Editor’s note: InDepthNH.org’s State House bureau chief Garry Rayno gave these remarks during our online event last week and we wanted to share them with those of you who may have missed them.
Watch the full event with Garry Rayno, Paula Tracy, Nancy West and Bev Stoddart here: https://www.youtube.com/live/nhM57Alp7bM?si=W3R8wsQWsPCNJABq
By GARRY RAYNO
Thank you for being here tonight as we look forward to another legislative session, one with Republicans firmly in control of state government.
Thirty years ago Republicans had long controlled state government until Jeanne Shaheen and other Democrats helped make NH a two-party state in the latter part of the 20th Century.
What those old Republicans did not want to do was make significant changes in the way we lived and how government operates, after it was theirs.
The ones in power today want to make NH over into their own image as champions of individual rights and free markets, and that desire is fueled by millions of dollars of outside dark money and a national agenda.
When I first covered the State House, you often heard legislators say with pride, “We are not Washington,” meaning Republicans and Democrats could — when required — work together for the good of the state and not succumb to partisan bickering.
That’s not true anymore. One of the biggest reasons is the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing more and more dark or anonymous contributors’ money to flow into national politics and also into state political races and lobbying efforts such as the Koch Foundations’ Americans for Prosperity and various other nonprofit dark money organizations that have spent millions on campaigns and lobbying efforts such as Education Freedom Accounts.
When significant money is expended, there is an expected return, making the stakes higher and the pressure greater to make Concord much more partisan and, dare I say, much less friendly across the aisles and to the general public.
Over the last few terms, lawmakers have extended their reach all the way down to public school classroom curriculum, telling educators what they can and particularly what they cannot teach in their classrooms over things like the straw man — critical race theory.
They want teachers to be surveillance agents of their children and view anything less as a violation of their parental rights.
But the same people pushing parental rights are willful supporters of changes to the state minimum standards and curriculum guidance that could allow poorer school districts to shortchange students if the districts cannot afford to provide an adequate education.
The upcoming session will give lawmakers an opportunity to change the education funding system to bring it more in line with two superior court rulings a year ago declaring the current system unconstitutional, inequitable, and the state’s contribution way too meager to meet the Supreme Court’s Claremont decisions three decades ago.
Bills to change the system are numerous, but it remains to be seen if they receive any more action than the ones introduced last session, which all fell by the wayside.
And there is one bill introduced to impeach the judge who wrote those decisions, something you would never have seen in the past.
Chief Justice David Brock was impeached a quarter century ago, but that was for failing to rein in associate justice Stephen Thayer, who was trying to influence his pending divorce proceeding.
Another example of expanding their reach is zoning ordinances and planning regulations, which have traditionally been left to local control, with towns’ residents deciding the character of their communities.
Lawmakers today have tried to override that principle and prevent cities and towns from becoming “overly restrictive,” and will try again in the upcoming session, all based on a report written by the founder of the Free State Project, Jason Sorens, in the name of property rights.
However, all these issues will pale in the face of the hurricane-force winds driving a budget crisis that the legislature must navigate before July 1.
Since the great recession at the turn of the century, New Hampshire has lived a charmed life fiscally with the exception of the first year of the COVID pandemic when revenues tanked.
State revenues began running large surpluses back when Maggie Hassan was governor and have not really stopped until this fiscal year. It is not the norm to have that long a run of strong revenues.
In response, Republicans cut business taxes, and in two weeks the interest and dividends tax will be repealed, a levy that produced $185 million last fiscal year. The cuts to business tax rates have been projected to cost the state about $750 million over the last 10 years, and now the (chickens) are coming home to roost as the federal COVID relief and rescue money that helped fill the state’s coffers is drying up along with the interest the state earned on it and on its large surpluses the past few years.
In that respect, Chris Sununu has been one of the luckiest governors in state history, while his successor, Kelly Ayotte, and her Republican colleagues will be searching for miracles to produce a balanced budget for the next two years that neither cuts essential services nor raises taxes.
One former budget writer emailed me after my column this week and told me the gap between revenues and spending is likely to be $1 billion, not the half a billion I roughly estimated.
The last time a gap like that confronted budget writers, they slashed state aid in half to the university and community college systems and kept the Medicaid enhancement tax money that should have been returned to the hospitals under the Mediscam arrangement.
It will be interesting to see how the budget impacts some of the Republicans’ priorities, such as making the voucher program for the Education Freedom Accounts universal so there is no salary cap for parents.
Removing any earnings cap could cost the state about $100 million a year, up from $28 million this year, and wipe out the more than $200 million surplus in the Education Trust Fund in a couple of years. The trust fund provides the bulk of state aid to public school districts and charter schools.
Will the budget crisis force Republicans to retain a salary cap for the vouchers? If other states are any indication, that will not stop the push for universal vouchers for everyone.
Arizona’s universal system is bankrupting that state while providing state-paid tuition subsidies to wealthy parents whose kids were already in private or religious schools at the parents’ expense, and that is likely to occur here if the salary cap is lifted.
While $5,000 a year is not going to allow a middle-class or poor family’s student to attend St. Paul’s or Phillips Exeter, or Kimball Union, or Holderness, it is mere pocket change to those at the top end of the earnings pyramid, but it is your tax dollars.
Lawmakers have also promised to put $75 million a year into the YDC settlement fund for the victims of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of state workers at the Sununu Youth Services Center.
They also are committed to setting aside about $50 million a year for a new men’s prison projected to cost between $450 million to $500 million to replace the decaying Concord facility.
And, the largest elephant in the room is education funding which could be even more costly to state coffers than the others if there is a real attempt at a permanent solution.
Earlier this year, Sununu asked department heads to present budgets with a 4 percent cut, but some budget writers believe a 6 percent cut is what is really needed for the upcoming two fiscal years of the next biennium.
Going from budgets that largely gave departments most of what they sought to a six percent cut is going to be very painful for those who depend on state services to survive and state employees who will be laid off in any such reduction.
The budget crisis will make fights over right-to-work legislation seem tame, although it has the best opportunity to pass in my lifetime this session as Republicans try to turn New Hampshire into Florida or Texas North.
Attempts to interfere in the decisions of young adults and their sexual identity would also follow the lead of Texas and Florida, as would greater restrictions on abortion rights, something Ayotte and Republican leaders say they want to protect, but will they stand by that position if it looks like a close vote?
It is going to be a wild year, so I suggest you buy hard hats or keep your head down and keep your eye on your property tax bill because it is bound to go up as it always does when money is hard to find in Concord. Cost shifting is so tempting.
Thank you, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions after Paula (Tracy) speaks.
