Starting this fall, seasonal workers in New Hampshire will find a new set of rules when they apply for unemployment benefits. Since 2002, seasonal workers who were rehired each year by the same employer have been able to collect unemployment benefits during the off-season without looking for other work. According to a New Hampshire Employment Security report, that 2002 exemption was based on complaints from year-round employers in the state who felt that “the work search requirement amounted to a complete waste of their time accepting applications from seasonal workers who had no intention of remaining employed with them once the seasonal employer recalled them to work.” Continue Reading →
Labor Day weekend is traditionally the end of the season for New England’s summer drive-in movie theaters. This year, it’s also the end of an era. Hollywood movie studios have announced they’re going digital, and as of next year they will no longer distribute movies on 35 millimeter film. If theaters want to stay open, they’ll have to swap their old-fashioned film projection for computers, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars. The Northfield Drive-In, on the state line between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, is one of those facing the future. Continue Reading →
State election law limits corporate campaign contributions to $7,000 per election cycle, the same as individual donors. But nothing in the law prohibits multiple limited-liability companies controlled by the same individual to donate on behalf of each LLC, making it easy for wealthy donors to exceed the statutory limits. Continue Reading →
Pangasius – it looks like catfish, it tastes like catfish — but is it catfish?
Believe it or not, this is a question Congress has been debating for the last decade. One seafood company with headquarters in New Hampshire hopes a provision in the 2012 Farm Bill will put an end to the debate. Bill DiMento works at High Liner Foods, a frozen seafood company that employs 250 people at a seafood processing plant in Portsmouth. Catfish or not, DiMento wants to make sure High Liner can continue to import Pangasius from Asia, which they process and sell to school cafeterias, restaurants, and supermarkets. Continue Reading →
Ten companies are being awarded grants this month from the New Hampshire Job Training Fund. The grants total about $200,000 and will be matched by each of the recipient companies. Continue Reading →
The entrance to Rockingham Park includes old-fashioned turnstyles.
Locals wager over a roulette table.
Money is transferred from gaming tables via a double-locked box. This is one of many security measures at Rockingham Park.
Mike, a poker dealer, awaits the next tournament.
Behind the counter at Rockingham Park.
Rockingham Park president, Ed Callahan, uses ultraviolet light to identify counterfeit chips.
Money is collected and counted under security cameras.
Rockingham Park racetrack and table gaming facility, Salem, N.H.
Imagine a high school cafeteria with painted concrete walls and linoleum floors. Then switch out the lunch-tables for blackjack and poker tables — and you’ve got Rockingham Park, the race-track turned gaming room at the epicenter of New Hampshire’s debate over expanded gambling.
Just about every year for the last 15 years, the legislature has voted on whether or not to expand gambling in New Hampshire. Every single bill has failed. But as the race for governor has gotten under way this season, all four major candidates have come out in favor of expanded gambling. Why? It has a lot to do with Massachusetts’ decision to open three casinos across the Bay State. Continue Reading →
Today, a legislative committee investigating pension privatization issued a request for information from companies that manage retirement funds.
After pension reform legislation failed to pass last term, House Speaker O’Brien requested that a committee convene over the summer to craft new legislation for next term. The committee will likely propose to move all new public employees to private, defined contribution plans — like a 401(k). Continue Reading →
Eating ice cream seems to come with the territory of campaigning in New Hampshire — but with nine ice cream socials scheduled across the state this month, gubernatorial candidate Maggie Hassan is going all out. The Hassan campaign has three socials down, six to go, scooping a total of about 1000 scoops of ice cream to about 450 people. That adds up to about $1,665 of ice cream, two-thirds of which will be paid for by Puritan Ice Cream in Manchester.
Let’s hope nobody on Hassan’s staff is lactose-intolerant. Continue Reading →
Business owners and policy makers from New Hampshire and Canada met in Concord today to participate in the New Hampshire-Canada Economic Development Forum. House Representative Ray Gagnon of Claremont helped organize the event. He believes the conference represents a new paradigm in international economic relations. Continue Reading →
When celebrated Concord resident and high school teacher Christa McAuliffe died in the Challenger explosion in 1986, an out-of-state donor offered $500,000 to build a monument in downtown Concord. As then-mayor Jim MacKay remembers, the city declined. Instead, the state built a planetarium. Today – 26 years after the state opened the McAuliffe Planetarium — the facility is on its way to becoming a private, nonprofit institution. Continue Reading →
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