Jackie Cilley - Facing the Silver Tsunami

Maybe you've heard about the "silver tsunami." It started last year, when the first of the baby boomers (those born between 1948 and 1964) turned 65. Nationally, the number of people aged 65 and older will double by 2050. Here in New Hampshire, nearly a third of our people will be 65 or older by 2030. Research by the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies suggests that this huge shift in our society means "pledge" budgeting won't meet our state's needs, especially when it comes to health care costs. The aging of our population presents us with unprecedented challenges to be sure, but also a wealth of opportunities.

This week marks the forty-seventh anniversary of Medicare. Before it was enacted in 1965, half of America's seniors had no health insurance. Today, this successful government program covers nearly 50 million people in the country, roughly 220,000 right here in New Hampshire––with overhead and administration costs, by the way, of just 3%, a figure the insurance industry can't begin to touch.

I believe that making sure people's basic needs are met is the essential first step for a productive economy and thriving society. This is true whether you come at it from the moral perspective that we should take care of each other (I am my brother's keeper) or from an economic perspective based purely on self interest: it's more cost effective to meet needs in the first place rather than address all the compounded costs down the line. In other words, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

Our elders understand this. They know this from experience. In fact, it is their wisdom and foresight  that makes our state and country great. Our seniors worked hard all their lives, not just for their own present, but for our future. They raised families, sending out the next generation on stronger footing than where they stood. In doing so, they also built a society. My own parents and grandparents––and yours too––through their hard work, through their taxes, built and maintained the foundations of our prosperity today: a strong system of public education and transportation infrastructure, environmental protections, programs that support people to make their fullest contribution to society. They understood they were building our future.

They did this for me, for all of us. So first and foremost, I honor them and thank them. And second, I insist, they have earned more than our gratitude and our respect. They have earned our support. They have earned the right to a healthy and secure retirement, and to the support they need to participate fully in our communities. We owe them this.

So yes, our seniors have earned our thanks and our support. But they have earned even more than that. They have also earned the right to expect that we carry on their work, that we maintain the foundations of society that they laid for us. And not just maintain them, but build upon them, for our children and their children. Pay it forward, if you will. To let what they built crumble, to throw up our hands and say "we can't afford it" ("it" being good schools or sturdy bridges or reststops on our highways or care and treatment for our most vulnerable)––this isn't just an excuse, nor even political pandering; it's an insult.

I was born and raised in the North Country.  I love New Hamsphire.  I stand where I do today because the generations before me paved the road. They built the road. We're at a real turning point in our state. Decisions we make today have impact farther than the eye can see. Times are changing, calling us to decide together the best direction for our future. That means an uncensored, grown-up conversation, no pledges, no taboos. We owe it to our children––and our seniors, too.

ABOUT JACKIE: Jackie Cilley is proud to have earned the support of nearly 17,000 union households across New Hampshire for her campaign for governor. Jackie, who served in both New Hampshire's House and Senate representing Barrington, built a successful business and taught more than 2500 New Hampshire students over her 20 years as a highly respected business professor with UNH's Whittemore School for Business and Economics. A Berlin native, Sen. Cilley earned a BA in Psychology from the University of New Hampshire and an MBA from the Whittemore School.  Jackie and her husband Bruce have lived in Barrington for more than 20 years.  They have five sons, 12 grandchildren, and two dogs. 

Jackie Cilley - There When We Need Them

There are many jobs we don’t give much thought to on a day-to-day basis.  The local hospital only surfaces to our conscious mind when we drive by, visit someone we care about there or need it ourselves.  The folks who plow our streets so that we can get up and go to work after a snow storm receive little attention unless a snow bank blocks our driveway.  Public safety fits this frame well.  We simply don’t think of first responders, police or firefighters until we need them.

On a cold, dark February evening last year that was just the case for my son and daughter-in-law.  She had arrived before him to find their modest, well-tended first home had been robbed of its copper piping  -- leaving them without heat or hot water.  After calling my son, the first calls she made were to firefighters and police, one to investigate the lingering odor of gas and the other to try to catch the thieves.

On another cold winter day before the holidays, yet another family member was involved in an accident so horrendous it required cutting him out of the van he was driving.  Having shattered his hip and sustaining other injuries, he was thankful for the loving care the paramedics provided.  It was a lengthy healing process from which he never fully recovered, but they gave him the start he needed to get as far as he did.

These incidents pale in comparison to much more traumatic events such as those on 9/11 in which so many were lost – including hundreds of firefighters and police.  Nonetheless, even the seemingly most innocuous incident can turn deadly.  Our public safety officials are and must always be prepared for that eventuality.

Our state has consistently been rated as one of the safest in the country in which to live.  Our public safety personnel work diligently to keep it that way.  Our citizens expect no less from them.  Business leaders choose a safe state and count on the protections afforded by well-trained and well-equipped public safety employees.  Visitors arrive in the comfort of knowing we are a safe state to visit.

Our safety net, however, is stretching at the seams like a fire hose that’s been dragged along the gravel too many times.  State and local cuts to public safety budgets are placing substantial stress on already thinning ranks.  Recently, Chief Jamie Sullivan of the Hampton Police Department was quoted as saying, “…we have been expected to do more with less and have done so.  Now we are doing less with less.”

Hampton thrives on its tourist industry.  These visitors come, at least in part, because they believe it a safe place to visit.  Yet, Chief Sullivan does not have the budget for a full complement of police for all shifts and locations.  He must depend on back-up from equally stretched Sheriff’s departments and State Police.

