Join us for a 2020 Election Preview virtual luncheon this Thursday

Join The Josiah Bartlett Center for a special 2020 Election Preview this Thursday from 12:30-1 with political reporters Jim Geraghty of National Review and James Pindell of The Boston Globe.

Learn where things stand in New Hampshire, New England, and the nation as we head into the final weekend before the election.

We’ll cover the top New Hampshire and New England races, explore what the situation looks like in top battleground states, see how U.S. Senate races are shaping up, and discuss the policy issues that have shaped the 2020 election.

This is a virtual event, so you can enjoy it from your home or office.

Register online here: https://bartlett2020electionpreview.eventbrite.com

 

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N.J. legislators ask to join N.H. tax lawsuit against Massachusetts

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Three days after New Hampshire sued Massachusetts to stop it from taxing the income of remote workers, a New Jersey Senate committee passed a bill requiring their state treasurer to explore joining the suit. If New Jersey joins, New Hampshire will have started a multi-state effort to stop high-tax states from reaching across their borders to tax non-resident commuters. 

Last week, Massachusetts adopted a new administrative rule allowing it to collect income taxes on New Hampshire residents who work remotely for Massachusetts companies. On Monday, New Hampshire sued in federal court, calling the practice unconstitutional. But Massachusetts isn’t the only state to do this, and other states have taken notice of New Hampshire’s suit. 

For decades, New York State has applied its income tax to people who work remotely for New York companies. Hundreds of thousands of New Jersey and Connecticut residents have to pay New York income taxes even if they don’t physically commute into the state.

New Jersey state Sen. Declan O’Scanlon told the Josiah Bartlett Center that the New Hampshire lawsuit could bring justice for New Jersey residents too. 

“The lawsuit between New Hampshire and Massachusetts may very well pave the way to helping make the case,” he said.

O’Scanlon is co-sponsor of a bill that would require New Jersey’s treasurer to study the commuter tax issue and make a report to the state legislature. On Thursday, the N.J. Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee unanimously amended the bill to instruct the treasurer to explore joining New Hampshire’s lawsuit.

The bill then unanimously passed the committee. Its next step would be a vote before the full Senate, O’Scanlon said.

He and the bill’s prime sponsor, Sen. Steven Oroho, had been interested in pursuing a fight against New York for a while, O’Scanlon said.

“I had a couple of people send me stories about the New Hampshire lawsuit, knowing I have an interest in this,” he said. 

“There is no logical explanation of why we wouldn’t pursue our residents paying New Jersey taxes rather than New York taxes.”

A spokesman for the New Jersey treasurer was unavailable for comment, but O’Scanlon said the effort has bipartisan support and the governor’s office has taken notice. 

“I am hearing from within the Murphy administration that there is interest in this,” he said. 

When the bill gets to the full Senate, O’Scanlon said he doesn’t foresee any serious opposition.

“It should be like a hot knife through butter,” he said. “It will help our taxpayers and enhance our revenue. Not often do you have an issue that lines up like that. “

New Jersey allows residents to take a tax credit for income taxes paid to New York. So New York’s taxation of commuters costs New Jersey lots of money. Senators on the Budget and Appropriations Committee speculated that the cost could be in the billions of dollars. 

Edward Zelinsky, who teaches tax law at Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City, told the Josiah Bartlett Center that New Jersey and New Hampshire are in the same position. 

“I believe it’s identical. From a constitutional perspective and a tax policy perspective, the issues are the same,” he said. 

“If the employer is in New York or in Massachusetts and you are at home in Connecticut or in New Hampshire, their position is that you owe income taxes. 

“Now, in fact, New York has gone very aggressively. New York is not just sending tax bills to people in Connecticut. New York has sent tax bills to people in Tennessee, in Arizona. Their position is that they can overstep the boundaries and send tax bills to anyone they want. In Massachusetts, they are technically saying the same thing.”

Zelinsky, who lives in Connecticut and works some days in New York City, sued New York over this issue in 1994 and lost in the New York state courts. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the case.  But he said that legal scholars have come to see his — and New Hampshire’s — position favorably.

“I lost in court; I won in the arena of academic opinion,” he said.

In its lawsuit, New Hampshire states that “Massachusetts has unilaterally imposed an income tax within New Hampshire that New Hampshire, in its sovereign discretion, has deliberately chosen not to impose.”

