State leaders warned of climbing labor shortages throughout New Hampshire’s government agencies during budget hearings this month and Governor-elect Kelly Ayotte plans to tackle that issue.

Ayotte assembled a Public Safety Task Force, her transition team announced on Friday, to assess how the state can improve on the recruitment and retention of its public safety workers.

The five-member task force will also weigh justice and public safety issues more broadly, including bail reform. Ayotte said they’ll work on “ending the revolving door bail system and getting dangerous criminals off our streets.”

One member is Seifu Ragassa, the chief probation and parole officer for the Department of Corrections. Ragassa is also the president of the NH Group II Retirement Coalition, which is backing a class-action lawsuit over retirement pensions the group says were promised to state workers but are being unconstitutionally withheld.

He said he wants to explore how to make New Hampshire more competitive in the labor market for firefighters, police officers and corrections workers. 

“We have to find a way to not only recruit but to retain them and keep them here,” Ragassa said. He hopes to find a long-term solution instead of a “temporary fix.”

Four other people, all from Manchester, will serve on the task force:

■Mayor Jay Ruais

■Stephen Pearson, a state representative and lieutenant at the Manchester Fire Department

■Police Chief Allen Aldenberg

■Mary Tenn, former president of the New Hampshire Bar Association and lawyer at Tenn and Tenn, PA

Ayotte herself is a former prosecutor and New Hampshire attorney general. She’s touted tougher penalties for fentanyl trafficking and taken issue with bail reform laws signed by Gov. Chris Sununu, including one that took defendants’ ability to pay bail into account and made it so only defendants who were determined to be a danger to themselves or their community could be held behind bars.

On the campaign trail, she pitched herself as a successor who’d build on the “Sununu path.”

“Keeping New Hampshire moving in the right direction starts with ensuring we remain the safest state in the nation,” Ayotte said in a press release.

New Hampshire recently snagged the No. 2 spot on a WalletHub ranking due to its low crime rates.

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, or send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.