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As expected, it didn’t take long for Democrats in New Hampshire to point out what proposals they didn’t like in Gov. Chris Sununu’s budget speech last week.

“I am encouraged by statements of Governor Sununu in support of full-day kindergarten and funding for the developmentally disabled, but as we all know, the devil is in the details,” said House Democratic Leader Steve Shurtleff in a statement. “The Governor’s budget address made no mention of the successful NH Health Protection Program, leaving serious unanswered questions for the 50,000 Granite Staters who rely on the program for their health care coverage.”

But the more divisive statements came from the Senate Democratic Caucus and New Hampshire Democratic Party (NHDP). While they applauded Sununu for keeping several initiatives put in place by former Gov. Maggie Hassan, they criticized him for not fully funding the Alcohol Fund to combat the opioid crisis.

“And in the midst of a substance abuse crisis, we need to find out why Governor Sununu chose not to fully fund the Alcohol Fund, which supports our effort to combat this crisis,” said Senate Minority Leader Jeff Woodburn in a statement.

NHDP Chairman Ray Buckley echoed Woodburn’s sentiments saying he was “disheartened to see that the governor did not fully fund the state’s alcohol fund, which would provide key resources to combat this epidemic.”

The Alcohol Abuse Prevention and Treatment Fund was created in 2000 by the Legislature, and it’s a mechanism that takes 5 percent of the gross profits from the sale of alcohol to support education, prevention, treatment, and recovery programs for alcohol and drugs. The fund has only been fully financed one time since its inception, which was in the 2003-2004 biennium — the first year it began. In his budget speech, Sununu proposed increasing the funds to 3.4 percent, double the 1.7 percent rate the previous budget had set.

In each budget after that, the governor or Legislature transferred the revenue to the general fund and only appropriated a small amount to the Alcohol Fund, which means Republican Gov. Craig Benson and Democratic Govs. John Lynch and Maggie Hassan suspended funding during their terms.

In the most recent budget, for the 2016-2017 budget biennium, Hassan and the House proposed suspending the funding formula. Hassan proposed giving the fund $9.6 million over the two-year period, but the Republican-controlled House dropped that figure to $3.6 million. Senators proposed bringing the formula back and lowering the cap to 1.7 percent, which would give the fund $6.7 million.

If the fund was fully financed for the whole biennium, it would have received approximately $19 million, still nearly $10 million less than what Hassan suggested. After the Senate put forward its recommendation for the budget, the NHDP called their budget “unbalanced and partisan” with “irresponsible gimmicks.”

It’s interesting that the NHDP would criticize Sununu for not fully funding the Alcohol Fund, when previous Democratic governors did not fully fund it either.

“We haven’t had a Democratic governor who has fought as hard as Sununu is fighting for it [the Alcohol Fund] right now,” said former state Rep. Joe Hannon, R-Lee, who made his mark in the Legislature by focusing on the opioid crisis.

“No one has taken the leadership on this, and the battle will be in the House and Senate Finance Committees,” he told NH Journal. “I’m always happy when the governor speaks about how he is addressing substance abuse treatment. He gets it, and that’s something I haven’t seen in awhile from leadership in the state.”

New Futures, a nonprofit group looking to curb substance abuse in the state, is a fervent supporter of fully funding the Alcohol Fund at 5 percent. They believe the money from the non-lapsing, flexible fund could be used for creative and innovative solutions to stop the opioid epidemic.

“We are encouraged by the fact that Gov. Sununu has increased the funding for the Alcohol Fund by doubling the current amount,” said Linda Paquette, president and CEO of New Futures. “However, we anxiously await the release of House Bill 2 in order to clarify the support in the budget for addressing New Hampshire’s substance abuse epidemic.”

Paquette said she was “very curious” what Sununu meant when he talked about “incentives” with the Alcohol Fund.

“First, I propose we double the Alcohol Fund, increasing these important resources by more than $3 million and creating incentives to ensure that those funds are truly spent,” he said in his Thursday speech.

Pacquette said she is hopeful that the Alcohol Fund will be a priority for the Republican-controlled State House because the funds are “not restricted.” New Hampshire is expected to receive federal money from grants and the 21st Century Cures Act, legislation approved by Congress and former President Barack Obama in December 2016, which gives $6.3 billion in funding to circumvent the opioid crisis and enhance medical research and development.

“The Alcohol Fund can be used to fill gaps where grant money and federal funds are restricted for certain uses,” Paquette told NH Journal. “It can be used for supporting recovery housing and investing in early childcare as a substance abuse prevention strategy. He [Sununu] clearly has made the opioid crisis a priority of his administration.”

