Sen. Dan Innis is contributing to New Hampshire’s property tax crisis and then asking Granite Staters to believe Democrats and public education — specifically, the Kearsarge Regional School District — are the culprits.
I serve as vice chair of the Kearsarge Regional School Board. I have also spent years studying fraud vulnerability in education savings account programs, including New Hampshire’s taxpayer-funded Education Freedom Accounts — a program Sen. Innis has helped expand. Before lecturing Kearsarge residents about fiscal discipline, he should examine his own record. He should also show up.
In my five years on the Kearsarge School Board, I have not seen Sen. Innis at a school board meeting or municipal budget hearing for the communities he represents. He criticizes Kearsarge’s decisions from Concord without being in the room to hear what our schools need, which expenses are mandated by state law or what our families can afford.
New Hampshire provides approximately $4,100 per student in base adequacy aid. In the ConVal decision, the New Hampshire Supreme Court found that amount unconstitutionally low and identified $7,356.01 per student as a conservative minimum for the adequate education our state Constitution guarantees. The difference — more than $3,000 per student — is shifted onto local property-tax bills.
This is not a new problem. For roughly three decades, New Hampshire has faced repeated
litigation over school funding. As a dissenting justice noted in ConVal, the court has never found that the Legislature fulfilled its constitutional duty.
At the same time, the state continues expanding Education Freedom Accounts while refusing to fully fund the public education system it is constitutionally obligated to support. Funding EFAs while shortchanging public education — and holding the two systems to different standards of public accountability — is a policy choice.
Sen. Innis now promotes a state-mandated vote to cap the local property tax revenue available to school districts. It does nothing to increase the state’s contribution or correct the funding formula; it only restricts how communities can respond to the state’s shortfall without addressing the shortfall itself.
Sen. Innis is right about one thing: property taxes are too high. But New Hampshire’s property-tax crisis is not accidental. It is the predictable result of state policies that reduce state spending by shifting those costs onto local taxpayers.
Solving it will require more than blaming public schools or assigning fault across party lines. It will require lawmakers from both parties to acknowledge the downshifting, repair the education-funding formula, protect every taxpayer-funded program with meaningful oversight and listen to the communities carrying the burden.
Granite Staters deserve lawmakers who show up with solutions — not talking points. They
deserve public policy that funds constitutional obligations, protects taxpayers and strengthens public education without pitting it against property owners.
If Sen. Innis wants to fight rising property taxes, he should stop blaming the people paying them and help build a bipartisan solution grounded in sound policy rather than partisan politics.
Kristen Schultz is a board member of the Kearsarge Regional School Board. She lives in Newbury.