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Nashua Mayor Urges Planning Board To Reject Proposed Asphalt Plant

Nashua Mayor Urges Planning Board To Reject Proposed Asphalt Plant

Mayor Jim Donchess called on the board to deny a petition that would allow for the construction of the plant on Temple St. near downtown.

Dan Shalin,Patch Staff

Posted Thu, Dec 1, 2022 at 1:09 pm ET

Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess (Courtesy of the City of Nashua)

NASHUA, NH — Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess on Thursday urged the city’s Planning Board to reject a petition for the construction of a controversial asphalt production plant near downtown. The board is scheduled to meet again on Jan. 19.

The proposed plant would be located at 145 Temple St., east of Main Street. Donchess said there are several reasons why he’s come out against the plant, which has been proposed by Westford, Massachusetts-based Newport Construction Corp.

“I am opposed to adding an asphalt production plant to the property at 145 Temple St., east of Nashua’s Main Street.” Donchess said in a statement. “An asphalt plant at that location would create detrimental environmental issues, add noise and traffic, all of which would have a negative impact on neighborhood residents. Furthermore, it is counter to our goal to evolve that area into a residential neighborhood.”

Donchess continued: “An asphalt production plant would impact nearby property values and is inconsistent with the City’s 2022 Master Plan and the East Hollis Street Master Plan, including a beautiful Rail Trail that is planned directly adjacent to the Newport property. We have engaged an appraisal firm to evaluate the impact an asphalt plant would have on surrounding property values.

“I am urging the Planning Board to consider the requirements of the overlay zoning and deny this petition.”

According to the New Hampshire Union Leader, the proposed site of the plan is a 70,614-square-foot lot that is the former site of a lumberyard and a road construction company.

The property is in the general industrial zone and transit-overlay zone, though requires several waivers to go ahead, the newspaper reported.

In a project application, Newport Construction Corp. reportedly made the point that the site’s “general industrial” use would be “similar in character to existing and previous uses in the abutting area including a former lumber yard, concrete manufacturing facility, etc. and currently, a landscape materials supply business, a road construction business, etc.”

In the application, the company also insisted “there are not any health or safety impacts to the area” due to the project. According to the application: “All environmental permits will be obtained before the plant is operational.”

But the Union Leader reported that the site of the proposed plant is near homes, schools and churches. That point has been made by multiple groups, including the Granite State Organizing Project, 350NH, and the Conservation Law Foundation, which have organized protests against the project.

Donchess has reminded citizens that they can attend the Planning Board’s Jan. 19 meeting and express their opinions on the proposed asphalt production plant.

Asphalt plant draws protest in Nashua

By Jonathan Phelps Union Leader Staff
Oct 4, 2022 Updated Oct 4, 2022

A plan to redevelop a property on Temple Street in Nashua into an asphalt-manufacturing plant is facing pushback from residents and organizations worried about the environment and the impact on those living in the area.

The planning board was set to consider the plans on Thursday night, but the hearing has been moved to Nov. 3, according to the city’s planning department. The hearing has been delayed multiple times in the past few months after initially being heard in May.

Newport Construction Corp. is behind the project. Planning board members took a site walk of the property in June and visited a similar asphalt facility also owned by Newport in Westford, Mass.

The 70,614-square-foot lot was the former site of a lumberyard and a road construction company, according to the project application. The use is allowed in the general industrial zone and the transit-oriented overlay zone, however the project will require several waivers.

The “proposed use is general industrial similar in character to existing and previous uses in the abutting area including a former lumber yard, concrete manufacturing facility, etc. and currently, a landscape materials supply business, a road construction business, etc.,” the application reads.

The site is also near a railroad, drywall business and stonework business and a car and truck rental business.

The equipment will be state-of-the-art with environmental protections, according to the application.

“There are not any health or safety impacts to the area,” the application reads. “All environmental permits will be obtained before the plant is operational.”

However, there are also homes, schools and churches nearby, according to those opposed.

The Granite State Organizing Project, 350NH, and the Conservation Law Foundation have organized protests against the plant, which they say is a mile from downtown. Some of the signs read: “No asphalt plant” and “Asphalt kills.”

Sarah Jane Knoy, leader of Granite State Organizing Project, said they are still waiting to hear an environmental impact study on the project. The plant is near low-income housing and a mill set to be converted into apartments, she said.

Neighbors have been told it will be a hot batch mix plant, “and those plants have been known to emit a lot of pollutants that cause respiratory problems, skin problems and so on,” Knoy said.

“This is also a place the city of Nashua has created an overlay zoning of transit-oriented development for this area,” she said. “Transit-oriented development is generally a walkable, livable community with green space and trying to reduce pollution and so on. It seems like people aren’t going to want to move into a community with a big asphalt plant right in the middle of it. Not to mention the harm it will do for the people who already live there.”

The groups have been distributing material in Spanish to those who live nearby.

“It’s important the residents and not just owners of abutting property know about it, because the impact will be in the air, so it will be far beyond just the abutting properties,” Knoy said.

Who Are the Extremists?
Just five weeks left to find out!

October 2022

Who Are the Extremists?

Just five weeks left to find out!

Some extremists seem crazy, others calculating. Both are taking advantage of COVID and other crises to chop away at the foundations of the New Hampshire we love.

How can voters identify extremists? Some are obvious. Others require research. At least, white supremacist groups clearly state their goals. Other Free-Staters and Libertarian extremists should alarm us more. They hack at our institutions while masking their intentions. Still other candidates claim to be moderates, but abet extremists and hope we won’t notice.

THE INDUBITABLY FANATICAL

Let’s start with the obvious. Three Congressional candidates are so extreme, their NH primary wins earned Washington Post coverage. Don Bolduc, running for US Senate, wasted no time revealing his duplicity. Two days after the primary, he reversed his false claim that the Presidential election was stolen. He later showed his disdain for the 2/3s of NH residents who support reproductive choice. He told WMUR that his plan to ban abortion was not a key issue and that Senator Hassan, his opponent, should just “Get over it.”

Bolduc reversed his claim the Presidential election was stolen within 48 hours after winning the primary.

Second is Robert Burns. He is running as a “Pro-Trump” candidate in Congressional District 2. He opposes mandates and the imaginary “critical race theory” curriculum. He wants to pass a Texas-style abortion ban.

Last of the federal extremists is Karoline Leavitt. She assisted Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany in the Trump White House. She is running for the 1st Congressional District seat. The 25-year-old supports Trump’s agenda and his claim that the Presidential election was stolen.

THE ABETTOR-IN-CHIEF

That brings us to a governor who purports to be a moderate, but whose actions belie his words. Governor Sununu rails against extremists one day. On another, he says he’s “a Trump guy, through and through.” He first claimed Don Bolduc was “a conspiracy theorist type” and endorsed his opponent. But when it became clear that Bolduc would win the primary, Sununu said, “I’ll endorse whoever the nominee is, and support him, of course I will, no question.” Mr. Sununu recently endorsed Karoline Leavitt, as well. Obviously, the governor puts party above principle. Even when the extremists are just using his party to their own advantage.

An able manipulator of the GOP is Education Commissioner Edelblut. Frank Edelblut has disguised his intentions from Day 1. He claimed that education vouchers were designed to provide freedom of choice to public schools students. Instead, they sent taxpayer funding to parents already paying tuition, primarily to religious schools. Edelblut claimed the first year would cost less than $1/4 million. It ended up costing $8 million the first year and is now up to $14 million. This is just one of many actions to disparage and dismantle NH’s education system. But most concerning are Edelblut’s future plans. He wants to overhaul the ED300 rules for an adequate education. For example, he wants to remove local control over graduation requirements. He wants to lower the state core requirements from “mastery” to “competence.” And much more.

Commissioner Edelblut cannot be voted out. He was appointed in 2017 and reappointed in 2021 by Gov Sununu, as confirmed by GOP Executive Councilors. Could a different Governor and Executive Council remove him before his 5-year term is up? Probably not. But the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules is controlled by the party in power. It could require changes in rules. A less extreme legislature could revoke vouchers altogether and a different governor could sign the repeal.

EXTREMIST STATE LEGISLATIVE LEADERS

Instead of pushing back on extremists, last session saw Governor Sununu support their bills. He helped House Majority Leader Jason Osborne to hide extremists’ measures in the budget. These included the school voucher program, censoring speech and an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.

Osborne is a Free Stater running for the NH House in Rockingham 2. He is infamous for old, outrageous social media posts using racist slurs and his image in front of a NH State House in flames. This year, he tweeted, “grab a few more rounds for your AK-47” instead of buying hotdogs on the 4th of July. “You’ll thank yourself later.”

Other extremist leaders of the NH legislature include: Rep. Frank Cordelli, Carroll County; Rep. Tony Piemonte, Rockingham County; Rep. Peter Torosian, Rockingham County; Rep. Jon Smith, Carroll County; and Sen. Ruth Ward, Senate District 8. This crew, after being elected, just decided on their own to break apart the state’s 30 cooperative school districts that 117 towns voted to form. The bill was sent to interim study. Its future will depend upon whether the sponsors are returned to office. The greatest dissembler of the group? Senator Ruth Ward, who ran on a campaign of local control. HB1679 would remove any local control over cooperative district formation.

EXTREMISTS RUNNING AS DEMOCRATS

Most Libertarians and Free Staters discovered to be running as Democrats lost their primaries. However, two Libertarians will appear as Democratic candidates in the Hillsborough County general election. Richard M Manzo of Goffstown is running to be Hillsborough County Treasurer. The other Libertarian pretending to be a Democrat is Nicholas Sarwark. He was the 19th national chair of the Libertarian party. He appears to have moved around the country to run for office in various states. He came to NH in 2019 as part of the Free State Project. He is running for Hillsborough County Attorney.

