Grade A Bunkum

By the time you read this, NH may have a budget for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. It’s also possible that we may not.

The budget process begins with the Governor, who presents his budget to the House and Senate. It contains his priorities, the things he would like to see funded in the next biennium. The House Finance Committee then uses the Governor’s budget as a blueprint for the budget they design. There are hearings where every government agency lists their needs, and public hearings where residents can express their budget priorities. Eventually they finish it and it comes out of committee, and goes to the full House for a vote. After passing it goes to the Senate Finance Committee, where they tinker with it. The House flies blindly, without revenue projections, but the projections are in by the time it gets to the Senate. When they finish tinkering, the bill comes out of committee and goes before the full Senate. If it passes, it goes back to the House, where it is sent to a Committee of Conference, where members of the House and Senate work out their differences, agree to concur, the budget is voted on by both bodies, and then prances off to the Governor’s desk.

This year, the budget process has been a disaster from the very beginning. For the first time in recorded history, the House failed to pass a budget. The creation of a budget became the responsibility of the Senate. The Senate Finance Committee had the same hearings with various government agencies, interested parties, and a public hearing for voters. Once they finished, the committee voted it ought to pass, and then it went to the full Senate for a vote. The Republican Party has control of the Senate, so the votes fell along party lines. The budget went back to the House for concurrence but there was no concurrence to be had, so a Committee of Conference was put together so that both bodies could work out an agreement. They have. The only Democrat on the Committee of Conference was removed when she refused to sign off on the CoC report. The House and the Senate will each have voted on this budget by the time you read this column.

Opinion pieces by the majority party are springing up like mushrooms (and you know what mushrooms grow in) in newspapers around the state. There is much chest thumping about “living within our means, “business tax cuts,” and “job creating.” The writers assume you won’t put two and two together. If the last round of business tax cuts were such a tearing success, why are we running the state as if it were impoverished? They claim the tax cuts will allow businesses to hire more and keep young people here. That’s pure grade A bunkum they’re selling.  

The state fails to invest in higher education, infrastructure, and affordable housing. Even if young people wanted to stay in a state so unwilling to invest in itself, there isn’t any place for them to live. This week there are four and a half pages of help wanted ads in the Conway Sun and 6 apartments for rent. It’s the same all over the state. Rather than wake up and smell the future, thanks to The Pledge we continue to elect people who perpetuate the foolishness that it’s still 1975.The business tax cuts just mean that the burden will continue to be shifted to the homeowner in the form of property tax.

Attaching keno to the full day kindergarten funding is being touted as a “compromise” instead of the poison pill that it really is. The education of our children should not be attached to uncertain gambling revenues, and, again, if those business tax cuts are working so well why is this necessary? A cynical person might wonder if this weren’t the plan all along. Our Trump supporting governor made himself sound human on the campaign trail by touting support for full day kindergarten. If the kenogarten bill fails, he can blame Democrats AND not have to cough up state money for education, something Republicans in this state are profoundly opposed to. It’s a win-win for him.

The Republican Party is fighting an internal war, between the regular old right wing and the far extremist right wing of the party.  The self-styled Freedom Caucus thinks the regular right wing is spending too much money, and doesn’t hurt enough people. The Democrats don’t think the budget spent enough money. The regular right wing probably could have negotiated with the Democrats, to pass a budget, but they didn’t want to, because this isn’t about what’s best for the state. This is about ideological purity, and party loyalty. To negotiate with the Democrats would be seen as weak. They’d be called RINOs. They’d be primaried in their next elections for not being hard core enough. The Republican Party has abdicated its responsibility to NH voters, and chosen ideology over New Hampshire.  

Published as an op-ed in the June 23 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

Jordan Ulery: 11 Years of Taking Orders From Special Interests

NH State Rep. Jordan Ulery, being interviewed at his 11th ALEC Conference shows why he shouldn't be anywhere near a state budget:






There's no thought for the future, no interest in planning ahead, only an interest in not spending any money. That's their idea of success. This is why NH, the 7th wealthiest state in the nation has the 11th worst infrastructure. 

That Ulery brings the model legislation written by pHARMA, Exxon Mobile, the NRA, or the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation  back to NH and tries to pass them off as something created here at home is shameful. 


Eleven years of taking marching orders from special interests! Bravo, Representative Ulery! 

I'm Back

I’m back.

As you know, I was involved in a serious car accident in November. I had a crushed femur, 4 compression fractures in my vertebrae, and a bunch of broken ribs. This resulted in 2 surgeries, a 2-month hospital stay, and in ongoing physical therapy. I’m hoping to be walking again by spring. I’m feeling pretty fortunate – I didn’t die! I was also really lucky to learn that I have the best friends and the best support system anyone could hope for.

Enough about me. On to the legislature!

