New Hampshire governor signs local tax cap legislation

  In 2009 the voters in the city of Manchester voted to enact a tax cap law. This law would  limit tax hikes to match the urban consumer price index, and several other towns in the state of New Hampshire adopted similar legislation in an attempt to control the out of control spending in the state.

  These tax caps were challenged in the courts and eventually reached the State Supreme Court where the caps were ruled unconstitutional because the local laws violated the state law. The new Republican legislature set out to change this ruling by changing the law so that tax caps would be compliant with a new state law.

  The legislature passed a bill which would put local tax control legislation back where it belongs, at the local level, and today Governor Lynch signed the legislation into law. This law also included language which stated that in all localities in which the voters already approved such tax cap legislation, the voters will would be upheld and the tax caps would immediately go into effect.

  With the new Republican veto-proof legislature Governor Lynch has been dragged kicking and screaming back to a more centrist point of view, he is nothing more than a GINO (governor in name only) at this point and must govern more from the center. He realizes this and we have seen at least three examples of this in the last two weeks.

  This legislation is the latest example of New Hampshire finally moving in the right direction after several years of Democrat rule and provides us with an example of how a true republic is supposed to work. The responsibility for local governance was returned in this case to where it belongs–at the localities–while th power of the state government was diminished on this issue. If only the federal government would act the same.