EXTREMISTS RUNNING AS GOP

Many more extremists are running as Republicans. The easiest way to identify them is to review the list of candidates recommended by a group called the Liberty Alliance. The Liberty Alliance rates legislators according to how closely they vote on a “liberty” agenda, Their Gold Standard is handed to legislators at the door before each session. It advises them to, for example, oppose low-income fuel assistance, support over-the-counter sale of ivermectin, and prohibit school boards from requiring masks.

Five weeks left to do the research. Let’s get busy!

Panelists: Mass. and N.Y. Don’t Criminalize Doctors
With Their 24-Week Abortion Bans

https://indepthnh.org/2022/09/27/panelists-mass-and-n-y-dont-criminalize-doctors-with-their-24-week-abortion-bans/

Panelists: Mass. and N.Y. Don’t Criminalize Doctors With Their 24-Week Abortion Bans

By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org September 27, 2022

Dr. Tom Sherman, D-Rye, is pictured speaking to a panel of healthcare professionals he convened Tuesday at River Valley Community College in Lebanon (Paula Tracy photo)

LEBANON – The state’s new abortion ban is not the same as Massachusetts and New York as Gov. Chris Sununu contends because New Hampshire’s law criminalizes doctors for providing such a service after 24 weeks of pregnancy except to save the woman’s life.

That leaves doctors here liable for up to seven years in jail and a $100,000 fine, according to noted obstetrician Dr. Barry Smith.

Smith, now retired from a long career at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, said those states “smartly or intentionally excluded the health-care providers from any legal penalties such as fines or imprisonment. That is a huge difference.”

Smith was speaking at a roundtable discussion of healthcare professionals convened by Sununu’s Democratic opponent, Dr. Tom Sherman, D-Rye, at River Valley Community College in Lebanon.

When Sununu said that it was the same as Massachusetts or New York, “That is as far from the truth as possible. And that huge statement is why I don’t think he either read or chose to ignore the difference,” Smith said.
Sununu has maintained he is pro-choice and that the average person supports limits on abortion in the last stages of pregnancy. He said he did not support all the conditions included in the bill, which was made part of the biennial budget which he did not want to veto.

On Good Morning NH with Jack Heath Tuesday, Sununu said, “The fact that Democrats are tripling down on the abortion issue is actually highlighting their extremism.”

Sununu said despite Roe v. Wade being struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, “Nothing changes in New Hampshire…”

“The fact that they have owned they are OK with folks having abortions right up until the moment of birth, that’s extreme…They have to own that extremism. If anything it’s a failing message,” Sununu said.

Sununu didn’t respond to an InDepthNH.org request for additional comment.

In a news release after Sununu’s remarks, Planned Parenthood accused Sununu of repeating false and inflammatory national rhetoric to distract voters from his anti-abortion record.

Kayla Montgomery, vice president of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood New Hampshire Action Fund said:

“This inflammatory and false rhetoric is used to try to distract voters from anti-abortion politicians’ abysmal reproductive health records by peddling falsehoods about abortion care later in pregnancy.

“No one is OK with abortion ‘up until the moment of birth’ because it simply doesn’t exist – that’s not how medicine, science, or pregnancy works,” Montgomery said.

When abortion is needed later in pregnancy it’s due to complex situations like the health of the woman or the fetus, she said.

At the roundtable, Sherman, a gastroenterologist for 30 years, said in states with similar laws, doctors are fearful and looking behind them to see if they are running afoul of these abortion laws and have to wait until the woman is septic, anemic and has lost tremendous amounts of blood before doctors feel assured they can save her life.

Then the “team” instead of medical providers are legal advisors.

“Then, the ‘team’ becomes the defense attorney, the malpractice attorney, the doctor and where does the woman fit into all this?

“It is a critical decision that takes into account the intensely personal decision-making of the woman, the patient, which you point out are kind of forgotten in the Sununu abortion ban process,” Sherman said.

Sherman said doctors live their whole careers with the threat of malpractice.

“We follow best practices. But what does this (new law) mean for your practice? This could be a slippery slope….

“Another big concern is once you criminalize a medical procedure what’s next? Is it trans surgery?” Sherman said.

Smith said the new state abortion law is completely unnecessary, creates a problem where one did not exist in maintaining collaborative medicine in rural New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, and completely ignores the woman who is pregnant, and her mental health and physical health needs.

Smith said about nine or 10 hospitals in New Hampshire have closed their maternity wards.

That was before the ban took effect on Jan. 1 and likely a financial decision as they were never big money makers but were perceived as creating customer loyalty in a community, which has disappeared in a new world of medical care.

Smith said there are currently seven maternal-fetal physicians in New Hampshire and four of them are expecting to retire in the next year or two.

“Recruitment to get replacements for those is going to be impossible when you factor in that Vermont has a law that protects physicians, Maine protects physicians and we are sitting the middle dealing with a third to a half of patients that are coming from Vermont,” to DHMC, Smith said.

The 20 or so at Dartmouth Medical School studying to be OB/GYN specialists are looking to other states without such laws, said those participating in the roundtable.

Others participating, including Dr. Don Kollish, assistant professor of Medicine at Dartmouth’s Geisel School, said he fears the law will create areas with no maternal health care providers at all and no one to call for help, particularly in rural parts of the region.

Panelists said they fear the return to the days prior to the 1970s when poor women were injured, sterilized or in some cases died from “back alley abortions.”

Dr. Peter Mason, assistant professor of community and family medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, said: “I never want to go back to that period. It’s clear that even with the ban, abortions are going to take place. I don’t think a lot of people understand that. I don’t think that our governor understands that there will be abortions after 24 weeks and they will be done illegally in this state and women will be hurt as a result of that.”

Rep. Rebecca McWilliams: High energy prices are cost of
GOP intransigence

https://www.unionleader.com/opinion/op-eds/rep-rebecca-mcwilliams-high-energy-prices-are-cost-of-gop-intransigence/article_9fc723d3-3d1b-54e5-85c5-bebf135fad07.htm l

Rep. Rebecca McWilliams: High energy prices are cost of GOP intransigence

Sep 29, 2022 Updated Sep 29, 2022

AS THE CHILL of autumn arrives and we prepare to heat our homes for another New Hampshire winter, Granite Staters are reminded that our state’s electric and heating rates have skyrocketed under Governor Chris Sununu and Republican administrations in the Legislature.

Rates have escalated so much under the current Republican leadership that lawmakers had to pass an emergency bill this month to expand eligibility to include middle-class taxpayers to receive government fuel and electric assistance through programs offered by CAPNH.org.

Since concern over New Hampshire’s energy situation has been building for years, it was simultaneously amusing and frustrating to read the Concord Monitor article on Friday in which Republican lawmakers proclaimed 2023 “the year of biomass” and suddenly discovered the need to place a “bigger focus” on renewable energy and diverse energy sources.

The amusement came from reading the outright Republican hypocrisy. For years, Republicans have opposed taking any action to diversify our energy sources or expand renewable energy, always reverting to their tired mantra “the market will take care of it.” Now that the market is harming consumers’ electric bills, they realized doing nothing is a political death sentence.

The frustration came from knowing these rate hikes approved by Governor Sununu’s appointees to the state Public Utilities Commission were entirely predictable and avoidable. Over the past five years, Democrats have attempted to confront our structural energy problems head on with over a dozen pieces of legislation, including bills to reform state energy efficiency funding, expand access to net metering, and support our struggling biomass plants.

Sadly, when Democrats controlled the Legislature, each of these forward-facing energy bills met the same fate — a veto from Governor Sununu and a rubber stamp from Republicans, blocking any chance at veto overrides.

In the accompanying message to his 2019 veto of SB 205, a bill that would increase accountability on the energy efficiency board, Governor Sununu wrote “the legislature should not abdicate its responsibility to unelected officials at the Public Utilities Commission.” Ironically, in vetoing every common-sense energy efficiency proposal over the past five years, Sununu has left Granite Staters with no voice, abdicating decisions to unelected officials that he appointed to the PUC instead.

With impending rate hikes just around the corner, Republicans worked overtime to block good energy bills this spring. Over just a couple House session days, Republicans blocked debate on 13 Democratic bills ranging from net metering, clean energy, energy efficiency, and everything in between.

It is clear to me that House Republicans were afraid that if we debated these bills, the public would find out where they stand on diversifying our energy mix — spoiler alert, they support methane “natural” gas and continuing to rely on the Bow coal-fired power plant for the long term. They refuse to entertain any renewable energy or weatherization solutions. It is crystal clear that Republicans did not believe addressing the cost of your utility bills was a priority. This is sadly nothing new.

Now comes the inevitable, predictable scenario of rapidly escalating energy costs. According to NHPR, New Hampshire is experiencing the energy crisis with the highest rates in New England.

The chickens of Governor Sununu and his Republican friends in the Legislature have finally come home to roost. Seeing the writing on the wall, Republicans are claiming to have changed their tune on previous Democratic-led efforts to keep energy costs under control in New Hampshire. But, as we have seen time and time again, voting records speak louder than words.

Check where your elected officials stand, their votes are readily available on the State House website.

It is going to take more than last-minute politically-expedient promises for Granite Staters to trust Republicans on energy costs. Their actions over the past half-decade have led us to unsustainable rates that we cannot afford. Vote for candidates who will lead on energy solutions on November 8th.

Rep. Rebecca McWilliams (D-Concord) represents Merrimack – District 27.

Why electricity prices are rising unevenly
across New England

Why electricity prices are rising unevenly across New England

September 08, 2022

Miriam Wasser, WBUR, and Mara Hoplamazian, NHPR

Vermont Public Radio’s Abagael Giles, Maine Public Radio’s Murray Carpenter and Connecticut Public Radio’s Patrick Skahill also contributed to this reporting.

https://amp.wbur.org/news/2022/09/08/new-england-electricity-prices-natual-gas-utility-auctions

You may have noticed that your most recent electric bill is higher than usual — and if that change hasn’t happened yet, it’s probably coming this fall. These price spikes are occurring across New England, but bills are rising more in some places than others.

Some ratepayers in New Hampshire saw the price of electricity double this summer, resulting in bills up to $70 higher, while many in Massachusetts are only paying an extra $11 per month.

