November 16, 2008
Fosters
I personally want to congratulate State Senator Joe Kenney of Wakefield for running a positive and issued oriented race for governor. He addressed the major issue in state government, which was the spending in last year’s state budget which dug the state into a hole, and now that hole is even deeper given the slow down in the national economy.
Last year’s Lynch budget was a 17.5 percent increase over the previous two-year budget with an additional $475 million in spending. In the previous two-year budget Governor Lynch claimed he eliminated a $300 million deficit when entering office but in reality he was left an $80 million surplus by then Governor Benson. He is now confronted with a real close-out deficit of $200 to $250 million in the 2008/09 two year budget. Going into the new two -year budget of 2009/2010 it is estimated the state deficit will be $500 to $700 million.
Senator Kenney in his election pointed out the need to make immediate major cuts in state government to stop the hemorrhaging in order to protect the taxpayer. In the WMUR Channel Nine debate the governor had no specific plan on how to balance the new budget. Conversely, Senator Kenney called for an immediate 10 percent cuts across the board within each agency which would save $500 million. This would be done being mindful of preserving essential state services and trying to prevent state worker layoffs.
Senator Kenney pointed out savings by reducing the usage of cells phones, creating a fleet management system for state cars and freezing high price consultants.
It was determined that through a recent audit that 3,000 state personnel have cell phones and that 30 percent of personnel in 12 agencies have cell phones, not to mention there are four service providers. This cost taxpayers approximately $1 million per year.
He further mentioned that the state has approximately 2,000 state cars that should have a fleet management system in place with a regional motor pool system in order to create savings. A state car is check in and out for business use, unless it is for on going public safety or highway purposes.
He wanted the freezing of high price consultants, the gutting out of direct overages (incidentals) from state contracts and a centralized purchasing system for all state agencies in order to create efficiencies and major savings.
Senator Kenney wanted to make state government more transparent to the public by putting checks and state audits on line like they do in other states. He was concerned that at the end of last year’s session $80 million was borrowed in a special session without a public hearing. He was appalled that the state retirement system executive director could resign after only working five months and be eligible for a $90 thousand severance package and called for her immediate removal two months ago. The governor remained silent, even though he appoints two members to the state retirement commission. Senator Kenney wanted an immediate review of all upper management employee contracts and to establish personnel guidelines for contracts.
Unlike Governor Lynch, he opposed a new accounting system that triggers an automatic tax if certain revenue projections are not met (all this without a vote). Basically, it created a system of taxation without representation.
Lastly, the governor did not take a position of the education adequacy law, which recreated donor and receiver towns. Senator Kenney was opposed to this new law. The adequacy law will cost over $100 million in order to fund in the 2009/10 budget.
It is quite clear in order to get to a balance budget in the next two year cycle only three things can happen: raise taxes (which the governor did last year by raising 23 taxes and fees), cut spending or hope that the new Obama administration will bail out New Hampshire.
Senator Kenney as Governor would have made the tough cuts to protect the taxpayer and brought back fiscal sanity with zero-base budgeting. Unfortunately, he did not have the resources — party backing and media support — to get his message out about the record spending in concord. No one was listening and the governor wanted no more debates to draw attention to state spending.
I was proud to support Joe Kenney for governor who truly sounded the alarm about state spending and was trying to tell us to live within our means.
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Note: According to a recent study by the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, we were told just last week that the LYNCH DEFICIT could be as much as $1 BILLION.