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After four days of back-to-back negotiations between the New Hampshire House and Senate, lawmakers on the state budget conference committee finally decided Wednesday on an $11.7 billion two-year spending plan. Although its widely expected to pass the Senate, there is still a chance that it could fail in the volatile House.

“This is a budget the legislature and the people of New Hampshire can be proud of,” said House Speaker Shawn Jasper after the committee approved the final version of the budget. “This budget provides resources to address the opioid crisis, mental illness, and domestic violence, includes several reforms to state government, and keeps spending in check. We’ve achieved a balance that ensures our citizens will have access to services they need while reducing the tax burden.”

Whether it will garner enough Democratic or conservative votes remains to be seen. Democrats claim Republicans are not spending all of the revenue available to the state and criticize that a workforce training proposal, known as Granite Workforce, was cut from the budget. It would have provided training and wage subsidies for certain types of workers since the state is dealing with a worker shortage.

“Democrats have made it very clear: we will not support a budget that asks working people to dig further into their wallets while the elite get more handouts,” said Senate Minority Leader Jeff Woodburn. “Unfortunately, our efforts to stand up for everyday people have been rejected at every turn. The reality is that this Trump-like, Republican budget agreement caves to the wealthy elite and ignores those who are most in need.”

Also, Democrats still don’t like that language was added to the budget that prohibits the state from giving money to health care facilities to provide abortions, which indicates that House Democrats are most likely not going to vote in favor of the budget in the full session next week.

State Reps. Al Baldasaro, R-Nashua, and Debra Altschiller, D-Stratham, brought up that issue on Twitter.

There, I fixed it:"Repubs would rather legislate NH women's reproductive systems than create a budget that serves the people" #nhpolitics

— Debra Altschiller (@DebrasATeam) June 14, 2017

Little has changed from the Senate version of the budget passed last month, with a few notable exceptions. The new budget includes an amendment mandating new work requirements for people enrolled in the state’s expanded Medicaid program. Low-income adults would have to work, attend job training, or go to school for at least 20 hours per week to qualify for the New Hampshire Health Protection Program. If the federal government rejects the work requirement, as it did last year, expanded Medicaid would end by 2018.

Some advocacy groups, like New Futures — which focuses on mental health, substance abuse, and children issues — were critical that an amendment in the budget would allow the governor to divert money away from the state’s Alcohol Fund, which is used for substance abuse treatment, prevention, and education programs. The governor would be allowed to reach into the fund to help pay for operations at the state’s juvenile detention center in case of emergencies after approval from the fiscal committee.

“Weakening the addiction treatment system in the midst of New Hampshire’s devastating opioid crisis will place the lives of people struggling with addiction at risk,” said Linda Saunders Paquette, CEO and president of New Futures. “This irresponsible decision by the committee cannot be overstated, and will be felt for years to come, as our public health crisis will only intensify without long-term sustainable investments.”

The budget includes cuts to the state’s businesses profits tax and business enterprise tax, but lawmakers also eliminated the electricity consumption tax, which generates about $5.5 million for the state each year.

“This budget also eliminates the Electric Consumption Tax, helping our state move in the right direction to reduce the burdensome electric rates paid for by homeowners and businesses,” said Senate Finance Chair Gary Daniels, R-Milford. “By making changes that will result in lower monthly bills, we put money back in our employer’s pockets and create an improved, lower cost state to run a business.”

With these tax cuts, House GOP leadership is hopeful that enough members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus join in supporting the budget. The caucus still has concerns that the state spending levels are too high, indicating that some of its members will probably vote against it.

@jdistaso @WMUR9 @DaveSolomon72 for those thinking $11.7B is a big budget number, try counting to 196 (votes) #nhpolitics https://t.co/mOycLchaiP

— NH Freedom Caucus (@NHFreedomCaucus) June 15, 2017

The House needs a majority to pass the budget and they need conservative support in order to do that. Jasper said he is optimistic the budget will get passed in the House next week. Behind the scenes, top GOP officials are starting to whip votes in order to make sure that it happens.

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If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either being made. That old adage could be applied to the current session of the New Hampshire General Court.

Drafting and adopting the state budget has been messy as different Republicans have argued passionately for what they believe is in the best interest of the Granite State. But while the process may sometimes be unpleasant to watch, the outcome is generally good and beneficial.