The suit states that its purpose is “to rectify Massachusetts’ unconstitutional, extraterritorial conduct.”

Zelinsky said the constitution favors New Hampshire, but the big question is whether the Supreme Court will hear the case. That will be up to the discretion of the justices. But he will be among the many commuters and remote workers pulling for the Granite State.

“I’m saying very openly that I’m cheering New Hampshire on.”

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The minimum wage, again?

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Like a good horror movie villain that just won’t die, the minimum wage has risen again. It reemerged in the presidential debate on October 21, and the same legislator who introduced the $15 minimum wage bill vetoed this year by Gov. Chris Sununu has filed another minimum wage bill for next year. 

In the presidential debate, the moderator surprisingly acknowledged the cost of higher minimum wages in her question to former Vice President Joe Biden.

“We are talking a lot about struggling small businesses and business owners these days. Do you think this is the right time to ask them to raise the minimum wage or support a federal $15 minimum wage?”

That was a good framing of the question. Biden gave a confusing answer. 

“I do,” Biden said. “Because I think that one of the things we’re going to have to do is we’re going to have to bail them out too. We should be bailing them out now, those small businesses. You’ve got one in six of them going under. They’re not going to be able to make it back.”

It’s unclear how “bailing out” businesses relates to the minimum wage, unless Biden meant that the federal government is already spending money to keep businesses alive so it might as well spend more to keep alive those that would be harmed by a federal $15 minimum wage law.

Biden went on to say, in response to an assertion from President Trump, “there is no evidence that when you raise the minimum wage business go out of business. That is simply not true.”

Ah, but it is true. 

A 2017 Harvard Business School study found that higher minimum wages result in restaurant closures.   

A 2018 U.S. Census Bureau study of manufacturers over 23 years found that “when wage rates increase, establishments are more likely to exit the market.” It also found that increases in the minimum wage led to reduction in hours worked and increases in automation. 

A 2019 National Bureau of Economic Research study found that “increases in the federal minimum wage worsen the financial health of small businesses in the affected states.… Increases in the minimum wage also lead to lower bank credit, higher loan defaults, lower employment, a lower entry and a higher exit rate for small businesses.”

The theory behind the minimum wage is that greedy capitalists sitting on piles of cash are exploiting workers and therefore must be forced to share their wealth. In reality, businesses fight to survive in highly competitive markets, and artificial wage floors often hurt both the businesses and the people they were intended to help. 

A 2019 UC-Irvine study found that minimum wage increases caused slower employment growth in California’s restaurant industry, with significantly larger effects in low-income neighborhoods.

The Congressional Budget Office just last year concluded that “the net effect of a minimum-wage increase is to reduce average family income” because “workers lose their jobs and business owners must absorb at least some of the higher costs of labor.”

It further concluded that higher minimum wages increase unemployment. “By increasing the cost of employing low-wage workers, a higher minimum wage generally leads employers to reduce the size of their workforce.”

The question to Biden from ABC News debate moderator Kristen Welker got the issue right. Minimum wage increases do strain small businesses, and that strain would be even more acute as businesses struggle with revenue losses caused by the pandemic and government restrictions on economic activity. 

The service industry has taken a financial beating during the pandemic. It’s a major reason for what Biden and others have called the K-shaped recovery. As the economy has picked back up, employment has lagged in sectors that employ a lot of lower-wage workers, such as restaurants. Among the hardest-hit businesses during the pandemic have been restaurants and movie theaters, both of which pay many employees at or near the minimum wage. 

If politicians want to guarantee larger-scale restaurant and theater closures, and permanent job losses for many in the service sector who have endured temporary unemployment during 2020, a $15 minimum wage would do the trick. 

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We have a podcast!

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On Oct 19, the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy in partnership with New Hampshire Journal launched a new podcast focused on New Hampshire politics and policy.

The podcast provides daily insights and analysis on topics directly related to the 2020 election so Granite Staters can have a better understanding of the issues facing the state this fall. Each episode features a free-market perspective on the top issues plus a guest to provide additional insight and context.

The podcast is available online here and on Spotify here. We’ll be up on more apps very soon, so check back here later in the week to see an updated list.

And if you don’t already subscribe to the Bartlett Center’s weekly email newsletter, The Broadside, do that here right now.

