Sunday, July 26, 2009

How Foster's Daily Democrat Got It Wrong

Parroting GOP talking points, Foster's Daily Democrat whined in an editorial published on Saturday, July 18, 2008 that N.H shifts the burden onto local governments.

The newspaper, which is contemptible simply by virtue of its disingenuous name, having never espoused a Democratic principle in its lifetime, continues to trumpet the nonsense that NH taxpayers are being burdened by a downshifting in costs from the state level to county and municipal governments.

NH Senate Majority Leader Maggie Hassan fired back with a response that eviscerates Foster's propaganda.

More aid to cities and towns than ever before

by Senator Maggie Hassan (Democrat-Exeter)

States across the country are slashing budgets to cope with the worst national recession since the Great Depression. New Hampshire, like many other states, made difficult choices to adopt a responsible and balanced budget in these difficult economic times.

But one area where we continued to invest, rather than cut, was in state aid to cities, towns and schools.

The budget we passed makes cuts and changes to just about every area of state government. It reduces the state's workforce by at least 5 percent, closes district courts and the Laconia State Prison. It manages to fund essential services for our most vulnerable citizens through creative reorganization but puts off funding for other worthy programs until better times.

And let's be clear. We did not shortchange our local communities. In fact, in the aggregate, cities, towns and schools receive more direct state aid in this budget than in the last one. Overall, state general fund spending is down about 1 percent. State aid to communities, however, increases 1.7 percent in this budget.

More specifically, at a time when other states have decimated direct aid to local education, New Hampshire has lived up to its commitment to local school districts by substantially increasing education funding. In the next two years, we will send an additional $123 million in education aid to cities and towns — for a total of nearly $2 billion.

It's therefore grossly inaccurate for this editorial page or anyone else to say that the state has failed to live up to its commitment to local governments, or has shifted "the cost of state government onto the backs of local taxpayers" as Sunday's editorial in Fosters did. It is also an especially disappointing example of how difficult it can be to create new approaches to addressing our common needs and obligations in a time of crisis.

Overall aid to cities and towns has increased 1.7 percent. It is true that the state has suspended an arbitrary and outdated revenue sharing system, and reduced its contributions to the retirement costs of local employees. But the state has more than made up for these changes with an overall increase in local aid, including the $123 million in education aid.

The state revenue-sharing formula was devised before the state began spending a billion dollars a year on education. In fact, the revenue sharing concept was devised in part because the state was not contributing significantly to education. As it now stands, the revenue-sharing formula is not based on need and has been frozen for decades even as our population and demographics have shifted dramatically.

This budget also reduces the amount the state contributes to the retirement system for municipal employees. These are municipal, not state, employees, hired by the cities and towns with contracts and benefits negotiated by the cities and towns. The state has subsidized payments to the retirement system for these municipal employees for years. But at a time when we have made tough choices — and asked for sacrifice and creativity from every sector — it is also appropriate and necessary to ask local governments to do more to care for their own in this particular area.

Finally, local communities should recognize that their financial well being depends not only on the amount of direct state aid that they receive, but also on the continuation of many critical state functions preserved in this budget. Local families who receive state welfare payments (matched by the federal government) would have to turn to local property taxpayers for help if the state failed to fund the Aid to Needy Families program. Community hospitals will shut their doors without at least minimal provider payments from the state to help them care for the needy.

Difficult times call for difficult decisions and for all of us to learn how to function — constructively and together — to meet unprecedented challenges. This budget doesn't do things the way they've always been done — it can't and it shouldn't. But it does honor our commitments to keep our state safe and healthy, to educate our young people, to provide a modern infrastructure, and to protect our most vulnerable.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Reflections on Education Legislation

By Judith Reever

When Governor John Lynch signed Senate Bill 180 into law on July 14, it marked the extraordinary completion of an almost 20-year struggle to meet the Supreme Court’s ruling that the State of New Hampshire provide an adequate education for all students.

Senate Bill 180 was the last piece required to meet the state’s obligation to the funding of education. The Court ruled that the legislature define an adequate education, cost it, fund it and put in place measures to ensure we are providing the opportunity for an adequate education.

As I watched Gov. Lynch sign this final piece of legislation, I found myself reflecting on the 21 years I spent on the Laconia School Board and the frustration I felt with the lack of state financial support for education. Even when the legislature passed the Augenblick Formula in the 1980s, the state never fully funded it. Beginning in 1986, I served 11 years on the New Hampshire School Board Associations’ board of directors. School funding was always a part of our yearly resolutions.

In 1997, I left the school board but continued to watch, with incredible interest, the struggle to move the legislature to adopt a funding formula that was fair and constitutional. In 2001, I was appointed to the State Board of Education and then served as chair. It gave me another perspective on how the state financed education.
I left the State Board in 2004, 13 years after the Claremont I decision. I had given up hope. It seemed the state was trying to find a way around the actual funding of adequacy.

In 2006, I was elected as a state representative. The most frequently asked question of me was, “Are you going to solve the education funding mess?” My answer was, “I’d like to be a part of the discussion.”

I was assigned to the Education Committee, where I became a member of the education subcommittee working to define adequacy.

The final definition, which included kindergarten, passed both the House and the Senate and step one of the process was behind us.

When I was asked to serve on the Costing Committee, step two, I was thrilled. I said to my husband, “How cool is this!” When this bill passed, we were half way there.
In the summer and fall of ’08, I served on the Funding Committee and lastly the Accountability Committee. Both of those bills passed in this session.

I am honored to have been at each of those tables and to have been part of the discussion. I would like to list all of the truly amazing legislators involved but I fear missing someone. They know education; they care deeply, work hard and research each piece of legislation that comes before us. I am awed by their dedication.

I am very proud that this work was completed on our watch and that education is at last, fully funded in this budget!

(Judith Reever represents Belknap County District 4 in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. She serves as Vice Chair of the House Education Committee.)