House budget proposes $382 million in new spending, $417 million in new taxes and fees

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A new briefing paper from the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy shows that the House’s 2020-2021 budget proposal spends $382.4 million more in state funds than Gov. Chris Sununu’s proposed budget and includes $417.7 million in new taxes and fees. 

The paper shows that the divergence in governing philosophies between the Republican governor and the Democratic House majority could hardly be more stark. 

Sununu’s budget would increase fiscal year 2021 general fund spending by 5.4 percent over fiscal year 2018. The House budget increases spending over the same time period by 14.8 percent.

The tax increases show an equally sharp philosophical divergence. 

Gov. Sununu’s proposed budget contains one expanded tax (extending the tobacco tax to cover electronic cigarettes) and a new fee (a charge on newly allowed sports betting). The House budget also expands the tobacco tax and includes the sports betting fee but also includes hundreds of millions of dollars in new taxes to cover the budget’s spending increases.

The House budget includes a sales tax on marijuana transactions ($4 million), business tax increases ($94.1 million), a new capital gains tax ($150 million), and a new wage tax (payroll tax) to fund a compulsory paid family and medical leave program ($168.6 million). 

Without those new taxes, the House budget does not balance. In fact, it also doesn’t balance without the surplus built up over the last two years.

Both Gov. Sununu and the House spend the current state budget surplus. But the governor treats the surplus as one-time revenue attributable primarily to the immediate stimulatory effects of the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. He therefore dedicates the money to one-time appropriations rather than recurring spending. 

By contrast, the House treats the money as ongoing revenue and uses it to increase baseline state appropriations. Spending it this way requires future tax increases to sustain the higher level of spending, something the governor sought to avoid. 

The House budget would turn state taxation and spending sharply upward and put it on a rising trajectory into the foreseeable future.  

(A previous post in this space failed to account for a relocation of lottery revenues in the governor’s budget. That failure inaccurately put the House spending figure $584 million above the governor’s.)

A copy of the full report in pdf form is here: Budget Visions 2020-21-4.

 

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DCYF funding and state business tax cuts

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Executive summary: Funding for the state’s Division of Children, Youth and Families has become a contested political issue in this year’s state elections. Framing the debate, former state Sen. Molly Kelly, the Democratic nominee for governor, asserts that the 2018-19 state budget signed by Gov. Chris Sununu prioritized tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations over child protection, thereby draining state revenue and leaving the division with less funding. This briefing paper takes a look at those claims. 

We find that the 2018-19 state budget signed by Gov. Sununu provided DCYF with its largest general fund spending increase in at least a decade. We find as well that the business tax cuts included in the budget were not targeted to the wealthiest corporations and did not cause DCYF funding reductions.  

DCYF Funding

NOTE: Until the 2014-15 state budget, the Division of Children, Youth and Families was a separate division of the Department of Health and Human Services, listed as a single category in the state budget. Starting in that biennium, DCYF was no longer listed in the state budget as a division. Its funding was divided into DCYF’s two primary component parts, “Child Protection” and “Child Development.” To make sure we were comparing apples to apples over the past decade, we asked the Legislative Budget Assistant to verify what budget categories constituted DCYF funding during that time period. The spreadsheet accompanying this brief (attached at the bottom of this post) is the LBA’s breakdown of DCYF’s core Child Protection and Child Development funding over the past decade, with the Sununu Youth Services Center budget shown separately. 

As with other state agencies, state general fund appropriations for the Division of Children, Youth and Families have fluctuated with the state’s financial fortunes. In the last decade, both political parties have cut state general fund spending on DCYF in leaner times and increased it when more money was available.

For example, the 2010-2011 budget was signed by Democratic Gov. John Lynch and written by a Democratic legislature, with Democratic Sen. and future Gov. Maggie Hassan taking the lead in the Senate. It cut state funding for Child Protection by 12 percent from 2009-2010 and for Child Development by less than a percentage point. 

The Republican-led Legislature cut state DCYF funding further as part of its broad spending reductions in the 2012-13 budget, which Gov. Lynch let pass without his signature. In the 2014-15 and 2016-17 budgets, DCYF state funding inched slightly higher. 

Then in the 2018-19 budget, Gov. Sununu and the Republican Legislature substantially increased state funding for DCYF. State general fund spending on Child Protection rose from $39,855,790 in 2017 to $45,857,006 in 2018, then to $47,688,777 in 2019. State General Fund spending on Child Development rose from $10,886,714 in 2017 to $11,391,914 in 2018 to $11,849,106 million in 2019. 

In total, state General Fund spending on DCYF was increased in the 2018-19 budget by $8,795,379, or 17.3 percent. 

No other budget in the last decade comes close to increasing DCYF funding by as large a percentage as the budget Gov. Sununu signed in 2017. Far from neglecting or underfunding DCYF, the 2018-19 budget treated it like a favored child. 

