moment, she then talked down to lake communities.
“The continued division among shorefront owners and boaters needs to come to an end. The waterways are for everyone,” she scolded.
“It’s time to get along,” Ricciardi added, as if addressing a cluster of small children.
Add Senator Tim Lang of Sanbornville to our list of new acquaintances. Tim sponsored SB 431 and its meaningless-by-any-measure 200-foot wake boat setback.
Speaking to a reporter after Ricciardi led the vote to maintain the status quo, he said the quiet part out loud, admitting that “the whole idea of the 200 feet was to recognize that there are some ecological effects, but also recognize it is a fairly significant industry in the state of New Hampshire.”
Asked about the adoption of a 500-foot wake surfing setback in Vermont and a 300-foot setback in Maine, Lang said “I am not the type of legislator to keep up with the Joneses.”
Lake organizations channeled their frustration about all this by organizing to hold incumbents to account in this year’s elections, and to demand that challengers declare how they will do better.
It would be a stretch to say that Tim, Denise and Joe were responsible for this new activism. But as Election Day approaches, it’s their names that come to mind.
David Smith is co-founder of Ossipee Lake Alliance, which is based in Freedom.
Never read such detached, uninformed, gooblygop from someone apparently pretending to be concerned. She is someone’s patsy, and I’m not talkin bout singer/songwriter.
Obviously favors are going out for donations. Passing this to the landowners and boaters to resolve is to encouraging a Hatfields and McCoy resolution. Shame on State House.
I thought this was supposed to be a helpful and informative source of relevant news for lakefront property owners. It has now degenerated into being a forum for disseminating Democratic propaganda? Please stick to news and leave the politics out of it or you will lose at least half of the people who subscribe to this.
It’s not even written in an articulate or responsible fashion at this point. The writer should be embarrassed for sending us such left wing nonsense.
Good editorial. It’s not “Democratic propaganda” to put the Republican majority on the spot for its repeated failure to adequately address lake issues. It’s just a fact. Anyone remember when Joe Kenney publicly called NH LAKES anti-boater because of its support for wake boat regulations, and then tried to take away its budget to manage the Lake Host program in retaliation? Funny that no one asked him about that at last week’s candidate forum or pressed Mark McConkey on his work on the Effingham gas station development. There are a lot of facts on the record that are not being publicly discussed, so thanks for this editorial, even though the candidates are from away. Maybe it will start a productive discussion.
It’s interesting that highlighting and quoting verbatim what our legislative officials have done and said is construed as being left-wing propaganda. Left-wing? In our day and age, is the reporting of factual events associated with the “left”? Left. Right. Center. It’s all time for us to come to the center, and face the facts.