The big news so far this year was the O’Brien vs. Jasper upset vote for Speaker of the NH House. Former Speaker Bill O’Brien was so sure he was going to be Speaker again that he was boasting about it in the press. His supporters were negotiating deals on committee chair positions.

Then he lost. The libertea crowd lives in a bubble. They only talk to each other. This insularity leads them to believe that their rabid ideology is far more popular than it actually is; that they are far more popular than they really are. O’Brien made a lot of promises to be a different sort of speaker this time – one with an open door policy, and presumably one that wouldn’t close the House gallery to the people, or deny reporters access to his press conferences. Those promises fell on skeptical ears. 

On the day of the election, O’Brien tried to change the rules so that he could be king. Then he failed to get a majority in the first vote. After that, Republican Shawn Jasper entered the contest. Jasper managed to secure bi-partisan support, and finally won the speakership. O’Brien had a Rumpelstiltskin style tantrum, declared himself the real leader, and opened an office across the street from the State House to. …lead, or something. The libertea crowd has been calling conservative Republican Shawn Jasper a RINO and a (gasp!) Democrat ever since. If this sounds childish, that’s because it is.  O’Brien went to the Iowa Freedom Summit last month to mumble into a microphone and announce that he is the current Republican NH House Leader, which probably came as a surprise to Rep. Jack Flanagan who actually holds that position.

The O’Brien cabal is now doing all that it can to subvert the process. Bills that come out of committee with a unanimous or near unanimous recommendation (like a vote of 15-0 that the bill ought to pass) go on the Consent Calendar, which is a section of the House voting session that is usually pretty quickly dispatched by voice votes. Occasionally a representative will pull a bill off Consent, to try to sway his or her fellow legislators that the recommendation is wrong, and this bill deserves greater consideration. The libertea crowd has begun pulling everything off Consent in an effort to slow down the process. They know they aren’t going to change the outcome, but they can obstruct and delay, and that’s the goal.

The Speaker assigns the seating in the House chamber. Jasper sat the most obnoxious members of the libertea crowd  in the middle of what is called “Murderer’s Row” in the middle section of the chamber. Murderer’s Row is a reference to the 1920’s NY Yankees batting line up. In the case of this particular legislature, it’s a lot of angry men wedged in together, forced to climb over one another to get to the podium to speak. They heckle, make sexist remarks about women, and they plot their next moves in the obstruction and delay derby that appears to be their idea of how to best serve their constituents. Lucky for them, their constituents appear to vote solely on the basis of party affiliation, and pay no attention to how effective their state representatives actually are.

This is a budget year in the biennium, so the predictable talk about revenue and budget cuts has already begun. Given how little revenue NH raises to run the state, it’s interesting to watch the GOP try to starve the state even further. The Senate recently passed a bill to eliminate the concealed carry permit. This will create an approximate annual loss of a million dollars to the state, which bill sponsor Senator Jeb Bradley blithely dismissed as unimportant in an interview with NHPR. Given Bradley’s sudden toadying up to the gundamentalists, the lack of concern for revenue, and recent spate of mountain climbing publicity, it’s likely that Bradley has plans to run for higher office in 2016.

The bill to reduce the amount of the business profits tax from 8.5% to 7% would reduce revenue to the state by $60,000,000 in 2016. A bill to exempt businesses doing business as a proprietorship from the business enterprise tax would decrease revenue to the state by $17,100,000 in fiscal year 2016, and unknown amounts in the future, according to the fiscal note attached to the bill. Another bill to exempt proprietorships from taxation under the business profits tax would decrease state revenue by $17,025,000 in fiscal year 2016, and unknown amounts in the future. SB 6, a bill to increase the research and development tax credit against the business profits tax would decrease state general fund and education fund revenues by $500,000,000. Add in the million dollars from Jeb Bradley's gun bill and we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of $600,000,000. 

This is fiscal irresponsibility of on an epic scale. If all of these bills pass, NH will be in a mess. It will take decades to recover.

The libertea crowd is under the impression that once they eliminate business taxes and unions, then companies will be lined up at the door to relocate to NH. This is further evidence of the bubble. NH property taxes are outrageous. We do not invest in education. Our energy costs are exorbitant, and we have the 11^th worst infrastructure in the nation. It’s clear to any company considering a move that we don’t invest in our state, so why would they?

Will the bubble burst? Stay tuned.  



Edited to fix the numbers - thanks Tony Schinella!

This was published as an op-ed in the February 20, 2015 issue of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

Same Old Song and Dance

Last week in Los Angeles, a 100-year old water pipe broke, and spilled more than 20 million gallons of water. That’s a day’s worth of water for about 100,000 people. According to a story at Grist.org, due to our aging water infrastructure, ancient pipes leak 7 billion gallons of treated drinking water every day. Most of our water infrastructure was put into place during the early part of the 20^th century. It’s now languishing in disrepair because we have other national and state spending priorities. We aren’t willing to invest in our country, because it would mean spending less on offense, and it would mean creating jobs, and that can’t happen while the Black Guy is in the White House. All that dripping water is something to chew on as we await the coming water wars.

