by Rep. Andrew Renzullo (R - Hills 27)

If you follow state politics at all you’ve probably heard or read about the most recent episode of the madhouse comedy that passes for state government in New Hampshire, the “EMERGENGY” special session of June 4. While the Legislature was already in session Governor John Lynch and the Executive Council, with the connivance of the House Speaker and Senate President, called a special “emergency” session of the Legislature to take place IMMEDIATELY after the regular session ended! The Governor and Council called for the session in the morning and it was held in the afternoon after the regular session finished.

Now what was the emergency? Had the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station had a meltdown? Had Vermont invaded Hanover and occupied Dartmouth? Nope. The emergency was that the Governor “discovered” he had a budget deficit due to the inflated budget he and his party’s legislative leaders had passed last year. If you couple that with the filing date for Governor being the following week, then having a red-ink stained budget on the table while you’re making your filing speech could be considered an “emergency,” a political emergency.

So the Governor’s problem was how to come up with some money fast to mask the state’s real financial dilemma. No problem, borrow it. It’s easy. If you have a car payment due, borrow money on your credit card. Ignore the fact that you’re transferring the cost, plus interest payments, to a future date.

One of the Governor’s ideas was to take the School Building Aid Transfer, which, for years, has always been treated as an expense item, and bond it. That’s good for 40 million dollars. Forget the fact that our children will be paying back the loan, plus interest.

Another idea was to allow the Pease Redevelopment Authority to borrow $10 million to pay back early the $10 million it had previously borrowed from the state. This is a neat way to have $10 million appear on the state’s books but have the debt appear on the books of another state entity.

As an aside, if you are a real government wonk you’re now asking the question, if there is a real financial emergency, why doesn’t Governor Lynch tap into the $87 million “Rainy Day” fund? That’s money set aside for emergencies, isn’t it? Well, the response from the House Democrat Leadership was, to the effect, that this “emergency” wasn’t the kind of emergency for which the rainy day fund should be used. Back to my story.

Now that the Governor had figured a way to finagle the books, he needed to get around the legislature, most notably the House, and its pesky rules. No problem, re-write the rules! But you can’t, the legislature has already adopted rules for this session, especially the inconvenient rule requiring a 2/3rds approval to take up new business. No problem. Call a Special “Emergency” session. Then you can adopt any rules you want. And the rules the majority party adopted made a farce of the legislative process.

First, the House legislators were not supplied with written copies of the new rules, only a sheet listing changes by section. Second, these rules did away with having any hearings for public input or referral to committees who could study the proposals and make intelligent recommendation to the whole House. And finally, the bill itself was handed out to be voted on while the House members were seated in session. Outraged by this travesty, many House Republicans walked out (but later returned out of respect for the institution).

Needless to say, Governor Lynch and the Democrat leadership in the legislature got what it wanted. But at what cost? Over 200 years the legislative process has been developed in New Hampshire. A cornerstone of that process is due deliberation and public openness. To deny the public’s input on a multi-million dollar financial bill is unconscionable. To hide the contents of a multi-million dollar financial bill from legislators until they are in session is unacceptable. The people have a right to expect their legislators to give due diligence to legislation and not be stampeded or coerced. Yet the overwhelming majority of Democrats sat there and did exactly that. They chose party loyalty over loyalty to the institution they swore an oath to serve. What happened inConcord last week helped add to the negative perception the electorate has of government. I hope the Governor and Democrat Leadership felt it was worth it.

by Jordan Ulery (R- Hills 27)

Wednesday night, June 4, 2008, the House and Senate were called to special session because of a so-called emergency facing the state. The “emergency” was solely the lack of leadership and fiscal responsibility of the Governor and the majority party. That lack of leadership was due to overspending and dismal management. In reality there was no “emergency,” other than the Governor wanting to announce his candidacy on June 10 that he had temporally resolved the mess he created. In short the “emergency” was a quest for power.

The Speaker, in a desperate bid to regain control of a House fractured, said that all Representatives had a duty to be present. She was wrong, if by being present meant denying our constituents the right to be heard and have their voices counted. She was wrong when the people of New Hampshire were denied their Natural Rights to have an open, free and accessible government. The Speaker was wrong when, in my humble opinion, the socialistic antics of the Democrat leadership violated Article 8 of the New Hampshire Constitution.

New Hampshire has traditionallyhad an open process where expenditures of monies were discussed in a public forum. That public forum was denied the people of New Hampshire by the Democrat Leadership’s arbitrary process. The absolute worst of back-room (no longer smoke filled) secret shenanigans took place that fateful evening. In a year with record revenues, the budget is still on track to have a $225,000,000.00 plus deficit and the Democrat party added another $100,000,000.00 in spending June 4^th. All the Republican Party leadership asked for was a free, open and public discussion of the proposed expenditures and input from the public.

Just what is the Democrat leadership afraid of - the people? Is it too much to demand that we, the people have open free and accessible government? Is it too much to require of our elected leaders, Republican or Democrat, that they listen to the people and redress (or at least listen to) any complaints we may have?

Then again, when one looks at what has happen nationwide with the voice of the citizen one can see that perhaps the Democrat Party is afraid of the people. Look at their system of ordaining a candidate. The people vote, but in some states only ½ the votes count. The people vote, but even then the all knowing, all powerful, elite “superdelegate” can cancel out those votes on a whim in a quest for power.