Business Tax Cuts

Legislators in 2015 passed business tax cuts to take effect on Jan. 1, 2016. They dropped the business profits tax rate from 8.5 percent to 8.2 percent and the business enterprise tax rate from 0.75 percent to 0.72 percent. A provision in the budget provided that the rates would fall again for fiscal year 2018 if general and education fund revenues hit at least $4.64 billion by the end of fiscal year 2017. Revenues hit $4.865 billion, easily exceeding the target, and on Jan. 1, 2018 the business profits tax fell to 7.9 percent and the business enterprise tax to 0.675 percent. 

The 2018-19 budget signed by Gov. Sununu introduced another round of business tax rate reductions. The business profits tax is scheduled to drop to 7.7 percent on Jan. 1, 2019 and 7.5 percent on Jan. 1, 2021. The business enterprise tax is scheduled to drop to 0.6 percent on Jan. 1, 2019 and 0.5 percent on Jan. 1, 2021.

Opponents of these business tax cuts have for more than a year floated a talking point which asserts that the 2018-19 budget contained $100 million in tax breaks reserved exclusively for the state’s wealthiest businesses. In some cases opponents have asserted that the tax cuts were for the richest 3 percent of businesses. 

Former Sen. Kelly has combined this attack with her claim that the budget shortchanged DCYF. For example, in an Aug. 30 opinion column for the New Hampshire Union Leader, she wrote:

“Sununu became governor knowing that DCYF and the state’s obligation for the safety of our children was in jeopardy. He has not done enough to fix it. Instead, his priority in his 2017 budget was giving away $100 million in tax breaks to the wealthiest corporations, when he should have ensured DCYF had every resource needed to protect our children.”

As detailed above, the budget Gov. Sununu signed in 2017 increased DCYF funding dramatically. Did it give away $100 million to the wealthiest corporations?

Neither the governor’s proposed budget nor the final state budget projected business tax revenue reductions. On the contrary, both counted on a growing economy to increase business tax revenue, which is exactly what has happened so far.

The governor’s proposed budget counted on business tax revenue growing by $31.7 million over the biennium (it also increased DCYF funding by $7.6 million). Rather than cut DCYF funding to account for lost business tax revenue, it proposed using increased business tax revenue to increase DCYF funding. The final state budget did the same thing.

The Committee of Conference that agreed on the final state budget projected business tax revenue of $662 million in 2018 and $672 million in 2019.  Available data suggest that these were conservative projections. Business tax revenues for fiscal year 2018 were $776.6 million, according to unaudited state figures. That’s 17.3 percent above plan and 22.4 percent above the prior year. 

How can one claim that the budget lost $100 million because of business tax cuts when it increased business tax revenue by $114 million — more than the supposed revenue loss — in only its first year?   

The $100 million figure likely comes from revenue projections presented by the Legislative Budget Assistant’s Office during the budget negotiations.  

The Legislative Budget Assistant provided an estimate of the cumulative value of the 2018-19 budget’s business tax cuts, which projected a revenue loss of $96 million through 2021 with another $86 million in 2022. It further estimated a $9.7 million annual loss from the budget’s expansion of allowable business profits tax deductions from $100.000 to $500,000. 

There are multiple problems with using those projections as the basis for claiming that the budget took money from DCYF to give to rich corporations. 

First, those estimates apply to tax law changes that take effect in 2019. If those rate reductions do materialize, they would have no effect on DCYF funding for the 2018-19 budget, which is already set.

Moreover, this theoretical future revenue loss is inconsistent with the results of the preceding business tax rate reductions. 

Business tax revenue exceeded projections by $132.8 million (23.4 percent) in fiscal year 2016 and by $72.7 million (12.9 percent) in fiscal year 2017, as recorded in the state’s official Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports for 2016 and 2017. Unaudited figures for fiscal year 2018 show business tax revenues coming in $114 million (17.3 percent) above state budget projections and 142.3 million (22.4 percent) above fiscal year 2017.

Since fiscal year 2016, when the business tax rate reductions took effect, revenues from state business taxes have risen, exceeding state projections by $319.5 million.  

The state has three years of data to show that business tax rate cuts did not starve the state of funding, but instead likely contributed to the increased economic activity that fueled an unexpected $319.5 million business tax windfall.

The revenue loss projections were made using static scoring, which does not take economic growth or changed business behavior into account. They represent a simple mathematical calculation of state tax receipts assuming that lower tax rates have no effect on anyone’s behavior. The state’s experience since 2016 shows why this is a bad way to project tax revenue. 

Moreover, neither the projections nor the rate cuts themselves support the claim that the budget’s business tax cuts were targeted to the wealthiest corporations. The rate cuts are not targeted to wealthy corporations but apply to all businesses that have to file New Hampshire business taxes. 