It is an election year, and around New Hampshire, politicians are gearing up for the primary on September 9. The signs are coming out, and so are the usual talking points. “Cut spending!” “No New Taxes!” That’s been the GOP mantra since I moved to NH thirty years ago. It’s been successful because it is easily absorbed and repeated by low information/low intellect voters. As a plan for running a state, it has not been successful – any more than it would be a successful business plan. A business that doesn’t invest in itself will eventually go under. We’re seeing what becomes of a state that doesn’t invest in itself – all the states around us are bouncing back from the meltdown of the economy in 2008. Our neighbor states invested in education and infrastructure. They began planning for the future. NH remains obstinately stuck in the past. 

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, over half of NH’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition. NH reports the need to invest $847 million in drinking water infrastructure over the next 20 years. We need to invest $1.2 billion in wastewater infrastructure over the next 20 years. We all know that there are hundreds of red listed bridges that need fixing, and that our state park system has unmet needs of about $100 million because we don’t fund the park system properly.

With all of that in mind, I looked at the websites of our top gubernatorial candidates. Andrew Hemingway wants to offer tax cut incentives to bring new businesses here. He wants to create a business friendly atmosphere, which in Hemingway speak means “a regulatory and tax structure that is inviting to small and large businesses.” Nowhere in the “Solutions First” section of his website is infrastructure even mentioned. We’ve heard all of this before.

Walter Havenstein, the Maryland resident who wants to be our governor, has a snappy graphic and a 3-part plan on his website. It seems that our problem is business taxes and high electric costs. Havenstein blames the high electric costs on REGGI. Perhaps it is unfair to expect a recent emigre to be familiar with what the Seabrook nuclear plant did to our energy costs, and how PSNH has managed itself over the years. He also adds the usual mantra of no income/no sales tax. No unions. Passing right to work will send a strong message to the whole country that we are open for business! We need qualified employees! The university system better shape up! We need to eliminate regulations and fees! And so on.

This is all in his plan for The Economic Transformation of NH.  If it sounds curiously familiar, it’s because it’s the same plan we’ve heard from every GOP candidate for the last 30 years. The word infrastructure is never mentioned in Havenstein’s 3 point plan. He does, however, pat himself on the back for his career at BAE Systems, a company that relies entirely on government contracts. Walt may be a stranger to NH, but he’s no stranger to feeding from the public trough.

Havenstein and Hemingway have both taken the Americans for Prosperity pledge. The Koch funded AFP is desperate to ensure that NH residents don’t have health insurance or roads and bridges. The more pledges a candidate signs, the less creativity or actual thought is required of them.

Governor Hassan acknowledges the need for modern, safe, transportation infrastructure on her campaign website, and touts her accomplishments in investing in business-backed plans for investing in road and bridge projects. She’s the only candidate who uses the word infrastructure on her campaign website.

None of the candidates mentioned telecommunications infrastructure at all. The idea that we can somehow continue to struggle to move into the 21^st century without dramatically improved telecommunications infrastructure is befuddling.

A great deal of high volume whining goes on about the transportation fund. Many people seem to think that somewhere in the highway budget is buried treasure that’s just waiting to be properly spent. The Bartlett Center for Kochenomics insists that it’s the carve outs from the highway fund that are the problem. It is true that money from the highway fund goes to the Dept. of Safety, and sometimes to other departments. The trickle downers are aghast upon their fainting couches at the very thought! What they don’t ever acknowledge is this: If NH doesn’t raise enough revenue to run the state properly, then departments will continue to rob Peter to pay Paul. That’s how the NH budget has worked for as long as we can all remember.

Infrastructure investment isn’t a sexy subject. It does not inflame the passions of voters. Addressing NH’s infrastructure needs won’t be cheap. The longer we put it off, the more costly it becomes, and we’ve been putting it off for decades, because NO TAXES/CUT SPENDING. Guns get people wound up. Infrastructure bores people. Roads, bridges, and drinking water are all essential to our state’s economic future, and all we’re getting from our candidates are the same old non-solutions from the last 3 decades. Its no wonder the future looks bleak – we can’t seem to find candidates who have any interest in it.

© 2014 sbruce

Published in the August 8 edition of the Conway Daily Sun Newspaper. 

Tourists Treated Like #2 in NH

This is the Sanbornton rest area, heading south on I-93. Note the rust around the bottom of the door, the mold growing on the outside of the rather shabby building. The rest area is only open from 8 am to 8 pm, to accomodate your peeing needs:

Classy!

Scenes from the ladies room

At least the ventilation system is working. 

Tourism - NH's second largest industry. The parking lot at this rest stop was filled with out of state cars, who will take this memory home with them to cherish.  

Tourism is our #2 business - and apparently treating our tourists like #2 is the way we roll.