If it seems unfair, blame the energy markets. And if it’s confusing because everyone in New England shares an electricity grid, well, read on.

What’s happening is complicated and poses a disproportionate burden on those who can least afford higher monthly bills. But it also opens up some interesting conversations about what a future powered primarily by renewable energy sources like wind and solar could mean for your electric bill.

Here’s what you need to know:

Electric Utility Supply Rates in New England | Aug. 2020 – Aug. 2022

The rising cost of electricity is affecting everyone. The “supply charge” part of an electricity bill, shown below in cents per kilowatt hour, has spiked for many ratepayers. Others have been more insulated. Rhode Island Energy has proposed an increase to 17.785 c/kWh that, if approved, would go into effect October 1, 2022. Vermont is the only New England state without a deregulated electricity market, so its rates cannot be compared side by side with neighboring states.

Chart: Sara Plourde, NHPR Get the data Created with Datawrapper

It’s not just you. Your neighbors, your friends across town, even local political leaders — everyone who gets their electricity from the power lines that run down the streets is seeing rates rise. (People with solar panels on their roof, or who are part of a municipal aggregation or “community power” program, are a different story.)

The primary reason for the spike is our reliance on fossil fuels. Specifically, natural gas.

Natural gas accounts for about 38% of the country’s electricity, though here in New England, it’s more like 53%. And the price of our main source of energy is anything but stable.

Gas prices are extremely volatile

Historically, New England burned oil and coal for power, but we switched many of our plants over to natural gas after the “fracking boom” in the early 2000s. Supply was high and prices were cheap, which was good for consumers, but not sustainable, said Dennis Wamsted, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Indeed, prices started to rise after the U.S. began turning its glut of natural gas into liquefied natural gas (LNG) and exporting it.

The COVID pandemic in 2020 temporarily disrupted this trend; the global economy came to a halt and many oil and gas operations curtailed production. But as demand for fossil fuels began to rebound in 2021, supplies haven’t recovered as quickly. This has meant steadily rising prices. Add in some record-setting cold temperatures in many parts of the country this past winter, and prices have gone up even more.

“And then Russia invaded Ukraine and the world changed,” said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association. “We are now facing the largest international energy crisis of my lifetime. [We’re] seeing enormous volatility across all the energy commodities, and in particular, natural gas and oil.”

Russia is the second-largest producer and the largest exporter of natural gas in the world, and its invasion of Ukraine in late February sent global energy prices into a frenzy. In fact, natural gas experienced its biggest 30-day price swing of the last two decades after the war began.

Getting enough gas is expensive in New England

There’s another important factor that helps explain why New England pays a lot for natural gas. We simply have a hard time getting it. We don’t sit on top of any fossil fuel reserves and we are at the end of the gas pipeline system, which means we can’t easily bring in more when demand calls for it.

“We just have a physical constraint of how much gas we can deliver through the pipeline system to New England,” said Ben Butterworth, director of climate, energy & equity analysis at the Acadia Center.

And when demand rises, so do prices.

To help make up the shortfall, New England imports liquified natural gas from other parts of the country to use for electricity — over the last decade, we’ve brought in between 20-43 billion cubic feet of LNG per year. Big tankers offload the gas in Everett, Massachusetts, where much of it is burned in the nearby Mystic Generating Station or stored for later use.

In most years, we meet our needs with this extra LNG and some oil. But this winter will be tougher because the price of LNG has skyrocketed over the last few months as U.S. suppliers scramble to help gas-starved European countries.

Overall, since the war in Ukraine began, oil and gas prices have fallen back a bit, but analysts say we shouldn’t expect prices to really drop off anytime this year.

“As we go through this winter, we are expecting to see high volatility, high historical prices for electricity,” Dolan said. “I remain cautiously optimistic that we’re going to be okay from a reliability standpoint, but the fuel supply infrastructure is tight.”

(Graphic by Sara Plourde/NHPR)

Why electricity prices differ across New England

Let’s start with a look at your electric bill.

You’ll see that there are a lot of charges that go into what you pay: Energy charges, customer charges and transmission charges, to name a few. All of those line items can be lumped into one of two categories: supply or delivery.

(Sample bill courtesy of Eversource. Annotation by Sara Plourde/NHPR)

Today’s focus is on the “supply charge.” This is the cost of the actual electricity you used in the last month. It tends to be about half of your monthly bill and it’s what has been rising in odd and unequal ways across the region.

For example, in September 2022, the supply charge for a Unitil customer in one part of New Hampshire is 10.11 cents per kilowatt hour, while an Eversource customer living a few miles away is paying 22.57 cents.

The variation, to be clear, is not just about which utility you have. A different Eversource customer just across the border in Massachusetts is paying 17.87 cents per kilowatt-hour, while a third in Connecticut is paying 12.05.

As a bit of background, the six New England states are part of the same regional electricity grid, which means that an electron produced by a power plant in Connecticut could theoretically travel through the wires and end up helping to illuminate a light bulb in New Hampshire.

But while the electrons flow freely, it’s the utilities — whether investor-owned or municipally-run — that act as the all-important middleman. They procure electricity from power generators and energy wholesalers on your behalf and make sure it gets to your house.

In most New England states, utilities change the supply rate twice a year after holding competitive auctions. Their experts calculate how much power they think their customers will need over the next six-month period and go about signing contracts for it from various suppliers.

The results of this procurement directly affect the monthly supply rate you pay, since utilities do not make a profit on the electricity they provide you. (They make money on other things they do.)

The prices utilities can get varies across states and regions for a few reasons.

The first has to do with the fact that it’s cheaper to buy power for certain areas than others. The prices utilities can get often depend on the number of customers they serve in a given territory and how challenging it is to meet demand. This helps explain why, for example, Eversource customers in eastern Massachusetts always pay slightly higher supply rates than in western Massachusetts.

The second, and perhaps most important factor, is timing. If your utility held its auction before the war in Ukraine started and gas prices jumped, you’re probably seeing cheaper electricity than your cousin whose utility negotiated its prices this spring.

The third reason has to do with state policies about utility auctions. Some states, like Massachusetts and Connecticut, require utilities to hold extra auctions or “blend” the prices from earlier cycles to help insulate customers from big market spikes.

To give a concrete example of how this plays out, consider Eversource customers in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In New Hampshire, the utilities do one auction per cycle, and because Eversource’s auction took place after the Russian invasion, its customers are seeing a huge jump in supply rates. In Massachusetts, the supply rate on customers’ bills reflects a combination of the two auctions — in this case, one from this spring and one from last spring. Because prices were lower last year, the overall supply rate is lower right now.

Doing it each way has its tradeoffs. Massachusetts customers have a buffer now, but if the price of natural gas falls dramatically in the future, New Hampshire customers will see that reflected in their bills sooner.

In other words, said Dolan, “it’s the timing of those retail auctions that really, really matters.”

Electricity rates in New England

Electric rates vary from utility to utility, and from state to state. Click on each state in the map to see how the price of electricity has changed over the last two years.

How much longer will we pay these higher prices?

For many, it’s going to be a tough winter.

As New England residents prepare to pay higher electric bills during the coldest months, some states have rolled out new efforts to help.

In New Hampshire, where some ratepayers could see more than a $70 monthly increase, lawmakers are expected to vote on a plan later this month that would give out $100 to almost everyone who pays an electricity bill. That will help with about a quarter of the extra costs an average Eversource customer can expect for the rest of the year. The plan also dedicates additional funding to utility assistance programs serving lower-income residents, like LIHEAP and the Electric Assistance Program.

In Rhode Island, state officials have proposed more funding for an electric assistance program to mitigate price hikes slated for October. And in Massachusetts, the Attorney General’s Office is spreading the word about programs to help residents pay for energy efficiency upgrades.

Meanwhile in Connecticut, some towns offer extra financial assistance for residents struggling to pay their bills. But according to Brenda Watson, executive director of Operation Fuel, it’s often not enough. Her group helps people struggling with utility bills, and she said that by late August, they had received far more applications for assistance than usual.

“It’s really quite astonishing,” Watson said. “We haven’t even seen this many people apply during peak COVID times.”

What about renewables?

This year’s price fluctuations have exposed the volatility of fossil fuels, but many experts say things could be different in the future as we “electrify everything” and source more of our power from renewables.

Most New England states are taking action to increase the amount of renewable energy on our regional grid — Massachusetts and Connecticut are signing big contracts for offshore wind. Maine is looking to solar and onshore wind, while developing targets for offshore wind. Rhode Island is requiring utilities to get all of their energy directly from renewables, or use offsets to reach this goal, by 2033. And Vermont aims to get 90% of its power from renewables by 2050.

Ratepayers can expect that shift to drive down the cost of electricity in the long-run, said Butterworth of the Acadia Center.

In a study about how to dramatically cut carbon emissions, for example, Massachusetts found that under certain conditions, ratepayers could see a 13% decrease in electric rates by 2050.

But though the groundwork is being laid for a major energy transition, the power isn’t flowing yet. And finding ways to spread the coming benefits equitably will be more complicated than just building turbines in the ocean and erecting more solar panels.

Right now, the people seeing the savings from renewables tend to be those who can afford to invest in solar panels and energy efficiency, or who participate in certain community aggregation programs. So in the short term, investing in state and utility programs that help lower-income residents make their homes more energy efficient, or make it more affordable to put up solar panels, would be really helpful, said Mireille Bejjani, co-executive director of Slingshot, an environmental justice organization based in New England.

In the medium-term, things get a little more complicated. “We’re going to have to build a lot of stuff,” said Butterworth. “And building stuff is expensive.”

Offshore wind turbines, solar farms, power lines – all are costly.

It’s time to start thinking “outside of the box,” he said. Right now, ratepayers pay for transmission line upgrades and some renewable energy projects in their electric bills — these are part of the delivery charge. But Butterworth said, what if we paid for that with taxpayer money instead of ratepayer money so that the wealthy shoulder a bigger burden? Or what if we spread the costs that utilities recoup for these projects over many decades so that the amount ratepayers contribute every month is lower?

