Change Comes to New Hampshire

NH has survived another election, despite the confusion around the NH Supreme Court decision concerning SB3, which was helpfully intensified by the Secretary of State.  In spite of the incorrect absentee ballots that were sent out, and without even the usual complaining about busloads of out of state voters. I’ve read grousing about how people from Commiechusetts are coming here to destroy NH, but the reality is, that most people who migrate to NH move to Rockingham County, the reddest county in the state. They aren’t coming to Carroll County. There aren’t good paying jobs, and there isn’t any affordable housing. The migrants to Carroll County are primarily in their 50’s and 60’s, coming to live in their second homes and protect their pensions in tax free splendor.

In 2016, the Republicans won control of every part of the NH state government. What did they do with that control? The governor’s first priority was passing a concealed carry bill – because, apparently, guns are more important than anything. After taking a pay increase negotiated by the State Employees Union, he tried to pass right-to-work legislation. The Republicans passed more business tax cuts. They tried to pass a voucher bill that would have dramatically increased property taxes. The governor referred (more than once) to a bill that would have provided family leave for workers as “a vacation.” Caring for a sick family member isn’t exactly a trip to the Bahamas. The Trumpublicans are nothing if not tone deaf. 

On the other hand, the Governor earned a reputation with the media for being “affable,” and “avuncular.” Anywhere a camera was held up and the lens focused, he was there. His party often touted his bold leadership, and I think we can all agree that Sununu did some fine work on the placement of price labels on deli cheese at Market Basket.


In May, he boasted that the state had “more money than we know what to do with.” What did he do with it? Nada. Nil. Nothing. He claims he wants to invest in infrastructure. Meanwhile, we still have hundreds of red listed bridges. We have rest areas on I-95 that are in less than stellar condition. Our parks are years behind in maintenance. We have a serious housing problem, and a very serious school funding problem. We need to build a secure psychiatric hospital that isn’t part of the NH prison system. If Sununu is having trouble coming up with ideas, he should call me.

At least we know that NH will not become a right-to-work-for-less state during the next biennium. NH will not pass a voucher bill. There’s already a bill to make the very questionable voucher program an amendment to the NH Constitution loitering in the queue of upcoming legislation for 2019. 

The legislature will be voting to choose a Secretary of State for the next 2 years. The House will be voting on a new Speaker. The Republicans will be voting for a new minority leader. All of the committee chairs will be different with a Democratic majority. The first year of the biennium is always the year that a budget is crafted. 

I urge all legislators, old and new, to spend some time on the Secretary of State’s website before they vote. I’m an adept researcher, but I had to spend a couple of hours trying to come up with the magic phrases that unlocked candidate financial forms. The magic phrase was different each time, and more difficult if one were trying to access a “Friends of Rep. Jim Jeremy” committee finance report. I was trying to access candidate forms for several different candidates, including Senator Bradley. Wheelabrator, an international solid waste incineration company mysteriously appeared in the biomass bill, which guaranteed them taxpayer subsidies. Bradley was a sponsor of the bill, and a vocal public supporter. It turns out that Wheelabrator generously donated $4,500 to Bradley’s 2018 re-election campaign. I should have been able to access that information easily, but the Secretary of State’s website is not user friendly. In an NHPR discussion with Secretary of State candidates, Gardner commented that the information is there, it’s just hard to find. That just isn’t acceptable. 

Northern Carroll County experienced a blue wave. The entire northern House delegation is now comprised of Democrats. In southern Carroll County, voters inexplicably chose to re-elect the same candidates who voted to dramatically increase their property taxes by attempting to initiate a school voucher program.


We should all take a page from Rep. Karen Umberger who lost her bid for re-election, and graciously wished the winners well. Rep. Umberger and I have disagreed on many issues over the years, but she has been unfailingly polite and willing to listen, which is what we should expect from citizen legislators.

Published as an op-ed in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper, November 16, 2018

Deliberately Decreasing Our Means

Every biennium the legislature creates a new state budget. This budget is required to be balanced every year. This happens no matter what party currently holds the majority in the House, the Senate, or the Governor’s office. Right now the legislature is winding down. The Committee of Conference reports will have been voted on by the time you read this.