Conclusion

There is no factual basis for the claim that DCYF funding in the 2018-19 state budget was neglected or diminished because of reduced business tax collections. Because business tax revenue has been significantly higher than projected since rate cuts began in 2016, legislators were able to increase DCYF funding by 17.3 percent in the 2018-19 budget. The first year of that budget brought in an additional $114 million in unanticipated business tax revenue, more than making up for the alleged $100 million in hypothetical future business tax losses. Those hypothetical future losses have not caused reduced DCYF funding and are inconsistent with the results of business tax rate cuts from 2016-2018. 

SYSC-DCYF Budgets

 

Download a pdf copy of this brief here: JBC DCYF Biz Tax Brief

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How Medicaid expansion immediately raids the general fund

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The bill reauthorizing Medicaid expansion passed the state Senate on Thursday when half of the 14 Republicans joined all 10 Democrats in voting to extend the Obamacare entitlement program for five years. This is why the #Headdesk Twitter hashtag was invented.

One of the Republican selling points was that the bill pays for for Medicaid expansion while protecting state taxpayers.

It doesn’t, though.

Some readers (the old, boring ones, you know who you are) might remember the ongoing fight to fund the state Alcohol Abuse Prevention and Treatment Fund (Alcohol Fund) established in 2000. State law long required that 5 percent of the state Liquor Commission’s gross profits go into the Alcohol Fund. Only once — in 2003 — have the people’s elected officials followed that law. Typically they write a suspension of the law into the state budget.

New Futures created this handy chart to show the difference between the law’s required deposits and what was actually put into the account.

The Senate’s Medicaid expansion bill follows this grand 18-year bipartisan tradition and raids the Alcohol Fund.

The raid starts by first requiring that the Alcohol Fund at last be fully funded at 5 percent of gross Liquor Commission profits. (No sense in raiding an empty fund, right?)

This Liquor Commission money is then transferred to a new account created to pay for Medicaid expansion. It’s called the New Hampshire Granite Advantage Health Care Trust Fund. (One dedicated fund is being raided to finance another dedicated fund.)

The bill assures us that this transfer will happen only “provided” the programs financed through the Alcohol Fund “shall be paid for with federal or other funds available from within the department of health and human services.”

To provide a portion of those “other funds,” the bill lets the Alcohol Fund accept “gifts, grants, donations, or other funding from any source.” This magic money is directed to the substance abuse programs the Alcohol Fund can no longer finance because Medicaid expansion just swiped all of its Liquor Commission money.

Yeah, it’s Indiana Jones’ bag of sand trick. But with dollars.

What are the odds that those “other funds” will be made up of gifts and donations vs. state general funds?

Wait, don’t answer that question.

Sorry, Harrison.

The important point is that the Senate bill takes Liquor Commission funds and replaces them with whatever the Department of Health and Human Services has lying around. Like, say, lottery tickets, Funspot tokens or, we don’t know, maybe state general funds.

Even if the department finds bags of federal money in an old vault somewhere, the Senate bill still shrinks the general fund. Think back to what we wrote nine paragraphs and two stupid gifs ago (we know, but try).

The Senate bill first addresses the Alcohol Fund by ensuring that it finally receives its full 5 percent of Liquor Commission gross profits. For 15 years, legislators have been taking for the general fund the difference between that full 5 percent and whatever they decided to put into the Alcohol Fund.

Under the Senate bill, those general fund appropriations will no longer happen. They will go instead to fund Medicaid expansion.

Those are some pretty neat tricks to take general fund money via the Alcohol Fund. They could make for an interesting reception when the bill lands in the House.

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An Assessment of the New Hampshire Coastal Risk and Hazards Commission Report

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January 2017

By Michael Sununu

Among the many drivers of unsound public policy in this day and age, perhaps the most odious is the alarmism over changes in climate that are supposedly driven by human activity. Time and again, we have seen costly, unjustified, and economically destructive public policy implemented in the name of climate protection, proclaiming that humanity can and should micromanage the earth’s climate, the largest and most complex system mankind will ever encounter. The justification for these costly actions is based on flimsy evidence, exaggerated claims, and a profound ignorance of the natural evolution and cycles of our climate systems. National, state, and local governments have all acted to impose damaging regulatory regimes, costly mandates, and harsh anti-development initiatives in the name of climate change, and New Hampshire has not been immune to the consequences.

On November 30, 2016, the New Hampshire Coastal Risk and Hazard Commission (“NHCRHC”) released its final report (http://www.nhcrhc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016-CRHC-final-report.pdf). This report is 124 pages of alarmist hand wringing, with a litany of recommendations that would expand government and strangle development in the Seacoast area. The apparent goal of the authors is to prod state legislators, bureaucrats and local officials to institutionalize acceptance of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in state law and state regulations, based on the premise that sea level rise (SLR) threatens our Seacoast in an unprecedented fashion. The unstated result of these actions would be to cede control from local towns to the state, impose huge barriers to development and undermine the economy in the region.

