Lots of budget talk in this weekend's political columns.
First, Kevin Landrigan writes in the Nashua Telegraph that Fred Tausch and his group, Stimulating The Economy Without Assumulating Record Debt (STEWARD) is examining how the
federal stimulus bill with impact New Hampshire:
On Monday, the group will release results of an economic analysis study done by Brian Gottlob, who has his own Seacoast consulting business and produces an ongoing report on economic trends.
In the report, Gottlob identified more than $920 million in stimulus money already headed to New Hampshire. That total is incomplete, he wrote, because it doesn't include what competitive grants New Hampshire projects may win in the coming months. Here's how Gottlob gets to this massive number:
• Education: $258 million.
• Medicaid: $250 million.
• Transportation: $129 million.
• Individual income support: $79 million.
• Environment: $63 million.
• Energy-weatherization: $61.7 million.
• State fiscal stabilization aid: $36 million.
• Housing: $33.5 million.
• Health care: $9.3 million.
Gottlob noted the two largest pools of money would be used to help pay for the next two-year state budget.
Landrigan also reports that budget writers are working to restore the $83 million in building aid that the House Finance Committee killed:
The House Finance Committee decided that since Lynch wouldn't put it in his state budget, the House panel wouldn't either, and the Senate can decide where it fits in its priorities.
Lynch press secretary Colin Manning said the governor is committed to making sure it finds a home.
"It's got to be somewhere,'' Manning said.
House Finance Committee Chairman Marjorie Smith, D-Durham, noted state law makes clear that school building aid is "subject to appropriation,'' which is legal speak for anywhere up to 100 percent, depending on how much the Legislature has on hand.
Landrigan also goes department by department to identify the winners and losers in the House Finance Budget.
In the Union Leader, Tom Fahey pens his weekly Under the State House Dome column and looks ahead to this week's
budget debate in the House:
On a party-line vote last week, the House Finance Committee passed a budget much like Gov. John Lynch's plan. Both versions maintain a roughly $50 million reserve, or Rainy Day Fund, after they tap it for about $40 million in June. They both have a tobacco-tax increase, a gambling tax and a hike in the Rooms and Meals tax.
But there are some key changes. For one thing, new taxes on estates and capital gains were nowhere in Lynch's plan. The House added $16 million to cut down the wait list for services to the developmentally disabled; $2 million for cancer prevention, $1 million for HIV-/AIDS programs and money for catastrophic illness victims and suicide prevention.
Lynch's plan to give the state Liquor Commission more business clout fell by the wayside. Liquor has more work to do before it can start closing marginal stores and setting up liquor sales in private stores, the committee said.
In the Concord Monitor, Lauren Dorgan's column points out that even those who wrote this budget don't like it very much. Dorgan says the budget news is much grimmer than when Lynch gave a
somber budget address in February:
Now we know that we didn't know from grim. House budget-writers backed two taxes on the wealthy, an estate tax and a capital-gains tax, on top of keeping most of Lynch's cuts in place (while adding back a few social programs, like cancer prevention).
The worst part: Even then, the budget still didn't balance, leading budget-writers to call for an additional 1.25 percent across-the-board cut, leaving agencies to decide where to find the money. (The Republican alternative budget did more than that, including a 13 percent across-the-board cut at many state agencies.)
