This author has not written his bio yet.
But we are proud to say that Charles M. Arlinghaus contributed 205 entries already.
DRED Commissioner Jeff Rose made a strong plea last week for his economic development bailiwick. His rationale, however sensible, minimizes a very real problem and is an accidental example of the problem state government faces. The state faces a real problem, one they know about even when denying it, and can’t fix it without a team pulling on each and every oar, not with selective paddling.
The brokered deal on the Medicaid Enhancement Tax and lawsuit is a partial solution to an imperfect situation that will require difficult choices but it may still be the right choice to make. The complexity of the tax and the schemes surrounding it make evaluating and understanding the tax, the choices, and the possibilities difficult but let’s give it a try.
The most annoying and disheartening time of the legislative year is upon us – the time when transparency and honest debate are sacrificed on the altar of hidden agendas in pursuit of that elusive legislative pot of gold, “a deal.” Committees of conference are legislative mini-summits where the romanticized version of a smoke filled room creates comparisons to sausage making that do a distinct dishonor the noble smoked meats.
I believe that the unique joys of another special legislative session loom on the horizon for the New Hampshire legislature. The purpose of the session will be the byzantine creature known as the Medicaid Enhancement Tax but we might just as easily call it the current budget crisis. Some legislators deny the existence of a crisis. They’re wrong.
Governor Hassan made a mistake by nominating someone engaged in an ongoing lawsuit against the state to regulate the area over which he’s still suing. The mistake is not one of policy but one of propriety. The nomination can and should be withdrawn before tomorrow’s vote of the Executive Council.
The $400 million hole in the state’s budget I described two weeks ago has caused the state to be placed on a negative fiscal watch. Some would ignore or minimize the crisis but the problem is large, structural, and will require more than a small tweak to fix.
Bobby Jindal and the ACLU are having a fight in these opinion pages. Guess whose side I’m going to take? I agree with Gov. Jindal and we both agree with the Washington Post which said “What shouldn’t get forgotten in this seemingly endless fight are the people with the most at stake: parents who simply want what’s best for their children.” The issue which unites me and the Washington Post is the lawsuit over the state’s much admired school choice scholarship program.
Proposals at the state and national level to increase the minimum wage will hurt the job market, decrease the number of jobs available, and hurt the people advocates are trying to help. Specifically, the higher wage will make it more expensive to hire entry level workers and reduce opportunities for lower skill workers trying to build job experience.
New Hampshire is complacent. As a state we seem to have accepted stagnation as a way of life and are just trying to figure out how to adapt to it. The vision of New Hampshire as an island of prosperity is receding as policymakers increasingly decide they must adopt rather than fight economic mediocrity.
A Superior Court ruling just created a $400 million hole in the state’s budget. A fake tax little understood by most policymakers and almost unknown to the public started as a scam to leverage more money from the federal government, turned into a clearly unconstitutional real tax, and has created New Hampshire’s own fiscal cliff.