Sununu presented his budget to the House and Senate Finance Committee in a Tuesday joint committee meeting. The House Finance Committee will take a look at his budget first and put forward recommendations to the full House later in the spring. After passage in the House, the Senate Finance Committee will review that budget and put it up for a vote to the full Senate, before returning to the governor’s desk for his signature or veto.

“We’re going to double that fund and get the money where we can have a lot of impact,” he said in the meeting. “Not just in the high-density areas, but really all across the state. None of our communities have been immune to that.”

The Senate Finance Committee recommended passage of Senate Bill 196 on Tuesday, which was amended to increase the Alcohol Fund to the 3.4 percent rate proposed by Sununu. If the House changes the formula or suspends it in its budget recommendations, this bill could override it and fund it at the rate Sununu proposed.

“This is a sound proposal that I and a majority of the Senate Finance Committee supported today by recommending a bill to do just that,” said Senate Finance Chair Gary Daniels, R-Milford, in a statement. “We have established a number of initiatives that serve to stem substance abuse, including the heroin crisis, and I know we can do more with the funding Governor Sununu has proposed as part of his budget.”

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Gov. Chris Sununu is quickly making education reform a priority during his two-year term. Just take a look at his Thursday budget speech.

“This budget and this administration recognizes local control in public education as the touchstone of policymaking, and that state government’s role in shaping education policy should be focused strictly on benefitting students and their families,” he said. “A major goal of this budget is to expand educational opportunity and choice for kids and their families.”

In his 2018-2019 biennium budget, Sununu focused on four areas of education reform that he wants to accomplish: full-day kindergarten, charter schools, higher education, and school building aid.

FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN

Sununu’s proposal includes $9 million a year for full-day kindergarten. He said the funds, which would be awarded in addition to education adequacy grants, would target communities that need it most.

After his speech, Democrats sought clarity on how it would be determined which communities received funding.

“We also do not know from his presentation which communities will get full-day kindergarten and which ones won’t…” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley in a statement.

Sununu said the formula would be based on a community’s property wealth, the number of students on subsidized lunch programs, and the number of English as a second language students.

“So I am proud today to be the first governor to deliver a real full-day kindergarten program for communities across the state,” he said.

Some Democrats, including gubernatorial nominee Colin van Ostern, were in favor of requiring all school districts to offer full-day kindergarten. Sununu’s budget leaves the decision up to individual cities and towns, but if they opt for full-day kindergarten, they’ll receive more funds.

Regardless if a school district offers half-day or full-day kindergarten, they only receive 50 percent of the state’s per-pupil grant compared to students in other grades. Sununu’s proposal would give the neediest communities an opportunity for additional funds to make full-day kindergarten a possibility.

CHARTER SCHOOLS

In his speech, Sununu called for increasing charter school funding by $15 million.

“And in addition to fully funding the adequacy formula, funding for charter school is stabilized and enhanced in this budget by linking funding to the state’s average per-pupil expenditure,” he said. “This will increase funding for our charter schools by $15 million, helping eliminate uncertainty and volatility for administrators, teachers and parents.”

This is probably one of the more contentious proposals in his budget, and it will be interesting to see if that amount changes as it moves through the budget process in the Legislature.

All of New Hampshire’s 25 charter schools, except for one, rely mostly on state and federal funding, and all but one are not supported by local property taxes. In the Granite State, per-pupil expenditures for charter schools are about $6,500, which is lower than traditional public schools, which averages about $14,900 for the 2015-2016 academic year.

Sununu is a fervent school choice advocate and he’s hoping the Legislature passes charter school-friendly bills during the legislative session. Democrats claim charter schools take away state money that could go to improve traditional public schools, and they lack equal proportions of disabled or special needs students, who are then forced into the traditional public school system.

Senate Majority Leader Jeff Woodburn told NH1 News that diverting public school funding to charter schools “is the wrong direction. It doesn’t make our state stronger or our kids better.”

HIGHER EDUCATION

It’s often a criticism of the Granite State that the population is aging and young people are leaving . The million dollar question is how does the state plan on encouraging them to stay?

Higher education advocates see increased funding to the state’s community college and university system as a key investment into the future workforce of New Hampshire.

Sununu said he agrees, but university officials and higher education activists remain skeptical.