So it is with the Republican compromise budget, which the House of Representatives takes up this week. The budget respects taxpayers while still providing for needed services for New Hampshire’s most vulnerable, such as the mentally ill and those struggling with addiction. Here are four features that you may not have heard about the legislation:

1. Drugs and Alcohol: The budget doubles funding to the Governor’s Commission on Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention, Treatment and Recovery. It establishes a youth inpatient and outpatient treatment center in Manchester. And it more than doubles the budget of the Bureau of Drug and Alcohol to help address the state’s opioid crisis.
2. Mental Health: The budget establishes 60 new beds for community treatment options and it creates a fourth rapid response mobile crisis unit to keep hospitals from having to shoulder all the burden for mental health issues.
3. DCYF: The Division of Children, Youth and Families is a system that has failed to do an adequate job of protecting New Hampshire kids and this budget begins to address that problem. It adds new case workers to deal with huge caseloads. It creates an Office of the Child Advocate to provide oversight from outside of the department. And it requires the lead attorney of DCYF to be supervised by our state’s attorney general, which will help when prosecutions are necessary.
4. Rainy Day Fund: The budget would grow our state’s rainy day fund from an anemic $9 million to $100 million, which would be useful in a pinch but would also help shore up New Hampshire’s top rate bond rating, so we can finance debt with very low interest.

Of course, this budget also sets the stage for a small business-friendly economic environment, which will spur better jobs and higher wages. And it invests in our shared future by making major priorities of education and public safety.

This roadmap for the 2018-2019 biennium contains no new taxes of fees. None. In fact, the budget focuses on economic growth by lowering both the business profits tax (BPT) and the business enterprise tax (BET) to allow for a friendlier business environment. Over the next few years, business will be able to grow and reinvest in the economy. The New Hampshire tax code will also be aligned with the federal tax code and allow for 179 more deductions, greatly helping small businesses.

This is all based on realistic revenue projections to create a finically responsible budget with modest increases of 1.8 percent and 2.0 percent over the next two years. This is the kind of sound fiscal management taxpayers have come to expect from Republican leadership in Concord.

As a former chair of the Senate Finance Committee, I know as well as anyone that putting together a budget is challenging work. Recall also that former Gov. Maggie Hassan, now U.S. senator, shamefully vetoed the Republican budget last summer in a harebrained political stunt that blew up in her face. In the end, she was forced to back down and sign the GOP budget.

And as a result New Hampshire presently has the third fastest growing economy in the nation. That’s real leadership and sound fiscal management. The Republican budget is good for the economy, good for working families and great for New Hampshire.

When it comes to the opioid crisis, one would expect every state dollar allocated to the epidemic would be spent. That’s apparently not exactly what happened this fiscal year. A substantial surplus remains in the Alcohol Abuse Prevention and Treatment Fund, also known as the Alcohol Fund, and lawmakers are trying to pin the blame on almost everyone.

The Alcohol Fund was created in 2000 by the Legislature as a mechanism that takes 5 percent of the gross profits from the sale of alcohol to support education, prevention, treatment, and recovery programs for substance abuse, which encompasses alcohol and drug abuse.

The focus right now for the Governor’s Commission on Alcohol Drug Abuse Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery, which gives out the funds, is the opioid crisis, but alcohol abuse is also part of its mission. The commission was allocated approximately $9 million in the 2017 fiscal year and will reportedly end the year on June 30 $2 million to $4 million in the black.

Tym Rourke, chair of the governor’s commission, said he is working with the Department of Health and Human Services to determine the exact amount and will release those figures this week.

That’s where the confusion lies for legislators as they finalize the state’s biennium budget this month. DHHS Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers has said he anticipates a $2 million surplus from contracts that didn’t use their full funds. The nonpartisan Legislative Budget Assistant is putting the number at $4.3 million. The discrepancy and uncertainty as to why the funds weren’t all used during the year was on full display during the Senate marathon budget session on Wednesday.

Sen. Martha Hennessey, D-Hanover, who also sits on the governor’s commission, questioned why there was an amendment introduced that would allocate $2 million from the Alcohol Fund for the construction of a juvenile substance abuse wing at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester without the commission’s approval.

Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, said they had to have “some frank talk” about the Alcohol Fund.

“It is pathetic that there is $4.3 million sitting in an account unexpended in the middle of a heroin crisis. That’s what we should be focused on. That’s outrageous,” he said. “So let’s look at the reforms this amendment tries to put in place … that’s called taking action, not sitting on $4.3 million.”