Unfortunately, there is not enough critical analysis and skepticism of the basis for the fears outlined in the report. The result is a document heavy on fearful scenarios, calls to action and demands for spending.

This paper is an attempt to put much of the science in its proper context, educate the reader with real data, raise the types of questions that should have been raised by the NHCRHC, consider the nature of the actual risks involved, and question whether the recommendations are really what the state, the region, and local communities need at this time.

Download the full report: NHCRHC Assessment

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Broadband Boondoggle is Risky Proposition

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March 9 , 2016

Broadband Boondoggle is Risky Proposition

Charles M. Arlinghaus

 

Changing state law to allow towns to borrow money to run their own internet companies is not about bringing service to the remarkably small number of consumers without access to broadband. It is a mistake that would expose property taxpayers to the same financial problems that plague government-owned networks across the country.

 

Today, in New Hampshire, there is a small list of purposes for which towns are allowed to borrow money. This government-limiting statute makes clear that long term debt is to be used sparingly and for core functions like government buildings and snowplows.

 

There is no legitimate government purpose in borrowing millions of dollars to be paid by taxpayers simply to compete with existing companies. However in the very few spots that don’t have access, town government is currently authorized to build infrastructure if they choose.

 

A proposed law would change that limited purpose. It would allow municipalities to build broadband for any purpose — not limiting it to those without access. The only possible excuse for the change is to allow government officials to use your money to build their own government-run company to compete with current providers.

 

Today, 93% of the state has access to broadband even under the new higher speed definition of broadband. Further, more than 98% of the state has access to mobile broadband. The number of those without service will decline as the federal Connect America Fund spends $25 million in New Hampshire to increase access.

 

For the last decade local government officials across the country have racked up huge debts running mediocre systems with high overhead and few subscribers. Locally, we are very familiar with the taxpayer-nightmare in Burlington, Vermont. The government-knows-best plan was a disaster from the beginning and ended its run in virtual bankruptcy settling a $33 million debt to the banks for $10 million and leaving taxpayers holding an additional $17 million default bag.

 

The best-named silliness is Utah’s UTOPIA. This plan, appropriately named after a fantasy world, saddled taxpayers in 11 Utah towns with $350 million in debt. To bail out the failed network, towns wanted to assess users and non-users a $240 per year tax — they fail, you pay.

 

I doubt any local official would be quite so blind as the local officials in Vermont, Connecticut, North Carolina, Utah, Tennessee, Louisiana and dozens of other communities across the country. But opening up that possibility creates an incentive for the official to think about empire building with no risk except to the taxpayer.

 

When a private company risks its capital, the potential for success is weighed against the possibility of going bankrupt, losing everything without recourse to your and my property taxes. The largest broadband companies in America spend between $35 and $50 billion each year to improve, expand, and upgrade their infrastructure.

 

High tech networks are continually updated at a rate towns can’t hope to compete with. The capital resources and incentives of a private company with national reach are probably greater than one town in one state.

 

Remember that the proposed change would allow towns to borrow money to build competing networks. They already have the power to borrow to serve the 7% of the population that has no service.

 

The question policymakers face is simple: does it make sense to allow government to borrow money which you and I have to pay back with our property taxes simply so they can attempt to compete with a business that invests hundreds of millions of dollars in our state to build state of the art networks in a high tech industry?

 

If we truly want to increase service coverage from 93% to closer to 99%, there are simpler, low-risk things we can do instead of repeating the mistakes of so many debt-ridden communities across the country.

 

Leave in the language allowing towns to serve unserved areas. Work with providers to target the $25 million the federal government wants to send here to ensure it goes to help someone instead of being wasted like the ridiculous “fast roads” project.

 

If a municipality has a proposal that current language doesn’t quite allow then the state can look at it and easily pass enabling legislation if it makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is to allow towns carte blanche to build their own doomed-to-fail internet companies on the backs of property taxpayers.

 

 

 

 

 

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Countering the Powerful Work Disincentive in Medicaid Expansion

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March 23, 2016

Countering the Powerful Work Disincentive in Medicaid Expansion

Charles M. Arlinghaus

 

The New Hampshire state senate is prepared to ignore economic research and abandon any real effort to include a work requirement in its expansion of Medicaid to able-bodied, childless adults. A proposal that began as a supposed compromise would currently abandon the supposed centerpiece of that compromise effort.

