State lawmakers will consider whether to investigate a nonprofit that advocates and coordinates services for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Rep. Ellen Read, a Democrat from Newmarket, will introduce the legislation, House Bill 1675, at a public hearing on Wednesday at 1 p.m. She said the state has outsourced government functions like victim advocacy to the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence and pays the nonprofit millions of dollars to do so without proper oversight.

Read said she wants to “open the book” and make sure that public funds are being used properly.

“There’s a lot of smoke, and when there’s smoke, there’s very likely fire,” Read said. “Someone better than me, a panel, preferably, should be looking into this.”

She said she plans to share documentation with legislators at Wednesday’s hearing.

The Coalition held $12.4 million in grant revenue as of mid-2025, according to an independent audit, and 98% of its funding comes from federal and state government.

The bill would form a commission of six state representatives and one state senator to investigate how the Concord-based Coalition uses federal grant money, its lobbying practices and other questions that reflect allegations made by Claire Best, a California resident, over the past several years.

Best filed an ethics complaint last month against Amanda Grady Sexton, the Coalition’s director of public affairs and a Concord city councilor, saying the Coalition collected “kickback” payments from victim settlements. That claim is one among several that the commission, if created by the Legislature, would investigate.

Read said she got in touch with Best after coming up with the idea to propose this legislation.

Lyn Schollett, the Coalition’s executive director, said Best has reported those claims to law enforcement agencies before, and to her knowledge, they have never resulted in an investigation. She also said the Coalition submits all its documentation to the state’s Charitable Trust Unit, which oversees nonprofits.

She characterized Read’s bill as another installment of a “harassment” campaign against the Coalition.

“No one has ever found there to be any there, there,” Schollett said.

Instead, she argued, the bill would set a dangerous precedent.

“We want nonprofits to be regulated so that they are using public money fairly and providing high-quality services to the people that they are helping,” Schollett said. “However, the Legislature is not the correct venue for this.”