NH State Budget - Conflicts of Interest?

 

There is all manner of jiggery pokery going on with  the current state-budget-in-progress. Governor Sununu inserted the Hyde Amendment into his governor's budget, despite his attempts to convince us all that he's "pro-choice." 

That's why this piece caught my eye. Garry Rayno for InDepthNH.org

 "Subcommittees of the House Finance Committee have decided to end or drastically reduce two education programs Gov. Chris Sununu touted in his budget address.

One is a student loan forgiveness program for those in high demand professions like health-care that would use revenues generated by the state’s scholarship program, and the other the governor’s School Infrastructure Fund intended to help schools improve internet connectivity and building safety.

Meeting Monday, the committee’s Division II approved an amendment that removed the loan forgiveness program from House Bill 2, instead allowing New Hampshire College Tuition Savings Plan Advisory Commission to decide how to allocate the funds between the UNIQUE program and the Governor’s Scholarship program."

NH has the highest percentage of college students that graduate with debt.  NH has the second highest student debt out of 50 states . Only Connecticut is higher. Some student loan forgiveness would be a welcome relief for NH students - the kind that might allow them to stay in NH, rather than taking their talents and moving to states where higher paying jobs are. These student loan forgiveness programs that are being removed were regarded favorably by Governor Sununu. Whoever is wielding the scalpel doesn't care about that, which is interesting in itself. (What faction of the NH GOP doesn't care much for the governor?) 

This is the membership of the House Finance Committee:

Rep. Jess Edwards (R-Free State) is  on the Finance Committee. He's also the Chair of Finance Division III. 

Like many state representatives, Jess Edwards has a job. The state representative salary of $100 a year isn't exactly a living wage. This is from his Linkedin page: 

He works for Credit Adjudstments, Inc.  What do they do?

Who else works there? Check out their executive team:

  Representative Jason Osborne (R-Free State) is also the House Majority Leader. 

In a 400 member House, where there are no real ethics rules, there are bound to be all sorts of conflicts of interest. I don't mean to imply that these Reps are up to anything unseemly -  I just believe in transparency - especially in a legislature that has no real ethics rules. 

A budgetary provision that eliminates student loan forgiveness means that debt recovery agencies will still be profiting. If one works for a debt recovery agency - does this create a conflict of interest? 

As for NH House ethics: 

When legislators are about to vote on a bill that has a conflict of interest, they have to fill out a form. 

This sounds good so, far, right? Then comes part two:

Legislators fill out a form that essentially does nothing. If they choose, they can describe their conflict of interest and vote in their own interest anyhow. 

House Ethics Guidelines

I'm sure we can count on these honorable state representatives to do the right thing, fill out their forms, check off not participate, and recuse themselves from voting on the budget. 

It's Veto Time

 Governor Sununu smiling after solving the problem of deli cheese labeling at  Market Basket

Another legislative session has come to an end. Over a thousand bills have been passed, killed, or held in committee.  After months of working on a budget, first in the House, then in the Senate, and finally in Committees of Conference, a budget was also passed. Even though the legislature gave Governor Sununu at least 90 percent of what he asked for, he vetoed it. 

The Committee of Conference (CoC) removed the paid family and medical leave program that was something he actually campaigned on. As I mentioned in my last column, other states use it as an incentive to attract skilled workers. We seem to think that being NH is sufficient attraction.

The sticking point is something the governor is calling a tax increase. A couple of years ago, business tax cuts were passed that decreased the business tax rate incrementally. Some of the decreases have already taken effect – including one at the beginning of this year. The vetoed budget puts the next cut on hold. A tax cut that isn’t being enacted shouldn’t properly be called a tax increase, but once again, if the words “income tax” and “guns” were removed from the lexicon, our NH Republicans would have nothing to say. The very last thing we want to do is have an adult discussion about our tax structure.

The freeze on this tax cut would only affect about 60 out-of-state big corporations. Most small businesses don’t even pay the business profits tax. Unfortunately most of us aren’t especially well educated about the state budget, or where the money comes from to fund our state government. The NH Fiscal Policy Institute did a good analysis of the current money flow, which you can find on their website, nhfpi.org, dated May 22. 

In the absence of a budget, the state is running on a continuing resolution that expires on October 1.In the meantime, however, towns aren’t getting the property tax relief that was part of the budget, and school districts aren’t getting the infusion of funding that they so desperately need. The new secure psychiatric hospital won’t be happening, the affordable housing fund will not be getting $5 million, and rates for mental health and substance abuse providers will not be increased.    

Governor Sununu’s mask of affability has fallen off, and what lurks underneath is an ambitious Trump acolyte. He’s more interested in feathering the nest of his own political future  than doing what is right for the state. The care and feeding of big business is very important to him, since they are his donors, and he’s going to need them even more when he runs for higher office. 

In the current age of ideology, doing right by your state means passing budgets that don’t invest in the state or its people. In New Hampshire, “living within our means” is a bogus justification for our unwillingness to invest. We have means – NH is the seventh wealthiest state. We choose not to use those means in order to perpetuate the illusion that The Pledge is working for NH in the 21^stcentury. We have intentionally failed to properly fund education for decades. Now we have an unqualified Commissioner of Education who is doing his level best to dismantle our system of public education. That failure to invest is one reason why the state has so much trouble attracting young people. We’ve got plenty of wealthy retirees – but at some point they’re going to need caregivers to wipe their behinds. Where will those workers come from? 

The governor is expected to veto a bill that would create a state minimum wage, and set it at $10 an hour. NH uses the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which was established in 2009. Ten years ago. The cost of living hasn’t been frozen in amber, but attitudes about paying workers certainly have. Rents have increased by 28.33 percent in that time period, which has a dramatic effect on the lives of low-wage workers in our state, given the lack of affordable housing. At $10 an hour, NH would still have the lowest minimum wage in New England. At $10 an hour, workers still can’t afford rental housing. Paying wages too low to live on is an expression of contempt for workers.

