CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Not content to Live Free or Die within current state borders, some lawmakers are looking to spread the New Hampshire advantage to neighbors in the east and west.

Two border battles – one old, one new – are getting a boost from bills proposing that New Hampshire envelop two towns in Maine and one in Vermont.

Whether those moves are welcome, however, is a different matter.

In Killington, Vt., where residents voted resoundingly last March to secede, Town Manager David Lewis called a New Hampshire bill – to establish a commission to negotiate the terms – a serious, important step in the long process of cutting ties with Vermont.

“It’s not a flippant request so we hope the New Hampshire Legislature will give it serious consideration,” Lewis said.

Establishing an island of New Hampshire in Vermont is no joke to the bill’s main sponsor, state Rep. David Currier, R-Henniker, either.

“Just because they are not contiguous doesn’t make it an unfeasible thing to consider,” he said. “Puerto Rico and Guam are not connected to the United States of America yet they are involved in the United States of America.”

Even if the bill passes, Killington would need approval from the Vermont Legislature and Congress before it could join New Hampshire. Neither is likely to happen, though the town does have roots here. It was chartered in New Hampshire in 1761, during a period when both New Hampshire and New York claimed jurisdiction over Vermont.

In Maine, officials said the notion of lawmakers in Concord declaring Kittery, Berwick and the Piscataqua River part of New Hampshire was good only for a laugh.

“That is absolutely ridiculous,” Ann Grinnell, chairwoman of the Kittery Town Council, said after she stopped laughing.

“Do they think they can just get in a motor boat and go up and down the Piscataqua River and point to towns that they can just take from the state of Maine?” she asked. “It’s just so farfetched.”

Berwick Town Manager Keith Trefethen agreed.

“I think it’s utterly ridiculous myself that they’re wasting time on that kind of issue,” Trefethen said, stifling chuckles. “I’m really not giving it a lot of thought.”

Maine move

One Maine lawmaker answered the New Hampshire bill with legislation to have his state look into annexing Portsmouth and the Isles of Shoals. Sen. Ethan Strimling, D-Portland, said he doesn’t expect his bill to pass.

For decades, the states battled over title to the Piscataqua River island that is home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Maine said it was in Kittery and collected income taxes from shipyard workers. The movement has petered out as the shipyard’s work force decreased.

In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling that the yard is in Maine.

State Rep. Richard Marple, R-Hooksett, is the main sponsor of the bill eyeing Kittery – and Berwick. He doesn’t give the decision much credence.

“The Supreme Court is subservient to the acts of Congress,” he said. Nor does he much care whether the people of Berwick and Kittery want to be claimed by New Hampshire.

“Feelings mean nothing, the law is the law,” he said.

Marple and supporters cite colonial maps and 18th-century congressional bills to make their case. Included is a U.S. Senate bill from the 1790s that proposed annexation of Kittery and Berwick by Portsmouth.

State archivist Brian Burford says a 1774 map of New Hampshire’s port illustrates the age and ambiguity of the argument about whether the boundary between the two states is in the middle of the Piscataqua River or along the Maine shore.

The map, drawn by a British naval surveyor, shows Portsmouth, the river, Seavey Island – site of the shipyard – Kittery and Berwick, but no boundary line.

“The fact that his job was to map the state of New Hampshire, and the fact that he doesn’t show a boundary line on either side of the river is significant,” Burford said, because it leaves open the possibility that the river – and the islands within it – belong to New Hampshire.

A House committee will hold a hearing on the bill on Thursday. Currier said helping Killington secede would help New Hampshire as well by bringing in tax revenue. A ski resort town 25 miles west of New Hampshire, Killington gets back only about one-fifth of the roughly $10 million in property taxes it contributes to schools each year. Lewis said economists have calculated that Killington would save about $6 million a year by joining New Hampshire.

“I took some major campaign heat for signing onto (the bill),” said Currier, who was enlisted to sponsor it because of his experience in the ski industry. Currier is a former manager of Pat’s Peak and past executive director of what now is Ski New Hampshire.

“It’s humorous but the people of Killington aren’t considering it humorous,” he said. “People have the right to self determination.”