AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. The State's Tax Amnesty
NH business tax amnesty on tap to start in December
by Bob Sanders, nhbr.com, October 1, 2015
The first New Hampshire tax amnesty in more than a decade will go into effect in two months, yet few people are aware of it.
Lost in the budget compromise over business taxes and tucked into Senate Bill – the giant trailer bill – is a 95-word provision that would forgive penalties and half the interest to business and individuals that fess up and pay up back taxes between Dec. 1, 2015, and Feb. 15, 2016.
“This is the first time we have had a general amnesty in 15 years,” said Department of Revenue Administration Commissioner John Beardmore at the Business and Industry Association’s Business Tax Forum in Manchester. “So we’ll see what it brings in.”
That 2001 amnesty brought in $14.9 million. This time, the state is hoping for $16 million. There was also an amnesty in 2005, but it was specific to real estate.
Businesses and accountants wanted to know about audits conducted during the amnesty period that turn up back taxes owed. Will businesses be able to pay those taxes without the penalty?
Beardmore said the department hasn’t figure that one out, but plans to come up with rules before the amnesty starts.
The state also hopes to raise more money from businesses by participating in a Multistate Tax Commission auditing program on complex assessment of large companies, Beardmore said. There was some concern that auditors would mistakenly apply the rules of other states to New Hampshire, but Beardmore said that the DRA will review the audits, and that it appeared the commission planned to employ a former NH DRA employee to work on Granite State companies. The auditing program won’t affect most of the small businesses in the state, Beardmore said.
Meanwhile, more tax revenue continues to roll into New Hampshire coffers than last year, according to the latest numbers previewed by Beardmore.
Estimated business tax revenue was up 13 percent in September and up nearly 8 percent during the calendar year to date.
Interest and dividends tax revenues were up 12 percent in September, 10.4 percent year to date. Real estate transfer tax revenues were up 27.4 percent year to date and rooms and meals tax revenues went up 6.6 percent year to date.
All this makes it looks like the state will reach its revenue goals, and that would trigger further cuts in business tax rates in 2018. The rates are already slated to go down in 2016.
The business profits tax rate is set to decrease from 8.5 to 8.2 percent next year and would go to 7.9 percent in 2018 if revenue goals are met. And the business enterprise tax rate, cut from 0.75 to 0.72 next year, would drop further to 0.675.
Next year, Beardmore said, people will be able to e-file their interest and dividends returns and pay with a credit card. The aim is to spread that program to business taxes in 2017, he said.
2. NH Cutting Support for Solar Energy
New Hampshire's Solar Incentive Getting a Bit Less Generous
by Sam Evans-Brown, nhpr.org, October 1, 2015
If you want to install solar panels at your home, it’s about to get a little more expensive. A reduction in the state’s renewable energy rebate goes into effect Thursday. The previous rebate was $.75 per watt, maxing out at $3,750, whereas the new one will be $.50 a watt, with a maximum of $2,500.
This is because in 2015 the number of residential installations more than doubled, but the fund that pays for the state’s solar rebate came in short this year: dropping from $17 million dollars to $4 million. The change is intended to ensure that the fund doesn’t run out of money for rebates before the end of the year.
The state's renewable energy fund gets it's revenue from alternative compliance payments (ACPs) that utilities make in lieu of purchasing renewable energy credits (RECs) under the state renewable portfolio standard (RPS). They have tended to fluctuate widely as market conditions and state rules for RECs have changed.
CREDIT NH PUC RENEWABLE ENERGY FUND ANNUAL REPORT
Solar installers were generally not excited about the change, with some arguing that it would result homeowners choosing to install fewer and smaller solar array, but others called it “painful but necessary” in comments to the Public Utilities Commission. They also point out the reduction is offset by the falling cost of solar panels.
“If you look at percentages, instead of straight dollar figures, someone moving forward with a system on Monday at the lower rebate value is going have a very similar return as someone who moved forward six months ago,” explains James Hasselbeck of Revision Energy.
This is not the first time the rebates have been reduced. When the program was first introduced in 2009 the maximum rebate was $6,000 dollars. It fell in 2010 $4,500 and again in 2012 to $3,750.
Both residential and commercial and industrial renewable energy projects accelerated dramatically in recent year, driven by falling costs for solar panels.
CREDIT NH PUC RENEWABLE ENERGY FUND ANNUAL REPORT
The change comes as an even greater hurdle for the solar industry appears to be approaching: the number of installations is bumping up against a cap on the amount of “net-metered” renewable energy facilities the state can have. This cap exists for all utilities except the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, whose board voted to eliminate it earlier this year.
Net-metering allows residential solar customers to sell their excess power to the grid at an advantageous price, so long as they produce less than they consume.
3. Priorities. NH is One of the 11
Lawmakers in 11 states are spending more on prisons and jails than their public colleges.
from CNN Money, cnn.com, October 1, 2015
The states are Michigan, Oregon, Arizona, Vermont, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Delaware, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
States have been slashing funding for higher education over the past decade, and cuts got deeper during the Great Recession. State budgets for public universities have been cut about 20% since 2008, according to the report.