As always, the most interesting item to watch is the budget wrangling. The House got started a bit late this year; probably because the O’Brienistas created so many diversions that everything was late. On days when the House is session, bills that will be coming up for a vote fall into two categories in the calendar: Consent and Regular. The Consent Calendar is comprised of bills that come out of committee with a unanimous vote to either pass or kill. They’re generally non-controversial, and are easily dispatched with voice votes. O’Brienistas made it a “thing” this session to yank as many bills off the consent calendar as possible, just to gum up the works and create delay.

Rep. Neal Kurk chairs the House Finance Committee. Kurk has long been a fiscal conservative, but generally someone who could be sensible when the situation called for it. This biennium apparently Kurk was so giddy at GOP control of both houses that he’s thrown caution and good sense out the window in favor of ideology. He partnered up with Free Stater Dan McGuire to create a hastily written budget that was guaranteed to ensure that NH would continue lose ground economically and hurt a lot of people along the way.

The original version included $88 million in DOT cuts, which meant rest areas and some bridges would be closed. Half the workforce would be eliminated. Federal funds would be lost, the widening of I-93 would be jeopardized, and some 2500 miles of roads and 1000 bridges would have been turned over to cities and towns to pay for. Apparently Meals on Wheels was a socialist program that needed to be cut, and Service Link was completely de-funded. Dan McGuire proposed $2 million in cuts to the NH Veteran’s Home, which would have resulted in 25 veterans losing their place to live. Some changes (the proposed cuts to the Veteran’s Home were too much for even the most rabid members of the right) were made, and eventually the budget found its way to the Senate. The Senate made some cosmetic changes and added business tax cuts. Because when you claim that there isn’t enough money to adequately fund the needs of the state, the only thing to do is cut revenue! 

A recent op-ed in the Laconia Sun penned by Senators Jeb Bradley and Jeanne Forrester claimed that the Senate decided to reduce business taxes at the end of the budget process. On January 8, Senator Bradley introduced a bill to lower the business profits tax (BPT). On January 8, a bill Bradley co-sponsored was introduced to lower the business enterprise tax. (BET).  Those bills were both passed by the Senate and Bradley tabled both. The intent from the very beginning of the session was to lower business taxes. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous at best. They’re telling us on the one hand that we must live our means while the other hand is slashing the means we live on.

The lowering of the BET and the BPT are touted as the way to bring business to our state. The fact that businesses actually want good infrastructure, lower utility costs, and an educated work force is lost on our representative ideologues, who are firmly steeped in the kind of economic policies that have failed to work since the Reagan administration. NH is a wealthy state, yet we refuse to raise sufficient revenues to fix the things that need fixing and invest in the future. As a result, we have the 11^th worth infrastructure in the United States. Award winning NH civil engineer Darren Benoit tells us that if we start right now, it will cost us $1.5 billion to fix everything. NH also ranks at about 100^th place out of the 50 states for state funding of our university system. We want an educated workforce, but we do not want to pay for it. If a budget is a statement of our values, than it’s painfully clear that the budget writers don’t value our state or its people.

The budget for tourism, the second largest industry in our state was level funded in this budget. This will not hurt the southern part of the state. It is likely to impact the North Country. Be sure to thank your GOP representatives for voting against the best interests of our area. It’s also worth pointing out that this budget fails to invest in repairing our state parks, something that would also benefit the tourist economy.  

A variety of self-congratulatory legislators are boasting that the substance abuse treatment budget was increased. It was but the Senate added those increases. They were not in the original House budget. The increases came about because even the most rabid ideologues couldn’t pretend that there aren’t significant numbers of young people dying from heroin overdoses.

Another aspect of all of this that goes unmentioned by our budgeteers is the downshifting of costs. Items the state doesn’t adequately fund (like infrastructure) get passed on to the counties and municipalities, which will likely be passed on to you, in the form of an increase in your property taxes.  