“Our higher ed system is a critical part of ensuring New Hampshire students have an opportunity to learn beyond their high school years and enter the New Hampshire workforce with real-world skills,” Sununu said in his speech. “My budget approaches post-secondary education strictly in terms of students and outcomes. The university and community college system of New Hampshire are key to these efforts, and we’ll continue to make investments in our partnership.”

He proposes a “significant increase” to the operating budget of the community college system, to the tune of $10 million for capital infrastructure investments.

However, it’s not immediately clear where those funds are coming from. A few months ago, New Hampshire’s Community College system asked lawmakers for about $49 million for 2018 and $52.5 million for 2019, an increase from about $44 million in the current budget.

In Sununu’s budget, it appears that the community college system’s proposed budget is the same amount of funding as in the current budget. He could pull the funds from infrastructure funds, but it wasn’t exactly clear where he would do that.

University System of New Hampshire (USNH) officials were not thrilled that they didn’t see an increase in their budget either. Sununu’s proposal would provide $81 million a year to the university system — the same level as the current budget. USNH asked for $88.5 million in 2018 and $93.5 million in 2019.

Without an increase in funding, it’s likely tuition will once again increase for the next academic school year at USNH colleges by no more than 2.5 percent for in-state students. The actual figure will be known later this spring after trustees set the rate.

In a statement, USNH “expressed deep disappointment” that the governor’s budget did not provide additional funding, which would have allowed the system to freeze or lower tuition for in-state students.

“Keeping our public, four-year colleges and universities affordable is not only critical for hard-working New Hampshire families, but also for the many businesses that depend on highly skilled talent to grow, thrive and succeed,” USNH Chancellor Todd Leach said in a statement.

Full time in-state tuition at UNH is $14,410 for the 2016-17 academic year. Room and board varies depending on the type of housing and meal plan, but costs range between $10,000 to $14,000 a year.

USNH receives the lowest state funding per capita of any university system in the county and tuition costs for New Hampshire students are some of the highest in the nation, which leads to students also having some of the highest student loan debt in the country after graduation.

Rep. Wayne Burton, D-Durham, and a former college administrator, criticized Sununu’s “cold shouldering of USNH.

“I’m deeply disappointed that Gov. Sununu, though professing the need for an educated workforce, shortchanged the principle player in that effort, our state university system,” Burton told the Fosters Daily Democrat.

Instead of increasing funds to the university system, Sununu proposed a new $5 million-a-year scholarship fund to assist high school students to attend colleges, universities or workforce training programs in the Granite State.

“We have to understand that not every student travels the same workforce path, and we need to build a system that provides flexibility to work within their lifestyle,” he said. “This scholarship program is designed, not to help 10, or 20, or even a 100 students, but at least 1,000 students each year, and we’ll open workforce gateways like never before.”

He said the Governor’s Scholarship Fund would be administered by a proposed commission and would be based, partially, on need.

SCHOOL BUILDING AID

The state is expected to end the current two-year budget with an $80 million surplus, and most of that money will be going to one-time expenses to fix roads and bridges, and provide school building aid through the “Infrastructure Revitalization Fund.”

“For the first time in a long time we’re going to give a boost to school building aid by granting dollars directly to communities to rebuild our classroom infrastructure,” Sununu said. “Specifically, schools with health and safety issues in towns that might not be able to otherwise address things like asbestos, lead paint, or other critical safety issues and these are where our school building aid will be targeted and funded.”

It’s unclear exactly how much of the $80 million surplus would be available at the end of the current fiscal year, and how it would it be allocated to cities and towns, but Republicans applauded the proposal during the governor’s speech.

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After Gov. Chris Sununu released his $12.1 billion biennium budget on Thursday, the overall sentiment among Democrats and Republicans was “the devil is in the details.”

Those details will be hammered out in the next few months as the House and Senate make their recommendations to Sununu’s 2018-2019 budget. Overall it appears both parties believe it’s a solid budget with room for improvement. Republicans praised it for being “a realistic, conservative budget which is transparent, forward thinking and strengthens education, supports our cities and towns and focuses on solving real problems that have plagued taxpayers for years,” according to Senate leadership.

Democrats were glad that Sununu kept some of his campaign promises, but were also critical that he didn’t provide too many details on proposals they deemed important, including Medicaid expansion and full-day kindergarten.

“I am very concerned about the $500 million cut from state agency budget requests and what that could mean to the citizens of New Hampshire,” House Minority Leader Steve Shurtleff said in a statement. “The governor’s budget address made no mention of the successful NH Health Protection Program, leaving serious unanswered questions for the 50,000 Granite Staters who rely on the program for their health care coverage.”