 

New Hampshire’s regular Medicaid has 139,000 enrollees. The effort two years ago to expand Medicaid to the previously ineligible category of childless adults expanded the Medicaid rolls by more than 49,000. As 100% federal funding expires, so does the expansion expire at the end of this year. Supporters of renewing the expansion were able to attract previous opponents by promising to improve the incentives in the program, primarily a work requirement. That promise turned out to be a predictable bait and switch on the part of the sponsors.

 

Traditional Medicaid applied to categorically eligible populations who could not work — children, the elderly, the disabled. The few times before the ACA that states expanded Medicaid to the population of able-bodied childless adults, they found that having public insurance discouraged work and looking for work. In most cases, a full-time job will raise a worker’s income above the level to qualify for Medicaid so he has a strong incentive not to work full-time.

 

The most significant natural test of this theory came in Tennessee. Tennessee had expanded Medicaid to childless adults but quickly found it could not afford the costs. In 2005, 170,000 enrollees lost coverage. Academic researchers from Northwestern, Columbia, and Chicago studied the results. The National Bureau of Economic Research summary of the study said “they find an immediate increase in job search behavior and a steady rise in employment and health insurance coverage following the disenrollment.”

 

NBER’s summary concluded: “The findings suggest there is a powerful work disincentive from public health insurance eligibility.” A similar study by Dague also for NBER similarly found “enrollment into public insurance leads to sizeable and statistically meaningful reductions in employment.”

 

For New Hampshire’s purposes, these and other similar studies suggest that enrollment of childless adults will reduce job searches and employment for the population we newly cover.

 

There exists what researchers call a benefit cliff: one additional dollar of income costs the beneficiary thousands of dollars worth of benefits. They behave rationally by staying on the benefit side of that cliff, avoiding full-time employment that would put them over the edge.

 

To counter-balance that ill-effect, sponsors promised significant and meaningful work requirements of the kind that have made a big difference in welfare programs.

 

Consider that with meaningful work and job search requirements, our main welfare program called FANF has seen caseloads decline from 13,803 in 2011 in the midst of the recession to just 5,307 last month.

 

The federal government would prefer we not institute work requirements and has rejected them in other states. But in each of those other states, there was no risk to the feds in rejecting the requirement. The program was not dependent on them. They were just a stand alone wish.

 

The expansion bill as proposed earlier in the year would have made the program dependent on a work requirement. But sponsors instead imposed a “severability” clause which tells the federal regulators that they can reject our idea with no consequence.

 

Right now, our plan to “negotiate” with the federal government is to say “I know this is perhaps the last time in modern history you will want something from us but we don’t care. We will do everything you want no matter what. You don’t have to do anything we want. You don’t have to do anything we think is a good idea. But gosh it would be nice if you did.”

 

I believe the promoters of the expansion plan honestly believe that expansion will create a work disincentive. They also truly believe that a work requirement is good and important. Sadly, though, they don’t want to negotiate for it. They want to give up and not even try.

 

Making the clause “severable” is the same as neutering it. A more honest approach would be to remove it entirely and dispense with the fiction.

 

Better policy would be to admit to the “powerful work disincentive” that researchers have found and is just plain common sense. No state before us has gone to the federal government explaining that a work requirement is the only way of addressing one very serious problem with the program and that we simply can’t proceed without one.

Charles Arlinghaus is president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a free market think tank based in Concord. He can be reached at [email protected]

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Pie in the sky train estimates will bankrupt us

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November 18, 2015

As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader

The Pappas-Van Ostern Express is a good example of bad math driving debt and leaving taxpayers with an empty wallet. Last week’s news release was not a new train plan but simply the old unaffordable plan with all the estimates revised down to make it appear cheaper but grotesquely unrealistic. This sort of new math is how governments go bankrupt.

Efforts to spend $300 million on a train that would require large annual operating subsidies have stalled. In an effort to revive the plan — or perhaps just to put out a news release — Executive Councilors Colin Van Ostern and Chris Pappas put out what they described as a “draft financing option.” Their goal is to jump start discussions that have lagged.

Pappas and Van Ostern have been the leading supporters of the train since their elections in 2012. And for Van Ostern, he has it at the heart of his economic development agenda in his gubernatorial campaign.

Their news release is not a new plan but rather a wildly optimistic reworking of already unrealistic numbers in a train study from a year ago.

The train would require a huge capital investment and then an annual operating subsidy. Underestimating each of these factors leads supporters to conclude the train is suddenly more affordable.

The Manchester option would require a total capital investment of $303 million. As the initial study did, the Pappas-Van Ostern plan counts on a capital investment from Massachusetts of $63.6 million. Given the significant budget problems in Massachusetts, their aid seems less than realistic as does the hope that the federal government would count the Massachusetts contribution as part of our local commitment to be matched.

The federal matching program supporters hope to tap is described as “chronically oversubscribed and thus extremely competitive.” But then again there is no financial cost to optimism.