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N.H. is running out of places for our families, friends & coworkers to live

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The No. 1 reason people move to or stay in New Hampshire is not jobs or low taxes or the environment. It’s family, according to University of New Hampshire Granite State Poll results summarized in the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority’s October Housing Market Report. 

New Hampshire’s strong economy gives our extended family members plenty of options for employment should they decide to stay or return home. Maintaining a vibrant economy is a way of keeping our families connected and close. But the other essential part of this equation is missing — where are they going to live? 

The coronavirus pandemic has made New Hampshire’s acute housing shortage even worse, data from the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority (NHFA) show. 

Multiple news organizations have documented the run on houses in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine as people flee cities for the safety of rural and suburban spaces with low infection rates. That surge in purchasers has spiked New Hampshire’s already high demand, driving prices to record levels. 

New Hampshire’s median home price reached a new peak of $335,000 in August, a 14% increase since last August, NHFA tracking shows. Sales are down 6% since January. Those numbers “reflect extremely low inventory levels, not a lack of demand,” the NHFA concludes.

“September 2020 listings in total have dropped 27% when compared to September 2019. As prices continue to rise, listings under $300,000 become scarcer; the number of homes below this price have decreased 37% from last year,” the authority’s October report details.

In September, there was less than a month’s supply of homes priced under $300,000 in the entire state. 

To put it another way, your child who wants to move home from Boston or Raleigh or Silicon Valley might have to keep that big-city salary just to afford a house in New Hampshire. 

The housing shortage is tighter this fall even though building permits for single-family homes rose by 24% from January through August. New Hampshire’s housing stock is so low that it will be years before we come close to building enough homes to satisfy demand. 

For rentals, the picture is even worse. Building permits for multi-family homes fell by 61% from January through August. As demand has surged, communities have clamped down on new apartment construction (or builders have given up even applying). 

For example, Bedford’s planning board in September rejected a proposal to build 200 market-rate luxury apartments in the town’s commercial zone on South River Road. Though the apartments would have brought more tax revenue and less traffic than a commercial development previously approved for the same lot, and would have made the town a profit after school and public safety costs were deducted, the board rejected it. Board members didn’t want more apartments, even though the data showed that apartments would have left the town financially better off than commercial development.  

Because local regulators continue to artificially restrict the supply of rental housing, rents keep rising. The median monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in New Hampshire rose 4.9% in the past year, to $1,413, NHFA data show. The state’s rental vacancy rate has risen a bit but remains below 2%. 

All of this means that if your children and parents want to move back to town, they will struggle to find a home. 

The NHFA’s report shows that almost three-fourths (73%) of New Hampshire home buyers are Granite Staters moving to another home within the state. High prices inflated by a severe shortage of new construction do not primarily hurt out-of-staters who want to move here for jobs. They primarily hurt Granite Staters. 

They also hurt New Hampshire employers. Fidelity and Sig Sauer this week announced expansions that would create more than 700 new jobs in the state. The shortage of housing in Southern New Hampshire will make it harder for those companies to fill those positions.  

New Hampshire’s families, workers and employers are in desperate need of new home construction, both owner-occupied and rentals. The situation has been worsening for years. At what point do all three go to their local boards and demand that they get out of the way and let builders build?

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Massachusetts banned the sale of flavored tobacco in June. What happened next was… totally predictable

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Massachusetts’ June 1 ban on the sale of flavored cigarettes is driving higher sales, and higher tax revenue, in New Hampshire, state and retailer data show. 

In Massachusetts, cigarette tax stamp sales fell vs. the same month in 2019 by 17.2% in June, 23.7% in July and 29.9% in August, the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association (NECSEMA) announced this week. 

In New Hampshire, cigarette tax stamp sales rose vs. the same month in 2019 by 55.8% in June, 27.3% in July and 17.2% in August, the association reported.

That’s a tax revenue gain of $16.48 million for New Hampshire and a loss of $31.88 million for Massachusetts. 

Those figures are for cigarette sales only and do not include other tobacco products or electronic cigarettes. 

Looking at all tobacco tax revenue, New Hampshire has seen large gains since the flavored cigarette ban took effect. 

Tobacco tax revenue in May was identical to the year before. Then in June it shot up by 43.3% over the prior year. Compared to the same month the year before, tobacco tax revenue was up by 12.1% in July,18.6% in August and a tremendous 56.8% in September. 

