New Hampshire’s Executive Council is one of the state’s oldest and most unusual political institutions — and one of its most powerful.
As Taylor Caswell at the Department of Business and Economic Affairs (BEA) is likely to find out.
Caswell’s nomination for another term as BEA commissioner was one of several topics discussed at a recent roundtable on the Executive Council and its place in state government hosted by Americans for Prosperity of New Hampshire. Councilors John Stephen (R-Manchester) and Dave Wheeler (R-Milford) fielded questions from AFP’s Greg Moore, as well as from a lively audience at the Stark Brewing Company in Manchester.
Made up of just five elected members, the council shares executive authority with the governor, approving everything from state contracts to judicial appointments. Its roots stretch back nearly 350 years, when distrust of concentrated power led colonists to establish a system of checks on the chief executive.
“We actually put the Executive Council in the Constitution so that the governor would control the agenda of the council, but the council would have authority over some of the governor’s decisions,” Stephen said. “So it’s really a check and balance at its very foundation of our New Hampshire state government, and we’re the only council like it in the country.”
Moore noted that Massachusetts has a Governor’s Council, but its authority is narrow, focusing almost entirely on judicial oversight and clemency decisions.
New Hampshire’s Council, on the other hand, is a fiscal gauntlet for spending, approving all state contracts above $10,000. It also confirms judges, commissioners, and top-level appointees.
“We confirm the nominee for attorney general, the parks people, the transportation commissioners, the police commissioner,” Wheeler said. “And for all the unclassified employees, we’re in charge of setting their pay and the department heads’ pay, too. So they can be responsive if they’re coming up for a pay raise.”
With a Republican governor and a 4-1 GOP majority (scandal-plagued Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill is the lone Democrat), there aren’t many major conflicts between Ayotte and the council, but they don’t always see eye to eye.
For example, on the nomination of Caswell to serve another four-year term heading the BEA.
“We’re facing tremendous pressure to renominate Taylor Caswell to the BEA. I just can’t do that,” Wheeler said. “Taylor Caswell is such a big spender. He came to us with a contract for $4 million to hire people to take pictures and videos of New Hampshire to help market tourism. After we killed that contract, we had numerous photographers come to us and say, ‘Hey, we’ll do it for free. All we want is our name on it.'”
Stephen offered a sober view of Caswell’s future.
“Commissioner Caswell needs three votes,” Stephen said. “The governor can’t just assume he’s going to get another four years after he’s been there eight years. You have to have three votes.”
Both Stephen and Wheeler highlighted the council’s duties as the state’s fiscal watchdog. That’s one reason the news that their colleague Liot Hill is soliciting plaintiffs to join a high-powered Democratic law firm’s litigation against the state’s voter ID laws raised eyebrows. Such a lawsuit from a well-funded, politically active firm like Elias Law (their clients have included Hillary Clinton and the DNC) is almost certain to be a major expense.
Asked at the roundtable about Liot Hill’s use of her councilor position to recruit plaintiffs, neither of her colleagues would comment. Wheeler did concede that, if the state needed outside counsel who specializes in election law, “that contract would have to come to the Executive Council.”
New Hampshire enjoys a reputation for fiscal responsibility — the state is consistently rated the best for taxpayer return on investment — but the councilors said constant vigilance is still required.
Wheeler raised the recent example of the Department of Corrections submitting a $2.1 million contract to lease 195 tasers for ten years.
“That’s $10,000 a taser. And that’s the type of thing you find when you’re reading contracts. So I called up my Milford police chief, and I said, ‘How much are you paying for tasers?’ He said, ‘Well, we paid two grand for tasers.’ And so the Executive Council … killed the taser contract.
“But all of a sudden, three months later, there it comes again. The Department of Corrections brings back these $10,000 tasers. So we killed it again,” Wheeler said.
“Come to find out, a citizen tipped us off that the tasers had already been shipped to the state of New Hampshire without governor and council approval. So you might wonder why there are two people not at the Department of Corrections anymore.”
Stephen said his approach is to view every contract as though the taxpayers were being asked to sign it.
“You look at every single line item. You try to identify whether the actual funds are being used to bring value to the taxpayer,” Stephen said.
“Because if you don’t do your homework, they’re going to pull one over on you.”
