December 14, 2008
Union Leader
The Democrats have controlled the New Hampshire governor’s office for 10 of the last 12 years and will control it for the next two. They will also control the New Hampshire Senate and House for two more years.
Last week, the National Conference of State Legislatures issued its report on state finances. The only state with a deficit greater than 15 percent of its general fund budget was New Hampshire. We had the worst deficit of any of the 50 states (ncsl.org/summit/budgetmap.htm).
And last May, the Pew Center on the States issued its fourth report on the overall performance of the states (www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Overall%20Performance.pdf). In its three previous studies, the Pew Center reported that over the last decade with Democratic governors in control, New Hampshire’s ranking on its performance, which had been rated good in the 1990s, was steadily getting worse. Unfortunately, we have hit rock bottom. New Hampshire now ranks 50th in its overall performance of state government.
This is all the more disturbing because this deterioration of service is taking place while there has been an uncontrolled increase in state spending. Last spring, going into the election season, the Democrat-controlled Legislature and Gov. John Lynch passed a budget with a 17 percent increase in spending even though they knew we were facing tough financial times. This spending explosion gave virtually every constituency in the state a big pre-election spending gift. Now that the election is over, the governor is trying to slash away at the deficit monster he created.
These are not the only big problems Democrat control has produced. The state retirement fund has been mismanaged under Democrat leadership for the past decade. It has been the victim of bad policy and under-funding, putting the retirement nest eggs of public employees in jeopardy. It was in serious trouble before this year’s meltdown of the financial sector and is now in even worse shape. This is a financial problem for today, and unfortunately it will take years to fully repair. Furthermore, the financial impact of all this on our communities will be devastating.
These 10 years of Democrat control are also characterized by a lack of leadership in the school funding issue. Other than the statewide property tax Gov. Jeanne Shaheen gave us, nothing significant has been done to fix the problem. They let it grow from a manageable acorn of an issue into a giant oak of a fiscal crisis.
Finally, last year, Gov. Lynch acknowledged that a constitutional amendment was required to return the power over education policy to the Legislature and governor. Unfortunately, he could not get the Democrat-controlled Senate and House to act responsibly to move a good amendment forward.
The basic problem, of course, is that the Democrats have been good at winning elections and terrible at managing the state of New Hampshire. They have used the politically successful formula of taking the pledge to veto a sales or income tax while still promising to increase spending for every voter’s favorite program. That something-for-everyone campaign rhetoric makes their promise on taxes hypocritical and dishonest.
The pledge is more than just a promise on tax structure. Implicit in the commitment is a promise to keep spending low and state government small and efficient so that broad-based taxes are not needed. The Democrats have broken that implicit component of the promise. A 17 percent increase in spending and a $250 million deficit will eventually change New Hampshire into another Massachusetts.
Our state can be managed and run well even in tough times. In the only two years the Republicans have held the governor’s office out of the last dozen years, Gov. Craig Benson cut spending and produced an $82 million surplus. Even with that surplus he inherited in 2004, Gov. Lynch has managed to turn it into a huge deficit.
These are important issues. They should be discussed on a factual basis. It is amazing that the Democrats seem unwilling to defend their performance with information. Rather, they are trying to hide their record by ranting and distorting what happened in New Hampshire over a quarter of a century ago. They are hoping their misrepresentation and their politics of personal destruction will keep the voters of New Hampshire from knowing that the Democrats are ruining our state.
John H. Sununu was governor of New Hampshire from 1983 to 1989 and chief of staff to President George H. Bush.