“Eventually as we transition to renewables, it’s going to lower costs. It’s just a matter of what kind of time frame you’re looking at and how you’re allocating electricity rates,” he said. “It’s not like a law of physics. It’s a policy decision.”

Oral arguments in New Hampshire’s ‘divisive concepts’
lawsuit set for Wednesday

Oral arguments in New Hampshire’s ‘divisive concepts’ lawsuit set for Wednesday

BY: ETHAN DEWITT – SEPTEMBER 13, 2022 1:44 PM

https://newhampshirebulletin.com/briefs/oral-arguments-in-new-hampshires-divisive-concepts-lawsuit-set-for-wednesday/

A lawsuit against the state’s “divisive concepts law” will come before oral argument in federal court Wednesday, allowing lawyers for teachers unions and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire to square off against the Department of Justice.

The court hearing, set for 1 p.m. at the U.S. District Court in Concord, will allow the plaintiffs to lay out why they say the new law creates a “chilling effect” for teachers that violates the Constitution.

The law, known by some as the “divisive concepts law,” bars New Hampshire educators from teaching that a person in one protected class is inherently superior to another, inherently racist, or inherently oppressive, even unconsciously, and it prohibits teaching that an individual should be treated differently for one of those characteristics.

It also prevents the teaching that people of one class “should not attempt to treat others equally and/or without regard to age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion, or national origin.”

Supporters have said that the law stops teachers from appearing to single out students of one race or gender – for instance white people or men – when talking about history, and that it applies to all protected classes equally.

But teachers unions and other opponents argue the prohibitions are broad and vague, and say the potential professional consequences will dissuade teachers from starting nuanced discussions about historical oppression. Those consequences can include lawsuits brought by parents against teachers and the potential loss of educational credentials.

Teachers unions filed two separate lawsuits in December, one led by the American Federation of Teachers of New Hampshire and the other led by the National Education Association of New Hampshire and the ACLU. Those lawsuits have since been combined into one case by the U.S. District Court; Wednesday’s hearing will include representatives from all parties. The plaintiffs include the state’s Disability Rights Center and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD).

They also include Andres Mejia, the director of diversity, equity inclusion, and justice for the Exeter Region Cooperative School District; Kim Philibotte, the chief equity officer for the Manchester School District; John Dube, a high school U.S. history and AP U.S. history teacher at Timberlane Regional High School; Ryan Richman, a high school world history teacher also at Timberland; and Jocelyn Merrill, a ninth-grade English teacher at Nashua High School North.

In their filings, lawyers for the plaintiffs have argued that the 14th Amendment prohibits legislation that is “unconstitutionally vague” and that the law is too confusing to follow confidently, which they say will lead to self-censorship by teachers.

The state, in its filing to dismiss the case, has sought to rebuff that vagueness argument, noting that the Attorney General’s office, the Department of Education and the Commission for Human Rights issued joint guidance to schools and teachers in 2021 on how to interpret the law and what lessons might or might not violate it. And lawyers for the state have argued that teachers are not entitled to a broad right to free speech when it comes to their “official duties” in the classroom and can be limited by policy or laws.

States Response to New School Funding Lawsuit

States Response to New School Funding Lawsuit

September 7th, the State filed its initial response to the new school funding lawsuit brought in June. In this filing, the State goes paragraph by paragraph and responds to the claims made by the plaintiffs in their complaint.

[You can read the State’s full response here: https://fairfundingnh.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Rand-v.-State-State-Response.pdf?emci=81972b09-a72f-ed11-ae83-281878b83d8a&emdi=d45c2463-bd2f-ed11-ae83-281878b83d8a&ceid=3405528 ]

This is a routine answer, and an early step in the process of this case. But one item stood out to us.

“The State alleges that school districts expend significant funds due to the provision of constitutionally unnecessary programs and services, that school districts expend significant funds on matters of local district choices, local district philosophies, and local district accounting practices, and/or that school districts expend significant funds on infrastructure and other resources that are not needed or are inefficient and/or obsolete.”

Remember that the State sends local school districts an average of $4,600 to cover the costs of an “adequate education” while the actual average cost of educating a student in New Hampshire is around $18,000.

The State is saying the $13,400 difference between those numbers comes from things that are not needed to provide a constitutionally adequate education. Things that districts decide are important, but aren’t strictly necessary for giving every student an “adequate” education.

But imagine your local school district operating on a shoe-string budget a third or a fourth of what it is now. What would that look like in your community? Would that really be an “adequate” education?

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has ruled in the past that the State has a constitutional obligation to fund education, and that any taxes used to fund education must be levied at a uniform rate.

As this case continues to move forward, the State will need to continue to rationalize its incredibly low definition of the cost of an “adequate” education, as well as defend the wildly varying local property tax rates used to make up for the difference between what the State says is adequate and what districts actually spend.

What Does an “Adequate” K-12 Education Cost?

[presentation prepared by NH School Funding Fairness Project https://fairfundingNH.org]

The State of New Hampshire said that, for Pittsfield’s 581 students, an adequate education should cost $2,690,000 or $4,630 per student in 2018-19.

The Pittsfield School District budget for 2018-19 was $10,302,402 or $17,732 per student.

Pittsfield was asked to show the results of paring the budget down to the State’s allocation of $4,630…

Eliminate 5 of the 16 teachers at the elementary school
Eliminate all art, music, and physical education classes in all grades
Eliminate all school nurses and any medical support
Eliminate all regular and special education transportation services (parents to transport their children to and from school)
Eliminate one of the two office secretaries at the elementary school
Eliminate one of the two office secretaries at the middle/high school
Eliminate teachers for business ed, family & consumer science, and health
Eliminate one of four science teachers at the middle/high school, thus eliminating some labs and electives
Eliminate all building and grounds maintenance and repairs
Eliminate student participation in Concord Regional Technical Center classes
Eliminate all foreign language courses
Eliminate both counselor/behavioral professionals and support staff
Eliminate four of eight custodians: building cleaning only twice per week
Eliminate health insurance and other benefits in current teacher contract
Eliminate all field trips
Eliminate all athletic programs: soccer, basketball, softball, and baseball
Eliminate the district reading specialist
Eliminate 34½ paraprofessional positions, including special ed teacher aides
Eliminate purchase of equipment, supplies, books, subscriptions, technology
Eliminate ESOL program (English for speakers of other languages)
Eliminate all substitute teachers, thus requiring students to be dismissed
Eliminate three special education teachers
Eliminate provisions for teacher development courses, workshops
Eliminate mentor teachers who support new teachers
Eliminate all technology personnel, equipment, training, software, etc.
Eliminate consulting specialists such as vision specialists and psychologists
Eliminate travel reimbursement for training events, meetings, home visits, etc.
Eliminate all co-curricular programs (clubs, activities, student council, etc.)
Eliminate the summer recreation program
Eliminate all guidance personnel
Eliminate substance abuse counselor
Eliminate speech/language, PT, OT, and vision services for special needs students
Eliminate stipend for teachers’ summertime work on innovation and development
Eliminate stipends for teacher leaders
Eliminate all librarians and media center staff and close media centers
Eliminate school board stipends
Eliminate school board expenses, including lawyers and auditing services
Reduce time of superintendent to one day per week
Eliminate all photocopiers and their supplies
Eliminate maintenance of athletic field
Eliminate one school principal, leaving only one for both school buildings
Eliminate all office incidentals: postage, supplies, advertising, etc.

With the above reductions…

Most “core” K-12 classrooms are maintained
Class size averages 29 students/teacher
And Budget is now $5,289,610 (still not low enough)

Now cut down further to reach the State’s “adequacy” level of $2,690,333

Nearly everything else has been eliminated, so now eliminate nearly half of the remaining teachers
Class size averages 60 students/teacher

How does anyone believe that this will provide an adequate education for Pittsfield’s 581 students?

Free Staters seek to undo New Hampshire government
from within

Free Staters seek to undo New Hampshire government from within

By Brian MacQuarrie Globe Staff, September 3, 2022

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/09/03/metro/free-staters-seek-undo-nh-government-within/

Carla Gericke, former president and current board member of the Free State Project, records podcasts at her home in Manchester. “I want to take a swing at making one place better, and this is the place I picked,” she said of New Hampshire.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The doormat outside Carla Gericke’s house carries the warning “Come back with a warrant.” It’s a stark reflection of her broad distrust of government bureaucracy, an attitude that is the driving force behind the Free State movement, which has led thousands of like-minded people to move to New Hampshire on a quixotic quest — to build a libertarian utopia.

Gericke helps lead that movement, and her agenda is broad and unapologetically radical. More than 6,000 people have relocated to New Hampshire since the effort was launched 21 years ago, according to its organizers. And while some dispute that claim, legislators on both sides of the aisle in Concord agree that Free Staters have come to wield outsize political influence.

Inside her home, Gericke explained why an independent New Hampshire is a good idea, why its public schools are hopelessly broken, why Washington, D.C., is pervasively corrupt, and why Free Staters who believe big government is the enemy of personal freedom are determined to turn society upside down.

“I’m a problem-solver, I’m a solutionist, I am an innovator, I’m a visionary,” said Gericke, a former corporate attorney who moved to New Hampshire from New York in 2008 as part of the Free State movement. “I want to take a swing at making one place better, and this is the place I picked.”

But where Gericke and other “porcupines” — a nickname Free Staters have adopted— see a blueprint for shrinking government and protecting the rights to privacy and private property, critics see a back-door assault on democracy itself.

Their end game, detractors say, is to infiltrate New Hampshire government at all levels — from select boards to the State House — with the aim of dismantling it. State support for public schools is a priority target.

“Their whole mission is to take over state government and to use the threat of secession as leverage” against the federal government, said Zandra Rice Hawkins, executive director of Granite State Progress, a progressive advocacy group.