From June through September, New Hampshire tobacco tax revenue was up by $22.2 million over the same four months in 2019. The state’s new tax on electronic cigarettes does not account for this increase. The state collected a little more than $300,000 a month in e-cigarette taxes from June through September. 

State Department of Revenue Administration staff attribute significant tobacco tax spikes in March and April (24.8% and 30.6%, respectively) to smokers stocking up for the coronavirus lockdowns this spring. They believe the surge starting in June is driven by the Massachusetts ban.

“We think it has to be related to the menthol ban in Massachusetts, although we don’t have the data to affirmatively prove that,” Carollynn Lear, assistant commissioner of revenue, said.

The state Department of Revenue Administration doesn’t break down cigarette tax stamp revenue by type of cigarette. But convenience stores do, and their data tell the story. 

Among NECSEMA members, total cigarette sales in Massachusetts were down 24% in August but up 65% in New Hampshire and 17% in Rhode Island, the association reported this week. But flavored cigarette sales were up 91% in New Hampshire and 40% in Rhode Island in August. Flavored smokeless tobacco sales were up 175% in New Hampshire and 54% in Rhode Island in August, NECSEMA reported.

Predictably, the ban increased both cross-border sales and in-state crime. Convenience store owners in Boston said this week that street sales of now-illegal flavored cigarettes have become a nuisance.

Free-market organizations were not the only ones to predict that this would happen. Massachusetts officials predicted it too. 

The Massachusetts Multi-Agency Illegal Tobacco Task Force noted in its 2020 annual report, published in February, that it was considering the need for increased enforcement this year because “the Task Force expects there will be an increase in smuggling activity and black market sales” after the flavored tobacco ban begins. 

Exactly as expected, Massachusetts’ ban has ended the legal sale, but not the consumption, of flavored tobacco products in the state. As tobacco retailers and the state’s own Illegal Tobacco Task Force predicted, the ban has sent legal sales over the border and increased the criminal, black-market sale of flavored tobacco products in Massachusetts. 

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How would N.H. handle a presidential vacancy before the election?

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President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he had tested positive for COVID-19, raising several constitutional questions regarding the presidential election that is just weeks away. The Broadside, our weekly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here, spoke with N.H. Secretary of State Bill Gardner Friday morning to learn how various scenarios might play out under New Hampshire law.

First, if a president is temporarily incapacitated, the 25th Amendment sets out procedures for transferring power to an acting president, as explained here.

But what would happen electorally if the president of the United Staters should die or resign before the election on Nov. 3? (A president anticipating a grave illness or imminent death could resign before an election, immediately elevating the vice president to the presidency.)

In such a scenario, would ballots have to be changed? Would votes for Trump count? Would votes for Vice President Pence count? Gardner walked us through the various scenarios. 

“Some states, if the candidate dies the candidate remains on the ballot,” Gardner told The Broadside. “In this state, if the candidate dies after the Tuesday before the election, so it’s less than a week, then you don’t do anything. If it’s before that, the law has provisions for pasters over the name.”

Under state law, new ballots can be issued up to one week before the election. If a candidate for president were to die or withdraw from the race before the Tuesday before the election (in this case, Tuesday, Oct. 27, new ballots could be printed and rushed to polling places. State law (RSA 656:3) requires ballots to be sent “at least 6 days before” an election. 

Obviously, already issued absentee ballots could not be changed.

In the event that a nominated candidate withdraws, is incapacitated or dies before the election, RSA 655:38 and 655:39 establish that the candidate’s political party would choose a replacement. At the federal level, too, parties replace presidential nominees. 

The process of replacing a candidate on a ballot is governed by RSA 656:21, “Pasters; Substitute Candidates.” That law states:

“In the event that a candidate dies or is disqualified as provided in RSA 655:38 or 655:39, the name of the substitute candidate shall be printed on the state general election ballot. If the state general election ballots have already been prepared and time will permit, the secretary of state may authorize adhesive slips or pasters with the name of the substitute candidate thereon to be printed and sent to the town or city clerks representing the territory wherein the deceased or disqualified candidate was to be voted for. Such paster shall be affixed to the ballots as provided in RSA 658:34. The name of the substitute candidate shall be received by the secretary of state no later than the Tuesday prior to the election in order for a substitute name to be placed on the ballot.”

So what happens if a presidential candidate withdraws, is incapacitated or dies within a week of the election and there’s no time to put the replacement’s name on the ballot? The ballots won’t be changed, Gardner said.

