By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org
“Houston, we have a problem,” the slight misquote from Apollo 13 mission commander Jim Lovell, could well describe what has ailed the New Hampshire General Court for the past five years.
And much like that nearly ill-fated mission in 1970, it will take a miracle to bring this ship home safely.
The reasons for the current predicament are multiple and varied, but the end result is the majority of lawmakers in the hallowed halls of the State House do not vote in the best interest of the state’s people.
You could say, many lawmakers do not represent the people who put them in office, and instead they serve the interests of the oligarchs who bought them their seats.
It is not in the best interest of the state to cut $50 million of state aid from the University System of New Hampshire when the cost of attending any of the three institutions is the equivalent of buying a new upscale car every year for four years.
The cut may be House Finance Committee Vice Chair, Rep. Dan McGuire’s favorite cut in the House-passed budget, but probably not the favorite of the families’ and students’ attending or who attended those institutions and will have to pay more tuition next school year to the least state-supported system in the country.
The same attitude is what allows the state to continue to woefully underfund its constitutional obligation to pay for an adequate education for the children in public schools, while spending tens of millions if not $100 million on an unregulated Education Freedom Account program that really is little more than a subsidy program for families wealthy enough to send their children to private and religious schools.
Last week, the House Education Funding Committee held a public hearing on the Senate’s version of universal vouchers without a salary cap, Senate Bill 295.
If the bill were to become law, there would be no ceiling on family income, and no constraint as Gov. Kelly Ayotte wants to have to be a public school student for one year before joining the program.
The bill would limit the number of participants to 10,000 but would have a provision to increase that if the limit is approached.
At the public hearing, only two people testified in favor, the prime sponsor, Sen. Victoria Sullivan, R-Manchester, whose children are EFA participants, and Patrick Graff, the Legislative Director of the Dallas-based American Federation for Children, which advocates for voucher programs.
Those testifying against the bill totaled about a dozen with many wondering how lawmakers could be considering spending tens of millions of dollars when they have yet to live up to their constitutional obligation to pay for an adequate education for public school students, and with the state facing a budget crisis.
A number of those testifying in opposition called it a subsidy program for the wealthy that would increase the educational disparity that exists today between property wealthy and property poor school districts, not decrease it.
The House’s electronic system for registering support or opposition and filing testimony told an even more lopsided story with 919 opposing the bill and 37 supporting the bill.
And the EFA families who turned out to support the House bill at its hearing, were absent from the hearing last week, meaning, they do not support the Senate version or believe it will be killed.
The chair of the committee Rep. Rick Ladd, R-Haverhill, earlier this year pooh-poohed the numbers on the electronic system, saying there are networks that can flip a switch and turn out great numbers, and said those testifying before the committee are a more apt representation.
Both the electronic count and the in-person count on SB 295 did not show any significant support for the bill or the EFA program, that advocates cite.
The bill passed the Senate on a partisan 16-8 vote.
Likewise, another bill that had little electronic or in-person support, but lots of partisan support coming out of the Senate on a 15-8 vote, was a bill requiring a work requirement for people on the state’s Granite Advantage Medicaid program, mostly low-income adults.
Part of the Affordable Care Act, the expanded Medicaid program is funded with 90 percent federal money and only 10 percent state money and may be on the federal chopping block before the Washington budget season is over.
Senate Bill 134 directs the Department of Health and Human Services to seek a work requirement waiver from the Center for Medicaid Services, something the state approved about a decade ago and in 2017 was overturned by the federal district court and upheld by the circuit court of appeals.
At the end of February, the Granite Advantage Medicaid program served 60,119 people, and when the 65 percent who already work full or part time, and those exempt from the requirement because they are physically or mentally not capable of working, care for a child or parent, a single mother, in school or volunteer for the needed 100 hours a month, etc., the sliver of people left to target are 4,510, or about 8 percent of the participants.
The DHHS spent $4.4 million a decade ago to stand up its work requirement and was prepared to spend an additional $1.6 million, until the waiver was withdrawn after the court rulings.
HHS officials now estimate the program would cost about $4 million annually to implement the monthly reporting requirements still in state law and the exemptions approved a decade ago.
The prime sponsor of the bill, Sen. Harold Pearl, R-Loudon, said the requirement would help low-income families work their way out of poverty, noting the Granite Advantage program is intended to “be a bridge, not a destination.”
He was one of only three people supporting the bill at a public hearing last week. One was former HHS commissioner and now Executive Councilor John Stephen, R-Manchester, and the other was another bill sponsor, Rep. Michael Moffett, R-Loudon.
Advocates for the disabled, people with heart disease, cancer and diabetes, and the mentally ill, greater access to health services, the community health and mental health centers, recovery programs, and legal organization all opposed the bill saying its work requirement certification procedure would snag people who meet all the requirements, but will be either unable to do the paperwork or incapable of following the necessary procedures and will lose their Medicaid coverage.
Several members of the House Health and Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee questioned why the state would want to spend several million dollars to require 4,500 people to work, when the process might throw 16,000 people off health care coverage at a time when the money is better spent elsewhere.
The electronic system showed nine people in support of the bill and 477 opposing the bill.
There are other examples of lawmakers working against the best interest of state residents.
The vast majority of people in the state support public education which serves 90 percent of the student age population and do not want the system destroyed, or books banned from school libraries.
And the vast majority of parents in the state have no problem with their children being vaccinated nor wanting to stop school districts from deciding whether masks should be worn or not, but a majority wants to make those decisions for a minority and the lawmakers are doing their bidding not the majority’s.
How many communities want a state-mandated, top-down, one-size-fits-all zoning system in the name of individual property rights with model legislation written by the man who established the Free State Project.
The system has been stacked against real representation for a long time in a well-orchestrated plan to gerrymander political districts on both the federal and state level, to demonize public education and other institutions and to control the judiciary.
The plan has been funded by some of the country’s richest families and individuals to avoid taxes, regulations, and take away national decision-making from the middle and lower classes.
The US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the floodgates for billionaires and millionaires to spend their money to influence the nation’s politics by buying elections and owning politicians to do their bidding. (See Elon Musk.)
These national bills the New Hampshire Legislature sees more and more, are also in other states in nearly identical forms written by oligarch-funded libertarian think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and distributed by groups like ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) intended to make democracy an afterthought to their desires.
Meanwhile, your best interests are buried under the mounds of money flowing into elections here and around the country.
That is why the New Hampshire Legislature no longer represents New Hampshire.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.