NH GOP Leaders Insist State Attorney General Resign

New Hampshire Republican leaders are calling for Attorney General Michael Delaney to be removed from office for pushing a partisan political agenda that would waste taxpayer money and encourage energy companies to raise prices in the state.

 

According to the New Hampshire Union Leader, House Speaker William O’Brien and Majority Leader D. J. Bettencourt want Delaney —who was appointed by Democratic Gov. John Lynch — to be removed from office after denying his request to the legislature for funding to join in a multi-state lawsuit against major oil companies.

 

O’Brien used Delaney’s request for money to hire outside counsel to bash him for his refusal last year of a GOP legislative directive to join in a 28-state lawsuit against Obamacare. At the time, Delaney said the directive was unconstitutional. The state Supreme Court agreed with him.

 

“For an attorney general who refused to join with 28 other states in the lawsuit against Obamacare, which represents a massive unfunded mandate to our state taxpayers, and which threatens the liberty of every New Hampshire resident, to suddenly rush to waste taxpayer money to join a speculative and likely frivolous lawsuit against energy companies is a sad day for our state,” O’Brien said.

 

Delaney defended his request, saying a lawsuit against oil companies would have no immediate financial impact on state finances and could reap huge rewards for taxpayers if successful.

 

But O’Brien was having none of it, according to the Union Leader. He argued that gas prices rise due to market forces, not the “liberal fiction of price-fixing by energy companies.”

 

A lawsuit, O’Brien added, “will hit New Hampshire taxpayers twice: first as they pay these unwarranted legal bills and then finally as it adds to the cost of energy companies doing business, which they will pass on to consumers.”