Hennessey countered to say that the fund would only have a $2 million surplus, but said Gov. Chris Sununu and Meyers should also be to blame.

“The governor and commissioner at HHS have not helped to facilitate the spending of this,” she said. “They are waiting to find out what kind of health care we’re going to have, what’s going on with Medicaid, all of which is up in the air. So if our governor and HHS aren’t helping to make this possible, that money can’t be spent.”

The Alcohol Fund fund has only been fully financed one time since its inception, which was in the 2003-2004 biennium — the first year it began. Since then, governors or the Legislature transferred the revenue to the general fund and would only appropriate a small amount to the Alcohol Fund. In the current biennium passed under former Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan, the fund was financed at 1.7 percent. In Sununu’s budget proposal and in the Senate’s budget, the fund was doubled to 3.4 percent.

Rourke applauded the Senate for increased monies to the fund, but reminded lawmakers that the Alcohol Fund is non-lapsing and any money left over is rolled over to the next fiscal year, so the commission could “repurpose and redeploy those dollars.”

Rourke said he had concerns about another amendment introduced in the Senate budget that would give the DHHS commissioner the ability to take money out of the Alcohol Fund itself and not from the potential surplus.

“The [governor’s] commission has a statutory authority over the fund and DHHS administers it, based on priorities set by the Commission” he told NH Journal. “The main concern is the precedent it would give for a commissioner to take money from the Alcohol Fund, without approval of the spending plan by the Commission.”

He said the 3.4 percent funding for the next biennium is mostly going to be used to sustain ongoing investments and state contracts to combat the opioid crisis. If the commissioner can take funds at anytime, Rourke is concerned that they would have to cancel contracts and put funding for other programs at risk.

So why is there a surplus in the first place? Rourke attributes it to two factors: Medicaid and workforce issues.

When the Legislature voted to renew Medicaid expansion in 2016, treatment and recovery centers were not clear if people who showed up would be covered by private or public insurance. The commission wanted to keep the funds available to those centers in case they needed to cover their insurance costs. Rourke said contractors ultimately didn’t need to draw on those funds.

He also said the workforce crisis in the mental health system resulted in funds not being used by contractors.

“We have treatment contractors who may have been given funding and have had a difficult time hiring appropriate staff,” he said. “Obviously, you’re not drawing on that salary while you’re waiting for that hire. If you talk to providers, there is that pressure on them on hiring and maintaining staff.”

The Senate budget is likely to go to a conference committee with the House, where lawmakers from both chambers will go over the details before voting on the final spending plan. The House previously stripped money for the Alcohol Fund in its version of the budget, so Rourke said he will continue to work with lawmakers on ensuring the funds are kept in place.

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The Senate Finance Committee finished crafting its version of the state budget on Wednesday. It largely resembles what Gov. Chris Sununu proposed in February, except for new business tax cuts and a multimillion dollar investment in mental health services.

The committee voted 4-2 along party lines to approve a two-year, $11.8 billion state budget. Republicans believe the spending is conservative enough and tackles important issues facing the state, such as the mental health crisis. Democrats argue the budget doesn’t focus enough on higher education, public health, and workforce training initiatives.

“It’s a solid budget that provides what New Hampshire needs,” said Senate President Chuck Morse. “We certainly have had lists of things that we couldn’t fund, like increased funding for the university system, that we just can’t get to in this budget if we’re going to live within our means.”

One of the biggest differences between Sununu’s proposal and the Senate Finance Committee’s spending plan is the cut in the state’s business profits tax (BPT) and business enterprise tax (BET). Sununu’s budget didn’t include them.

Under the measure, the BPT would drop to 7.7 percent in 2019 and 7.5 in 2021. Meanwhile, the state’s BET would fall to 0.6 percent in 2019 and 0.5 percent in 2021.

“The budget passed by the Senate Finance Committee does not increase or create any new taxes or fees and relies on realistic revenue projections,” said Senate Finance Chair Gary Daniels. “The budget also addresses our state’s top priorities including providing resources for those most in need. This budget also includes additional business tax cuts and increases small businesses’ ability to make capital investments. This allows businesses in New Hampshire to create good paying jobs and grow their business, keeping our state competitive with other states in New England and nationally.”

The two Democrats on the committee, Dan Feltes of Concord and Lou D’Allesandro of Manchester, voted against the budget, saying several necessary programs are underfunded.

