This bill proposes to include race and ethnicity as optional information on various forms of identification, including driver's licenses, commercial driver's licenses, and nondriver's picture identification cards. It also mandates that law enforcement agencies collect data on gender, race, and ethnicity from these IDs during arrests, citations, or field stops, including motor vehicle stops that do not lead to a citation. The bill specifies that the collected data should be aggregated and made publicly available without personal information, and it should include details such as gender, race, ethnicity, residence zip code, and information about the event (e.g., whether it involved a motor vehicle accident, fatality, or a stop and its outcome).

The bill requires amendments to several sections of the RSA (Revised Statutes Annotated) to implement these changes. It also introduces a new section, RSA 594:14-b, which outlines the procedure for the collection and reporting of race and ethnicity data by law enforcement agencies. The collected data must be provided annually to the police standards and training council and made accessible on its public website. The bill is set to take effect 60 days after its passage. The fiscal note indicates a one-time cost of $108,000 to the Department of Safety for necessary changes to the VISION transaction framework and card design changes with the current card vendor. There are no other anticipated impacts on state, county, or local revenues or expenditures.

Statutes affected:
Introduced: 260:14-a, 260:21, 260:21-a, 260:21-b, 263:5, 263:40, 263:90, 263:91