New Hampshire, The Taxman Cometh

I have previously posted about the coming taxes to New Hampshire here, here, and here.

Below are to letters to the Rockingham News, a weekly local paper available to the Sanborn school district. This is the first time I remember seeing anything negative about Gov. John Lynch.

In the interest of full disclosure, the second letter is by a Republican state rep., but what he says is right on the money.

I hope New Hampshire remembers what is happening now and shows up at the next election to do the right thing.

Governor making N.H. Taxachusetts North

To the Editor:

So, Gov. Lynch, who has stated over and over again that he would not raise taxes and took the No Tax Pledge, has once again submitted a budget laden with all types of hidden taxes under the guise of a balanced budget.

He is once again hurting the economy of the state by raising the cigarette tax 28 cents a pack. With the gas prices once again on the rise, people are not going to drive to New Hampshire to save a few cents on cigarettes.

Raising the car registrations 20 percent is certainly not showing any consideration for the citizens of New Hampshire who have to pay the high gas prices everyday to get to their jobs, and not have to look forward to a 20 percent rise in the cost of registering a vehicle.

Gov. Lynch, who got re-elected by reaching out to the other side of the aisle, is showing his true colors by not reappointing Commissioner John Stephen as Health and Human Services commissioner.

The Human Services Budget is as lean as it can possibly be without jeopardizing the needs of the elderly and the handicapped. Our elderly need to know that they can grow old with dignity. Gov. Lynch has cut the Human Services budget, but sees no problem with appropriating $12 million to the tree-huggers at LCHIP. What is wrong with this picture!

Also mentioned was a $30 lottery ticket. I think the governor knows you cannot depend on the revenues from a lottery ticket; it is a temporary revenue stream at best.

Once again, Gov. Lynch, saying one thing, and doing quite another. Under his watch, New Hampshire is fast becoming Taxachusetts North.

Veda Paoletta
East Kingston

Higher spending, taxes under Democrats’ rule

To the Editor:

According to our state constitution, the state budget must originate in the House of Representatives. As a member of the Finance Committee, I have had the privilege of working on five previous budgets under four different governors — two from each party. Our procedures have always been the same. The Finance Committee, and later the reinstituted Ways and Means Committee, would estimate the state revenues for the coming biennium. State agencies and departments would deliver their budget requests in mid-February. The governor’s office would have already done prescreening, and the document would be called the governor’s budget.

The governor’s budget would also include revenue estimates and, in each case, the governor’s estimates would come in higher than those of the House — sometimes by hundreds of millions of dollars. In developing revenue estimates, the governor’s office would make certain assumptions that the Legislature would pass a new tax or tax increase. We did not always comply, so we were always forced to trim the budget to meet the more realistic revenue figures developed by the Ways and Means or Finance committees.

In the past three months that has all changed. Now that the Democrats control both chambers of the Legislature, as well as the governor’s office for the first time in 100 years, the House committees have been prevented from doing their due diligence. We had the governor’s budget delivered in a timely fashion, on Feb. 16, and are due to deliver it to the Senate on April 12. The Senate will also have about six weeks to work on the budget. That will be followed by a joint meeting during which time the two chambers will resolve any differences before sending it on for the governor’s signature. All this has a deadline of June 30. Since July first begins the next fiscal biennium, if we fail to pass a budget, there will be no authority to spend any state money.

We are now in our fifth week of budget work, and we still have not received revenue estimates from the committee on Ways and Means. How can we responsibly produce a balanced budget? For the past three weeks I have been informed by my committee chair that “the revenue estimates are coming next Monday.” If I were a conspiracy theorist, I could easily see a definite plan by the Democrats. Apparently they do not want to embarrass their governor by admitting that his budget is out of balance by hundreds of millions of dollars. Secondly, the Democrats will then force the House Finance Committee, which they control with 15 members, to accept a bloated budget, including inflated revenues.

The voters of this state turned the majority over to the Democrats last November based on a national issue. And now, they are beginning to see the unfortunate consequences of their actions: higher spending and even higher taxes. I hope the voters are watching closely and will help us reverse this in the 2008 election.

Rep. Kenneth Weyler
Rockingham County-District 8
Concord