“This budget fails to fully fund full-day kindergarten, fails to fully fund our efforts to combat the opioid epidemic, and fails to adequately meet the needs of those suffering from mental illness,” D’Allesandro said. “Make no mistake, this is not the budget I wanted and I will continue to work to ensure that the critical needs of the people of New Hampshire are met.”

The Senate Finance Committee’s budget leaves out money for full-day kindergarten, which Sununu included in his proposal. Those funds, though, are part of a separate bill making its way through the Legislature.

The budget also calls for more than $17 million in spending to increase the number of mental health beds and expand mental health services. That measure was not in Sununu’s budget, but he supports it. It also increases funding for additional social workers and supervisors in the Division for Children, Youth and Families (DCYF). The Alcohol Fund is seeing an allocation of 3.4 percent of revenues, which is up from 1.7 percent in the current budget.

“We addressed our state’s most critical needs, including programs to benefit families with a disabled child and adding 60 new beds and community treatment options to relieve the growing mental health problem,” Daniels said. “We also doubled the Governor’s Commission on Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention, Treatment and Recovery to bring new resources into our communities combating the heroin crisis. We also made sweeping changes to the leadership at the Division of Children, Youth and Families and added more caseworkers to ensure our kids’ best interests are being taken care of and they are protected abuse and neglect harm.”

The Senate Finance Committee budget also approves the use of $2 million in unspent money from the 2017 Alcohol Fund for renovations and construction of a youth substance abuse treatment wing at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. An allocation of $250,000 per year for sexual and domestic violence prevention programs was also approved, along with $1 million in funding for 13 rape and domestic violence crisis centers operated by the N.H. Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.

Despite these additions, Feltes said the Senate GOP budget doesn’t reflect the needs of Granite Staters.

“This budget fails to include job training programs that would boost our workforce and close our skills gap, breaks promises made to our retirees and increases health care costs for our seniors,” he said. “It fails to live up to our obligations to Granite Staters living with disabilities by failing to fund our developmental disability waitlist and does not adequately deal with childhood mental health. And it fails to provide resources to reform DCYF and protect our most vulnerable children. Quite simply, this budget fails to adequately address the critical and time-sensitive challenges facing our state.”

The budget go the Senate floor for a vote. Usually, after the full Senate approves of its budget, the Senate and House confer to iron out differences between the two budgets. However, the House was unable to pass a budget this year. After the Senate approves of the budget, it will ultimately need to be approved by the full House.

The real test of the budget will be in the lower chamber, after conservative members sided with Democrats to sink the House GOP leadership’s plan last month. They cited an increase in spending and lack of tax cuts as reasons for opposing the budget. With BPT and BET tax cuts, it’s possible they might support the Senate’s plan, which included several provisions from the House budget.

If the state budget makes it through the House, it will head to the governor’s desk for his signature. The whole process needs to be done by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

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With about $59 million less to spend than expected, it’s natural that the House Finance Committee would trim a few items from Gov. Chris Sununu’s budget proposal. Yet, the cuts they’re making are concerning advocates who championed Sununu for including them in the first place.

On Wednesday, Republican budget writers in the House killed Sununu’s plan to spend $18 million over the biennium to expand full-day kindergarten programs. They also cut a $5 million college scholarship program.

“This is a short-sighted decision by a subcommittee of the Finance Committee,” said Mark Shriver, president of Save the Children Action Network, in a statement. “When he proposed his budget last month, Governor Sununu showed that he recognizes the importance of a full-day of kindergarten and understands the long-term economic benefits quality early learning programs can have for New Hampshire. The Republican majority in the House should stand with Governor Sununu and vote to put the full-day kindergarten funding request back into the budget.”

Full-day kindergarten isn’t the only proposal on the chopping block. The Alcohol Abuse Prevention and Treatment Fund was also cut this week.

The Alcohol Fund was created in 2000 by a bipartisan majority in the Legislature to be a funding 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 funds would be allocated to the Governor’s Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention, Intervention, and Treatment to pay contracts for service providers in communities.

The fund has only been fully financed one time since its inception, which was in the 2003-2004 biennium. In his budget speech, Sununu proposed increasing the funds to 3.4 percent, double the 1.7 percent rate the previous budget had set.

“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.

In several biennium budgets, the governor or Legislature would usually suspend the formula and allocate monies from the general fund to go to substance abuse prevention, treatment, and recovery.

