SPENDING ADVOCATES looking for a home in the upcoming state budget proposal from the state Senate found out this past week there may not be any room in the inn.
The shrewd move of Senate Finance Committee Chairman James Gray, R-Rochester, to restore the three most unpopular cuts in the House-approved budget means the upper chamber has spent nearly 70% of the additional state revenue its Ways and Means Committee had identified.
Gray rattled more than a few cages when he announced that few if any Senate spending bills on the table will make it into the final document.
Currently, there are 65 such Senate bills in limbo.
There's nothing new here.
The House of Representatives always gets to start this process of writing a budget.
This is why whenever the Senate has a spending bill that it likes, the custom is to put it on the table until the budget gets over to the Senate.
Then Gray's committee used to decide which ones would make the final cut and how much money on the dollar each one could receive.
That's not possible in a cycle when Gray's committee spent $160 million to get rid of a 3% cut in provider rates under Medicaid and deep cuts to programs for mental health and the developmentally disabled.
Here's a sample of a few of those big spending bills that will likely stay on the cutting room floor:
* Affordable Housing Fund (SB 81): Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Dan Innis, R-Bradford, proposes to double the $5 million that comes from the Real Estate Transfer Tax for housing and deposit $25 million more into this fund to support projects.
* Housing Affordable Guarantee (SB 86): This bipartisan bill from Senate Democratic Leader Rebecca Perkins Kwoka of Portsmouth would create up to a $300 million loan program to support low- and moderate-income housing.
* Homeless Services (SB 113): Senate Majority Leader Regina Birdsell of Hampstead's bill got a 23-0 roll call vote in the Senate to provide $12 million for homeless programs and $3 million to set up a stabilization fund to support rental deposits.
* Provisional long-term care eligibility (SB 131): A $1.5 million account would be set up in this bill from Sen. David Rochefort, R-Littleton, to make seniors immediately eligible for nursing home services under Medicaid while the facility determines permanent eligibility.
* Momnibus 2.0 (SB 246): Sen. Denise Ricciardi, R-Bedford, carries this one that would provide maternal depression screening for new mothers, create a perinatal psychiatric provider consult line and study barriers to creating independent birthing centers.
* Retiree COLA (SB 242): Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Bill Gannon, R-Sandown, heads up this plan to spend $98 million to provide a 5 to 10% cost-of-living adjustment for those who retired from public employment at least 10 years ago.
Public guardian becomes budget orphan
It's frustrating for those in the trenches that the Office of Public Guardian's pleas to get some help in the budget haven't worked.
Since the closure of the Laconia State School, this nonprofit has served as the last resort for people unable to make critical life decisions on their own.
A staff of 60 under CEO Lisabritt Solsky Stevens, a former deputy state Medicaid director, serves 1,400 clients.
The Department of Health and Human Services finances 850 slots, which is 70% of the agency's workload, but reimburses at such a low rate that for every case the OPG accepts this way, its deficit grows by $1,000.
By now you may have guessed there is legislation that would address this and it's sitting on the table in the Senate.
Sen. Kevin Avard, R-Nashua, championed SB 127 that would spend just under $4.5 million, $550,000 to create 50 more funded HHS slots and $3.9 million to both raise the payment rates and create more spaces.
Renewable Energy Fund has a pulse
Both Gov. Kelly Ayotte and the House of Representatives decided this was too tight a budget to have a multimillion-dollar account that supports renewable energy projects at the local level.
So they both decided all their money, except for the cost to run the office of offshore wind industry development and energy innovation, should be deposited into the treasury, an amount that exceeds $10 million.
Environmental advocates say the move is a lawsuit in the making and that if the projects aren't financed then the "alternative compliance payments" made by electric utilities that pay for them amounts to an illegal tax.
The two lead senators on the topic, Loudon Republican Howard Pearl and Dover Democrat David Watters, believe they have a middle ground.
Their emerging proposal would first let the current balance of the fund be used to reduce the state budget deficit on June 30, which ranges from $80 million to $130 million depending on whose revenue estimates you use as a starting point.
Then the Watters-Pearl plan would permit $5 million a year to be spent for projects with the rest of any monies going to the treasury.
After big win, digital assets have a down week
A week after New Hampshire made national news as the first state to allow government investment in cryptocurrency, the state Senate put another crypto bill into the breakdown lane.
With little debate, the Senate kicked back to Innis's Commerce Committee a bill (HB 639) to create a court docket to deal with disputes over blockchain and digital currencies and to create model legislation to protect digital technology.
Sen. Donovan Fenton, D-Keene, said states such as Arkansas that adopted similar laws have either undone them or regretted the move.
"This bill is not ready for prime time and I do not think a re-referral is the appropriate move on this," Fenton said.
The Senate disagreed and re-referred the bill which means it will return to the full Senate for final action early on next year.
Ayotte, Legislature scrap over budget
Senate President Sharon Carson, R-Londonderry, said this past week that it wasn't a good look for Ayotte's office to ask Senate budget writers to reverse a $100,000 cut to her office budget.