Jeremy Kauffman, a Free State Project board member, describes democracy itself as a threat.

“Democracy is a soft form of communism that basically assures bad and dangerous people will be in power,” Kauffman said by e-mail. The Manchester resident, a tech entrepreneur, is running for US Senate as a Libertarian.

The movement began with a 2001 essay by Jason Sorens, then a Yale graduate student and now director of the Center for Ethics in Society at St. Anselm College in Manchester. The goal was at once simple and sweeping: attract 20,000 libertarians to a single state with a small population, get elected to public office, concentrate power, and enact change from the inside out.

In 2003, Free Staters chose New Hampshire, with its deep vein of conservatism and “Live Free or Die” motto, as their prospective homeland, and more than 19,000 people have since signed a pledge to move to the state, organizers said. Only a third of that number are estimated to have relocated so far, but Sorens said they have made a major impact.

“There’s been the emergence of a significant group of libertarian legislators, and some of them are in leadership” in Concord, the state capital, Sorens said. “I’ve been pleased overall with what we’ve achieved. I may have hoped that we would reach 20,000, but I’m not sure I ever expected we would.”

House majority leader Jason Osborne, for example, moved to New Hampshire from Ohio in 2010 as part of the Free State Project. Like many Free Staters, Osborne belongs to the Republican Party, something critics say masks the true intentions of many in the movement — using a major party as a Trojan horse to gain election.

Sorens estimated that as many as 40 percent of Free Staters favor secession.

The porcupines, so called because they portray themselves as harmless until provoked, have built a statewide support network for newcomers and member families already here.

Porcupine real-estate agents help find housing for the arrivals, others steer them to jobs, and weekly meetups, from pub gatherings to knitting circles, have sprung up across the state. The Free State Project also organizes PorcFest each summer, a weeklong celebration featuring a plethora of lectures and family activities.

In the recent past, “those not so misguided by the winning government’s indoctrination camps” have heard about the War for Southern Independence, according to a PorcFest schedule. That’s the epic, bloody conflict better known as the Civil War. Parents also have been invited to a discussion on the “Battle Over Raising Your Child.”

“Your rulers would like to do you the ‘favor’ of taking your children off your hands to ‘educate’ them (with a heavy dose of learning to revere their authority),” its summary read.

While the group often avoids the spotlight, it gained notoriety this year when a Free State legislator sponsored a bill seeking a constitutional amendment to allow New Hampshire to secede. The effort was resoundingly defeated.

Free Stater influence also played a role in the controversial two-week shutdown of the Gunstock ski resort, a popular recreational area in conservative Belknap County. Antigovernment activists briefly took control of the commission that runs the county-owned attraction; chaos ensued.

And a Free Stater who served as select board chair in rural Croydon succeeded in cutting that town’s school budget in half with a startling motion at a sparsely attended town meeting. When they learned what had happened, hundreds of voters rallied to restore the funding.

Despite those setbacks, Free Staters have amassed substantial political clout, observers said.

Only 25 lawmakers in the 400-member House have been identified as known or likely Free Staters, but many more are believed to be aligned with the movement, according to Granite State Progress.

“They now control essentially the Republican Party in the House,” Dr. Tom Sherman, a Democratic state senator from Rye who is running for governor, said at a picnic in Croydon, where families celebrated the restoration of school funding. “They’re vocal and well-funded. It’s the tail wagging the dog, and the tail is big enough.”

When they enter the chamber, legislators are handed sheets with voting recommendations by the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, a group that shares many of the Free State values, and are later graded on the positions they take.

Republican lawmakers buck those priorities at their peril, particularly in primary races, said Representative Brodie Deshaies, a Wolfeboro Republican who has criticized the secession effort and what he calls a lack of transparency among Free Staters.

“Are they for you, are they going after you, or are they staying out of the race?” said Deshaies, who estimated that a majority of Republican legislators might be associated with the group.

“That’s never really happened in this state. How are they going to utilize this power?” Deshaies said. “I never know where they’re going, and I’m unsure if they even know.”

Free State leaders, including Kauffman, said the group is a big tent whose members range from radicals to pragmatists. The unifying strand, Gericke said, “is the nonaggression principle, which is an ethical stance that says you cannot force people to do things against their will.”

That made the government response to the pandemic a rallying point, she said, although New Hampshire’s restrictions were less stringent than many federal and municipal mandates.

“A lot of people are just like, ‘This response is not for us. We’d like to live in a community where, you know, people aren’t forcing us to do things against our will,’ ” said Gericke, who is running for state representative as a Republican.

The Free State Project also has alarmed the New Hampshire Council of Churches, which expressed concern last month after Free Staters tweeted a list of Christian churches in the state that it considers “woke.”

The list singled out congregations that have expressed support for the LGBTQ+ community, condemned racism, and endorsed measures to curb COVID-19, among other things, according to New Hampshire Public Radio.

Governor Chris Sununu, a Republican seeking a fourth term, occasionally has tried to distance himself from the Free State bloc. But many Democrats say he has little choice but to work with them if Republicans are to maintain control of the Legislature.

Sununu did not respond to requests for comment.

Despite the unease that Free Staters have caused,Andrew Smith, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire and director of the UNH Survey Center, said the movement’s influence might be overstated.

“They’re taking advantage of what other people don’t want to do,” Smith said. “This is kind of typical, small-town New Hampshire politics.”

But in a state already known for its libertarian leanings, Free Staters have helped drive a broad expansion of school choice, which critics often portray as a steppingstone to eliminating public schools; supported the right to carry firearms without a permit; and endorsed cutting business and property taxes, among other measures.

Free Staters also have supported the legalization of gay marriage and medical marijuana in New Hampshire, which Gericke cites as evidence that the movement can work with progressives on issues of personal freedom.

But some in the Free State effort appear less sanguine about working with others.

“The goal is to get anyone who is an authoritarian and get them out of any position of power, ideally to get them out of the state,” Kauffman said in a November podcast posted by the Libertarian Institute.

“If they’re not going to adopt our positions, we want them out,” added Kauffman, who moved to the state from Philadelphia in 2015. “And if they’re certainly in any positions of power, our goal is to replace them.”

By e-mail, Kauffman defined an authoritarian as “someone who violates the principles of bodily autonomy and voluntary interaction. For example, an authoritarian might think it’s right to rob one neighbor to pay for the other neighbor’s college.”

Free Staters are rarely so explicit in public, critics say, often masking their extreme agenda by appearing to run as mainstream Republicans.

“The Free State Project is deliberately targeting unsuspecting small communities where they can outnumber the local voting population with people who are brought in to disrupt political outcomes,” said Mohammad Saleh of Keene, chair of the Cheshire County Democrats.

“Voters see an ‘R’ next to a name, and they don’t necessarily ask what their background is,” Saleh said. The Free Staters are “an antidemocratic organization, which unfortunately has hijacked the New Hampshire Republican Party,”

According to the New Hampshire Business Review, 195 of the House’s 213-member Republican caucus in the 2021 session received A or B grades from the Liberty Alliance, a coalition “working to increase individual freedom.”

Among the 177 Democrats, 18 received a D, 24 were graded F, and the remaining 135 were deemed a “constitutional threat,” meaning they were deemed by the alliance to be “unfaithful to their oath of office to uphold the New Hampshire Constitution and the principle of liberty.”

Kauffman, in the podcast interview, expressed a hope that as the Free State movement gains strength, its opponents will see the writing on the wall and leave.

“My hope would be that you can simply make it unattractive enough that if you want there to be a giant welfare state, what are you doing here? Why did you come here?” Kauffman said.

“We’re shrinking the state here as much as we can with the influence we have, but ultimately we’ve got to get enough that we can actively take it federal and start really saying, ‘Hey, if you’re in New Hampshire, these things don’t apply,’ ” he said.

“That’s not going to happen next year,” Kauffman added. “I’d be surprised if it happened in the next five. But if the movement keeps accelerating, I think that it could happen within 10.”

Sherman: It’s time we rally together, stop placating the
extremists in NH

Sherman: It’s time we rally together, stop placating the extremists in NH

Dr. Tom Sherman

Guest Columnist

Published 5:00 a.m. ET Aug. 29, 2022

https://www.fosters.com/story/opinion/columns/2022/08/29/sherman-governors-race-sununu-nh-extremists/7926147001/

Today students in Croydon, New Hampshire, are returning to school like they’ve done every year since the schoolhouse first opened in 1794. But that tradition was jeopardized after extremists voted in March to cut the town’s public school budget in half. The town rallied together to save their school.

In July, New Hampshire residents woke up to learn that the locks had been changed on the beloved New Hampshire recreation center Gunstock Mountain. The center is critical to the area’s economy, and was temporarily shut down after political extremists who wanted to privatize it drove out the existing management team. The county rallied together to reopen Gunstock.

Last year, extremists inserted in the budget New Hampshire’s first abortion restrictions requiring cruel and invasive procedures meant to shame women. They inserted provisions meant to make teachers afraid to teach basic history, they pushed legislation that takes money from public schools, and they pushed legislation that restricts the right to vote. They pushed highly gerrymandered legislative maps. Chris Sununu signed all of these into law. Granite Staters rallied together to push back some of these restrictions, but many remain in place.

In New Hampshire and across the country we’re watching extremists attempt to tear down long-held rights and institutions. Public schools. Reproductive rights. The integrity of our elections. They literally stormed the Capitol building to try and overturn a basic tenet of our democracy.

For years when it suited his political ambitions, Chris Sununu catered to these extremists, giving them a wink and a nod to keep them on his side. He said he was a “Trump guy through and through,” then when the tide turned referred to Trump as “f—ing crazy.”

Sununu appointed an education commissioner who wants to dismantle public schools. The vote to defund Croydon’s schools was years in the making.

He gave life to conspiracy theories about Planned Parenthood and voted to defund women’s health services. He signed the state’s first abortion ban, bragged about doing “more on the pro-life issue” than anyone, refused to take any actions to codify abortion rights after Roe v. Wade fell, and said he’s willing to campaign for the New Hampshire Republicans pushing further abortion restrictions. But he claims he’s pro-choice if you ask him.

