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. 

Bills, Bills, Bills

The legislature is back from a week of hiatus, and they’re getting back to business. A lot of proposed bills were dealt with this week, and the committees are busy hearing more.

One of the many good things about NH is our unwillingness to frivolously amend the state constitution. Every legislative session numerous amendment bills are filed, and most of them never go anywhere. This week, the House voted that CACR 1 was inexpedient to legislate. CACR would have amended the constitution to stipulate that a 3/5-majority vote would be required to increase taxes or fees, or to authorize the issuance of state bonds.

This is model legislation, from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate funded organization for conservative legislators. ALEC drafts model legislation for its members to try to pass in their own states. CACR 1 was sponsored by Rep. Jordan Ulery, who is the NH State Chair of ALEC. ALEC’s goal seems to be to ensure that taxes are not raised and state legislatures are hamstrung. It is telling that Rep. Ulery couldn’t muster up a single co-sponsor for his bill.

The House voted down HB 350, which would have created a commission to study the impact of the property tax on NH residents, businesses, municipalities, and the economy. The commission would have written a report. Just a report. A non-binding report.

 The very idea of this commission was so frightening to the Republican majority that they voted against it 213-143. This is the same party that thinks that eliminating collective bargaining and business taxes is going to entice companies to move to NH. Companies thinking of locating here will be bringing employees – employees who will be interested in the cost of housing, property taxes, and education. NH has the 11^th highest housing costs in the country. That the property tax might be a deterrent is apparently not worthy of consideration, especially if you’ve been beating the wrong drum hard and loud for decades. All of our local Republican state representatives voted against the commission.  

Republicans do have a long-standing resentment against education in all forms, but especially public education, and perhaps that’s why the idea of a STUDY was so abhorrent. HB 302, a bill to require a public hearing prior to the submission of a grant application by the Dept. of Education was also defeated. The goal was clearly to make life more difficult for the Dept. of Education by forcing them to bow and scrape before the legislature before they could go about their business.

HB 438, a bill to exempt proprietorships from taxation under the business profits tax was defeated soundly, in a roll call vote of 254-54. This bill would have cost the state an estimated $17 million in revenue next year.

A number of bills attempting to make voting easier or more difficult will be dealt with this year. HB 627 is a bill to eliminate same day voter registration. The bill stipulated that voters could register at the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Dept. of Health and Human Services, and the Dept. of Education. This would have undoubtedly been a real treat for the perennially underfunded and understaffed agencies, but the bill went down in flames. HB 185, an attempt to bring back straight ticket voting was also defeated. The supporters of this bill said that filling in a whole ballot was too difficult and time consuming. HB 652, a messy and confusing bill, would prohibit undeclared voters from returning to undeclared status after an election. It was defeated.

The House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee has voted to retain HB 582, a bill to eliminate the concealed carry permit for a pistol or revolver. The committee wants to further study the issue. The Senate recently passed a bill repealing the requirement for a concealed carry permit. Non-residents pay a $100 fee for a permit, so it is estimated that this will cost the state nearly a million dollars in annual revenue. Supporters of these bills tell us that NH is one of the safest states, which is why we need this bill. NH has required a permit for 90 years (since 1923), and somehow managed to become one of the safest states. The MOAR GUNZ crowd isn’t big on logic. My other favorite is “criminals won’t obey the law.” If that’s the case, why should we have any laws?

SB 30, a bill to provide state backing for a $28 million loan to the developers of the Balsams has been retained in committee for further study. There is some question about the financing of the project.

Developer Les Otten had an independent economic impact study done that is worth reading. We would all like to see the Balsams open again, creating jobs for people in Coos County. It’s a landmark, it’s part of our history, and we want it brought back. The plans, however, are a mite grandiose.

The study generates some fanciful expectations, like the idea that wealthy people will buy 50 percent of the residential units and relocate to the area. The plans for the Balsams are lovely, but anyone who thinks that the wealthy will be dying to move to a place where there is one bad road and questionable telecommunications access and infrastructure is living in fantasy land.

I encourage readers to go to the House on a Wednesday and observe the voting session. Many voters seem to vote purely on the basis of partisan affiliation. Most people don’t pay a lot of attention to what their elected officials do in Concord, or how they behave in the House chamber. It is an eye opening experience for anyone who hasn’t been there.

The NH General Court website www.gencourt.state.nh.us is a treasure trove of information. You can look up legislators, look up bills, read the House and Senate calendars to see what’s coming up for a vote and what bills will be in committee during the upcoming week. Both the House and Senate voting sessions are live streamed for both audio and video. The chances are excellent that you’ll get the audio. The video, not so much.

As spring approaches, so does work on the budget for this biennium. This is something that will affect us all – so we should all be paying attention.