The veto will be couched in terms of how it would hurt business, because that is always the only real concern. There’s a lot of breast beating about how businesses can’t find workers, but there’s no willingness to take any corrective action. NH has an abundance of low wage service jobs. A lot of working folks juggle several of them at once. Workers in other states don’t seem to be sufficiently motivated to move to NH for a low wage career. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Don’t they know it’s New Hampshire? 

Living Within Our Means

The NH House Finance Committee is currently working on the state budget. They are outraged by the budget sent to them by Governor Hassan, and so the pushback begins. So far it contains every bit of cruelty that today’s Republican Party has ever wanted to inflict on the non-wealthy, and plenty more besides.

NH’s infrastructure is the 11^th worst in the nation, and that was before this winter. The Republicans on the Finance committee want to slash $88 million from the Dept. of Transportation (DOT) budget.  Some bridges would be closed. Welcome centers and rest areas would be closed. (Probably not the ones where we sell cheap booze to tourists.) Approximately 700 jobs would be lost, that’s half the workforce. Federal funds would be lost. Say goodbye to completing the widening of I-93. NH has failed to invest in infrastructure for decades, but this is a kind of bold, intentional negligence that is hard to imagine in a state that relies so heavily on tourist dollars. This also means that 2500 miles of roads and 1000 bridges would be turned over to cities and towns to pay for.

The state was sued for providing inadequate treatment services for the mentally ill. The class action lawsuit was settled in 2013.

The Republicans on the Finance Committee are suggesting that the terms agreed to in the settlement be underfunded by 20%. Some other legislature can deal with the costs of the next lawsuit, right?

Apparently the Republicans on the House Finance Committee really hate old people. They’re suggesting higher taxes on nursing homes, as well as higher fees and $26 million in state funding cuts. They’ve also proposed $10.5 million in cuts to social services for the elderly, cutting funds for transportation, caregivers, senior meals and meals on wheels. Our new state motto: Hey Olds: Live food free and die.

Some $2 million in proposed cuts to community health centers. At a time when heroin addiction and overdoses are rampant, the Republicans on the House Finance Committee have suggested cutting the inadequate addiction services budget by $6 million. Governor Hassan had proposed $8 million for emergency homeless shelters. The Finance Committee has cut that in half.

Representative Neal Kurk is the chair of the Finance Committee. He’s from Weare. His district consists of the towns of Weare and Deering. If you are from any of the other 219 towns or 13 cities in NH, you did not vote for Neal Kurk. That doesn’t matter - he’s not shy about speaking for you. “This is what the people of NH want,” he intones, with regards to the budget cuts he’s proposing. It seems unlikely he’s spoken all of the people in NH, especially those north of Concord. To his credit, he does not approve of the DOT cuts. He understands the connection between infrastructure and commerce. He doesn’t want to hurt the roads and bridges. Hurting people is a different story.

The people who want to make NH a failed state are the libertea crowd, a mix of John Birchers, Tea Partiers, and Free Staters.  Representative Dan McGuire, a Free Stater from Epsom, is emerging as a star pillager in this year’s budget follies.

Representative McGuire has proposed $2 million in cuts to the NH Veteran’s Home. The Veteran’s Home was established in 1890 as the Soldier’s Home for Civil War Veterans. It’s now a home for elderly and disabled NH veterans. The cuts proposed by McGuire would mean that the Veteran’s Home would have to kick out 25 residents. I suggest that Representative McGuire be the one to go in and choose who gets kicked out. I further suggest that this be televised.

The cruelty goes on and on. The Republicans are desperate to eliminate the NH Health Protection Program that is currently providing 37,000 NH families with health care, and has reduced emergency room visits to hospitals by 17% in just 6 months. The BIA supports the NHPP, by the way. It is slated to sunset in 2016. Failure to extend the program will mean a loss of approximately $240 million in federal funds.

The Republicans on the House Finance Committee are also intent on gutting existing Medicaid services to adults. They are eliminating personal care assistance for people who are wheelchair bound, and eliminating therapy for stroke victims. They’re also eliminating access to ambulances, optometry, audiology, and speech, physical and occupational therapy. Medicaid covers adults with developmental disabilities and traumatic brain injuries. What kind of people even think of doing this? If a budget is a moral document, NH is heading for the warm place.

A proposed Kurk/McGuire cut of $60 million in DD funds (developmental disabilities) failed on a tie vote in committee. This would be 10% of DD funding. Remember the shameful DD wait list? It’s likely to be coming back.

The Finance Committee hasn’t just cut funds to Service Link; they’ve eliminated them altogether. It seems that if you’re not funding any services, you don’t need an organization to help people find them.

In many cases, the cuts being made will result in further cost shifting to counties, cities and towns. Those cities and towns will have to come up with funding – and you know what that means. Hello property tax increases!

There will be a significant loss of federal dollars. The libertea crowd thinks this is striking a blow for independence from the gummint. What it really means is that instead of a portion of your federal tax dollars coming back to NH, they’ll go to some other state. FREEDUMB!

The Republicans on the House Finance Committee assert that they have to do make all of these budget cuts, and they mouth the usual platitudes about “living within our means.” If NH is in such dire straits for revenue, how is it that the Senate has passed SB 1 and SB 2- bills that cut the business enterprise tax and the business profits tax to the tune of tens of millions of dollars? What they’re saying is that if we lack sufficient revenue to run our state in a responsible and humane way, we should make big cuts to revenue sources.

“Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.”  George Eliot