After dozens of New Hampshire legislators attended conservative conferences at Florida resorts in recent years, the state lacks legally required documents from several of them showing the value of free rooms, meals and air travel, according to public records.

Reasons some of these current and former elected officials offered The Sentinel include failure to file the form, confusion over the law mandating it, and that the document was lost in the mail.

But the missing records — and their apparent lack of oversight — limit the value of a law meant to prevent public officials from being improperly influenced, at a time when outside groups are exerting increasing influence over state politics and legislation.

In recent years, one of these organizations — the Texas-based Young Americans for Liberty — covered costs New Hampshire lawmakers incurred to attend its conferences in Florida, usually exceeding $1,000, per public records dating back to 2021. The organization spent at least $92,000 for Granite State legislators to attend these gatherings during this time, the records show.

The next confab at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Kissimmee, Fla., is scheduled for Aug. 1-3.

“With a focus on key issues like school choice, gun rights, privacy, and criminal justice reform, attendees will be equipped with effective arguments, model legislation, and winning tactics to help them Make Liberty Win!” the group says in an online invitation.

Although some liberal or progressive groups hold national conferences, New Hampshire ethics filings do not indicate a great number of Granite State Democrats go to them.

On its website, Young Americans for Liberty describes itself as a conservative advocacy group dedicated to building the bench of “liberty legislators at the state level who will advance a pro-liberty philosophy, ascend to higher office, and reclaim the direction of our government.”

In addition to school choice programs, it advocates for “right-to-work” laws, the elimination of “taxes in as many sectors as possible,” as well as against corporate subsidies and occupational licensing, a page on its site from 2023 states.

According to public IRS nonprofit filings, in 2019 the organization received $355,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation and $575,000 from the Seminar Network Inc., a group also funded by Koch.

Koch, who Bloomberg estimates is worth $68.4 billion, is a co-owner and CEO of Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the U.S.

Young Americans for Liberty, which did not respond to Sentinel requests for comment, says on its website it has mentors who train a group of more than 300 legislators it calls its Hazlitt Coalition. Its list of lawmakers includes 94 from New Hampshire, and the 2024 conference registration page says the organization will pay for airfare and hotel accommodations for coalition members.

A 2022 publication by the organization states the New Hampshire Hazlitt Coalition members “worked to pass a variety of bills to make 1.3 million people more free,” including bills forbidding vaccine mandates and expanding Constitutional carry.

N.H. Reps. Juliet Harvey-Bolia, R-Tilton; Erica Layon, R-Derry; John Lewicke, R-Mason; Matthew Santonastaso, R-Rindge; and former Reps. Max Abramson, R-Seabrook; and Cody Belanger, R-Epping, all said in interviews they attended conferences in years for which the state lacks associated expense forms.

The state also doesn’t have this required documentation from several other current or former New Hampshire lawmakers who are in the group’s conference photos online or were listed by the organization as planning to attend one of these events.

‘What the legislators have agreed to do’

State law requires legislators to fill out these expense reimbursement forms within a short period of time whenever an organization provides them with anything of value for attending a conference, such as travel, room or food.

The Legislative Ethics Committee has links to these filings on its website.

For example, Senate President Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, filed a $4,919 report for expenses paid by the Republican State Leadership Committee for a national meeting at the Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs, Colo., July 31 to Aug. 2, 2023.

And Sen. Donna Soucy, D-Manchester, filed a $2,364 report for expenses paid by the State Government Affairs Council for a policy conference held Nov. 18-21, 2023, at a Ritz-Carlton in Florida.

Former Republican Rep. Edward Gordon of Bristol, chairman of the Legislative Ethics Committee, said in an interview that orientation sessions given to new legislators explain they are legally required to publicly report to the Secretary of State’s Office gifts and expense reimbursements greater than $50.

House Speaker Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry, also explained this requirement in writing in an advisory note to representatives in the March 15 House Calendar.

Gordon noted that the requirements can be found in Section 14-C:4 of New Hampshire’s revised statutes.

“They were in fact adopted by the Legislature, so it’s not something that’s imposed by someone from the outside,” he said. “This is what the legislators have agreed to do.”

The public reporting requirement grew out of House Bill 458, which the Legislature passed in 2016, and then-Gov. Maggie Hassan signed. It went into effect Dec. 7 of that year.

Although the law carries a misdemeanor penalty for anyone who knowingly fails to comply with its provisions or files a false report, Gordon said he can’t remember a complaint ever being brought against a person for violating it.

According to the law, it’s the New Hampshire attorney general’s duty to examine the reports and compel compliance.

In response to a Sentinel request for comment, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office wrote via email March 29 that the “New Hampshire Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Unit would investigate any alleged violations of the statute.”

2021 conference

On Aug. 23, 2021, Rep. Erica Layon reported a reimbursement worth $1,115 for attending a Hazlitt Coalition conference with Young Americans for Liberty. In the attached form, Layon included a list of expected attendees sent by the organization’s policy director the week before the Aug. 5-7 gathering.

The list shows 26 names from New Hampshire, three of them crossed out. Of the remaining 23, records obtained Feb. 21 and 22 from the Secretary of State’s Office via right-to-know requests and posts on the Legislative Ethics Committee website show that as of last month nine did not have expense reports on file for that conference: Santonastaso, Lewicke, Abramson, Belanger and Rep. Tom Kaczynski Jr., R-Rochester; former Sen. Gary Daniels, R-Milford; and former Reps. William Foster, R-New Boston; Michael Yakubovich, R-Hooksett; and Tim Baxter, R-Seabrook.

