If you can’t stop the local spending, can you slow down the local tax hikes?
That’s the idea behind GOP-backed legislation requiring proposals raising local property taxes to pass with a 60 percent “supermajority,” as opposed to a simple “50 percent plus one” majority.
Granite State voters appear to like the idea. In the new NHJournal/Praecones Analytica poll, 46 percent of Granite Staters approved of the supermajority requirement, while just 34 percent opposed it. Another 20 percent weren’t sure or didn’t know.
Republicans have repeatedly tried to relieve the pressure on property taxpayers by making it harder for local governments to spend money. They’ve largely failed.
At the state level, a bill to impose spending caps on local schools failed to pass the legislature.
At the local level, teachers unions and local progressives have teamed up to block attempts to cap spending in many towns.
For example, when a group of taxpayers in the Kearsarge Regional School District tried to cap spending at $27,000 per pupil earlier this year, activists flooded the district meeting and backed a budget raising the per-pupil spending to $33,000.
The Kearsarge district includes the towns of Bradford, Newbury, New London, Springfield, Sutton, Warner
and Wilmot.
Asked about the poll results, Sen. Kevin Avard (R-Nashua) said, “It’s not a surprise that property taxpayers are fed up with the almost yearly increases on their tax bills. Every single year, the Republican-led legislature passes property tax relief bills, but all too often, that money gets spent by local municipal officials before it can make it back to regular Granite State families.”
Tax caps aren’t new. Many cities, including Manchester, operate under caps on property tax revenues.
But only six of the state’s 221 towns have tax caps, and the GOP-controlled legislature passed HB200 to address the issue and provide relief.
Under the legislation (HB200), if a proposed appropriation would cause local taxes to exceed the tax cap, voting on that appropriation must be done by ballot. To override the tax cap, a 3/5 (60 percent) majority of voters must approve the appropriation.
Opponents of tax caps in towns, including the New Hampshire Municipal Association, say HB 200 “undermines the voters” and their right to pay more if they choose to. Republicans respond that people are free to pay more if they choose. The problem is when activists force everyone else to pay more, too.
“Mel Thomson was generally right that low taxes are the result of low spending,” said Drew Cline, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. “But New Hampshire has proven that the inverse is also true. Spending can be suppressed by restraining tax revenues.
“Requiring a supermajority to raise local taxes seems such an obviously New Hampshire thing that a lot of people might be surprised it wasn’t already on the books for decades.”
Avard, who supported the cap in the state senate, says the state needs to step up and help local residents.
“I think it’s definitely time that taxpayer voices are heard at the local level, which is where the tax increases are coming from. Those local elected officials need to be held accountable for making our communities unaffordable to many who have lived here for generations.”
HB 200 is headed to Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s desk, where she has 60 days from passage to sign it into law.