Areas of the nation that fail to invest in sound public safety pay the price through higher rates of crime, fewer middle class families who want to live there and fewer visitors who come with their tourist dollars.  That is not the New Hampshire we have had and it is not the New Hampshire we want.

Over these past two years our Free State/Tea Party legislature has maligned public employees, including firefighters, police and first responders, at every opportunity.  The adjectives and labels used to describe these hardworking men and women would have been unthinkable to utter in the halls of our Statehouse not so long ago.  Regardless, these brave men and women have continued to go about their job – sometimes at great personal risk – to keep our citizens safe. 

Protecting those who protect us is a primary motive for my decision to run for Governor. I will always remember that it is our police, firefighters and first responders who make New Hampshire a safe and inviting place for businesses, tourists, and growing families. Together, we'll change the way public employees are valued.  We will preserve the quality of life that well-trained and well-equipped safety forces defend.

This week I was proud to receive the endorsements of the New England Police Benevolent Association and the Professional Fire Fighters of New Hampshire. I am honored that they have seen in me someone who will fight to keep New Hampshire a beautiful and safe state  Together with all of our citizens we will protect the traditions that have made New Hampshire the greatest state in the country in which to live and work.

Jackie Cilley - CACR 13 Income Tax Ban and CACR 6 Super Majority to Tax Amendments

At a time when New Hampshire is falling behind other states in its ability to attract new businesses with good jobs for our citizens, the Free State/Tea Party legislature in Concord is putting our economic future at even greater risk.  On Wednesday, May 30 a legislative committee of conference passed CACR 13, a constitutional amendment that, if approved by the voters in November, will forever ban taxes on incomes.

One doesn’t need to be in favor of an income tax, something I’m sure to be accused of, to understand that a constitutional amendment of this nature may well be easy to sell and far harder to explain its long term damage to our state. 

However, unless the business community is willing to settle for rising business profits taxes, as well as getting less for their money to boot from a deteriorating infrastructure and educational system, and unless property taxpayers are willing to see their property taxes rise faster and by greater percentages, folks better take a long hard look at where this simple sounding solution to all of our fiscal woes will actually lead.  

In their cynical ideological rush to tie the hands of future generations’ ability to consider any alternative to rising property and business taxes, the legislature has managed to pass a badly flawed bill that experts say will involve years of court battles and whole new bodies of constitutional law. 

For example, Professor Marcus Hum of UNH's School of Law points out this amendment could put nearly all taxation issues into the hands of New Hampshire's courts. CACR 13 would, says Hum “start a cascade of constitutional questions that could take years to settle” and “inescapably require the Supreme Court to develop whole new bodies of constitutional law and … to make judgment calls where clear or even workable definitions are probably impossible.”

But the legislature didn’t stop at just passing a constitutional amendment to forever ban consideration of taxing someone’s income (poorly defined though that may be), they also passed another amendment CACR 6, that requires a two-fifths majority to pass any new or increased fee or tax – double whammy and boatloads of additional damage. 

Unfortunately, in today’s halls of power one can’t get two-thirds to agree on whether the sky is blue.  There is far greater loyalty to partisan ideology than anything remotely akin to what might be best for our citizens or our long-term sustainability as a state. 

Since the beginning of my campaign for governor, I've made clear that we must have an adult discussion about how we fund the investments that make New Hampshire strong – quality education, robust public and private sectors, and the infrastructure needed for our state to compete in the 21^st century marketplace.

Our state is already not making sufficient investments in these areas, the very investments that attract good businesses with good jobs.  Businesses are now reluctant to relocate or start up in our state.  Last year alone, New Hampshire lost 3,800 jobs while Massachusetts and New York created jobs.

CACR 13 and CACR 6, linked together, fail to do anything to meet these needs to revitalize our economy and attract businesses to our state and they will significantly impede our ability to fund such priorities in the future.   In fact, there is every likelihood that the combination of the two will make the North Country, that has been losing jobs for more than five decades, seem to be a beehive of economic activity.

If the voters of the state care about its future, they need to swiftly defeat these destructive amendments in November and vote out the ideologues that passed them.

Jackie Cilley - It’s Time To Take the Streets Again

Does anyone recall any of the 2010 candidates running on a platform of eliminating insurance coverage for contraception?  You didn’t?  Well, you’re not alone.  There was not one word about doing something so draconian, but that’s what they are slipping through now.

In a continuation of attacks on the women of New Hampshire, including the removal of adequate protections against domestic violence, the NH House passed HR 29 to require Congress to allow employers to deny healthcare coverage for contraception.  In another amendment attached to a non-germane bill, the House is attempting to unravel 13 years of bipartisan support for healthcare coverage for contraception.

The Free State/Tea Partiers in our legislature are effectively telling New Hampshire women they don’t have the right to determine when to start their family or to control their own reproductive healthcare.

As utterly regressive as these actions were, a statement by Rep. Lynne Blankenbeker, r, Concord, was simply jaw-dropping.  During a committee hearing, Rep. Blankenbeker said the women of our state could avoid an unwanted or untimely pregnancy “with simple over-the-counter remedies such as abstinence or condoms.”  The first is likely to lead to significant levels of domestic disharmony and the latter has a high failure rate.

Our grandmothers marched in the streets and suffered untold humiliations to win us the right to have a say in governing ourselves.  Ladies (and pro-equality gentlemen), it looks like it is time to take to the streets again!