In spite of the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling, Governor Lynch plots to steal funds from the JUA

  New Hampshire Governor John Lynch just can’t seem to let go of his idea to balance the state budget by stealing private money from the Joint Underwriting Association even after the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for him to do so.

  For those unfamiliar with the story, you can check out my previous posts on this issue here, here, and here. A very quick summary goes like this: New Hampshire’s constitution requires a balanced budget; in order to pay for his outlandish spending (spending that Republicans warned was unsustainable) Governor Lynch devised a plan to steal money from the JUA to balance the budget for the previous two years; the New Hampshire Supreme court ruled that the governor had no right to steal this money because it did not belong to the state, it belonged to the people who paid into the system; New Hampshire is left with a $100 million deficit in the state budget for the last two years. The money that is in question is from a fund that doctors and hospitals pay into to cover mal-practice lawsuits, there is a surplus of funds and the governor tried to steal them from their rightful owners.

  Fast forward to today. After failing in his attempt to steal this money from the people who paid into the fund– and being an election year– the governor actually proposed spending cuts to state agencies. But lacking the leadership that is necessary to make a decision on where the cuts would be made, and being unwilling to make the tough decisions and look like the “bad guy,”  Governor Lynch told the agencies to find the money that they could cut. Needless to say, when the state legislature took up the new budget they did not include any of the cuts that the governor asked for, instead they proposed seven new tax increases with no budget cuts to trim the deficit. That is what happens when the governor can’t be a leader.

  But there is something afoot behind the scenes, as I stated earlier the governor hasn’t given up on his idea to steal the money from the JUA. Governor Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Bud Fitch are trying to run an end around in order to claim at least some of the funds from the JUA. The Insurance Commissioner, Roger Sevigny, and Bud Fitch are conducting a confidential investigation into the recent New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling to see if that ruling actually cost the JUA its tax exempt status. In other words, after losing the court battle, the governor is looking to collect in back taxes the money that the Supreme Court denied him in the first place.

  The New Hampshire Republican Party was quick to jump on this news:

Gov. Lynch’s decision to blatantly ignore court rulings indicates a complete lack of respect for the state constitution and the rule of law. Lynch’s repeated attempts to illegally raid the JUA also raise serious questions about his ethical standards

  Harsh words indeed, but in light of these recent events I have to say that I agree with them 100%. When the economy took a turn for the worse and the governor realized that there was going to be a deficit, he did what all good Democrats do– he blamed George W Bush for the state’s budget woes. But the truth is that even before the economy took a downturn Governor Lynch was warned by state Republicans that his budget was unsustainable and relied on unrealistic and bloated “revenue” projections. And now we are seeing that those Republicans were right. The projections were never realistic and it has nothing to do with the recent downturn in the economy– although the economy doesn’t help– his budget never had a chance at succeeding.

  When the governor first unveiled his plan to steal the surplus of funds in the JUA many people warned him that he would not get away with it and that it would be ruled unconstitutional. But much like he ignored the warnings he received about his budget, he ignored the warnings about stealing these funds. He was ridiculed for not having a “Plan B” for the eventuality that his plan would be ruled unconstitutional– but maybe he did have a “Plan B’ after all, and we are seeing what this “Plan B” was– stealing this money anyway, just using a different angle to do so.