But that’s OK for presidential elections since people don’t actually vote for presidents. 

Contrary to popular belief, your vote for a particular presidential candidate is not really a vote for that candidate. It’s a vote for a slate of presidential electors. (Constitutionally, there’s no such thing as “the popular vote” for president.)

As the Library of Congress explains: “When citizens cast their ballots for president in the popular vote, they elect a slate of electors. Electors then cast the votes that decide who becomes president of the United States.”

Constitutionally, a vote for President Trump is a vote for the Republican slate of electors. If President Trump were to resign or die before the election, citizens could still express their preference for the Republican nominee by checking Trump’s name on the ballot. 

Should President Trump win New Hampshire after dying or resigning, the state’s Republican electors would be free to cast their Electoral College votes for Mike Pence (who would already be president). Technically, New Hampshire’s electors can vote for whomever the party chooses as its replacement, or anyone else. No state law limits their vote.

“The electors actually can vote for whom they want,” Gardner said.  

That’s not necessarily the case in every state. Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have laws requiring electors to vote for their party’s nominees. Each law is worded differently, so it’s not clear if all of those electors could vote for the vice president-elect as president. 

In the case of a president dying or failing to qualify for the office after the Electoral College vote, the 20th Amendment states that the vice president-elect shall become acting president. But if the president-elect dies between the election and the Electoral College vote, it’s less clear how the transition would work, given that so many electors’ votes are bound by state laws. 

As usual, the process is simpler and easier to understand in New Hampshire. Electors are free to vote for whomever they want. So in the case of a candidate becoming ineligible during or immediately after the election, there’s no constitutional issue here. 

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N.H. COVID deaths fall by 96% through September, hitting lowest level since March

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New Hampshire recorded only seven COVID-19 deaths in September, a 96% decline from May’s total of 176, and a 59% from August, state data show.

It was the third month in a row that deaths have fallen by more than 50%.

For the first time since March, when the state recorded three COVID-19 fatalities, deaths for the month stayed in the single digits. All deaths in September were of people over age 60.

New hospitalizations were almost flat, going from 21 in August to 24 in September. That is a 19% increase from month to month but represents an 81% decline since June’s peak of 121. 

Positive test results rose from 692 in August to 991 in September, a 43% increase that is largely an artifact of increased testing. Without expanded testing, almost all of those infections likely would have gone undetected.

Excluding tests done at the University of New Hampshire, the state tested an average of 3,8242 people per day in September, a 27% increase from August. 

But when UNH tests are included for the last week of September, the daily average jumps to 7,750, a roughly 156% increase from August.

Getting a precise daily average is challenging because the state only began including UNH’s numbers in its daily totals on Sept. 23. UNH reports that it has given 128,230 tests since July 29. Most of those came since late August when students returned to school, but the daily results are not listed with the state’s daily results to allow for precise calculation.

To illustrate the scale of UNH’s testing, the state recorded 90,208 tests in August and 115,280 in September, according to its published data. UNH’s 128,230 tests cover just three campuses, Durham, Manchester and UNH Law in Concord.

The bottom line is that through September the state has continued to have a very small number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and a pronounced drop in deaths despite the reopening of schools, colleges and businesses. The increase in positive test results has picked up some small clusters of cases, most notably at UNH, but has been driven largely by the substantial increase in testing.

Below is the state’s own chart tracking tests and positives, showing the rise in tests and the drop in the percent positive rate.

 

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Mask mandates and the urge to control

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Portsmouth’s City Council approved a mask mandate on a 7-2 vote last week. The city had fewer than five known active coronavirus infections the day the ordinance passed, meaning more councilors voted for the ordinance than there were active cases in the city, NH Journal pointed out. The city still has fewer than five known active cases.

Manchester aldermen are considering a mandate that would carry an absurd $1,000 fine. City Health Department Director Anna Thomas told aldermen the point of the ordinance would be to educate the public about the importance of wearing masks. 

No, the purpose of a public relations campaign is to educate. The purpose of a mandate is to force compliance. The purpose of a fine is to punish.

Manchester Community College charges only $215 per credit. For $1,000, you could take a course in the Health Sciences curriculum, say, Probability & Statistics, learn more about the value of mask wearing, and still have $140 left over. 

