Down in Concord, it’s easy to forget that New Hampshire doesn’t end at the Lakes Region. Up here in Berlin, and across the North Country, we face a very different economic landscape than regions like the Seacoast or the Merrimack Valley. As my Republican friends in the Legislature get to work considering bills this session, I hope they will keep in mind the unintended consequences that well-intentioned bills like SB 615 can have on the rural parts of our state.
Right now, there is a push at the State House to overhaul the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by restricting what families can and cannot buy. Specifically, SB 615 seeks to ban purchase of “candy and soft drinks” with SNAP benefits. I know the sponsors of this legislation mean well. They are good Republicans who want to see healthier families and more responsible government spending. But good intentions in Concord can often translate into economic chaos in Coos County.
In the North Country, we don’t have a grocery store on every corner. Our communities rely on small grocers and convenience stores that operate on very tight margins. By passing this bill, we would ask local store clerks to police what their neighbors eat and require store owners to overhaul their point-of-sale systems. Failure to properly comply with these costly changes could mean a USDA undercover agent comes knocking on their door.
I’m not worried about the big supermarket chains. Large corporate retailers will have the resources to absorb the shock from this legislation. But North Country mom-and-pop businesses can’t afford the cost of complying with even more red tape in this challenging economic environment.
More broadly, this proposal threatens a critical economic advantage in our region: cross-border commerce. It’s common to see license plates from Vermont and Maine in towns like Berlin and Littleton. The reason is obvious — the New Hampshire Advantage has drawn them to the Granite State to do business. They come here to buy groceries, fill their gas tanks and eat at our local restaurants.
The last thing New Hampshire should be doing is embracing the kind of heavy-handed restrictions that those shoppers are leaving behind in their home states. As mayor of Berlin, I can tell you we cannot afford to hand our economic advantage back to Vermont.
I support the Trump administration’s call to “Make America Healthy Again.” But paying bureaucrats at the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services to create and maintain a government-approved “food list” for SNAP recipients is not the answer. And burdening our local businesses with costly new regulations is certainly not the answer, either.
The sponsors of this bill are good people and have their hearts in the right place. But we cannot legislate healthy eating from the State House, especially when doing so comes at the cost of our rural economies.
I urge my fellow Republicans and all state legislators to consider what’s best for all of us, even those who live in the far northern reaches of our state. The best way to support the economy of the North Country is to keep the New Hampshire Advantage alive and keep the Granite State open for business.
Robert Cone is the Mayor of Berlin, the northernmost city in New Hampshire.