Since there’s $59 million less in tax revenue coming in than expected when Sununu wrote his budget, Alcohol Fund advocates suspected that lawmakers would suspend the formula again. However, a more dramatic approach was taken by the House Finance Committee on Tuesday.

An amendment introduced by Rep. Neal Kurk, R-Weare, was added to the budget in House Bill 2 that would repeal the Alcohol Fund for good and it passed in a 6-4 vote on party lines.

“They’re trying to get to a number and they’re trying to come up with different avenues to do that, and some are very creative,” said Kate Frey, vice president of advocacy for New Futures, a nonprofit advocacy group that’s been one of the biggest proponents of the Alcohol Fund.

“New Futures has always been in favor of restoring the Alcohol Fund and using it as intended by the original statute to address problems for the substance abuse crisis,” she told NH Journal. “The fact that they are repealing the Alcohol Fund in its entirety is very unsettling.”

Advocates and some lawmakers like the fund because it’s non-lapsing and flexible, which is a creative and innovative solution to curb the opioid epidemic. The funds are non-restrictive, unlike some federal funds from grants that can’t be used to build brick-and-mortar recovery centers, for example.

New Hampshire is expected to receive $6 million, less than the $10 million previously anticipated by state officials, from the 21st Century Cures Act, bipartisan legislation approved by Congress and signed into law by former President Barack Obama in December, which gave $6.3 billion in funding to states hit hardest by the opioid crisis.

When Kurk introduced the amendment, advocates were also concerned because the language in the amendment appeared that he also repealed the authority of the Governor’s Commission to disperse the funds. The issue was cleared up on Wednesday, when that language was changed, giving the authority back to the Governor’s Commission to allocate funds, but still repealing the Alcohol Fund. The measure passed on a 5-4 vote on party lines, with Kurk absent.

Rep. Cindy Rosenwald, D-Nashua, who sits on the House Finance Committee, said the Governor’s Commission would receive $5.9 million in 2018 and $6.2 million in 2019 for alcohol and drug abuse education, prevention, treatment, and recovery, slightly less than what was allocated in the current biennium. If the elimination of the Alcohol Fund is passed, it would be up to the Legislature in each budget to allocate whatever they thought was an appropriate amount.

“Without the stability of that fund, it’s concerning to providers that are thinking about expanding their services here,” Rosenwald told NH Journal. “The flat funding for the next two years doesn’t expand access to treatment or recovery very much.”

When introducing the amendment in New Hampshire, Kurk said it was inappropriate for alcohol funds to go to the opioid crisis and that the issue the fund was originally created to solve, alcohol abuse, isn’t the main issue anymore — it’s opioids.

Advocates were quick to point out that the statute language when it was first written allowed funds to be used for alcohol and drug abuse programs. They also dismissed the idea that New Hampshire doesn’t have an alcohol problem anymore. According to a 2014 report, the Granite State’s per capita alcohol consumption is nearly twice the national average.

“I was very surprised at the elimination of the [Alcohol] Fund and I was surprised that they would suggest that somehow there is a disconnect between alcohol and our current opioid epidemic,” said Tym Rourke, chair of the Governor’s Commission, in an interview with NH Journal.

“The suggestion that New Hampshire only has an opioid problem is just false and somewhat disappointing that the Legislature would be picking one group of individuals who are suffering over another,” he added.

Previously, the Senate Finance Committee recommended passage of Senate Bill 196, which would put the Alcohol Fund at the 3.4 percent rate originally proposed by Sununu. The bill was laid on the table so lawmakers could go through the budget process before deciding on the fate of that bill.

Once the House Finance Committee signs off on the budget, it goes to the full House for a vote. The Senate will then get their turn to go line-by-line in the budget. At this point, Senate budget writers could have more money to play with since revenue estimates change throughout the year, so in theory, reinstating the Alcohol Fund and funding full-day kindergarten could see a new life. Advocates for those issues are hopeful the Senate would return them to the budget for Sununu to sign.

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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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Another year is gone and New Hampshire is still one of the states hit hardest by the opioid crisis. Now, a new legislature is again trying to figure out how to curb the rampant use of opioids.

Lawmakers might be hesitant to allocate more funds to the effort, since it can appear previous funding has had little effect. But advocacy groups, health experts, and recovering addicts say money is only part of the solution. According to them, the state needs to be more flexible with how the funds are spent and amenable to creative solutions.

That was one of the themes discussed at the State House on Tuesday, where advocates asked the Senate Finance Committee to approve a bill funding the state’s Alcohol Fund.