Sununu recently hit the campaign trail in Maine with Paul LePage, who is actively peddling unsubstantiated voter fraud claims, who is on the record actively opposing abortion, and who once described himself as “Trump before there was Trump.”

I’m a gastroenterologist, so believe me when I say cut the crap.

You don’t get to spend years ignoring the smoke and then act surprised when the house is on fire.

Sununu is one of many Republicans with higher ambition who has played the game for years to appease these extremists. He distances himself from them in some rooms while hugging them close in others. Sununu is not the only national Republican playing this balancing game. But our democracy is not a game. It’s not a parlor trick. And it’ll be gone before we know it if we’re not careful.

The fight to preserve our democracy is taking place in state houses across the country. The states will decide abortion rights, they’ll decide how elections are run, they’ll decide how schools are funded and what they teach.

We need leaders who will veto measures meant to restrict or limit the right to vote, and who will refuse to entertain conspiracies meant to undermine our elections. We need leaders who will codify the right to choose. We need leaders who will make sure our schools have adequate funding and that educators can teach basic history without fear. And we need leaders who will stand up to the gun lobby and pass common-sense reforms, and leaders who will ignore fossil fuel industry talking points and move forward to expand our renewable energy sources and lower costs.

Before the last couple of years, New Hampshire has had a long history of Republicans, Democrats and independents coming together to find common ground. It’s time we rally together, stop placating the extremists, and do that again.

Dr. Tom Sherman, of Rye, is a New Hampshire state senator and Democratic nominee for Governor.

Americans United: Supreme Court Ruling Is Greatest Loss Of
Religious Freedom in Generations

Sherman: It’s time we rally together, stop placating the extremists in NH

Dr. Tom Sherman

Guest Columnist

Published 5:00 a.m. ET Aug. 29, 2022

https://www.fosters.com/story/opinion/columns/2022/08/29/sherman-governors-race-sununu-nh-extremists/7926147001/

Sununu appointed an education commissioner who wants to dismantle public schools. The vote to defund Croydon’s schools was years in the making.

I’m a gastroenterologist, so believe me when I say cut the crap.

You don’t get to spend years ignoring the smoke and then act surprised when the house is on fire.

Dr. Tom Sherman, of Rye, is a New Hampshire state senator and Democratic nominee for Governor.

3 Things you need to know about Biden’s student loan announcement

3 Things you need to know about Biden’s student loan announcement

hhttps://www.nhpr.org/2022-08-25/3-things-you-need-to-know-about-bidens-student-loan-announcement

President Biden’s announcement of a sweeping effort to forgive federal student loan debt – up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients, and up to $10,000 for others who qualify – leaves millions of borrowers with unanswered questions, and some of the details won’t be clear for weeks or months.

Here are three big questions borrowers may have:

1. Who will get loan forgiveness?

Americans currently owe about $1.62 trillion in federal student loans. Biden’s plan will provide relief to most of them – 43 million borrowers – and will completely erase the student debt of about 20 million.

But who qualifies?

Individuals with federal student loans who make under $125,000 per year, or couples earning less than $250,000, qualify for up to $10,000 in forgiveness.

That includes current students: Borrowers who are dependent students will be eligible for relief based on their parents’ income. Parent PLUS loans, which are federal loans for parents of undergraduate students, are also eligible under the president’s plan. (Loans taken out after June 30, 2022, will not qualify.)

Qualified borrowers who received Pell Grants are eligible for additional relief – up to $20,000.

Roughly 60% of federal student loan borrowers received Pell Grants, according to the White House. These grants are designed to help low-income students pay for higher education, and about a third of undergraduates with federal student loans receive Pell Grants every year.

2. Do I have to apply?

Many borrowers, while excited about the news, want to know what comes next. The White House said that, in order to benefit, most borrowers will have to submit an application to verify their income. The Education Department said nearly 8 million borrowers already have income information on file, and should qualify to have their debts canceled automatically.

For those 8 million borrowers, that relief may come very soon. And the timetable for those remaining borrowers – some 35 million of them?

“That’s the million dollar question,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly.

“We’re improving a system that was broken and antiquated,” he said, adding that it will take time to make the process run smoothly. Cardona urged borrowers to go to https://studentaid.gov/debt-relief-announcement/ for more information and to sign up for automated emails that will provide updates.

3. Will my monthly payments go down?

An unexpected part of Biden’s announcement is a revised plan for what is known as income-driven repayment (IDR), which are designed to help people who cannot afford to make large monthly payments.

Biden’s IDR plan will cut the amount borrowers have to contribute each month – from 10% of their discretionary income to 5%. It will also raise the amount of income that is considered non-discretionary, thus providing more assistance.

While Biden’s loan forgiveness announcement brings immediate relief for many borrowers, Dominique Baker, an associate professor of education policy at Southern Methodist University, says these changes to IDR could bring benefits for years. “When we talk about needing large-scale reform of the student loan system, this would be one of those things,” she said. “This is a good first step.”

Op-Ed: The Sununu Hypocrisy Train Has Left the Station

Op-Ed: The Sununu Hypocrisy Train Has Left the Station

By Rep. David Meuse, Portsmouth August 26, 2022
https://indepthnh.org/2022/08/26/op-ed-the-sununu-hypocrisy-train-has-left-the-station/

On Wednesday, Gov. Sununu charged up his conservative base and made a few headlines by condemning President Biden’s decision to cancel $10,000 in student debt for those making less than $125,000 a year. In statements reported by the media, Sununu angrily pointed out that poorer taxpayers who didn’t go to college will essentially wind up subsidizing those who did.

Don’t get me wrong. The governor’s newfound concern for economically disadvantaged taxpayers is welcome change. But keep in mind this is the same governor who has twice vetoed establishing a state minimum wage—the second time in the same year he accepted a $31,000 pay raise.

As you ponder the governor’s distaste for subsidies that leave lower-income people holding the bag —it should be noted that in his tweets and statements to the press he somehow failed to mention those same taxpayers also happen to be subsidizing over $3 million in federal PPP loans awarded to Sununu family businesses during COVID—and later forgiven.

Perhaps the hypocrisy wouldn’t be so striking if it weren’t so blatant. Evidently, it’s fine to heap scorn on people struggling with student loan debt. But when it comes to forgiving taxpayer-funded loans accepted by the Sununu family’s business interests, “that’s different.”

Unmentioned during the governor’s mid-week rant is the fact that under his leadership New Hampshire has the dubious distinction of having the highest average student loan debt ($39,928) in the country. Many borrowers come from low-to-moderate income families. Ironically, this means that a substantial number of the “poorer taxpayers” Sununu claims to be concerned about—along with many of their parents now struggling to pay utility bills—will actually benefit from Biden’s action.

But the hypocrisy train doesn’t stop there. In 2021, the governor signed a state budget into law that, along with his infamous abortion ban, also appropriated $10 million in taxpayer money to bail out rich investors who were duped in the FRM Ponzi scheme. As if forcing poorer taxpayers to subsidize the mistakes of the wealthy wasn’t enough, the same budget bill set aside only $130,000 for an expansive school voucher program that has run up a $9 million bill to date—90% of which has been spent to subsidize private school tuitions for children who were already attending private schools. In neither case did the did governor voice any concerns for “poorer taxpayers” left holding the bag to subsidize the foibles and choices of the privileged.

But wait, there’s more! The final stop on the hypocrisy train deals with how the college educations for Gov. Sununu and his siblings were financed. Unlike the thousands of New Hampshire students and families forced to scramble for loans for a chance at a brighter future, Sununu’s education was at least partially subsidized by others thanks to maneuvering by his father, former Gov. John Sununu.

After famously complaining that his salary as New Hampshire governor wasn’t enough to pay college tuition for his children, the elder Sununu decided to take a 6 year leave of absence from his teaching job at Tufts University instead of simply cutting the cord. Why take a leave of absence instead of the exit ramp? Because at the time, children of Tufts staff on leave were eligible to attend Tufts free of charge. University policy also allowed children of Tufts faculty to receive $1,250 a semester for a maximum of $2,500 a year to help pay their bills at any other accredited college.

Bottom line? Sweet deal if you’re fortunate enough to be born into the right family.

While I don’t begrudge the governor’s good fortune in winning the birth lottery, his vocal scorn for debt-ridden college students and his silence when it comes to protecting “poorer taxpayers” against subsidies and loan forgiveness that benefited his family and his ideological allies is telling. I hope voters see through the bluster and send him a message in November.

Jewish congregations mount legal challenges to state abortion bans

Jewish congregations mount legal challenges to state abortion bans

BY: ARIANA FIGUEROA – AUGUST 26, 2022 4:30 AM

https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2022/08/26/jewish-congregations-mount-legal-challenges-to-state-abortion-bans/eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=403f8742-bc0c-4332-9d13-db79458597d1

WASHINGTON – Thousands of years of Jewish scripture make it clear that access to abortion care is a requirement of Jewish law and practice, according to Rabbi Karen Bogard.

“We preserve life at all costs,” she said in an interview with States Newsroom. “But there is a difference between that which is living, and that which is not yet living.”

Bogard is a rabbi at Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis, which is in the progressive tradition of Reform Judaism. She said that whether it’s the Torah — the first five books of the Old Testament in the Hebrew Bible — or the Talmud — the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law and theology — those pieces of Jewish literature “really draw the difference between life and potential life.”

But with the fall of Roe v. Wade in late June, some members of the Jewish faith as well as other religious groups find their beliefs in deep conflict with state laws that ban or greatly restrict abortion – especially if a pregnant patient’s life is in danger.

Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, states now are permitted to craft their own laws regarding abortion, and in Bogard’s home state of Missouri, the procedure is banned.

“Our congregants are heartbroken,” she said. “It’s really violating to be told what you can and can’t do with your own self.”

