By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org

CONCORD — Two bills that would change the default budget process for Senate Bill 2 towns and school districts had different fates before the Senate Election Law and Municipal Affairs Committee Tuesday.

House Bill 475 would remove positions in the default budget that had been vacant for a year along with their salary and benefits.

Rep. Kristine Perez, R-Londonderry, said some default budgets include the vacant position year after year and the governing body uses that money as it sees fit and is shifted around to cover expenses that may not be included in the default budget.

If the position is not filled for a year it comes off the default budget, she said. “Let voters know exactly what they are voting for.”
If you are using money for something else, it should come off because the money wasn’t allocated, Perez said.

But Barrett Christina, the executive director of the New Hampshire School Boards Association, said school districts have significant staffing shortages particularly in support staff like paraeducators and office staff with people coming and going in every school district.

People may take a job for a short period of time, or some are in the same positions for years, he noted, but many times there are two or three people filling the same position at different wage scales.

It would be nearly impossible to track that into the default budget under the bill, Christina said.

“Trying to craft a budget when there are open positions all the time,” he said, “I don’t know how practical that is or even doable.”
Committee chair Sen. James Gray, R-Rochester, said he did not see the bill restricting the filling of positions.

Christina said in a school district K to 12th grade, a school district may have 10 paraprofessional positions but sometimes during the school year seven are filled and other times there may be 11 or 12 paraprofessionals because several kids enrolled needing special educational services that require a para under the law.

Some positions are filled and some can’t be, he said.

Aubrey Freeman of Bridgewater supported the bill and said if there is an emergency and a position needs to be added, the district can call a special meeting.

Taxpayers are responsible, he said. “It’s not the end of the world if you have to call a special meeting.”
He said default budgets increase every year and the bill begins to address that.

A default budget is last year’s budget without one-time expenditures and other adjustments like declining bond payments, etc.

Six people supported the bill online and 20 opposed it.

Later in the executive session, Gray said the school district could include that position in its proposed budget if they really need it.

But Sen. Pat Long, D-Manchester, said Manchester has a difficult time finding professional educators for special education positions and has had to hire two or three special education paraeducators to ensure services are being provided. How do you handle that arrangement under the bill, he asked.

The committee recommended the bill pass on a 3-2 vote down party lines.

Lowering Default Budget

House Bill 613 would allow either the school board or selectmen or the voters to propose a third alternative for the ballot vote on the budget in SB 2 communities.

The bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. Juliet Harvey-Bolia, R-Tilton, said the default budgets keep increasing and the bill would give voters a third option if voters want to lower the budget total from the default budget, which in some instances is higher than the proposed budget.

The third option would take a three-fifths vote of the board or voters to approve under the bill and could not reduce the default budget more than 10 percent.

Harvey-Bolia said the bill would give taxpayers some predictability, by cutting the budget 1 or 2 percent every year.

“It makes it simple for voters as far as managing spending,” she said, “and that’s what we need, to manage spending.”

Christina said the bill only allows lowering the default budget not increasing it.

He said the simple solution is to amend the proposed budget. “You do not need to get into a third budget.”

Brodie Deshaies, legislative advocate for the NH Municipal Association, said his organization usually supports a local option, but in some cases the local option is just not workable often for financial issues.

If a warrant article cuts the budget too much, the town may not be capable of meeting all its obligations like a collective bargaining agreement, he said. 

“This would hamstring local leaders,” he said.

Freeman said the biggest complaint is property taxes are too high and the bill would allow local taxpayers to lower the operating budget.

He also likes the idea of ballot voting on the options, noting sometimes at open meetings people are intimidated by their neighbors, and don’t want to appear to be selfish.

“We need to do something about property taxes,” Freeman said, “and this is a reasonable measure.”
In executive session on the bill Gray noted that all the committee members but David Rochefort, R-Littleton, are from cities where there is no SB 2 arrangement.

Gray asked Rochefort what his thoughts were on the bill.

Rochefort said the idea is there are two budgets, one for wants and one for needs under SB 2. The needs budget is the default budget, and the wants budget is the proposed budget.

He said he thought House Bill 475 addresses the issues raised about the default budget in many ways.

“I don’t want to make it more complicated,” he said, and suggested the committee could hold on to the bill to see what happens with HB 475, but Gray said he did not want any more retained bills in the committee.

He suggested they recommend the bill pass but table it when it comes up effectively killing it for the session, so the sponsors could bring it back next session if they want.

The committee agreed to that strategy.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.