NH budget remains constant issue
Once again, the House Republican leadership lost the propaganda war and threatened to open itself up to false charges that its budget discipline was faux conservative. The total taxes and fees expected were only $60 million over existing revenue, and that 2 percent boost is the smallest jump in the last decade, according to the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute. This led to numerous press reports having House Speaker William O’Brien, R-Mont Vernon, pledge to cut spending by at least 2 percent in 2012 and 2013. Huh? Gov. John Lynch has instructed state agencies to prepare plans to cut spending 5 percent, although not across the board. Think tank experts such as Charles Arlinghaus at the Josiah Bartlett Center and Steve Norton with the Center for New Hampshire Public Policy Studies have concluded the cuts will have to range from 8 percent to 13 percent, depending on how much temporary downshifting of aid to cities and town gets locked in. House leaders failed to emphasize that the 2 percent cut fails to recognize that the next budget has to be done without $846 million in one-time revenue or savings, and that less than $150 million of that has anything to do with the general fund, where state taxes and fees go. The imagery left the House GOP wide open to the same Tea Party attacks that took place in Washington when hard-right conservatives greeted the U.S. House GOP pledge to cut $100 billion in the next federal budget as too meek. But if anything is certain, this new House GOP crowd is neither timid nor tentative. They just have to re-oil their PR machine. Not good enough for some Let’s lay it on the big guy. That seemed to be the strategy of the all-Republican Executive Council when it came time to pass judgment on Ward Bird, of Moultonborough, and his bid for a pardon. All five forced Lynch to be the Grinch who stole the pardon from Bird. Former Merrimack County Attorney Dan St. Hilaire failed to be a profile in courage, along with Bath Republican Executive Councilor Raymond Burton, who initially agreed with Lynch that commuting the sentence to time served was the appropriate remedy. But when the other three executive councilors balked at anything less than a full pardon, St.
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