“Campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved”

James Harvey Robinson

 

Steve Merrill’s recent announcement he wants to be New Hampshire’s governor for another two years was as unexpected as the arrival of allied forces on the French coast fifty years ago.  In so doing, he joins State Senator Wayne King and three Libertarian hopefuls with similar ambitions.

While such issues as health care reform, right-to-work rules, term limits, the privatization of state agencies and citizen-originated initiative petitions should be critically debated by the candidates … taxes and education are likely to take center stage.  This campaign focus will be driven by a 1995 Supreme Court deadline to resolve the issue of the state’s reliance on local property taxes to fund public education.

Unfortunately, these wannabes have begun their campaigns with an inordinate amount of posturing and rhetoric, but precious little in the way of substance.  None of them have articulated the type of thoughtful, well-crafted policies necessary to address and solve the many challenges facing the state.  The voters deserve no less!

Wayne King is fashioning his campaign around an assumption a settlement to the public school funding decision will require a state income tax and his populist message of lowering property taxes.  His educational reforms remain inexorably linked to few changes in the existing system but is dependent on his tax policies.

Governor Merrill is leading the crusade of those vehemently opposed to new taxes and has “pledged” to veto any sales of income tax crossing his desk; leaving the issue of a statewide property tax on the table.  While promising to offer a plan to resolve the lawsuit brought by the five poor school districts, his strategy to “improve educational quality” remains nebulous.

The Libertarians appear to be philosophical fellow-travelers of the governor on the tax issue.  However, they generally favor a more radical approach to educational reform, one based around the heresy of privatizing much of the system.

Campaign rhetoric aside, the court may ultimately inject itself as the arbiter of future tax policy in the Granite State, albeit over a gubernatorial veto.  In the absence of a court-approved compromise, it may rule local property taxes cannot the basis for funding public education.  If the alternative to a statewide tax thus becomes the draconian curtailment a wide range of state services, the latter might be more politically unpalatable than the imposition of a sales or income tax.

Given such a scenario, it is not unreasonable to challenge each of the candidates on a number of related issues.  Specifically, if a court mandate necessitates the imposition of a state sales, income or property tax, will you support such reasonable conditions as :

  • limiting the use of its proceeds to funding public education?
  • ensuring monies raised through such a statewide tax relieve local property taxes on a dollar-for-dollar basis?
  • requiring landlords, currently collecting property taxes through their tenant’s rent, to pass at least some of their property tax relief on to those tenants?
  • restricting local communities from quickly re-escalating local property taxes to near current levels?
  • enacting educational spending caps, limiting incremental monies which can be collected at the local level through increased property taxes to a fixed percentage in excess of statewide averages?
  • permitting local school districts to experiment with alternatives to public education, free of state interference?
  • limiting state school standards with no proven correlation to enhanced student performance, and for which state funding is not provided?
  • tightening minimal standards of student performance?
  • periodic competency testing of educators, particularly when student performance fails to measure up over a period of time?
  • and, finally, do you believe a sales tax, income tax or statewide property tax is least being  oppressive to the majority of Granitestaters … and why?

Whatever their personal convictions, some sort of broad-based state tax is probably inevitable during the tenure of the next governor.  It is, therefore, an imperative each aspirant be openly challenged to outline the guidelines they would insist upon were one to be enacted. 

Refusing to address this matter is irresponsible and may provides an open-ended invitation to the army special interest groups who are salivating at the prospect of new taxes to feed their insatiable thirst for public dollars.