The 97% Solution

In the Nashua Telegraph, Kevin Landrigan reports that Republican lawmakers are asking Governor John Lynch to share the budget proposals he required department heads to submit last winter, which called for spending just 97% of last year's total.

Senate Republican Leader Peter Bragdon, of Milford, and House Republican Leader Sherman Packard, of Londonderry, asked Lynch to release state agency head work papers from last fall that assumed a 3 percent cut in state spending over the next two years.

"We need to come back; we need to make the cuts which we are asking for,'' Packard told reporters.

"We are asking for the governor to step up, call us back into special session so we can make the cuts necessary to make.''

The budgets that Commissioners craft in the winter are given to the Governor to help him prepare his budget address, but have not been made public. The Josiah Bartlett Center has requested access to these 97% budgets for months, to no avail. We're pleased that Governor Lynch is now willing to share with the public the same information he had when putting together his budget proposal to the Legislature.