July 23, 2008
by Bill St. Laurent, President
The Association of Portsmouth Taxpayers
The Portsmouth City Council had a public hearing, Monday night, to get the residents to vote for a city resolution to do away with the “pledge”. This resolution was sponsored by our state Representative Laura Pantelakos and went down to defeat. I was the only speaker and my take on these resolutions from these cities and towns is in my speech which is quoted below.
Bill’s remarks before the City Council:
“This resolution smacks against our constitutional rights to express ours views on a given subject. First of all I do not think it is right for local officials to be make resolutions for local residents when it comes to taking the rights away from other citizens. If you vote yes tonight for this resolution you are telling the rest of the state that the residents of Portsmouth oppose the pledge, which may or may not be the feelings of the residents of Portsmouth.
This resolution seems simple enough in that it takes away the need to have this NO BROADBASED TAX PLEDGE but it also puts a stigma on those who would take this pledge. Without getting into the good or bad of a broadbased tax, which I believe should not be part of the discussion of this resolution, I think the issue is telling someone what they can and cannot do.
If we are going to decide weather we should or should not have a broadbased tax , let the voters decide this issue at the polls, not some town or city elected officials that want to put a gag order on state residents running for office. There is nothing now that restricts candidates for state office from supporting or opposing a broadbased tax so why now send a resolution restricting this freedom. You may say there is nothing in this resolution restricting them from taking the pledge and that may be so, but the mere fact these resolutions are out there puts a pall over this pledge.
It seems to me that the ones wanting to do away with this pledge feel the heat in the kitchen at election time and would love to do everything in their power to do away with it. I say, “If you can’t stand the heat in the kitchen, get out and move to Maine, Massachusetts or Vermont where you would not have this problem and you would have all the money you want to spend like there was no tomorrow.”
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Kudos to Bill for having the guts to speak up against Pantelakos’ effort to pass this resolution.