Following The Sentinel’s requests for comment, Baxter, Daniels and Santonastaso all filed expense reports, according to an online database.

Lewicke told The Sentinel he attended but couldn’t remember what year and that “the secretary of state would only be involved in my mind if it were a campaign type thing.”

“... I did absolutely nothing other than attend … I had no idea how much anything cost,” he added. In a follow-up call the next week, he said he had donated to Young Americans for Liberty several times, including sending the organization a $500 check at some point before the trip.

“I have no idea how much that compares to how much the trip costs,” he said. “They took care of me. I took care of them.”

Abramson said he attended a conference where the organization paid for his plane ticket and “two or three days in a hotel.”

“I didn’t understand the law; the forms are kind of confusing,” he said, adding that he thought he’d filled out the required documentation.

“Sometimes we send paperwork up to Concord and it gets either lost or something. I believe it’s all generic, so it’s all the same numbers for everyone.”

Santonastaso, whose House district covers Dublin, Jaffrey and Rindge, said he attended one of the conferences, which he believed was in 2021. Asked if he’d filed the required report, he said he was “not super knowledgeable on the rules of that. I could check. If we’re supposed to then we would.”

“You’re asking me about something that’s 2021,” he added. “I mean I don’t particularly remember.”

After speaking with a reporter, Belanger said, he “immediately contacted the Secretary of State’s Office and spoke to a member of that team to inquire about the status of the report in question.”

“… That team member did confirm that no filings had been submitted under my name. Unfortunately, I missed the demands of my responsibility as a father and small business owner … my assumption was after mailing it, it had gotten to its final destination,” he said. “This incident was simply an incident of the report being lost in the mail.”

He added that he had resubmitted a form to correct the issue.

Via text, Baxter said he “filled out the expense reports retroactively when I became aware that they needed to be filled out.”

Kaczynski and Foster declined to comment and Yakubovich did not respond to requests by phone and email.

2022 conference

In November 2022, 20 representatives submitted expense reports averaging about $1,400 for another Young Americans for Liberty conference.

An online photo album of the event shows many elected officials from New Hampshire. For six of them — former Sen. Daniels and former Reps. Baxter and Dawn Johnson, R-Laconia; along with current Reps. Layon, Harvey-Bolia and Lisa Post, R-Lydenborough — the Secretary of State’s Office had no expense reimbursement reports for that event on file, per The Sentinel’s right-to-know request. Baxter was also photographed at a separate Young Americans for Liberty conference, also in Florida, giving a speech.

Following The Sentinel’s requests for comment, Daniels, Johnson and Post all filed expense reports, with Baxter filing two, according to the online database. Harvey-Bolia filed a report for a 2023 conference, writing on it that “a review of model legislation was a big component.”

Layon said she would make sure her report gets properly filed, adding that New Hampshire representatives have many deadlines and little help.

“[There’s] a lot of different deadlines that we have … I mean, it’s a $100 a year job,” she said, referencing the amount legislators receive for serving. “… It’s not an excuse, but it’s a challenge.”

Harvey-Bolia said she recalled attending the Young Americans for Liberty conference in 2022 and properly reporting the expenses the organization covered.

“Everybody filled out their paperwork and to the best of my knowledge, I filled it out,” she said. “It was submitted.”

She said the event was valuable.

“They arranged the airfare. I did not pay for anything, but I did not receive any money. I received the meals and the accommodations, and the flight. And everybody claimed the same thing,” she said. “I found it valuable [to learn about] model legislation that’s being proposed in other states or even passed in other states, and also just speaking to other Republicans or liberty-minded state reps from other states.”

Johnson and Post did not respond to multiple requests for comment. When reached Friday morning, Daniels hung up the phone.

Conferences used for model legislation

National conservative policy priorities presented at conferences find their way into state legislation across the country, according to Emily Baer, an assistant political science professor at the University of New Hampshire.

Conference organizers provide model legislation ready for lawmakers to introduce when they get back to their home states, which may or may not have the kind of problems the legislation is aimed at solving, Baer noted.

For organizers and elected officials, “model legislation is an incredibly effective way to act on your mutually held policy goals,” she said. “On their own, legislators are not provided with a lot of resources to research and write legislation.”

In a 2021 news release, Young Americans for Liberty took credit for a right-to-work law that passed the N.H. Senate, and, in an undated post on its website, advocated for school choice in New Hampshire. A 2022 commentary in N.H. Journal by Daniel Stuart, the Hazlitt action director for the organization, states that “YAL believes that we can continue to enact tax cuts, limit regulation even further, expand Education Freedom Accounts, and ... finally pass right to work in New Hampshire.”

At the 2022 conference, Rep. Layon is briefly featured in a YouTube video posted by the organization discussing New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Accounts, also known as school vouchers.

A bill passed by the N.H. Legislature in 2021 created the Education Freedom Accounts program, which provides state money to parents to defray some of the costs of sending their children to private, religious and home schools.

Supporters say this provides important educational opportunities for children, while opponents say it siphons money from public schools.

“I ended up on the education committee, and we actually were getting through school choice,” Layon said in the video, “getting education savings accounts approved.”

Baer, the assistant political science professor at UNH, said national conservative organizations have proven adept at driving issues in a number of states.

“The emphasis on model legislation has for the most part been more of a conservative strategy across the board,” Baer said. “Republicans have had more of a focus on state legislatures, and Democrats have been playing catch-up.”