I’ve worked a lot of different jobs in my life. Fast food at 15. Direct care with developmentally disabled adults. Years as an EMT and on inpatient psychiatric units. I taught myself to program in the early ’90s and eventually became a software engineer. I served in the Army as a wheeled vehicle mechanic. I know what it’s like to be a working person in New Hampshire stretching a paycheck as far as it’ll go, because I’ve done it myself and I’ve spent years working alongside people doing the exact same thing.
As costs for everything keep climbing, we need to ask a simple question: who’s responsible? Right now, Republicans in Concord have done nothing but cut services and tell you to be smarter with your money. But when their own decisions are the reason your money doesn’t stretch as far, that’s on them.
For years now, Republicans have held every lever of power in Concord: the House, the Senate and the Governor’s office. So let’s look at what they actually did with that power.
They made your property tax bill someone else’s problem to solve. New Hampshire’s property taxes are the fourth highest in the nation, and it isn’t an accident. The state used to cover 35% of pension costs for the teachers, police officers, and firefighters our towns employ. Today it covers zero. The state used to share tax revenue with towns to ease the local burden. Republicans repealed it for good in 2025. Every time the state walks away from an obligation, the bill doesn’t disappear, it lands on your property tax bill instead. Then the same legislators turn around and blame your town for spending too much when they’re the ones who caused the problem.
They’ve funneled over $200 million to wealthy families with their school voucher program, while public schools went without. New Hampshire ranks dead last in the country in the share of education costs the state actually covers. The state’s own Supreme Court has ruled that base adequacy aid must exceed $7,356 per student. Right now the state provides about $4,800. Meanwhile, Republicans expanded the school voucher program with no income cap at all, and over 90% of that money has gone to families who were already sending their kids to private school before they got a check from the state. That is a handout funded by shortchanging the public schools every other family in this state depends on.
They cut healthcare access for the people who can least afford to lose it. I spent years working in psychiatric care and as an EMT, so I know what it looks like when people fall through the cracks of a healthcare system that isn’t built for them. Republicans added new monthly premiums on Medicaid enrollees — essentially a tax on low-income people. They added higher work requirements that could cause up to 19,000 Granite Staters to lose coverage entirely. This doesn’t make healthcare more affordable. It just shifts the cost onto the people who are already struggling the most.
They cut business taxes by nearly a billion dollars and have nothing to show for it. Republicans have cut business taxes since 2015, costing the state up to $1.17 billion in revenue, money that could have funded our schools, our roads, and our towns. A New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute analysis found that Maine and Vermont, similar economically to New Hampshire, saw greater business tax revenue growth over the same period without lowering their business taxes. And the relief was never really for small businesses in the first place: a business paying $1,000 to $10,000 in taxes saved about $50 from the most recent round of cuts. A business paying over $1 million saved $33,350. That’s not relief for the shop owner on Main Street. That’s a rounding error for the biggest corporations in the state.
And support for special interests doesn’t stop at tax cuts for Republicans in Concord. There have been discussions about bringing a new hyperscale data center to the power plant in Bow, and before that in Nottingham, which would drive up energy costs and cause major disruptions for residents. People don’t want this, but when Democrats introduced a bill to allow for local control and regulations on data center development in our communities (SB 439), Republicans amended the bill to strip out serious protections.
This is not a record to run on. It’s a record to run from, and this November, Republicans in Concord are going to have to answer for it.
Bob Lawliss is a Pembroke resident running for NH State Senate District 17.