New Hampshire / State / 2026 Regular Session

Laws of New Hampshire 2026, chapter 304 (HB 1415) Created the New Hampshire First for Veterans Program and Authority and a plate to fund it

Catalog reconciledEnactedProgram created

Signed 2026-07-10 · Takes effect 2026-09-08

Added RSA 110-B:92 to 110-B:101 and RSA 261:97-g to 261:97-i. The programme funds work on ending veteran homelessness, attracting and retaining veterans and matching their skills to employers, improving access to physical and mental health care, suicide prevention, oral health care and substance use disorder treatment, military skills transfer and certification, and education including apprenticeships and the trades. The authority is a public instrumentality organised as a nonprofit under RSA 292, governed by an eleven-member board of which five seats belong to the state veterans council. Funding comes from a new Special Veteran Number Plate renewed annually at $30 per set on top of the ordinary registration and plate fees: $1 per registration up to $50,000 a year is spent promoting the plate programme itself and the remainder goes to the first for veterans fund, distributed on priorities set by the governor and the state veterans council. A trust fund sits in the state treasurer’s office, nonlapsing and continually appropriated, and no state agency money may be transferred into it without authorisation from the general court. Administrative revenue is capped at $200,000 a fiscal year with the excess credited to the trust fund. Only municipalities, other political subdivisions and publicly-supported section 501(c) nonprofits may apply for assistance, which comes as grants, block grants and loans with up to half of each year’s assistance allowed to be loans whose repayments return to the plate fund. Tracked because the programme is three weeks old, no criteria or guidelines have been adopted under RSA 110-B:96, II, there is no grant history, and the first annual report is not due until December 1.