Entries by Editorial Staff

State Pensions: The Unfunded Liability and What it Means

The oft cited growing unfunded liability, pegged at the end of last fiscal year at $3.7 billion, has been the driving force behind pension reform in Concord. This shortfall is not just a result of poor investment returns from the recent recession, rather it is systemic. Every year, for the past ten years, the dollar value of the unfunded liability has increased. Even in years with double digit investment returns, liabilities continued to out pace the growth of assets.

December 25, 2011 by

New Hampshire taking the keys away from top bureaucrats

By Grant Bosse December 23, 2011 As originally published in the Concord Monitor Economic downturns and budget deficits are not good things.  But like most things in life, we can always look on the bright side.  One of the fringe benefits of tough times is that public officials spend our money a little more carefully.  […]

December 20, 2011 by

Rich Ashooh assumes chairmanship of the Josiah Bartlett Center

The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, New Hampshire’s free-market think tank, today announced the election of Richard Ashooh as Chairman of its Board of Directors. Ashooh has served on the Center’s Board since 2010, and succeeds Manchester attorney Eugene Van Loan, who remains on the Board himself. Ashooh takes over an organization known for […]

July 19, 2011 /1 Comment/by

RGGI in New Hampshire: The First Two Years

In 2008, New Hampshire joined a ten-state regional compact designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through a cap-and-trade program on electric generation facilities. This report examines how that program has been implemented in New Hampshire over the past two years, how much revenue has been generated from the sale of carbon allowances, and how New Hampshire officials have spent that money.

July 15, 2011 by

Walter Peterson 1922-2011

Former Chairman of the Josiah Bartlett Center Walter Peterson was one of the great treasures of the state of New Hampshire. A former governor and university president, he was known to everyone simply as Walter and no one remembers him as anything other than a warm and wonderful man.

June 22, 2011 by

The Pension System is Broken and Can’t Be Fixed By Tinkering

Pension and retirement obligations are the biggest long term problem facing the state. New Hampshire’s four long-term pension and retiree health benefit obligations have current unfunded liabilities of more than $7 billion. Changing the state’s pension and health obligations is no longer optional.

Through the Retirement System, the state administers a pension plan for state and local employees and a retirement health benefit. Those two components have unfunded liabilities of $4.7 billion. In addition, outside of the system there is a much larger health benefit with an unfunded liability of $2.4 billion and a much smaller judicial retirement plan with rapidly eroding funding — $15 million in the hole after just five years.

March 2, 2011 by