The battle over the state budget underscores the partisan divide in the New Hampshire Legislature, with most conservative priorities prevailing and Democrats warning that critical programs and services will be harmed.

The roughly $15.4 billion two-year spending plan now heads to the state Senate, where Republicans hold a commanding 16-8 majority.

After six hours of debate and multiple upheavals Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a state budget that would abolish the Office of the Child Advocate, the Council on the Arts, the Human Rights Commission and the state’s family planning program, among other job and spending cuts.

Kingston Republican Kenneth Weyler, chair of the House Finance Committee, told his colleagues on the House floor that those eliminations were necessary because revenue hadn’t come in as strongly as they’d anticipated.

“We took a very good look at all the General Fund things, and we knew we had to make some cuts,” Weyler said. “We looked at things like, ‘Can we cut out the middleman? Is there a board here or an advocate that’s between the agency and the people? Why do we need them there?’”

Democrats, who’d introduced a failed amendment for what they called a “better budget,” posited the spending plan as one with “deep, harmful cuts” that would strip services from people who need them and downshift costs to municipalities.

“The budget before us harms the most vulnerable Granite Staters, cutting funding for mental health support and people with developmental disabilities,” said Exeter Rep. Alexis Simpson, the Democratic minority leader. “Granite Staters deserve a better budget than this.”

Not all of the proposed cuts made it through: Enough Republicans joined Democrats to keep the Board of Tax and Land Appeals, restore $14 million in state support for travel and tourism advertising and stop the state from selling its rest areas and welcome centers.

Rep. Nicholas Bridle, a Hampton Republican, called the cuts to travel and tourism a “death blow” to one of New Hampshire’s largest industries. He and a few other conservatives introduced the amendment to restore that funding, which passed, 198-169.

“When you see a commercial on TV saying ‘Visit Florida’ or ‘Virginia is for lovers,’ it wasn’t paid for by Joe’s Kayak Rental,” Bridle said. “Our mountains, lakes, loons, moose and lobsters don’t have ad budgets. Small businesses don’t have marketing departments.”

Salem Republican Joe Sweeney, the deputy majority leader, downplayed the necessity of that spending and argued that the tourism industries should pay for their own advertising. 

“It’s not a cry that we need to answer for the associations and the industries that are supposedly affected by this reduced New Hampshire state marketing spend,” he said.

The hours-long debate wasn’t without chaos: Lawmakers had proposed 30 different floor amendments to try and change the budget at the last minute and at one point voted to table House Bill 2, the so-called “trailer bill” that includes all the policy changes that go with the line-item numbers.

After both parties had retreated for a caucus, they proceeded to quickly vote on the remaining dozen or so amendments with limited debate.

Policy changes

As part of its budget negotiations, the House overturned a win that Republicans had secured last month, voting 206-165 on Thursday to remove policy language that would’ve imposed a cap on local school budgets. Republican leadership had pitched it as a way to keep property taxes in check while Democrats attacked it as state overreach on local control.

The amendment came from conservatives like Litchfield Rep. Ralph Boehm, who said he could not support the budget if that legislation was included.

“It is amazing that we keep yelling about local control and are trying to remove more of it,” Boehm said. “I’m surprised that members here that call themselves Free Staters are for this. Members that say they are against big government are now voting for a bigger government.”

Epsom Rep. Dan McGuire, a Republican leader on the Finance Committee, had a simple response.

“Property taxes are high, schools are the reason and this piece of legislation is a way to give our local property taxpayers a little bit of relief and a little control,” he said.

McGuire’s effort was unsuccessful, with 37 other Republicans joining Boehm to vote with Democrats and repeal that language from the budget trailer bill. 

In the Legislature, however, nothing is over until it’s over: The policy, which would tie school budget increases to inflation and require a two-thirds vote by towns to raise them any further, could make its way back in through the Senate.

Most other policies that were tacked on – except a state ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which the Finance Committee added last week – had already passed the full House earlier this year. Those included things like looser vaccine requirements and the so-called “bathroom bill” that would allow segregation of certain spaces by biological sex.

Now that it’s passed the House of Representatives, the budget could face revisions in the Senate. Gov. Kelly Ayotte has said she’ll work with senators to restore some of the House’s cuts, like community mental health support, the Office of the Child Advocate and the Council on the Arts.

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.