It’s a unique mechanism created by the legislature in 2000 that takes 5 percent of the gross profits from the sale of alcohol to support alcohol and drug education, abuse prevention, and treatment programs. In the past year, approximately $19 million would have gone to service providers and recovery centers that are dealing with the opioid crisis at a local level.

The Alcohol Fund has only been fully financed one time in its history. In previous biennium budgets, the governor or legislature have transferred the revenue to the general fund and only appropriated a small amount to the Alcohol Fund.

Supporters of the bill say the fund is a creative solution the state should use because it already exists in law and is designed to aid prevention and treatment of issues like the opioid epidemic.

“Two governors have called substance abuse the biggest problem in this state,” Keene Democrat Sen. Jay Kahn said, noting Gov. Chris Sununu called for putting more money into treatment, prevention, and recovery in his inauguration speech.

“I completely agree,” Kahn added. “This legislation provides an innovative solution to the real problems confronting the state.”

A similar proposal was introduced in the Boston City Council, where councilors tried to add a 2 percent tax on alcohol sold in Boston to help fund substance abuse prevention programs. The council eventually voted against the proposal.

New Hampshire’s Alcohol Fund is different. In the “Live Free or Die” state, voters wouldn’t be too happy about a tax on their alcohol (a major reason why Bay Staters cross the border). The Alcohol Fund uses revenue the state is already making from sales.

That’s the reason former state Sen. Ned Gordon, R-Bristol, authored that 2000 law establishing the fund. And while it’s focus back then was mostly on alcohol abuse and prevention, the language was broad enough to evolve over time to include other substance abuse.

“The state adopted a policy that if we are going to aggressively market alcohol, we are going to accept the consequences,” Gordon testified Tuesday. “You can’t be just committed to a treatment program. You have to be committed to a recovery, so we need more resources going to prevention and recovery. Unless you provide the funding to do it, you won’t have the capacity to do it.”

While the Alcohol Fund revenue goes to the Governor’s Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention, Intervention, and Treatment for their determination on what contracts, programs, and centers need the funds most, advocates said more funding could be used for New Hampshire’s Safe Station programs — another unique and creative approach to the opioid crisis.

Safe Station is the brainchild of Chris Hickey of the Manchester Fire Department. The program launched in May 2016, and anyone who is struggling with drug addiction can go to any one of the 10 fire stations in the Queen City any time and connect with recovery resources.

Anyone who visits the fire stations will go to Serenity Place, an outpatient program focusing on recovery work, or a similar center, and no one is turned away if they go through that method. Safe Station doesn’t receive any direct funding from the state, which can place limits on the program. Overall it’s seen as a success for the city, but it may still be too early to tell. Nashua also opened their first Safe Station in November.

From May to December 2016, there were 509 overdoses and 49 deaths — a slight drop from the same time period in 2015.

The American Medical Response group recently announced there was a slight increase in overdoses and deaths from 2015 to 2016 for Manchester and Nashua.

In 2015, Nashua saw 250 overdoses, with 19 fatalities. In 2016, the city’s total overdose number rose to 365 with 40 fatalities. For Manchester, there were 729 overdoses with 88 fatalities in 2015 and then 785 overdoses and 90 fatalities in 2016.

Traci Green, associate professor of emergency medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, is hopeful those numbers will decrease in 2017 as the Safe Station programs expand.

“I hope this is one new entree into an expanded hub for people to enter,” she told NH Journal. “There is great hope in trying to think about how public health and public safety can work together to get people to go to a place where it’s safe and connect with other peers in a time when they’re feeling extremely vulnerable. It seems like a great working relationship.”

Green called for states to be more creative in their thinking on how to address the opioid crisis, and make sure that it fits with the individual needs of their towns and cities. She applauded fire departments, law enforcement, and public health groups taking a role in prevention, treatment, and recovery rather than one entity trying to do everything.

“The entree into treatment and recovery seem to really work in Manchester, and people can have their clear roles and responsibilities,” she said. “I think that’s really important.”

It may be difficult to replicate Safe Station programs throughout New Hampshire, since fire stations must be staffed 24/7 and have access to a treatment center or emergency shelter nearby. It’s a problem the state will wrestle with as they decide how to disburse funding to all communities.

“Manchester has available resources that a place like Concord just certainly wouldn’t have,” James Vara, the state’s “drug czar,” said in September. “So, you have to look at them and temper that with the fact that these approaches may not all work. Safe Station is a great access point for people who are suffering, but they also have available resources like Serenity Place, which many of your districts wouldn’t have.”