If all goes well and Massachusetts rides to our rescue and we win the competitive federal process, supporters would then have us use about 75 percent of the state’s bonding capacity for one year on the train project. The annual cost of bonding, if all goes well, will be about $6 million.
At this point, supporters are merely guilty of optimism. Now the problems come in.

Supporters would have to believe that — unlike any other commuter train in existence — operations will more than pay for themselves and reduce the state’s annual costs below the $6 million bonding payment.
The closest analogue to the proposed train is the Portland-Boston Downeaster. It is remarkably successful by train standards, carries 530,000 passengers per year, but requires an annual subsidy of $8.4 million. Despite that, the Pappas-Van Ostern projection is that their train would be the best performing in the entire country — better than any New York train where the population density is extraordinary, better than all the other Boston trains in any direction, and exponentially better than anything seen or projected. Rather than covering 45 percent of its costs like most trains and the Downeaster, the PVO projection is closer to 90 percent.
That sort of optimism leads to financial problems. In planning for our own train, we would be more realistic to think of the $8 million the much-touted Downeaster loses. That raises the state’s annual need to $14 million each year.
Both last year’s plan and the PVO news release assume some offsets. The plan anticipated parking revenue of $500,000 to $900,000. The PVO release raises that to $1 million on higher fees.

As a discussion starter, the PVO release suggests local property taxes — through a local development district and supplemented by a local charge when that falls short — to cover $1-$3 million. I’m sure that will be very popular in Manchester and Nashua.
Even if they’re right about parking and local property taxes, they need $10-$12 million per year or double their estimate.

The policy goal is to aid commuters. The Downeaster moved 530,000 people for $8.4 million. The express buses in the I-93 corridor moved 550,000 people for just $750,000 — and didn’t require $300 million in capital costs.
Too often government loses sight of the policy goal and the most efficient way to achieve it.

Even worse, politicians are regularly tempted to use unrealistic numbers to make choices easier. Optimistic but unrealistic budget numbers created a huge hole, required a federal bailout, and led to the largest budget crisis in history. This is how it starts.

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The State Government Disagrees With Itself On Education

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Charlie Arlinghaus

October 28, 2015

As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader

The state is refusing to defend itself and the governor is attacking herself for having bad ideas. Welcome to the world of education funding where lawsuits make everyone weird and no one seems to be able to figure out which way is up.

The City of Dover is suing the state because an education funding law in place for years limits the amount their state education aid increases. To make matters more confused, Dover’s lawsuit stipulates that they do not and will not agree that the underlying system is constitutional only that there is an unconstitutional cap on a system that they don’t have an opinion on.

With much fanfare a few legislatures ago, the state passed a new education aid formula to govern the distribution of state education aid. It was said to be “more constitutional” but from the beginning it made concessions and alterations and had caveats.

About one-third of the $3 billion in school spending comes from state revenue sources. That is distributed through a complicated formula based largely on the number of pupils in a given district in a given year. The formula creates a number but that number is then modified to make sure no town loses too much funding or gains funding rapidly and to make sure there are no net donor towns.

The law was duly passed and reauthorized multiple times. The state’s Attorney General is charged with defending the state of NH and its laws in court. If we pass a law and are sued, they are the state’s attorney. But not this time.

The law was passed by both houses of the legislature. Capping increases has been voted for by Democratic legislatures, Republican legislatures, and divided legislatures. It was signed by Governor Lynch, supported multiple times by Governor Hassan. There is no evidence that the Attorney General or legal counsels for any legislative chamber or governor’s staff protested.

Today is a different story. The Attorney General has decided that it will not defend the law as passed and reaffirmed so many times. The governor who proposed caps in her budget and didn’t support legislative plans to eliminate them has had a change of heart. She announced she agrees with the Attorney General and that she hopes the legislature will “fully fund” what the districts want.

To “fully fund” would require $14 million for Dover alone and another $25 million for the other cities and towns. Presumably the governor’s next press release will include a proposal for just where that money would come from.

Fortunately for taxpayers, the legislative legal counsels have announced they will take up the baton cast aside by the executive branch and defend the law. Senate legal counsel Rick Lehman takes the position “the legislature passed the law, it should be defended.” He and the House legal counsel, Chuck Douglas, will be defending the law. If they are successful, Governor Hassan won’t need to figure out how to find an additional $40 million to pay for her press release.

The lawsuit underscores the serious issues related to education funding that have been ignored for most of the last decade. Our whole approach is and has been contradictory.

When a newly installed legislature passed a new formula in 2008 they trumpeted their constitutional nobility in contrast to the supposed compromisers and slackers of previous legislatures who made political calculations at the supposed expense of the guidelines set out by court opinions. Yet in doing so, they specifically made an exception for towns with excess property tax — the old donor towns.

