Last election season, New Hampshirites in nine school districts went to the polls to vote on ballot measures that would place a cap on the school budget. All nine rejected the measure, all by resounding margins. Kearsarge voted 93% to reject the cap. In Epsom, the cap was raised from $25,000 per student to $100,000 per student during a deliberative session, making it functionally useless.
The New Hampshire House of Representatives, Senate and Governor Kelly Ayotte clearly did not see this overwhelming rejection by the towns of the state as a sign, and House Bill 1300 (HB 1300) passed through the New Hampshire legislature. The bill forces every district in New Hampshire to place a ballot measure that, if passed, would institute a budget cap that only increases with local inflation.
Ballot measures in and of themselves are common in New Hampshire. Almost every town puts forward at least one ballot measure every election cycle, often on local issues. The state occasionally puts forward ballot measures on constitutional issues, such as judicial retirements or eminent domain. HB 1300 is unique, instead forcing towns to adopt individual ballot measures.
Tax relief advocates would have you believe that a budget cap would at least keep ballooning property taxes low. This bill insidiously insists that it will have no effect on student experience, which is a promise that is impossible to uphold. In every school district in the state, teacher salaries and benefits are the largest expense. A district can shave away athletics, student extracurriculars and administration expenses, but eventually, teachers have to be let go.
The next largest expense in education is always special education. Regardless of claims that a tax cap will not impact student experience, special education is not a controllable expense, and one that changes yearly. Any district that wants to cap its budget has to consider the fact that special education costs can drastically increase year over year. The bill provides no safeguard for a massive increase in special education costs because of a new student coming into the district, which could necessitate cuts to other departments to meet the school’s federal mandate to provide for special education.
The most perfidious part of this attempt to convince New Hampshirites to kneecap their own schools is that New Hampshire already had the tools to start repairing the budget. In 2023, New Hampshire Republicans proudly repealed the Interest and Dividends Tax, proclaiming that it made New Hampshire the only state that is “income and sales tax free.” The New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute found that repealing the Interest and Dividends Tax overwhelmingly benefited millionaire taxpayers, with 90% of the tax dollars coming from the top 20% of earners and 50% coming from the top 1%.
Through cutting taxes like the Interest and Dividends Tax and passing bills like HB 1300, the New Hampshire legislature has played the state like a poker table. It is an impressive feat of political manipulation to cut the state-level taxes that relieve local property taxes and then turn around to make residents vote on capping their own property taxes, citing the lack of state-level taxes.
The solution to New Hampshire’s budgeting problem is not a problem solved by cutting funds, but with more state support. The state has the tools to prevent the need for ever passing a budget cap, and those tools have been allowed to rust and disintegrate in favor of the supposed New Hampshire advantage.
Frank LeBlanc can be contacted at
fleblanc@kscequinox.com
