New Hampshire Democrats have seized on comments by House Republicans critical of Granite Staters calling to spend more money on public schools.
Republicans have pushed back by pointing out just how of the taxpayers’ money is already being spent.
That’s the political divide as lawmakers debate a GOP-backed proposal to cap increases on local school property taxes (HB 675).
During Tuesday’s Finance Committee hearing on the bill, Republican Chairman Rep. Ken Weyler (R-Kingston) complained about the crowd of activists who showed up to insist on more state education spending.
“All these things we heard at the public hearing, ‘gimme gimme gimme, more money, more money, for my schools,’” Weyler said. House Democrats quickly posted the clip on social media.
“Today, after acknowledging that the state’s underfunding of public schools has led to an increase in property taxes, GOP Finance Chair Weyler mocks Granite Staters who came out to testify at State Budget hearing,” House Democrats wrote in their post.
The claim about Weyler “acknowledging” underfunding is factually incorrect, but it echoes a theme Democrats have been pounding away at over the past two election cycles: Residential property tax bills go up because GOP lawmakers “downshift” school funding onto local taxpayers.
During last week’s special budget hearing, for example, Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill (D-Lebanon) demanded more state education spending. A member of the Lebanon City Council, she also accused Republicans of “divert(ing) taxpayer dollars from public schools to private schools” in their push to expand EFA eligibility, causing “local property taxes to go up.”
“I know this because I’ve seen it firsthand for the past 20 years as a city councilor.”
In fact, state education funding set an all-time record in the last biennium, breaking the record set in the previous budget. Both budgets were passed by a GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.
Liot Hill’s city of Lebanon is typical of the education spending trend in New Hampshire.
In 2001, the Lebanon school district had 2,105 students and a budget of just over $28 million.
By 2019, enrollment had fallen to 1,632, while the budget had soared to more than $40.6 million.
On a per-pupil basis, spending rose from $13,474 to nearly $25,000.
At the state level, public school enrollment has fallen from more than 203,000 to below 170,000, while taxpayer spending on the annual budget has gone up by more than $1 billion.
Liot Hill and her fellow Democrats oppose the GOP proposal aimed at addressing this issue. HB 675 would “establish a tax cap for local school districts” and “tie education funding increases to the Consumer Price Index.”
Former state Rep. Brian Chirichiello (R-Derry) testified in support of HB 675 and noted that while Derry has had a municipal tax cap in effect since 1993, the town’s local education tax is separate. As a result, he said, residential property taxes continue to climb because, as with similarly-sized school districts in Nashua and Manchester, there is no school district tax cap.
(In Manchester, the school budget is part of the entire city budget, which is under a tax cap. There have been efforts to make the school district its own taxing authority, which has been routinely rejected by the aldermen, fearing backlash from taxpayers.)
Last week, voters in Derry approved a $24.6 million school building upgrade plan and a $102.1 million operating budget. Turnout for the town, however, was less than 10 percent as just 1,975 of the town’s more than 21,000 registered voters showed up.
The school funding proposals prevailed by just 123 votes.
Local officials estimate the approved budget will result in a $156 increase on a tax bill for the typical home valued at $400,000.
That small minority, Chirichiello pointed out, “decided the fate of the fourth largest community in the state.”
“People are busy in March for whatever reason, and they don’t see anything until December’s tax bill,” he added. “They then immediately run to the town council screaming.
“My schools keep wanting to grow and grow, and what happens is they blame the state legislators.”
The story in Derry is similar to Lebanon and the rest of the state. Enrollment has fallen from 4,685 to around 3,300 students, while the budget has risen from $66 million to more than $82 million.
Democrats don’t dispute those numbers. Instead, they argue the state should transfer more tax dollars to local school districts to subsidize their spending.
House Majority Leader Jason Osborne (R-Auburn) touched on that argument during his floor remarks last Thursday when lawmakers were deliberating a proposal to make access to Education Freedom Accounts universal regardless of family income levels.
Osborne pointed out that local property tax hikes are determined by local elections with “voter turnout less than 15 percent.”
“That is not local control. That is a tyranny of fringe special interests,” Osborne said.
Republicans used their House majority during last Thursday’s 190-185 session vote to successfully advance HB 675 to where it was heard again Tuesday by Weyler’s committee.
Opponents of the GOP tax-cap bill say the state shouldn’t interfere in local education funding decisions or strip residents of local control of their schools.
Committee member Rep. Kate Murray (D-New Castle) claimed Chirichiello’s testimony in favor of the tax-cap bill actually bolstered arguments against it.
“To me, you make a very good argument for why this should be a local issue,” she said. “Because your community is unique, you need to have the freedom to do it yourself, so I don’t see this bill as being particularly helpful.”
Chirichiello responded that New Hampshire is not a home rule state — it’s a “Dillon’s Law” state, where all powers of local municipalities stem from the state legislature.
“What we’re allowed to do comes from state reps,” he said. “So if the legislature wants to do a check-and-balance, it’s their prerogative to do it.”
As for Weyler, he referenced declining rates of enrollment in the portion of his comments that was not shared by House Democrats on social media.
“One would think that with all of the reductions we’ve seen in enrollment, we would see a reduction in school spending, but it just keeps going up, and they keep adding employees,” he said. “It is very important that we put a limit on them.”
