The voters of New Hampshire sent us to Concord to put people first, and the state budget that I presented to the Legislature last week does exactly that.
Built on fiscally conservative revenue estimates, it contains no gimmicks or empty promises. It’s a budget that focuses on prioritized needs, and delivers results for our most vulnerable citizens – something we can all get behind.
Creating equal opportunity is the foundational purpose of government. To achieve this we can, and should, open as many doors of opportunity as possible. At the end of the day, we must send a clear signal that a ZIP code cannot, and should not, define one’s chance at success.
As the Concord Monitor first reported on Wednesday, my budget appropriates $2.4 million a year – an increase of 30 percent – to the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence and its 13 member organizations. This funding will help carry out their critical mission of protecting victims and survivors of domestic violence. Their work empowers and enables women to achieve independence, and is at the core of what we stand for as a state and community.
Last year, the Governor’s Advisory Council on Diversity and Inclusion and the first-ever Civil Rights Bureau within the New Hampshire Department of Justice were established. We should build upon this progress by increasing funding to the Human Rights Commission by 35 percent to finally clear a backlog of cases, and begin assisting businesses in implementing the best practices for ensuring all citizens’ rights are respected.
We are fully funding the requests of the state’s Advisory Council on Diversity and Inclusion for support of listening sessions around the state, and appropriating $50,000 per year to fund Diversity and Cultural Competency training in our public schools.
Another way we can ensure the doors of opportunity are open is by improving and protecting the health and well-being of our children.
Last year, I was proud to sign the most comprehensive child welfare reform bill this state has ever seen, but there is more work to be done.
Today, caseloads at the Division for Children, Youth and Families are still too high for our frontline workers, which is why we need to refocus our resources on these efforts.
My budget authorizes 62 new positions so that our most vulnerable children have a support network standing up for them. We are also increasing funding for court-appointed special advocates by 25 percent in Fiscal Year 2020 and by 44 percent in Fiscal Year 2021 to provide additional resources for those on the front lines.
In just two short years, we have made significant strides in rebuilding New Hampshire’s broken child welfare system. We must not stop until the job is done.
Another area, in which we have made historic improvements by re-engineering the system is in the area of mental health services. Included in this budget is a historic $40 million investment for a new, state-of-the-art facility to move individuals who have been civilly committed out of the state prison and into a new, secure forensic hospital. My budget also calls for moving the children currently in New Hampshire Hospital out of this adult facility into more appropriate child- and adolescent-focused space for treatment.
This multi-pronged effort is the single largest step this state has ever taken to reform our mental health system. In total, we will be creating 148 new adult placements, which will be more than enough capacity to ensure services are available for those waiting in our state’s hospital emergency departments.
These expansive reforms will not fix the system overnight, but I am confident in time we will set the gold standard for the rest of the nation.
Whether it is increasing funding for services for survivors of domestic violence, investing in reforming our mental health system or improving the lives of children, this job is bigger than ourselves. New Hampshire’s most vulnerable citizens are counting on us get it right and ensure we deliver equal opportunity. That’s what this budget accomplishes.
As the legislative session moves forward, lawmakers will likely make changes to my proposal. We must work together to continue funding critical core services while also designing a fiscally responsible plan that puts the needs of our citizens front and center. We are here to design systems that work, and put people before politics.
(Chris Sununu is serving his second term as governor of New Hampshire.)