Manchester’s COVID-19 dashboard, as of Friday, Sept. 25, shows only 39 known active infections recorded in the city of 110,000 people. Most of those infections are in people who live outside the city. Manchester has only six active in-patient hospitalizations. Not one of them is a city resident, according to the city’s own data.  

This is hardly the basis for an ordinance compelling mask wearing on penalty of a $1,000 fine. 

Last month, Hanover, Lebanon and Enfield passed mask mandates, as did Durham, despite having few recorded infections. Nashua, the first N.H. municipality to pass a mandate, last week updated it to require that businesses refuse to serve customers who aren’t wearing masks.

The new language forces employees to confront customers, even if no one else is in the business, and even if the employee is a teenager who might not have the training or confidence to engage in such a confrontation. 

After months of declining infections, hospitalizations and deaths, the urge to impose mandates on the population is growing rather than shrinking. Municipalities are pushing forward with new or expanded mandates even when presented with evidence that the large majority of people already wear masks. 

Nationally, 85% of Americans say they regularly wear masks when in stores or other businesses. A casual walk in downtown Manchester or a trip to any area supermarket is evidence that most people already wear masks when outside the house. 

The new municipal mandates typically require that masks be worn within six feet of someone else. Yet the World Health Organization recommends maintaining one meter (three feet) of distance. The British Medical Journal has suggested basing distancing on level of risk, with outdoor, less congested places needing smaller distance requirements. But municipalities are acting as if six feet of separation is an unbreakable law of science that is universally applicable to all situations. It isn’t.  

Mandates are blunt instruments. They don’t allow for nuance or for in-the-moment decision-making. And they explicitly preclude people from using their own judgment in any circumstances. 

With a mandate, individuals, not trusted to make a good decision at any time, have their judgment entirely replaced by the judgment of elected officials. 

And so we have Granite Staters being subject to fines for not maintaining twice the WHO’s recommended distance, even when outside in non-congested spaces where the risk of spread is low.

The state confirmed on Thursday that only one case of COVID-19 has been linked to Bike Week, and not a single case has been linked to any other large, outdoor gathering, including two Trump rallies and a NASCAR race. Multiple Black Lives Matter protests did not cause an infection surge in New Hampshire. But the public is supposed to believe that two individuals passing on a sidewalk within five feet, 11 inches of each other is a public health emergency? 

The Josiah Bartlett Center has, from the start, recommended voluntary mask wearing based on the strong evidence that it reduces the spread of the coronavirus. We also recommended a state public relations campaign to encourage mask wearing.

Mandates, however, are not the same as education. Education informs, but does not compel. A mandate compels. It is an extraordinary measure to be reserved for the most extraordinary emergencies. Subjecting American citizens to fines as a means of “educating” them is an abuse of government power. 

The coercive power of government is not a tool with which to fine tune people’s sensibilities. It is a last resort to be deployed when all other options are exhausted and the consequences of inaction are most dire.

Too many elected officials consider their temporary access to the levers of power an entitlement that permits them to replace others’ judgment with their own, whenever they feel like it. 

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Reopening is putting N.H. back to work

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In May, some politicians and activists warned that reopening the state’s economy would be a public health disaster. Instead, it’s been an economic savior. 

New Hampshire employment fell by more than 151,000 from March to April as the economic shutdown tanked the economy, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of this week, the state has recovered approximately 61% of those lost jobs (more than 93,000). 

An estimated 689,750 Granite Staters were employed in August, the state Department of Employment Security reported this week. That’s an additional 14,270 people from the month before.   

The state’s unemployment rate fell to 6.5%, down from 8% in July. It remains below the national rate of 8.4%.

As this economic restoration has taken place, the state’s coronavirus infections have plummeted. The state recorded 692 new coronavirus infections in August, down from its monthly high of 2,505 in May.

New hospitalizations fell from a peak of 213 in April to 21 in August. Deaths fell from a peak of 176 in May to 17 in August.

As the Josiah Bartlett Center pointed out in our reopening guidelines published in April, the state would do best to apply the minimum intervention necessary and to focus on behaviors. Encouraging individuals to practice safe behaviors, such as mask wearing, would slow the spread of the disease while letting the economy open back up.

The state shifted from a prescriptive lockdown in April to more of a behavior-focused guidance model in May and June. As a result, the economy has undergone a recovery while reducing the spread of the virus.

 

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