As I write this, the Governor has stated her intent to veto the budget unless changes are made. The NH GOP is wailing about the need to compromise. Their definition of “compromise” appears to mean that the House Republicans get to write the budget; the Senate Republicans get to change it, and the Republicans of both bodies compromise with each other in the Committee of Conference. The CoC process included the compromise of closed door meetings with Greg Moore of the Koch funded Americans for Prosperity. After all that internal GOP compromise (with a dash of Koch-promise) the Governor is expected to meekly sign it, displaying her willingness to compromise.

This budget fails to address the needs of our state and blows a big hole in future budgets by cutting business taxes. It guarantees that nothing will ever get fixed properly, because we will have to live within our deliberately decreased means.

Published as an op-ed in the June 26 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

How Now Brown Cash Cow

The 2014 legislative session is coming to an end. The House passed a lot of bills that met obstruction in the Senate. A number of NH Senators have announced that they won’t be running for reelection. With luck, a few more will reach that same decision.

Last week’s Senate vote on the creation of and increase to the state minimum wage is an example of why the Senate needs the application of a big broom. During the O’Brien years, the state minimum wage was struck down, leaving NH to march in lockstep with the federal minimum wage. Even the ability to set our own minimum was too frighteningly permissive for the O’Brien crowd. (Ironic when one considers that the gummint haters turned over the NH option to the federal gummint.) The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. If a minimum wage worker worked 40 hours a week, they’d earn $290 before taxes. The cheapest apartment advertised in the local classifieds was $600 a month, without utilities. Even if they could pay the rent, they’d be unable to afford utilities, food, transportation, clothing, and health care.

Most employers that pay minimum wage don’t offer full time jobs, because then they’d have to offer benefits. These same companies (big box stores in particular) also provide fluctuating hours, so a worker never has a regular schedule they can count on. That makes juggling other jobs difficult at best. When companies don’t pay workers enough to live on, the rest of us help subsidize their company profits, by picking up the tab for public assistance programs.

Legislators and business owners love to pretend that the minimum wage is a sort of training wage for teenagers entering the job market. In NH, 72% of minimum wage workers are over the age of 20. They’re breadwinners. In our brave new economy, where we manufacture nothing, the bulk of the jobs being created are low wage service jobs. Adults with families to support are competing with teens for low wage jobs.

The NH Senate voted to kill the establishment of a state minimum wage, and a two-step increase that would result in a state min. wage of $9 an hour by 2016. Senator John Reagan was quoted in the Laconia Citizen as saying he “thinks it’s silly to say someone couldn’t be supported on minimum wage, as they can take on multiple jobs.” Our local Senator, multimillionaire Jeb Bradley said that raising the minimum wage would harm teenagers and entry-level workers. It sure would suck for entry level workers to be able to afford food and shelter. Senator Andy Sanborn, who owns a bar/restaurant, drove up in his Mercedes to claim that an increase in minimum wage would hurt restaurants. Sanborn should have declared conflict of interest and abstained from voting. He pays some of his employees minimum wage. Former Senate President Peter Bragdon (who just signed a contract for a job paying $185,000 a year) called the bill “feel good” legislation. He’s right. It would feel good for workers to be slightly more able to feed their children and put a roof over their heads.

A couple of Senators took the minimum wage challenge, where they lived for a week on the minimum wage. Senator David Watters said that it quickly became clear that on that wage he wouldn’t be able to continue to live in Dover without food and housing assistance. Senator David Pierce said that the challenge produced such anxiety for him that he was shaken by the experience.

The cost of higher education has skyrocketed. The kinds of jobs being created offer low wages and no possibility of advancement. The creation and perpetuation of a permanent, poor underclass in our country will have dire consequences.

In other news, Scott Brown was in North Conway last week. Many of our local politicians were on hand to meet, greet, endorse, and toady up to the recent émigré who wants to be NH’s next US Senator. From Lloyd Jones’ excellent news story, we learned that even though Scott Brown moved to NH in February some of our local state representatives and wannabes think Scott’s the guy who represents NH values.