In his budget proposal, Sununu includes more than $50 million in spending to address an existing shortfall in the Department of Health and Human Services’ (DHHS) fiscal 2017 budget.

In January, DHHS projected a $65.9 million dollar budget shortfall. Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers pushed back against the accusation his department overspent, claiming instead Medicaid costs did not decline as the legislature expected during the last budget debate. That put Sununu in the awkward position of writing a budget with an unexpected hole in it, while also figuring out how to handle Medicaid for the state.

As for the deficit, Sununu is requiring the commissioner to make quarterly reports to him and members of the legislature leadership “about where we actually stand on our true costs, so we can become a more nimble government that’s responsive, not just reactive.”

“As governor, I won’t make people wait until after an election to discover we may have a shortfall,” he said in remarks during a Thursday joint legislative session. “We have to be transparent. We have to be honest with the people and honest with ourselves.”

Democrats’ claim he didn’t mention Medicaid expansion is true. He only mentioned the program when talking about the DHHS deficit, since that’s where the department says its money went.

“And where we have failed in the past, I am pushing for true accounting of our Medicaid program so we can reconcile estimated Medicaid payments to actual costs,” Sununu said. “And as we go forward, be sure that we won’t wait two years to check in on them again.”

He doesn’t say if he plans to expand, repeal, or replace NH Health Protection Program. The Medicaid program in New Hampshire received bipartisan support in the legislature last year when lawmakers extended the program until Dec. 31, 2018.

That legislation gives Sununu wiggle room as he attempts to balance politics and health coverage for the state. As Washington debates repealing the Affordable Care Act, several states including New Hampshire are waiting to see how Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration handles the issue.

Sununu was reluctant to say anything about Medicaid on the campaign trail, commenting he was worried about financing the program in the long-term, but didn’t mention repeal. Not wanting to permanently fund the program, he told voters it was better to let the federal government make the first move.

Before the budget speech, Democrats waited to see if Sununu would fulfill his campaign promise of funding full-day kindergarten. His proposal includes $9 million a year for full-day kindergarten, but after the speech Democrats sought clarity on determining which communities get funding.

.@ChrisSununu needs to explain targeted full day k. $9 million a year while giving $15 million to charter schools? #nhpolitics

— NH Young Democrats (@NHYoungDems) February 9, 2017

Sununu said funds, which will be awarded in addition to education adequacy grants, would target the communities that need it most based on a community’s property wealth, the number of students on subsidized lunch programs, and communities with a high number of English as a second language students.

“So I am proud today to be the first governor to deliver a real full-day kindergarten program for communities across the state,” he added.

There’s a big distinction to be made with the state “mandating” full-day kindergarten and simply funding full-day kindergarten. Several Democrats sought to require school districts to offer full-day kindergarten, but Sununu’s budget doesn’t make that a requirement. He’s leaving it up to the individual cities and towns, but they’ll receive more funds if they opt-in.

In towns that vote to implement full-day kindergarten, school districts presently only receive 50 percent of the state’s per-pupil grant for kindergarten students. Under Sununu’s plan, the neediest communities can apply for additional grants to make the program possible.

Rep. Victoria Sullivan, R-Manchester, who sits on the House Education Committee, said she wasn’t thrilled about Sununu’s full-day kindergarten funding proposal. Sullivan said it should be a local community’s decision, and could eventually lead to mandated full-day kindergarten.

I agree with @NHSpeaker. This is a huge issue 4 me. Parental & local control in jeopardy. Next step=Mandated K. #NHPolitics https://t.co/HuCwQVuCv9

— Victoria Sullivan (@VSullivan4NH) February 9, 2017

House Speaker Shawn Jasper told reporters Sununu’s full-day kindergarten proposal probably won’t be included in the House version of the budget.

“I think that is going to be a stretch,” he said. “I think if you looked around the hall, you probably didn’t see a lot of enthusiasm on the part of Republicans on that issue. We’ll have different priorities in some areas than the governor has, certainly. I don’t think there’s ever been a budget that’s gone into the House and come out looking the same way, but he’s given us a great starting point.”

The two-year budget must be passed by June 30 to go into effect on July 1 of the next fiscal year. The House Finance Committee will look at Sununu’s budget before making a recommendation to the full House. After the House passes its version of a budget, it goes to the Senate Finance Committee, which will recommend its own proposals to the full Senate, before going to the governor’s desk for his signature or veto in spring.

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