The law also sought to exempt towns losing students from the law and not do too much right away for towns gaining students. In essence, the legislatures and governors made political decisions about how aid should be distributed as a practical matter — the same kind of decision lawmakers make on every subject under the sun.

The lawsuit seeks not just to abrogate a law but also to have the court appropriate money — a function expressly limited to the legislative branch. It seems like that would have been worth defending.

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A Tale of Two States: Economic Recovery in Massachusetts vs New Hampshire

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October 2015

Joshua Elliott-Traficante

Summary[i]: Despite historically leading the region out of recessions, the New Hampshire has become a laggard in comparison to Massachusetts. While Massachusetts recovered from the recession in terms of both employment and job numbers more than two years ago, only as of June 2015 has New Hampshire done the same. If New Hampshire had matched Massachusetts’s recovery speed, there would be 27,000 additional jobs in the state today. This piece looks at three work force metrics: the number of jobs in the state, the number employed residents, and the size of the labor force.

Jobs:[ii]

Proportionally, both New Hampshire and Massachusetts lost roughly the same amount of jobs in the last recession. Massachusetts hit bottom first in October 2009, with the total number of jobs in the state falling by just over 4 percent. New Hampshire reached its lowest point a few months later in January 2010 and lost just over 4.6% of its jobs. There the similarities end.

jobs1

 

After hitting bottom, Massachusetts experienced a job creation growth rate averaging 1.6% per year, over the last five and a half years, far outpacing New Hampshire’s .9% per year average. While a .7 percentage point difference in growth does not sound like much, compounded over five and half years yields the yawning gap seen in the chart above. With that higher growth rate, Massachusetts was able regain all of the jobs lost in the recession by September 2012. New Hampshire on the other hand needed an additional two and a half years to recover all of the jobs lost. The state did crest prerecession levels in both December 2014 and March 2015, only for it to fall back below in the following month. Only as of June 2015 have job numbers stated above prerecession levels for more than a single month. If New Hampshire experienced the same growth rate in job creation Massachusetts did, there would be an additional 27,000 jobs in the state today.

 

Employment:

In terms of employment, which measures the number of state residents that have jobs (regardless of where the job is located), New Hampshire made out slightly better than Massachusetts did in the recession, experiencing less severe losses on a percentage basis.

Employment1

Despite losing more proportionally, Massachusetts recovered faster, averaging growth of 1.4% per year, and returned to its pre-recession employment level in June 2013. New Hampshire however, only averaged .66% growth per year. That lower growth rate meant New Hampshire only returned to its pre-recession level of employment in February 2015, nearly two years after Massachusetts. The fact that the number of employed returned to prerecession levels before the number of jobs after Massachusetts did, indicates more people are commuting to other states for work than they did before the recession.

Labor Force:

With the mediocrity of the recovery, many analysts have used changes in the size of the labor force as a better measure of the general labor situation because the traditional unemployment rate fails to account for those who have given up looking for work. Although mild by national standards, both New Hampshire and Massachusetts saw declines in their respective labor forces as first the recession and then the mediocre recovery wore on. After hitting their lowest points in Spring 2011, both states saw minor albeit steady improvements.

jobs1

Massachusetts returned to its prerecession high in March 2012 and saw accelerating growth beginning in late 2013 that continues to the present. New Hampshire’s Labor Force largely held steady and only recovered fully in May 2015. In recent months however, New Hampshire has experienced sustained growth, though not nearly as dramatic as south of the border. Some of this slow recovery in Labor Force growth is connecting to the ageing of the state, but the recent growth spurt in the last few months shows that this is not the dominant factor.

More Commuters?

With those upticks in Labor Force and Employment growth rates, it would seem as though New Hampshire is finally experiencing real economic growth. Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case. That growth in the Labor Force over the last 11 months represents more than 7,000 additional New Hampshire residents actively searching for work, with the number Employed growing by roughly 10,500. That means both those new entrants into the Labor Force and people who are currently unemployed are finding work. However, there is only a muted corresponding increase in the Jobs numbers, which only increased by 3,600 over the same eleven months. What accounts for these ‘missing jobs?’ Even when taking into account the self-employed and agricultural workers[iii] the difference between Job creation and Employment growth means upwards of half of the newly employed are finding work in another state, likely Massachusetts.

Conclusion:

While it is tempting to judge a state’s economic health based on the unemployment rate alone, doing so can be misleading. New Hampshire has an incredibly low unemployment rate, but it only just recovered all of the jobs lost in the recession.  In contrast, Massachusetts has seen strong job growth, propelling it back to precession levels two and a half years before New Hampshire. Had New Hampshire simply replicated this growth rate, there would be more than 27,000 additional jobs in the state. Despite the recent improvements over the last nine months in both Labor Force and Employment numbers, the lack of a corresponding increase in Job numbers indicates more people are commuting out of state for work. Given Massachusetts’s growth it is likely that most of those new commuters found work there.

