The 2022-2023 New Hampshire State Budget: A Symphony of Depravity

Rep. Debra Altschiller (D-Stratham) argues against a provision in House Bill 2 that would treat the state’s reproductive health care facilities like criminals.

On Thursday, following the passage of budget bills HB 1 and HB2, the Majority Leader of the New Hampshire House of Representatives framed what is effectively the most extreme two-year budget in state history as a “transformational symphony of reforms.”

While elections have consequences and members of different political parties are never expected to be fully in tune with each other, this particular “symphony” made use of the budget process in ways that set a dangerous precedent, rolled back the clock when it comes to free speech and reproductive freedom, and brought division to a toxic new level.

Thanks to a legislature made up of 66% men (and more than a few would-be Aunt Lydias), the budget includes a provision requiring that any woman seeking an abortion for any reason will now need to pay up to $1,500 to get a mandatory invasive transvaginal ultrasound procedure. Additionally, women who find themselves carrying an unviable fetus longer than 24 weeks will now be forced by the action of 424 strangers (and most likely one governor) to carry the fetus to full term with no exceptions for rape or incest. This sour tune also impacts New Hampshire medical providers. Should the governor sign this budget into law, any doctor who performs an abortion after 24 weeks will face a felony charge that involves jail time.

Sen. Tom Sherman, the Senate’s only practicing physician, shows his colleagues what a transvaginal ultrasound probe looks like.

The GOP majority’s bitter symphony also delivers a blow to reproductive health facilities. Going forward, facilities like the Seacoast’s Joan Lovering Health Center will be forced to submit to a time-consuming, unnecessary, ambiguous and very poorly-worded audit process requirement in order to prove that none of the public money they receive from the state has been used to pay for abortions. Unlike any other New Hampshire business or citizen, these facilities—which also assist men and women with birth control, testing and treatment for AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, and other reproductive health services—are now in a position where the burden will be on them (and not the state) to prove that they have not committed a crime.

The sour note created by this budget also extends to students and teachers seeking to have constructive conversions about sexism, racism, and ableism in our history and our institutions. That’s because GOP legislators (who seem to watch far too much right-wing TV) inserted language into the budget lifted from House Bill 544, which was itself lifted from a since-rescinded executive order from the Trump administration banning diversity instruction in schools that mentions systemic racism. The language in the budget bans any instruction in public schools, public institutions, or state contractors that frames racism, sexism, or ableism as systemic problems in a broken system that has historically favored white, straight, narrow-minded men of means whose only disability seems to be their crippling level of self-interest and lack of empathy for others. If the New Hampshire primary loses its first-in-the-nation status, this provision will likely be the main reason.

Another group that won’t be humming along in tune with the new GOP budget are property tax-payers in many New Hampshire communities. 59 cities and towns will see a decrease in state education aid. Berlin, Derry, Manchester, and Rochester will suffer declines of more than $1 million each. But the hit to property tax-payers extends beyond these communities. Assuming that every city and town held their property tax rate steady, over 60% of cities and towns would be worse off under this budget and have to make cuts to services. Despite this, some will claim the budget actually cuts property taxes. As my friend and fellow state representative Rosemarie Rung posted this morning, this is simply not true. “It's a shell game they hope people don't figure out,” she wrote. While the budget seemingly cuts the portion of your property tax bill that says “STATE” (in local school budgets it's referred to as "SWEPT" for Statewide Education Property Tax), it turns out (surprise!) the same amount will simply be transferred to your LOCAL school property tax. On top of this, your local school property tax is likely to go higher because of cuts to state aid and the diversion of some funds that will now to go to private and religious schools.

For Medicaid recipients needing dental work, the new budget is a tone-deaf symphony of silence. An inexpensive but potentially life-changing Medicaid dental benefit was removed at the last minute. But don’t worry. To make up for the loss of voices in the chorus, a provision appropriating twice as much money to reimburse well-connected investors who should have known better and lost money in a Ponzi scheme was included in the budget.

But don’t fear! Tuning up their instruments and busy prepping for their symphony solos are New Hampshire’s pandemic scofflaws. Under the budget approved yesterday, the few businesses that were fined by the AG’s office after knowingly failing to comply with COVID restrictions at the height of the pandemic will have their fines reimbursed and their records wiped clean.

Advocates of “freedom vouchers” won’t be tuning up their instruments but they will be dancing in the aisles. Should the governor sign the budget, parents sending their kids to private and religious schools will now be eligible for up to $5,000 in tuition and expenses. The money to pay for it? It will be subtracted from state educational aid distributed to your community, meaning your public schools are likely to suffer unless your community—and taxpayers like you—make up the difference by raising property taxes.

Meanwhile, silently rejoicing in their private box seats and demanding an encore are out-of-state corporations and the lobbyists who love them. That’s because—as always seems to be the case under Gov. Sununu—they will once again be the main beneficiaries of sweeping business tax cuts. With this budget, they’ll be also be joined in their exclusive perches by deliriously happy wealthy investors, who will see the state’s Interest and Dividends Tax phased out over the next two years.

So What Now?

Musical analogies aside, the harsh reality is that New Hampshire’s first state budget after COVID could have and should have been a statement of values that lifted us up together. Instead, it is a cacophony of depravity that lifts up some at great expense to others, damages our state’s reputation, and hammers away at the basic freedoms of groups—women, teachers, students, doctors, public health professionals, racial and ethnic minorities, and property tax payers—that the majority felt entitled to marginalize.

Now all eyes turn to the same governor who saw fit to veto the entire 2019 budget and hold things up for three months over disagreements about the amount of business tax cuts. Gov. Chris Sununu has said he considers himself to be “pro-choice”. But despite this, Sununu has repeatedly said he intends to sign this flaming dumpster fire of a budget, even though it includes mandatory transvaginal probes for any woman seeking an abortion, ends reproductive freedom for New Hampshire women at 24 weeks, criminalizes a medical procedure that is now legal in New Hampshire and many other states, and treats our state’s few remaining reproductive health facilities like criminals. He has also openly defended the inclusion of a change to New Hampshire law in the budget that is likely to have a chilling effect on any conversations in our schools, public institutions, and businesses about the impact of systemic racism, sexism, and ableism.

The bottom line is that whether he realizes it or not, the cruel, misbegotten, and Orwellian “symphony of reforms” passed yesterday by a craven majority of New Hampshire lawmakers is about to become Gov. Chris Sununu’s “symphony of accountability”.

If you would like to try to stop the music, please tell the governor it’s time to find the veto pen he used over 70 times in the last session and veto the worst budget in New Hampshire state history.

You can reach him at (603) 271-2121. Please do it now.