Let us be clear about what kind of value our GOP friends see in Scott Brown. It’s green and has a funny pyramid on it. This senate election is reportedly going to be one of the most expensive in our nation’s history. Thanks to the Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions by the Supreme Court, the amount of money shoveled into our state will be breathtaking. Our local solons understand that of all the candidates running against Senator Shaheen, the one who is going to have the big bucks behind him is Brown. Politicians are pragmatic folk, and they’re going to get behind the money candidate, and wait for the trickle down effect. The state GOP is desperate for cash. Mr. Brown is the cow they’re pinning their hopes on.

The Supreme Court has ruled yet again that money is speech. No longer do we have “free” speech, thanks to SCOTUS the kind of speech we have is very expensive. Those who give the most get the loudest speech. With no limits and no accountability. It’s called dark money, because there is no transparency. We the voters won’t know where all this money to manipulate us comes from. The only one who will know is the candidate. Big money comes with marching orders. We are about to be bombarded with negative ads, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.

Negative ads work in two ways and both are intentional. They discourage people from voting and they plant lies that become truths. When Scott Brown was here last week, he repeated one of them. The Koch funded group Americans for Prosperity NH has been pushing a particular message for months: “Jeanne Shaheen Cast the Deciding Vote for Obamacare.” Scott Brown repeated that, and embellished it, by saying he was there and he saw her do it.

In Louisiana, Americans for Prosperity’s ads inform voters “Mary Landrieu Cast the Deciding Vote for Obamacare.” In Florida, Bill Nelson cast that vote. In Arkansas it was Mark Pryor. In Ohio, “Sherrod Brown Cast the Deciding Vote for Obamacare.” In Minnesota it was Al Franken. And in Virginia, Mark Warner “Cast the Tie-Breaking Vote for Obamacare.”

So, when Scott Brown says he was there and he saw her do it, he’s counting on the fact that a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. It’s both craven and cynical - and that’s what life is going to look like in NH from now till November.

© sbruce 2014 

Published in the May 16, 2014 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

Accidentally Voting in Two Places Can Happen to Anyone!

From the Union Leader:

Five years ago, when his father was running for the U.S. House, the son of current state Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley's voted in the 2008 general election in both New Hampshire and Colorado, according to voting officials and records in each state.

Sebastian Bradley, who is now in his late 20s, voted in person in Larimer County, Colorado, in the November 2008 general election, county election officials said, citing records. Bradley was student at Colorado State University at the time.

Separately, Wolfeboro town clerk Patricia Waterman confirmed the younger Bradley voted there by absentee ballot in the same election.

But hey, let's not get all judgey:

The elder Bradley said in an interview Thursday he did not know for sure whether his son actually voted twice.
But he said, "He was a college student at the time. He was attending Colorado State University and if he voted in two places, it was clearly a mistake, if that's what he did."

Because accidentally voting in two places can happen to anyone! Geez, simmer down people. 

They Touch Our Food

The end of the legislative session is fast approaching. The new budget for the state is supposed to be in place by July 1. The budget passed by the House was dismantled by the pouty Senate, and now goes to a Committee of Conference, where the two branches must come together and hammer out some sort of compromise.

The Senate is crawling with ambitious folk, using this budget as a springboard to higher office. One of them is former Congressman turned State Senator Jeb Bradley. He is desperate for higher office. Rumors abound that he’s going to run for governor or possibly even the US Senate. Others include Andy Sanborn and Chuck Morse. Their actions and their votes are all about that ambition, and not at all reflecting concern for their constituents or their state. Of course, that’s been the hallmark of this Senate. Obstructionism passing as “work.”

It was illustrated perfectly by Bradley, during a recent debate on a minimum wage bill. The bill didn’t ad a penny to the minimum wage, merely put back into statute the ability for NH to set it’s own min. wage. During the debate, Bradley referred (numerous times) to the sponsors of the bill as “people of good intentions”, even as he argued against a bill that was going to have zero fiscal impact. If their intentions were good, what does that say about Bradley’s?