Legal challenges are resulting. The enactment of state laws that ban or restrict access to abortion has already sparked a lawsuit in Florida from a liberal Jewish congregation in the Sunshine State. In Ohio, another liberal Jewish congregation is joining the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit against the state’s six-week abortion ban.

A coalition of three dozen rabbis also filed a brief on a separate lawsuit in the Buckeye State, where physicians are challenging the new abortion law in the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Similar lawsuits are anticipated, not only from liberal Jewish congregations, but other religious groups as well.

There’s currently a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas Houston Division filed by the Satanic Temple – not to be confused with the Church of Satan – on behalf of a member who argues the state’s abortion ban violates that temple member’s religious beliefs allowing access to an abortion ritual.

The ritual involves members repeating verses in a mirror to affirm body autonomy and repel any guilt, shame, or discomfort that can surface when undergoing an abortion.

“There’s going to be a wave of religious freedom lawsuits,” Rabbi Daniel Bogard, who’s married to Rabbi Karen Bogard, said. “We’re going to find out if this country really believes in religious freedom, or whether this country believes in the freedom of a small minority to impose its will on the rest of us.”

But it’s unclear if these religious-based lawsuits challenging state abortion laws can win in court.

“We’re very much in the wild, wild west of abortion law and religious law,” said Candace Bond-Theriault, the director of racial justice policy and strategy at Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

Jewish law

According to Jewish law, a fetus is not considered a full human being and the biblical foundation for this is found in Exodus 21:22 of the Torah, Rabbi Daniel Bogard said.

The translation reads: “When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman’s husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning. But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.…”

Rabbi Daniel Bogard said that the Jewish legal interpretation of these passages states that a fetus is not a person, because the miscarriage results in only monetary compensation, rather than the “life for life” punishment.

There are several other passages in Jewish literature that make the distinction that the life of the person who is pregnant is prioritized.

“If we’re going to live in a religiously free society, we are each allowed to interpret these verses on our own for our own traditions and a minority in this country can’t impose their conservative white Christian religiosity on the rest of us,” Rabbi Daniel Bogard said.

The lawsuits challenging abortion laws are predominately filed by congregations that practice Reform Judaism, but Conservative Judaism also supports access to abortion.

The question of access to abortion gets more restrictive when it comes to Orthodox Judaism, but access to the medical procedure isn’t barred, says Yedida Eisenstat, a fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in Atlanta.

“Abortion in Judaism absolutely does have a place, and within Jewish law, there absolutely is a place for abortion,” she said. “Judaism is not anti-abortion, like Christianity is, so it absolutely does make sense for Jewish congregations to be saying, ‘Hey, this is a violation of our religious rights.’”

Eisenstat specializes in Jewish biblical interpretation and also works as an editorial associate at the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization.

“Judaism doesn’t have one voice or one opinion or one ruling about everything,” she said, adding that every situation is different and “there’s all this other gray area,” when it comes to theoretical cases in Jewish law pertaining to abortion.

And interpretations on abortion in Jewish law, or Halacha, vary across American Jewish denominations.

“We use the theoretical cases to illuminate other cases – just like in American law – so there isn’t one blanket answer for every situation, every situation has its own nuances,” she said. “And again, that’s why this is a decision, a very personal decision, not one that the government should be making.”

The Rabbinical Assembly, a major institution of Conservative Judaism, condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs.

“Denying individuals access to the complete spectrum of reproductive health care, including contraception, abortion-inducing devices and medications, and abortions, among others, on religious grounds, deprives those who need medical care of their Constitutional right to religious freedom,” the organization said in a statement.

Orthodox Judaism is typically more aligned with Christian conservative views on religious liberty issues, Eisenstat said, but differs on the belief that life begins at conception.

Following the Dobbs decision, the Rabbinical Council of America and Agudath Israel, large organizations that represent Orthodox Jewish communities, urged states to consider exceptions to expand abortion access.

“As the debate over abortion rights enters this new phase, we encourage states to craft policies that will simultaneously express the great value we place on life as well as protecting the rights to abortion when warranted by Jewish law,” the Rabbinical Council of America said in a statement.

Florida lawsuits

Rabbi Barry Silver is a self-proclaimed “rabbi-rouser.”

He’s an attorney, a social activist, a former Democratic legislator in the Florida House of Representative and the leader of the Congregation L’Dor va-Dor, a synagogue practicing progressive Judaism in Palm Beach, Florida.

Silver, along with three rabbis, a United Church of Christ reverend, a Unitarian Universalist minister, an Episcopal Church priest and a Buddhist lama, each have filed separate lawsuits challenging the state’s 15-week abortion ban that went into effect July 1. Those suits argue that the new abortion law violates Florida’s state constitution, as well as U.S. constitutional protections for freedom of speech and religion.

The suits also claim the law creates “substantial” burdens on individuals’ ability to practice their faith, and creates a “potential” burden on religious leaders to advise their members. Because of the vagueness of the law, Silver said, rabbis or other religious leaders who counsel their clergy members on abortion could face criminal charges.

“It criminalizes the practice of Judaism as well as all the other religions that are not aligned with fundamentalist Christianity, which is pretty much everybody,” Silver said of Florida’s new abortion law.

Silver’s Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor also filed a separate suit in June in state court that argues the 15-week abortion ban violates the right to privacy guaranteed by the Florida state constitution.

“For Jews, all life is precious and thus the decision to bring new life into the world is not taken lightly or determined by state fiat,” according to the lawsuit. “As such, the act prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and this violates their privacy rights and religious freedom.”

Silver said he still plans to counsel his congregants who need or are considering abortion care, despite Florida’s new law.

“We do the right thing and if they want to come after us, they can make our day, we’re not going to stop saying what we need to say. We’re not gonna stop practicing Jewish law,” he said.

A spokesperson with GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office did not answer questions from States Newsroom about whether the newly passed abortion law prevents Jewish people from practicing their faith.

“Governor DeSantis is pro-life, and we believe HB 5 will ultimately withstand all legal challenges,” a spokesperson with DeSantis’ office wrote in an email to States Newsroom, referring to the abortion law. “The struggle for life is not over.”

Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor’s suit claiming Florida’s constitution has an explicit right to privacy is “fairly straightforward, and would generally be unremarkable,” said Caroline Mala Corbin, a law professor at the University of Miami School of Law.

“Under the existing law, it’s a no-brainer challenge,” Corbin said.

She added that the Florida Supreme Court has interpreted that language to cover abortion.

“Except that, like the U.S. Supreme Court, the Florida Supreme Court has taken a sharp turn to the right, so just as you have the U.S. Supreme Court completely remake abortion law, it’s a possibility the Florida Supreme Court will as well,” she said.

Corbin said the court could rule several ways in the congregation’s case.

“They might argue, ‘We question your sincerity,’ which would be shocking given how deferential they are to other claims of religious liberty,” she said.

The court could also rule that the congregation did not prove Florida’s abortion law created a substantial burden, or that even if the law prevents someone from practicing their religion, “the state has a compelling reason for its law, and therefore, the state must prevail,” she said.

“So the state might respond, even if this does affect your ability to live your religious truth, the state has a compelling interest in saving lives and therefore the state still prevails,” Corbin said.

Future cases

Micah Schwartzman, the director of the University of Virginia School of Law’s Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, and the Hardy Cross Dillard professor of law, said lawsuits brought on behalf of a group of people, like the one from Silver’s congregation in Florida, rather than a particular individual, will have more procedural hurdles to prove the group has standing to sue under state and federal law.

“I’m not terribly confident about these early lawsuits,” Schwartzman said.

He pointed to the case in Texas, the one by the Satanic Temple, which the religious organization filed in federal court on behalf of one of its members, and said he expects to see similar cases.

“I think in the future, we’re going to see cases that are brought on behalf of particular individuals who are burdened by abortion restrictions or prohibitions,” he said. “And those types (of cases) will have a stronger chance of surviving the preliminary stages of litigation.”

Schwartzman said there’s also the question of religious exemptions, particularly in states that have enacted trigger law bans or near total bans on abortion, and whether those laws impose a burden on people trying to practice their religion.

State abortion laws are going to have some exemptions for abortion, he said, such as in cases of rape and incest and to protect the life and health of the mother.

“And in those circumstances, courts are going to face the question if these laws have certain secular exceptions, why shouldn’t they also grant exceptions on religious grounds?” he said. “And I think that will be the structure of many challenges that we will see in the future.”

Elizabeth Sepper, a religious liberty, health law, and equality scholar at the University of Texas School of Law, said that over the last couple of decades the Supreme Court has “reduced the establishment clause to rubble,” which under the First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing a religion.

When Roe v. Wade was initially issued, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds to cover the cost of abortions, with some limited exceptions.

Sepper said Congress’ decision to pass a restriction related to abortion in the case of the Hyde Amendment, is an example of “an establishment of religion because when legislators pass abortion bans that say ‘Well, human beings come into life at the moment of conception,’ that’s a doctrine – is a theological stance – that’s rooted in a particular religious faith, and we all know religious faith that is.”

“I think some large segment of the population on both sides of the abortion issue understands (that) to be the truth, which is that many abortion bans require religious reasoning,” Sepper said.

N.H. churches condemn ‘wokeness’ list,
saying it could spur harassment

N.H. churches condemn ‘wokeness’ list,
saying it could spur harassment

https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2022-08-23/n-h-churches-condemn-wokeness-list-saying-it-could-spur-harassment

New Hampshire Public Radio | By Paul Cuno-Booth

Published August 23, 2022 at 5:39 PM EDT

The New Hampshire Council of Churches is concerned a list of so-called “woke” churches could be used to target those with inclusive beliefs.

The list of New Hampshire churches singles out congregations that have displayed rainbow symbols, condemned racism or supported COVID mitigation measures, among other things. The libertarian Free State Project shared the list on Twitter last week.

In a statement Tuesday, the Council of Churches expressed concern that certain churches could be harassed because of their beliefs, noting that “hate and white supremacist activity” has been occurring in New Hampshire.

