CONCORD — Several lawmakers seek to have the Superior Court judge in the ConVal School District education funding lawsuit impeached for his decision.

House Resolution 7 would establish a committee to investigate whether there are grounds to impeach Judge David Ruoff and have it report back to the House in November.

The prime sponsor of the bill, Rep. Michael Belcher, R-Wakefield, said he believes there may be cause to impeach Ruoff because he usurped the constitutionally defined powers of the legislature. 

Belcher told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that Ruoff’s ruling requires the legislature to raise and spend an additional $500 million in education funding, which would require additional taxation. Budgeting and taxation are the exclusive purview of the legislature, he said.

The judge’s action amounted to “a flagrant and unapologetic usurpation of the legislature’s powers of budgeting and levying taxation, a violation of the separation of powers doctrine and an extreme case of judicial activism.” 

And Belcher said that decision came on the part of a partisan political cause that sought to bypass the legislature and the people who elected lawmakers.

He also accused Ruoff of straining  the “temperance and prudence . . . of his office by refusing to stay his own order pending a review by the New Hampshire Supreme Court.”

Belcher also said Ruoff failed to consider any other paradigms for public education, which makes his decision a policy issue – also the exclusive purview of the legislature. 

He said Ruoff’s decision far exceeded any other school funding decision that preceded it and was fundamentally political.

“This judge in this case thought himself king of New Hampshire,” Belcher said. “The duty to correct that premise is ours alone.”

Ruoff originally sided with ConVal in its argument that the state is failing to live up to its constitutional obligation to pay for an adequate education for its students by grossly underfunding the real costs.

The state appealed, and the state Supreme Court sent the case back to Ruoff to establish facts, including the cost of an adequate education.

During the three-week trial in 2023, the state didn’t defend the state’s figure for the base, per-pupil cost of an adequate education – $4,100 at the time – or explain how it was calculated. Ruoff ruled that the base adequacy amount should be at least $7,356 per pupil, which would require about $500 million in additional money from the state to offset what is now paid through local property taxes with widely varying rates.

Another suit brought by business and property owner Steven Rand and other taxpayers, which Ruoff also heard, argues that the distribution of revenues from the statewide education property tax, used to pay for an adequate education, is the state’s responsibility and needs to meet the state constitution’s requirement that taxes be proportional and reasonable.

The state appealed Ruoff’s rulings in both cases to the Supreme Court, which has heard oral arguments but not yet ruled.

Kaitlin Bernier of Merrimack opposed the impeachment bill, saying if the legislature is not getting anything done to improve education, “How else are we supposed to get anything improved? Who is going to take action and take care of our students and our community?”

The question should not be whether Ruoff should be investigated, Bernier said, but what the legislature is doing about the inadequate education aid the state is providing to towns and districts.

The House electronic filing system for testimony and support or opposition to the bill indicates that 406 people oppose the bill, while three support it.

“We have an educational funding crisis in New Hampshire. Our property taxes are out of control, the state chooses not to provide more funding, and the courts are the neutral arbiter for we, the citizens. Their decisions are based on what is fair and equitable,” Bruce Berk of Pittsfield said in filed testimony. “Then it is up to you, the legislators, to find the fiscal solutions.”

The committee did not make an immediate recommendation on the bill.

A resolution, if it is approved, is a “sense of the House,” but does not have the weight of a law.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.