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March 28: NH House in budget turmoil
It sounds like a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul: Republican budget writers in the N.H. House recommend this week taking money slated for the University System of New Hampshire and renewable energy projects and using them to fund the N.H. Department of Transportation.
It is the second budget outline to come out of the House Finance Committee this week. The first version earlier this week was rejected by the House because it proposed to offset NH DOT cuts with a hike in the gas tax.
The House is running out of time to deliver its budget to the state Senate. In its consideration of Gov. Maggie Hassan’s proposed two-year budget of $11.6 billion (contained in HB 1 and HB 2), the finance committee has recommended cuts in all kind of programs to bring the budget down to $11 billion. Among the recommendation — and seen as among the most severe — is an $88 million reduction in the NH DOT.
With a warning that such a cut would decimate the department, with about 700 layoffs and severe reduction to road and bridge repair and maintenance, the Republican majority in the finance committee suggested an increase in the gas tax to help offset the budget cuts.
When that didn’t fly in the full House, opposed by both Republicans and Democrats, the budget writers went back to the drawing board and came up with a plan to $50 million from the state’s renewable energy fund and $14 million from the USNH budget and give it to the DOT. Some money is also coming from state aid to public schools.
The Nature Conservancy questioned whether the diversion of funds dedicated to renewable energy was even legal.
“What this really does it is going to be charging a fee on rate-payers on their electric bill and instead it is going to be going to the department of transportation and so you have rate-payers pretty much paying a new tax to fund roads,” Jim O’Brien, director of external affairs for the Nature Conservancy, said in an NHPR story.
Needless to say, Democrats don’t like it.
“This is no ‘fix’ at all as House Republicans go from bad to worse with backward cuts that will hurt students and families, and increase local property taxes,” said Representative Cindy Rosenwald, House Deputy Democratic Leader and a member of the House Finance Committee.
Said Gov. Hassan: “Instead of responsibly addressing the issues facing our Highway Fund with a modest revenue solution, they are proposing further reductions to the priorities that are critical to the success of our people, families and businesses. These irresponsible cuts threaten to shut down local road and bridge projects, increase the cost of higher education, raid the dedicated Renewable Energy Fund and further downshift the burden on local property tax rate-payers.”
Once adopted by the full House, scheduled for a vote Wednesday, this budget will go to the Senate.
See another report on the budget proceeding here from the Concord Monitor and one here from the Union Leader.
Also in the State House this week, a bill to restrict access to social media passwords came under some fire from anti-bullying advocates.
The bill would prohibit any public or private school in the state from requiring or requesting access to students' personal social media accounts. Supporters of the bill, including the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, argue that students have a right to personal, private lives outside of school and that accessing their accounts is an invasion of privacy, according to a Seacoast Online story.
But opponents said the bill would hamper investigations into cases of online bullying.
A lot was made in the state — and across the country — about some inappropriate comments made in the House as a group of fourth graders tried to get the red-tailed hawk named as the state’s official raptor. The tumult hasn’t died down.
Rep. Warren Groen, R-Rochester, compared the hawk's sharp talons to the work of Planned Parenthood. The bill to establish the state raptor was defeated.
The House, in an effort to save some face, passed a resolution formally encouraging student participation in state government See a Concord Monitor story here.
And some state senators have said they may attach the raptor bill to the already House-passed measure that designates the bobcat as the state wildcat. See an NH1 story here.
We’re over on Facebook with a wide variety of discussion topics.
And we’re back next week with another look back at the week that was.
Live Free or Die Alliance
www.livefreeordiealliance.org
Source: http://townhall.livefreeordiealliance.org/xn/detail/4091641:BlogPost:70741
