By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org
A late 1970s rock band was named Cheap Trick, which could also be the title for House Bill 1300 which Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed into law last week.
The bill was one of the Libertarian/Republicans’ top priorities last session. Its genesis was an overwhelming vote at the Kearsarge Regional School District’s 2025 annual meeting to reject a school budget cap warrant article, one of the Libertarian/Republicans’ top priority for the 2024 session.
After the Kearsarge vote, House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, who was one of the prime advocates for instituting school district budget caps similar to the ones municipalities have been able to enact for years, said “Perhaps, if [local voters] are unwilling to cap themselves, the state will step in and cap local taxes for them.”
Osborne was a sponsor of House Bill 675, which would have capped school district budgets statewide, but failed in the House the same year as the Kearsarge vote.
This session, HB 1300 would have required every school district in the state to place a budget cap tied to inflation and a cap on School Administrative Unit spending on the general election ballot every two years beginning this year.
The “selling point” was only special interests turn out for annual school district meetings, such as teachers, administrators and parents, who are residents of the district as opposed to those who don’t care about public education or children’s education, don’t want to hear explanations, but want lower property taxes, but evidently those folks do not represent special interests in the mind’s eye of Libertarian/Republicans.
Bill proponents argued voters need to make their voices heard in order to reduce the wild spending that local school boards were proposing although there is no blocking anyone’s attendance at annual meetings or deliberative sessions for Senate Bill 2 communities, which was the first of a long line of attempts to have more uninformed voters decide what city, town and school budgets will include.
Cheap Trick had a hit song called “I Want You to Want Me,” which might better describe what the proponents of HB 1300 really had in mind in an election year.
They want you to think they have your best interest at heart and this gimmick will lower your property taxes which everyone knows have grown significantly over the last decade. Republicans have controlled the State House from the governor’s office to the Senate and the House.
They don’t want you to know in that time when there were hundreds of millions of dollars in budget surpluses, fueled by several billions of dollars of federal COVID relief and rescue money pouring into the state, they did not increase state spending for public education even at the rate of inflation and with their latest actions, about half the school districts are losing significant dollars in state aid, many that most need state help to educate their children.
However, Libertarian/Republicans had no problem adding $130 million in state spending for the Education Freedom Account program that largely benefits families wealthy enough to send their children to religious and private schools and to home schools, and were never in public schools or were not there when they joined the EFA program.
The voucher program has expanded as lawmakers did away with any earnings cap for parents making it a subsidy for parents with children in religious or private schools, and homeschools.
While $52 million in state money flowed into the voucher program this year, the Libertarians/Republicans slashed state money to the university and community college systems, increasing tuition to in-state students, and raised co-pays for those on Medicaid and charged low-income parents, usually a single mother, an insurance premium for the state’s Children Health Insurance Program.
What the Libertarian/Republicans really don’t want you to know is the real reason your school property taxes are so high is because they have determined the state should pay much less than any other state in the country percentage wise for public education.
New Hampshire is dead last in its commitment to public education in the country as it is for its commitment to higher education. New Hampshire pays less percentage wise for public education than Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas and West Virginia. Others on the low end of the scale are Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas and Florida.
While New Hampshire pays between 19 to 29 percent of the cost of public education, the national average is about 47 to 48 percent.
If the Statewide Education Property Tax is included — which raises $363 million annually — the state pays 29 percent, but if you include the statewide property tax in with the local property taxes because they are all paid at the local level, the state pays 19 percent.
Property taxes, whether local or state, pay 70 percent of the cost of public education in New Hampshire, one of the wealthiest states per capita in the country.
However, the Granite State ranks in the top 10 in the country for what it pays per student to educate its children.
The state raises enough money for public education, the problem is who provides the bulk of the funding which is everyone who pays property taxes whether residential or commercial.
That is why your property taxes are so high for schools, your state government does not believe it has to contribute what would be its fair share in any other state.
That unfortunate fact is true for both Libertarian/Republicans and Democrats — when they have held the reins of power however briefly — over the years since the state Supreme Court ruled the state has a constitutional obligation to provide its children with an adequate education and to pay for it.
In the more than 30 years since the Claremont I and Claremont II decisions were issued, the state has yet to fully comply with the rulings and many others including two recent rulings one of which is now before the Supreme Court on appeal by the state.
Today’s Libertarian/Republicans like to beat the drum about property taxes and blame local elected and appointed officials for the high cost of education, tout a constitutional amendment to ban an income tax although no proposal has seriously been considered for 20 years or more, and praise themselves for reducing business taxes and eliminating the interest and dividends taxes, but have no solution for education funding but to spend more money on children not in public schools, cut state revenues by over $1 billion and pass a statewide school budget cap while your property taxes continue to go up.
That is not a cheap trick, it is a very expensive trick on the home and building owners of the state who pay for the bulk of the costs for all governmental entities.
If three-fifths of voters at the next general election in your school districts approve the content of House Bill 1300, that will prevent property taxes from increasing any more than the rate of inflation, and caps SAU funding at 6 percent of the district’s budget, but that does not stop them from rising.
But if you believe property taxes are too high, this bill does nothing to change that because that would require political courage to put a real solution on the table that provides significantly more state money to pay a much higher share of public education costs.
If something like that were to pass, voters would not likely have a problem “wanting to want you” in the legislature or corner office.
That would not be a “Cheap Trick.”
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.
Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn and their two rescue dogs.