Pretending to help property taxpayers
We’re about to see just one more scheme New Hampshire lawmakers are using to pretend they’re helping property taxpayers. The legislature is bringing back up for a vote a bill that would require state-mandated school budget caps. Granite Staters don’t want this and the legislature should care about what we want. This past year was the first time communities could propose local school budget caps under a new state law. Brookline, ConVal, Epping, Epsom, Haverhill, Hollis-Brookline, Kearsarge, Salem, Thornton and Weare all saw proposed caps. Every single one was rejected by voters, some by big margins.
With a state-mandated budget cap, when school districts face unbudgeted cost increases (like the recent increase in insurance premiums that no school district was responsible for or could predict), the money to pay for such expenses has to come from somewhere. The only place it can come from is cutting programs or making other drastic budget cuts, all of which harm the students, the educators and ultimately the community.
HB675 is the bill in question, and I have to ask if New Hampshire is becoming a nanny state where the state government dictates to the local government in a matter as local as school budgeting? That doesn’t sound like freedom to me. And it’s certainly not local control. HB675 will cause harm. Please ask your legislator to vote against it. To provide real relief to property taxpayers the legislature needs to comply with school funding court decisions.