CONCORD — House and Senate negotiators Wednesday agreed on a new plan to redraw the political boundaries of the five Executive Council districts.

The plan essentially tweaks the House version of the districts, which includes what some call a serpentine District 2 that winds from southwestern New Hampshire to near the Seacoast.

The district includes Democratic strongholds Concord, Keene and the Durham-Dover area.

After the agreement, the lone Democratic negotiator, Senate Minority Leader Sylvia Larsen, D-Concord, said the final changes made in the plan, which would move Henniker and Hancock into the district, puts even more Democrats in one district while separating communities of interest such as Bow and Pembroke from Concord, and Durham and Madbury from Lee and Portsmouth.

Larsen said she could not go along with the agreement and would have to be removed from the committee.

The House’s chief negotiator Rep. Paul Mirski, R-Enfield, said the House intent has been to keep the districts close to what they have been for 20 years.

He said in order to do that, a central district that stretches across the state is needed to “compact” the three southern districts.

Under the plan, District 3 would again include Portsmouth and Newington, which it did not in the original House plan, but also picks up Derry.

District 4, which is currently centered in Manchester, would stretch north and east to Loudon and south and east to Lee.

Mirski said lawmakers tried a lot of different arrangements and tried to reflect the interest of the current councilors.

“Every 10 years we get to look at these districts and see if we can improve them,” Mirski said. “We think we improved them.”

Welfare Fraud

House and Senate negotiators also agreed on a welfare fraud plan proposed by House Speaker William O’Brien that would require Health and Human Services officials to check the information from current recipients and applicants against existing national data bases.

The Senate wanted vendors to take the risk and receive a percentage of any savings they find, while the House would have required the state to hire an outside vendor.

The compromise requires the state to seek a private company to do the review and to be paid through savings the company finds, but allows the department to decide if it wants to do its own program if no vendor is found.

The deadline for conference committees to reach agreement is today at 4 p.m.

The House and Senate will vote on the agreements June 6.