Since 1986, funding for prisons has spiked 141%.
And spending on things like Medicaid and pension contributions keeps growing. Politicians find it nearly impossible to make cuts to those programs.
State funding isn't the only source of revenue for public universities, but it still accounts for about half of a typical school's budget. The other half comes from the federal government and tuition and fees.
In California, though, state funding only covers about 9% of the budget at the University of California. In 2001, it covered 23%.
Experts say the cuts in state funding are partly to blame for the rise in tuition at public schools. The sticker price at state schools has risen 28% since 2008.
Earlier this week, the Obama administration proposed shifting some of the money spent on prisons and jails to education. By locking up fewer people who get arrested for nonviolent crimes, it could save more than $15 billion a year that could be redirected to students and teachers, said Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
"It's about setting a different direction as a society, a different priority -- one that says we believe in great teaching early in our kids' lives, rather than courts, jails and prisons later," he said.
But the Department of Education doesn't have the authority to implement that kind of change. The decision ultimately falls to the states.
4. NH, Addiction, and Failing Our Young
The Newly Concerned
by Susan Bruce, susanthebruce.blogspot.com, October 1, 2015
Drug problems and overdoses are not new. It’s just that everyone turned a blind eye until middle class kids started dying of heroin overdoses. Now, everyone is talking about the heroin epidemic. Jennifer Horn, the Chair of the NH GOP spent the summer bleating on twitter about how the budget stand off was a failure to act to help addicts. The GOP hasn’t given 2 rusty farthings about addicts in my memory. Their concern is of a very recent vintage, and one that is politically motivated.
One of the best tools the state has to help addicts is the NH Health Protection Plan, aka expanded Medicaid. The NHPP is due to sunset in December of 2016. The legislature refused to extend the program this year. Republicans are opposed to helping those 40,000 working poor folks get health coverage. This same health coverage pays for addiction treatment – something the GOP claims to be concerned about.
Over the last 30 years the number of treatment facilities in NH have dwindled considerably. We’ve chosen to send people to jail rather than invest in treatment. Here in the Live Free or Die state, our jails and prisons have become what passes for mental health and substance abuse treatment. Treatment is cheaper, but as I’ve said many times, NH will always choose the pound of cure.
I’ve read a number of pieces on addiction lately, some written by well meaning people who chose to use stereotypes to describe addicts. They’re poor, they’re from broken homes, they’ve had terrible lives … and so on. And indeed, as long as we thought the only addicts dying were THOSE people, we didn’t waste a minute of time being concerned about them.
Now that it’s hitting the middle and upper levels of the socioeconomic strata, suddenly we see some interest. Middle class parents are losing children. They aren’t being silent about it any more, either. A number of obituaries have been written in the last year or so that are very candid about their child’s battle with addiction and how they struggled to help him or her.
The opiate drugs are some of the hardest to kick. Many people get to heroin through the back door of painkillers. We’ve all read that Oxycontin and Oxycodone are incredibly addictive. When I was hospitalized last year with 4 compression fractures in my mid vertebrae, 8 broken ribs, and a crushed, split femur, I was given painkillers. The first week of my hospitalization was spent in a morphine haze. I was switched from morphine to Oxycontin when it looked as if I was going to live, and I could swallow oral medications. A couple of weeks before I left the hospital, I asked to be taken off the painkillers. I discussed it with my doctor, who put me on a tapering off regimen before we stopped. Even with the tapering off, I experienced 2 days of withdrawal.
I asked to come off the drugs. If I hadn’t, I might have left the hospital with a prescription for the drugs I’d developed a level of physical dependence on. When my prescription ended, I might have turned to heroin as the replacement. My doctors weren’t nefarious over-prescribers. I was hurt very badly, and they were trying to help manage my pain.
I asked, because I knew the drugs were affecting my thought processes, and making me tired. I worried it would affect my physical therapy, and more than anything I wanted to walk again. The opiates made me itchy and nauseous. I asked because I know about addiction. I asked because I am an addict.
Substance abuse research and treatment are lagging behind in the US. Other developed countries are way ahead of us. The US still relies heavily on the 29-day stay in a rehab facility that uses the 12-Step model of recovery. Twelve step programs aren’t for everyone – nor should they be. There should be a variety of options for treatment, the way there are for any disease.
The 12-step model comes to us from Alcoholics Anonymous, a fellowship where alcoholics come together to help each other get sober and stay sober. They are not treatment professionals. AA is very loosely organized and doesn’t have any sort of records of how successful it is. AA emphasizes the anonymous part in a couple of ways. People who attend meetings are expected to refrain from naming those whom they see at meetings. Some of the 12 traditions focus on anonymity, and the need to maintain public silence about recovery.