Yes, perhaps that is exactly what happened last Wednesday. Those who know better than we the citizens, the voters, the parents of New Hampshire; those that were afraid of actual free, open and responsive government; sought out power – regardless of the good of the State.

By Jeff Woodburn

Our old fashion way of running government has put New Hampshire dead last in a Pew Foundation analysis of efficiency in state government. From the perspective of the Washington think-tank and their expert witnesses, government “managerial employees,” New Hampshire is an antiquated, odd ball state; hopeless stuck in an 18^th century ideals of decentralized democracy that is suspicions of centralized power.

It is true that our structure of government has remained fundamentally unchanged since 1784, three years before the U.S. Constitution was adopted. While other states have marched to the tune of professional, centralized government efficiency, the Granite state has resisted. We have a historically large citizen Legislature, a slew of volunteer boards and commissions, a relatively weak Executive that must win the support of voters every two years, deal with department heads with independent terms and an Executive Council that must approve appointments and expenditures. All of this is designed to drive government bureaucrats and power hungry politicians crazy, and make them less efficient at carrying out their will.

Government operates best in small places, where maximum participation is feasible. From the Mayflower Compact to our cherished town meetings, we learned that the only way to control the abuses of government is by distributing power as widely as possible and encouraging the instinctive distrust of anything large and powerful. It is, after all, our heritage. We are a nation of immigrants and exiles, all who left their homes because of their government’s efficient denial of their human rights.

The measure of good government is not efficiency, but self restraint and allowing the citizens the maximum freedom and opportunity, and permitting slow, steady progress that is in line with our ideals and the dictates of the people.

(Jeff Woodburn, of Dalton, is a high school civics teacher, columnist for the Coos County Democrat and long observer and participant in New Hampshire government.)

By Ed Mosca

Last year, Gov. John Lynch proposed a constitutional amendment that wrote most of the mandates of the Claremont/Londonderry cases into the State Constitution. It read as follows:

“In fulfillment of the duty to cherish public schools set forth in the preceding article, the general court shall define an adequate education, regularly determine the total statewide cost thereof, fund, with state monies, not less than fifty percent of the total statewide cost of an adequate education each year and maintain standards of accountability. The general court shall have the authority to distribute the funds in the manner that it determines to best promote an equal opportunity for an adequate education for every child in the public schools, provided that the general court shall distribute some state aid to every school district.”

This year, Lynch is supporting an amendment, CACR 34, which undoes most of Claremont/Londonderry. It reads as follows:

“In fulfillment of the state's duties set forth in the preceding article, the General Court shall have the authority and responsibility to reasonably define the content of an adequate public education and to distribute state funds for public education in the manner that it reasonably determines to alleviate local disparities.”

Gone are the mandates that the Legislature has to determine the cost of an adequate education, pay for it with state taxes and maintain “standards of accountability,” all subject to the strictest standard of judicial review. Instead, the Legislature only has to define an adequate education and provide state funding in a manner to alleviate local disparities. Moreover, the drafters apparently intend these legislative determinations to be subject to the minimum standard of judicial review.

Some have suggested that CACR 34 implicitly leaves in place the mandates that the Legislature, subject to strict scrutiny judicial review, must determine the cost of an adequate education and pay for it with state taxes because it does not expressly address these matters. However, the words, “[i]n fulfillment of the state’s duties” at the beginning of the amendment make it clear that the Legislature only has to do what follows.

“Tweaking” the amendment by adding requirements that the Legislature determine the cost of the adequate education it defines and that commits the Legislature to paying for a specific share of those costs albeit subject only to the minimum level of judicial review, as has been suggested, is not just unnecessary; it is a step in the wrong direction. The Legislature should have the flexibility to set education funding based on the reality that the education budget is just part of a larger budget and that the taxpayers are not bottomless pits of money.

During the 2006 campaign, Lynch argued that an amendment like CACR 34 would “abandon our responsibility to our kids” and result in “a race to the bottom.” What explains Lynch’s about face? The most likely explanation is that he and his advisers have concluded that CACR 34 is their last, best chance to avoid getting trapped between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

The $3,460.00 per pupil cost of an adequate education that a legislative committee recently came up with in response to the Supreme Court’s most recent education funding decision doesn’t pass the straight-face test. It is little more than one-third of average per pupil spending in 2005-2006. If the Court were to rule that the cost is two-thirds of the average, which is entirely possible, then the State’s obligation under Claremont/Londonderry would be around $1.3 billion. At three-fourths, which also is entirely possible, the number is about $1.5 billion.

So unless an amendment passes, the alternatives may well come down to either an income tax or stand up to the Court. Both are fraught with risks for Lynch. If he goes with the former, he will have to convince the anti-income tax voters, which presumably still constitute a majority of the electorate, to blame the Court not him. Not an easy sell. If the latter, he will lose his base.

Lynch’s biggest challenge will be to convince his own Party to support CACR 34, which puts him in sort of the same position John Kerry was in explaining his position on funding the Iraq war: I was actually against CACR 34 before I was for it.

by Anonymous

Like alot of folks in this state, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit.

In order to get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test with which I have no problem.

What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test.

Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them?

Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet.

I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their butts, doing drugs, while I work. . . .

Can you imagine how much money the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?