It’s possible Sununu could address solutions like funding the Alcohol Fund and Safe Station programs throughout the state in his proposed 2018-2019 biennium budget, scheduled for released Thursday. Sununu said the opioid crisis was the state’s top priority, and funding to fix the crisis is expected to be a significant part of his budget proposal.

Combatting the epidemic is usually a bipartisan issue, though it may depend on how creative lawmakers in the State House can get.

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Despite several inches of snow in most parts of the state, substance abuse prevention advocates and recovering addicts made the trek to the State House to show support for a bill that would be able to fund more recovery programs in the Granite State.

“What are we waiting for?,” deputy director at New Futures Kate Frey asked at a Tuesday press conference. New Futures is a nonprofit advocacy organization looking to prevent and reduce substance abuse in the New Hampshire. According to her, the state is suffering a serious epidemic and needs creativity to get out of it.

One of those creative solutions unique to New Hampshire and endorsed by New Futures should be fully funding the state’s Alcohol Fund.

The New Hampshire Alcohol Fund was created in 2000 as a non-lapsing and continually appropriated fund to support alcohol and drug education, abuse prevention, and treatment programs. The law provides 5 percent of the gross profits from the sale of alcohol to support such programs. The funds would be allocated to the Governor’s Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention, Intervention, and Treatment to pay contracts for service providers in the communities hardest hit by opioid abuse.

The fund began during the 2003-2004 biennium and was fully funded in that budget. But every year since, the 5 percent funding has been suspended by either the governor or the legislature, and revenue transferred to the General Fund. In the subsequent years, the legislature appropriated only a small amount of general funds — significantly less than the 5 percent that was mandated by law for prevention and treatment.

The 2016-2017 state budget allocated only 1.7 percent to the Alcohol Fund. That total amount equated to about $6.6 million, instead of the $19 million had the fund received the total 5 percent. In the previous legislative session, lawmakers allocated an additional $2.5 million from the General Fund for prevention, treatment, and recovery in 2017, bringing the total to $9.1 million.

But a bill in the Senate would fully fund the Alcohol Fund for the 2017-2018 biennium at the 5 percent rate. At a hearing for Senate Bill 166 on Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee, prime sponsor Sen. Jay Kahn, D-Kenne, said if the state is going to be serious about addressing the opioid crisis by focusing on prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery, then legislators should be doing everything possible to get ahead of the problem.

“Where we invest our money is a direct reflection of our priorities, and our priorities ought to be with people in New Hampshire who need care,” he said. Kahn also called for creative ways to fight to crisis with “yankee ingenuity.”

But it might not be an easy task to convince the Legislature that this is a worthwhile endeavor.

In the last biennium budget, lawmakers approved $42 million in substance abuse funding. Former Gov. Maggie Hassan was criticized for originally vetoing the budget, delaying the appropriation of the funds by three months. The total amount was $14 million more than the 2014-2015 budget. During the legislative session, lawmakers approved at least $5 million in additional funding.

Some legislators on the Senate Finance Committee were concerned that the state has already spent a significant amount of money, yet didn’t seem to fix anything.

“If we just throw money at the problem, we don’t necessarily solve the problem,” Sen. Bob Giuda, R-Warren, said.

Gov. Chris Sununu is scheduled to release his budget proposal for the 2018-2019 biennium on Thursday, so it remains to be seen how much money he’s putting towards the opioid crisis or if he plans to fully fund the Alcohol Fund. During his bid for the corner office, Sununu and his Democratic challenger Colin van Ostern said they supported returning the Alcohol Fund to 5 percent.

In his inauguration speech, Sununu said getting the opioid crisis under control was the state’s top priority.

“I believe we need to start in the beginning in terms of our schools,” he said on January 5. “Aggressive prevention programs in our schools that start earlier, that are more aggressive. And I think we need to start bringing in the parents and the stakeholders into those programs. There is a different path for everybody and we need to be open to all the paths. We need to put resources behind our words and take real action.”

NH Journal previously reported fully funding the Alcohol Fund had bipartisan support among most of the gubernatorial candidates. And when the fund was first debated in 2000, it received widespread, bipartisan support in the House and Senate. Former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen vetoed the original legislation establishing the Alcohol Fund, but a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate overrode her veto, so it has the potential to appeal to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

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