We don’t know who most recovering addicts are, because of that anonymity. The stories we read are full of stereotypes. We only hear the success stories of the famous. We don’t know that people in recovery walk among us, every day, in all levels of our society.
We don’t know who most recovering addicts are, because of that anonymity. The stories we read are full of stereotypes. We only hear the success stories of the famous. We don’t know that people in recovery walk among us, every day, in all levels of our society.
And so we continue to stigmatize addicts, which only serves to keep people who need help from coming forward. Addiction is regarded as a moral failing (read any online comment section) instead of what it truly is – a public health problem.
We are failing our young people. The cost of a college education leaves them buried under a mountain of debt. We aren’t creating decent paying jobs any more. We create a lot of low wage service jobs. The property taxes in our state mean that home ownership is no longer part of the American dream for many. They’ve been conditioned to understand that government is the root of all evil, that our elected officials don’t believe in science but do believe strongly in obstruction, and that there is really little hope for the future. Upward mobility is a thing of the past. It can’t be a surprise that some turn to the relatively inexpensive comfort of heroin. In fact, if they were spending their escapist dollars at our state liquor stores, we might not hear so much from the newly concerned.
A good place to start is renewing the NHPP. We need all the resources we can muster to fight the pernicious evil of opiate addiction. We need more and better treatment options in our state. We need more compassion and fewer fingers waving and stereotyping. I wish I were more optimistic.
A good place to start is renewing the NHPP. We need all the resources we can muster to fight the pernicious evil of opiate addiction. We need more and better treatment options in our state. We need more compassion and fewer fingers waving and stereotyping. I wish I were more optimistic.
5. The NH Coalition for More Debates
81-person coalition debuts to push for more Democratic debates in N.H.
by Casey McDermott, concordmonitor.com, October 1, 2015
The calls for more Democratic presidential debates are continuing to amplify in New Hampshire, as a fledgling “New Hampshire Debates” coalition launched Wednesday with the goal of securing at least one additional exchange between the candidates before the state’s primary.
The 81-person group includes a mix of Democratic and politically independent Granite Staters – state legislators, activists and other community members. It also includes supporters across several of the major Democratic presidential campaigns: State Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, for example, is supporting Hillary Clinton; former executive councilor Dudley Dudley is supporting Bernie Sanders; former Democratic National Committee member and former state senator Peter Burling is supporting Martin O’Malley.
The group’s stated goal is to “work to educate members of the public and the media about the long-tradition of New Hampshire Primary voters having more than one opportunity to see all the candidates at the same time on a single stage offering competing visions for moving the country forward.”
Members of the coalition “will be meeting with media, non-profit organizations, and private and public educational and civic institutions to secure at least one additional debate before the New Hampshire Primary,” according to a press release.
Dudley, who in August co-authored an op-ed in the Monitor with Burling calling for more debates, said her involvement in this cause has nothing to do with her preferred candidate – it’s about giving Democrats at large a better platform to get their message out during the campaign.
“It just seems to make sense to me that the Republicans have had an enormous wealth of publicity based on their debates, and they’ve been lively debates and they’ve been interesting to watch – and I think we need to counter that,” Dudley said.
D’Allesandro, for his part, also thinks it’s important for several reasons.
“The public needs it, the public is crying out for it,” he said, adding that more debates would give Democratic candidates a better chance to show the American people their ideas for addressing the issues facing the country.
But he also has a feeling that more debates would end up working in Clinton’s favor.
“I think the debates would enhance her,” D’Allesandro said. “It gives her a chance to show people how qualified she is, how capable she is, how good she is on her feet.”
Jay Surdukowski, a Concord attorney who is serving as O’Malley’s campaign counsel, has been similarly calling for a more robust debate lineup since the Democratic National Committee formalized its schedule in early August.
“I look forward to reaching out in solidarity with this group to potential conveners of a second New Hampshire presidential debate,” Surdukowski wrote in an email Thursday afternoon, after the coalition was announced. “Having a New Hampshire debate when people are paying attention – and not the Saturday before Christmas – is something we need to do the job the country entrusts us with doing every four years.”
As it stands now, New Hampshire is scheduled to host one of six pre-primary debates on Dec. 19 in Manchester.
O’Malley and his supporters, in particular, have been vocal opponents of the national party’s proposal – calling for an expansion of the debate schedule and the removal of an “exclusivity clause” that would penalize candidates who participate in non-sanctioned debates.
That pushback reached a boiling point in Manchester at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s state convention on Sept. 19 – as a crowd of local Democrats drowned out DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz with their calls for “More debate!” The chanting was so persistent that it at one point forced her to pause in the middle of her speech to the convention.
“C’mon folks, we are all on the same side,” she urged, in response. “Let’s make sure we focus on the Republicans. We should not be arguing amongst ourselves – we have a job to do. We have a president to elect. We will have a healthy and robust debate amongst ourselves, and then we will take it to the Republicans.”
The DNC has continued to stand by its original debate plans despite these and other calls for changes.
AND NATIONALLY
FINALLY
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