Fortunately Bradley has not been appointed to the Committee of Conference that will be working out a budget compromise. It seems our NH GOP Senators are so miffed about the fate of their poorly written gambling bill that they’re refusing to raise any revenue.

That’s it in a nutshell. The ideologues of the far right don’t want to raise any revenue. They don’t care if all of our bridges fall down. They don’t care if any NH child gets an education. They don’t care if our state runs smoothly. In fact, that’s the last thing they want. They want to make sure that our state runs poorly, so they can point to it as gummint failure. That they are the architects of that failure is nothing that they ever have to answer for.

Sooner or later the lack of spending on infrastructure and education are going to become a big enough problem that even they can’t ignore it. When businesses refuse to come to NH because of it, the far right anti-government crowd won’t be able to ignore it any longer. NH is already recovering from the economic collapse of 2008 more slowly than any of the states around us. Massachusetts, despite their taxin’ and regulatin’ is doing pretty well. NH is not a poor state. NH is a cheap state.

Speaking of cheap, the NH Senate is opposed to the Medicaid expansion being embraced by most of the other states in the nation. Well known liberal moon-bat Jan Brewer of Arizona decided it would be a good thing for Arizona. Legendary pinko, Rick Scott of Florida has embraced the idea, even if his legislature has not.  Expanded Medicaid would give 58,000 low wage workers in NH some health insurance. The federal government is fully funding the expansion for 3 years. In NH that means $2.5 billion over the next 7 years. It would cost the state $85 million. Obviously the state is making out on the deal.  But let’s be clear, this isn’t “free.” These are our tax dollars, coming home to our state. NH is a donor state. We get back about $0.67 for every tax dollar we send to Washington. That means we’re funding states like New Mexico, where they get back $2.63 on the dollar. Or Alaska, where they get $1.93 for every dollar – and they have oil. Not taking this money isn’t going to save NH a dime. We’ll just continue to be a donor state.

The free marketeers love to tell us that what we need to “fix” health care in NH is “competition.” If only we’d allow it, the free market will just move right into NH and give us all kinds of insurance company options to choose from. Insurance too cheap to meter! Except that it won’t. The top two insurance conglomerates control about 60% of the US market. One of them controls NH – WellPoint/Anthem Blue Cross. The entire population of NH is less than the population of any major metropolitan area in the nation. There is no incentive for any insurance company to come here.

The state can withdraw from the expanded Medicaid program at any time. The state could write a provision spelling that out quite clearly (as the Maine legislature did) so that there’s no doubt. Not taking a big wad of our own cash back is just the kind of thinking we can expect from the folks who pride themselves on their Judeo-Christian family values. They’d rather see that wad o’cash go to Arizona or New Mexico. Or even…Massachusetts.

Low wage workers are the folks who wait on you in coffee shops, restaurants and convenience stores. They touch your food. Low wage workers are also at your mum’s house, wiping her bum and preparing her food. These are not people who have insurance, or paid sick days. All of us should want these people to have access to health insurance. It’s the right thing to do.

“To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.”  Confucius




© 2013 sbruce  Published as a regular bi-weekly column in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper

Jeb Bradley's Intentions

In the pink shirt, we have multimillionaire NH State Senator Jeb Bradley of Wolfeboro, stumping for his fellow multimillionaire, Mitt Romney who has a vacation mansion in Wolfeboro. 


The NH Senate had a big voting session today. They've made it their mission to overturn any good that might have come out of the NH House during this legislative year, and they're doing a fine job.

Today they voted on HB 501, a bill concerning the minimum wage. Let's be clear, folks, this bill had nothing to do with an INCREASE in the minimum wage. All this bill did was return to statute the simple concept that NH had it's own minimum wage, and could actually set it higher than federal law. The last GOP legislature overturned this rather benign statute out of sheer malice.

I was listening to the rather capricious streaming of the session. Senate Majority Leader, Jeb Bradley told the assembled throng that this bill was written "by people with good intentions." He mentioned those good intentions several times as he spoke against the bill. A bill that I repeat: Did Not Increase the State Minimum Wage.

Then he voted against it. What does that tell us about HIS intentions?