If Massachusetts, a state that lost a congressional seat in 2010 because its population was not growing fast enough, and that has notoriously difficult regulations and high taxes can both increase their labor force and add jobs, New Hampshire can certainly do better.

Click here to download a pdf version of this paper

 

 

[i] All data used in this piece was taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Establishment Survey (Jobs) and Household Survey (Employment and Labor Force) for New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

[ii] Jobs vs Employment: ‘Jobs’ counts the number of paid positions based on where they are located. Employment’ counts the number of people employed based on where they live. The employment figure for New Hampshire counts every state resident that has a job, regardless of where the job is located, while the jobs figure for New Hampshire counts the number of jobs based here, regardless of who fills it. For example, someone who lives in New Hampshire, but works in Massachusetts, would show up in the New Hampshire employment number, but their job would be counted in the Massachusetts job number. The Labor Force measures all of the people either employed or looking for work.

[iii] Both the self-employed and those who work on farms are not counted in the Jobs survey, but are counted in the Employment survey. It is possible that all of those ‘missing’ jobs in the last eleven months are people who started their own businesses or found agricultural work in the state. However, there is no evidence of a very quiet boom in either farming or self-employment, so this does not seem to be the case.

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The State Surplus That Isn’t

Charlie Arlinghaus

October 7, 2015

As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader

Pay no attention to the surplus behind the curtain. It’s not real. Despite advertised claims, the state did not run a $73 million surplus. It ran a barely $1 million surplus. The difference between press releases and reality comes entirely from the state’s reckless refusal to adhere to its rainy day fund law.

This week the governor announced a supposed $73.2 million surplus. Leaders in both parties took to the public square to praise their own fiscal responsibility in helping create such an enormous “surplus.” In reality however, the two-year state budget did not create a massive surplus. It just barely broke even.

These wonderful press releases were created by government starting out on third base and pretending they hit a triple. The budget did not raise $73 million more than it spent — the traditional definition of a budget surplus. Instead, budget writers started the budget with $72.2 million carried forward from the previous budget, ensuring a “surplus” by their definition as long as they didn’t deficit-spend by too much.

Under the state budget law, any money left over at the end of the budget is automatically deposited into the state’s rainy day fund — officially called the revenue stabilization account — to protect against future economic downturns. New Hampshire’s rainy day fund is considered by most regulators, financial analysts, and state officials to be woefully underfunded at $9.3 million, just two-tenths of 1% of the state’s biennial operating budget [general and education funds].

But the state budget law is a farce. Lawmakers routinely flout it. The $72 million that should have been deposited into the rainy day fund was preserved by temporarily suspending the rainy day fund law. It left it available to be easily spent without the restrictions the law would have placed on money deposited in the rainy day fund — the law has been suspended regularly for the last decade.

So the real surplus for the budget is just $1 million. That’s not necessarily bad management. Or is it?

Revenues for the biennium came in ahead of the budgeted amount by $57 million. Knowing that, you’d think we would have a $57 million surplus, not just one. That suggests the executive branch overspent its authority by $56 million. But it may be worse than that.

The governor attributed the not-really-$73 million surplus to her “working closely with state agencies to responsibly manage their budgets.” That is at it should be. The chief operating officer of the state has a responsibility to manage and to manage to budget. But some of that management appears to be problematic.

Notably, the state Department of Health and Human Services reported that they did not spend $20 million earmarked for services for the developmentally disabled even though there are more than 100 people remaining on a waiting list for services supposedly because of lack of funds.

This is perhaps the only area of state government where there is broad agreement between both parties about it being a significant priority. Surely a CEO “working closely with state agencies to responsibly manage their budgets” would have noticed a huge lapse in a universally agreed on priority and one which she herself kept advocating for increased funding throughout the budget process.

With that as a priority for her, and eliminating the waiting list a long held priority for the entire management of the HHS department, how does $20 million slip through the cracks?

The more cynical among us might argue that eagerness to have a press release with a big surplus number puts undue pressures on the process.

The state’s largest department — HHS is close to half the state budget — is always under extraordinary pressure to reduce spending without reducing services, particularly as the budget draws to a close and managers are worried about overspending in other areas. It’s clear that the pressure the one department is under would be less burdensome and perhaps lead to better outcomes if someone were working closely with other agencies to responsibly manage their budgets.

The state’s needs to modernize and improve the transparency and utility of its reporting on spending so people inside and outside state government could notice these odd lapses developing when central management misses them.

We shouldn’t rush to judgment on the inexplicable $20 million shortfall. But when spending comes in just a bare $1 million under the wire only because of a significant error in a bipartisan priority, questions ought to be asked.

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