Good news for NH budget makers

Gov. Maggie Hassan will take some good news about state revenues wherever she can get it. That arrived Thursday at the first meeting of the Governor’s Revenue Estimating Panel that she had created earlier in the week. Dennis Delay, with the nonpartisan New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies, concluded that after a lengthy economic slumber, state tax ad fees are going start creeping back up. He based his optimism on the belief that a steadily recovering housing market and consumer spending will drive a little more economic growth. This boomlet leads the group to conclude that existing revenues will increase by 1.7 percent in 2014 and 2.1 percent in 2015. Together, this would provide about $133 million more for the next budget. That’s slightly more than the $100 million revenue upgrade that the Hassan administration had been looking at as the new base going forward. More than half of the revenue increase in Delay’s report would come from the state’s two business taxes, plus the levy on property transactions. Hassan certainly drew a tough line on the budget in her directive to state agencies last month that they present spending plans that assumed a 3 percent cut in 2014 and no increase in current expenses for 2015. But she cautioned at the time that these benchmarks wouldn’t represent how much gets allotted to each department. Even the increase hardly brings us back to pre- recession levels. Indeed, Delay said he estimates it will take until 2016 for state revenues to return to what they had been in mid-2007 before the recession hit. On the chopping block Which Republican-led cause in 2010-11 is most likely to be repealed by this partisan-split Legislature? The Telegraph’s Capitol Watch project is examining the biggest issues beyond the state budget for 2013-14, and there are at least nine proposals coming out that try to undo what the most recent Republican-dominated Legislature did in 2011-12. The undoing of the Stand Your Ground law is unlikely to top the hit parade. To be sure, the Democratically led House of Representatives stands a good chance of passing this measure from Majority Leader Steve Shurtleff, D-Concord, that would do away with the right of citizens facing a threat to use deadly force in public. Former House Speaker William O’Brien, R-Mont Vernon, was a big proponent of this one, modeling the change after a law adopted in Florida that has become a major source of controversy with the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida last year. A few hundred supporters of gun rights and Libertarian principles turned out against the bill during its hearing last week. Senate President Peter Bragdon, R-Milford, confided that he didn’t believe enough in his majority party would go along with the change, which is strongly supported by law enforcement across the state. So, if not that one, which? Well, the mandate that voters show an ID at the polls isn’t likely to be done away with, but opponents may find a Senate receptive to major changes to it. You may recall that the Senate hadn’t wanted to prevent those without an ID from voting in 2012, as the new law will do for all elections after September 2013. Sen. Russell Prescott, R-Kingston, had championed the process that was in place for the last election, which didn’t require people to show an ID. The Senate may well be willing to go back to its previous position, and Democrats running the House would be smart to take that one and chalk it up as a major victory. FRM restitution The Financial Resources Mortgage scandal is the issue that simply doesn’t want to go away. We’ve had two legislative investigations on the matter, and it dominated the attempt to remove then-Banking Commissioner Peter Hildreth from office in 2010. Ultimately, Hildreth agreed to resign. But a bipartisan group of senators is reviving the notion that citizen investors in FRM should be entitled to some restitution from the state because government regulators failed to stop the Ponzi scheme in its tracks. Peter Bragdon and Sen.