"It's a little disappointing to see that they (the governor's office) don't want to give up (anything). We gave a million dollars. They are just being asked to give $100,000," Carson said.
The Senate Finance Committee denied the request and Gray said it's likely the Senate budget will honor all of the back-of-the-budget cuts contained in the House spending plan.
Ayotte's cut her office budget by 2.63%, more than the 2.34% cut the Legislature made to its own budget.
A few other hot buttons left to be pushed
In the coming weeks, we'll see what is to become of two popular programs on the chopping block, the Office of the Child Advocate and the state Division of the Arts.
Ayotte's budget had funded the first and given the arts half of what they had gotten in the past.
We hear what's likely in the Senate budget is for the child advocate office to be retained but at a lower staffing level.
Some Senate budget writers were surprised to learn that only about a third of its 10-person staff spends its time out in the field investigating residential placements of at-risk children.
The arts have a lot of support outside the State House, but not as much under the Dome.
One scenario would have the Senate budget restore an account reference for the program, but put only $1 in it.
This would permit the program to use its survival to pursue private funding and more charitable donations to support its work.
A primer on YDC victim loans
A favorite talking point from critics of the Youth Development Center Settlement Fund is about high-interest loans victims can take out while waiting for a government payday for damages they suffered due to sexual and physical abuse.
There are a few well-informed financial companies that have studied the YDC abuse landscape and determined nearly all these damage claims are winners.
They extend to alleged victims the offer to pay cash they only have to pay back with proceeds from any damage award. The lending rate is high -- often in the 35% range.
This isn't like a payday loan, which gives you money that you have to pay back no matter what happens to you in the future.
In this case, no damage award, nothing owed by victims to these clients.
The law firms representing these victims aren't involved in these transactions and their principals typically urge victims not to enter these, often to no avail.
Congress mimeos of Ayotte's Medicaid copayment
Leading Democratic lawmakers here have sharply criticized Ayotte's budget for proposing to bring back a copayment for health insurance premiums for moderate-income families in the Children's Health Insurance Program.
This plan requires families pay 5% of premiums if they earn 255% of the federal poverty level, which is just over $80,000 a year for a family of four.
This past week, the House released the outline of how it would generate up to $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid.
This is part of Trump's "big beautiful bill" that would include extending tax cuts for all income classes including the super-wealthy.
It did include "a new cost-sharing requirement for some beneficiaries in the program, not to exceed five percent of a patient's income."
Why is the 5% number chosen by both New Hampshire and Congress? Federal law permits Medicaid premium copayments but only for families that make at least 150% of the federal poverty level and those costs can't exceed 5% of income.
Formella for Congress -- oops, not now at least
The left-leaning Amplify N.H. could not have pounced harder when a website registration log revealed that two new websites were created to promote the Republican candidacy of New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella of Portsmouth in the 1st Congressional District.
"John Formella has spent nearly a decade defending Trump's most extreme policies, from gutting environmental protections to undermining abortion rights and blocking gun safety laws, all while helping to create an $80 million hole in our state budget," said Amplify N.H. Executive Director Ryan Mahoney.
Department of Justice Communications Director Michael Garrity nipped the political nonstory in the bud.
"Attorney General Formella remains fully focused on serving the people of New Hampshire in his current role. He did not authorize and was not involved in the registration of these domain names," he said in a statement.
You don't need permission to create a website in someone else's name; that's why the same registration log service recently listed a new website promoting Scott Brown for U.S. Senate -- back in Massachusetts.
NH cameo in Biden redux book
CNN's Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios combine on a new book, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again."
You knew somehow there would be a New Hampshire angle.
The book recounts retiring U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, D-N.H., in the crowd of that June 15, 2024, Biden fundraiser in California in which former President Barack Obama was seen gingerly escorting a clearly lost Biden off the stage.
"He doesn't look like he knows where he's supposed to go," thought Kuster in the book as she sat with California congresswoman Julia Brownley.
"Kuster had already reached the conclusion that there was no scenario in which Biden would be reelected. She turned to Brownley. 'We can't go out there and campaign for 'four more years,' she said. 'That's just not tenable.'"
Despite that episode, Kuster defended Biden and Harris two weeks later in a social media post as the "leaders we need to move our country forward."
Chandler is back
Former House Speaker Gene Chandler has had more political lives than a cat.
His latest reincarnation came this past week when the Conway Daily Sun reported Chandler had been picked by the Republican-led Carroll County House delegation to replace Terry McCarthy, R-Conway, who stepped down April 1.
Chandler, a Bartlett Republican, won over Wharton Sinkler, D-Sandwich, who had lost to McCarthy for the seat last November and Conway School Board member Joe Mosca, an independent.
"I'm a lifelong resident of New Hampshire, Carroll County, Bartlett and Jackson. I've kind of been around for a little while. I hope that works to my advantage, but you never know," Chandler said.