“I am concerned about targeted or elevated harassment, particularly of congregations with strong anti-racism commitments or a long history of LGBTQ+ inclusion,” Rev. Heidi Carrington Heath, the council’s executive director, told NHPR.

She called the use of “woke” in this context “a racist dog-whistle designed to activate and alert other white supremacists.”

While she saw no cause for “immediate alarm,” she said the council will watch for any uptick in hate speech or harassment in the coming days.

The list appears on a Wikipedia-style website that says it aims to bolster the Free State Project, a movement that encourages libertarians to move to New Hampshire.

The page groups churches by denominations, listing their names, locations and which ones it deems “woke.” One church it identified as “woke” posted about Disability Pride Month, another honors the Abenaki on its website and says the church sits on the tribe’s “unceded lands.” A third church donated to the NAACP.

Jeremy Kauffman, a Free State Project board member and Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, said a member created the list so that Christians moving to the state could find churches in line with their social views.

“The N.H. Council of Churches sounds pretty woke and is probably full of socialists frustrated by how much liberty is winning in New Hampshire,” Kauffman said in an email. “Groups that screech bigotry and racism so casually embarrass themselves and distract from what real problems do exist.”

Looking for a church that isn’t ‘woke?’
Secessionist group tweets out list that
classifies places of worship.

https://www.insider.com/new-hampshire-free-staters-shared-list-of-woke-churches-2022-8

A New Hampshire libertarian group tweeted a list of churches, classifying them by how “woke” they are.
Being LGBTQ-friendly, COVID-cautious, or having a Ukraine flag displayed is considered “woke.”
The list was posted amid a spike in far-right threats of violence.

The Free State Project — a New Hampshire-based libertarian movement — tweeted a list of Christian churches in the state, identifying those that are considered “woke.”

The list, which was published on a wiki called “LibertyWins.org,” largely measures “wokeness” by whether the church is LGBTQ-friendly, has advocated for racial or social justice, or had implemented COVID precautions.

It was distributed by The Free State Twitter account, which has over 80,000 followers.

The list on “LibertyWins.org” titled “Christianity in New Hampshire,” doesn’t detail the intention of the list, but some critics on Twitter are calling the “wokeness” classification a “racist dog whistle” and worry that it will prompt attacks on the places of worship.

State Democratic Rep. Lucy Weber has previously protested against The Free State Project and described them as anti-LGBTQ. Weber told Insider that she didn’t want to speculate about the group’s motivations for compiling the list, but found it “distasteful.”

“It’s not an issue I have a lot to say on except that they’ve gotten the right to say it,” Weber told Insider. “They’re not government actors, so I find it distasteful, but I’m allowed to have my opinions too.”

[The complete list can be found here: https://libertywin.org/index.php/Christianity_in_New_Hampshire]

There are nearly 900 churches named, and they are identified by their location and denomination.

In a column called “wokeness” there are notes.

While displaying a Pride flag, or requiring masks was a sure-fire way to land churches on the list, there were other reasons cited for the classification.

An Episcopal church made its way on the woke list by donating to the NAACP. Another displayed a Ukraine flag on its website. A third included a blurb on its website about how they are located on “unceded native American land.”

Eight Episcopal churches on the list were included for either supporting the LGBTQ. community on their websites or for generally being LGBTQ affirming churches. The Episcopal Church is generally more accepting of the LGBTQ community, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the former Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, was the first openly gay priest to become a bishop of a major Christian denomination.

A representative for the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire told Insider in a statement that the church was aware of the list.

“The Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire supports gay marriage, as do Episcopal bishops and churches across the nation, as does The Episcopal Church as a governing body,” the statement read. “We are all seeking to be disciples of our savior Jesus Christ.”

Founded by Jason Sorens, the Free State Project is a movement that since the early 2000s has encouraged the migration of “liberty activists” to New Hampshire, where they hope to live in a libertarian limited-government utopia.

The group’s website explicitly says it is not tied to “any political party or organization,” though many of its members who do run or serve in political office are registered as Republicans.

The Free State Project didn’t return Insider’s messages for comment.

At a recent protest against the movement, Weber told The Keene Sentinel that the group may preach freedom, but that liberty doesn’t extend to people in the LGBTQ community. Members of the group, she said, have pushed to make it harder to register to vote and want to restrict abortions.

“They go, ‘we’re for liberty, we’re for freedom.’ Who isn’t?” Weber told the Sentinel in July. “Their freedom is only for people who are just like them and they don’t seem to have a concept of the public good.”

Extremist threats of violence are at a high

The Free State Project says on its website — in bold — that “it does not welcome anyone who promotes violence, racial hatred, or bigotry” and in 2013 it kicked out infamous neo-Nazi Christopher Cantwell after he wrote about killing government agents and violently overthrowing the government.

And while the group says it doesn’t welcome those who promote violence, the list, which singles out places of worship due to ideology, was shared on Twitter as threats of extremist far-right violence are at a high.

References to “civil war” doubled on online extremist platforms in the week following the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, Insider previously reported.

Extremists have taken to both niche social media platforms and mainstream sites like TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube to preach pro-Trump violence.

Antisemitic threats against the Jewish Florida judge who signed the search warrant became so specific and credible that his temple canceled Shabbat services.

Judge Bruce Reinhart and Attorney General Merrick Garland have been subjected to “an enormous amount of threats and vitriol online,” Alex Friedfeld, who monitors online extremism for the Anti Defamation League’s Center On Extremism, told Insider.

Op-Ed: How the Supreme Court
changed the rules of the game

Op-Ed: How the Supreme Court changed the rules of the game

By Rep. Marjorie Smith August 3, 2022

Since the Dobbs decision came down, many tears and much ink have been spilled over the effects of the decision on women and their families. I understand the difficulties being experienced by women across the nation, and the efforts by many to try to solve those difficulties. But very little has been written about the substance of the decision itself, and alternatives that the court could have adopted. One example of a more moderate approach – one that Justice Roberts appears to favor, would retain a woman’s constitutional right to abortion while eliminating the viability language from the Roe and Casey decisions.

I have been a legislator for 25 years, but I am not a constitutional scholar. For expert advice I turned to William Cotter. President Emeritus of Colby College and Professor Emeritus of American government, Cotter continues to lecture regularly on US Supreme Court decisions. What follows is Cotter’s response to my questions about the decision.

Cotter sees five major flaws in the Alito opinion that he considers intentional distortions.

Alito claims that unenumerated rights must be “deeply rooted in the Nation’s History and tradition and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” This is simply not true and many rights that the Court assures us they do not intend to disturb – such as same-sex and inter-racial marriage – had the opposite history. Moreover, he quotes Justice Ginsburg’s decision regarding excessive fines in the Timbs case to suggest that she would agree with always using that standard. Nothing could be further from the truth. There has to be a shaking grave wherever RBG is resting. “

Cotter believes that it is not the 1973 Roe decision, “but the more relevant opinion guaranteeing a woman’s right to choose is Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). The Casey guideline of “undue burden” has been used by the Courts for over 40 years but the Alito opinion in Dobbs spends considerable time attacking Roe’s trimester formula which in fact was abandoned entirely in Casey after 20 years.

The Casey opinion is full of reasons to reaffirm Roe’s “central holding” [of a woman’s right to choose], not as Alioto claims that Casey’s central holding is the doctrine of stare decisis.

Cotter took time to educate me, and now you, about Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health (1990). Allito lists by name 12 cases he relied on, but conspicuously omits Cruzon, one of the most important cases that was central to the Casey decision, decided just 2 years before Casey, and described by the Casey court as a separate and distinct pillar of the constitutional right of a woman to choose that goes well beyond the reasoning of Roe. “Roe, however, may be seen not only as an exemplar of Griswold liberty but as a rule (whether or not mistaken) of personal autonomy and bodily integrity, with doctrinal affinity to cases recognizing limits on governmental power to mandate medical treatment or bar its rejection.” Casey explicitly — and first – cites Cruzan to support that statement and so Cruzan is a case of equal importance with Roe to the Casey Court and this is never acknowledged in Alito’s opinion. Cruzan, by the way, gives all of us the right to refuse medical treatment and to have living wills. Cotter doubts the Alito majority wants to take those away. Perhaps this is why they totally ignore it in their Dobbs opinion.

Cotter’s last point is that Alito stresses the “judicial restraint” of the Dobbs decision by leaving decisions about abortion to “elected representatives” But he fails to note that Casey already did that 40 years earlier. In fact, Casey gives great deference to the power of state legislatures and upheld 4 of the 5 abortion restrictions passed in Pennsylvania. Alito could have respected Casey and continued that tradition where state laws are reviewed only under the “reasonable” standard and not subject to the “strict scrutiny” that Roe had proposed.

Cotter’s concludes that in analyzing Supreme Court decisions for over 40 years, he has never before encountered such distortions.

I have served in the NH house of representatives since 1996. During that time, with one narrow exception, the NH house adopted the classic libertarian philosophy that the government did not belong in the bedrooms or the doctors’ offices when decisions about a woman’s right to privacy and to control her own body were at stake. During most of those years Republicans controlled the legislature, but with the strong leadership of their Democratic colleagues, continued to respect reproductive rights. That changed dramatically in 2021 when the Republican legislature passed and Governor Sununu signed a budget bill that included a section that had nothing to do with the state budget- no public money is used to fund abortions -, but was included in order to capture the votes of right wing extremists who threatened to otherwise oppose the budget. The governor caved.

The law as passed required intrusive medical procedures, without any determination that such procedures were medically necessary. It also included draconian penalties for medical professionals if they performed abortion procedures without regard to their medical necessity, and they had no exceptions for denial of abortion based on rape, incest, or the health of the woman.

Since then, the governor and the Republicans in the legislature, reacting to public outrage about this dramatic change in state policy, have passed legislation which removes some, but not all of the 2021 language. What happens in New Hampshire to basic rights of women to control their own bodies and of women and their families to control their futures, rests with NH voters and the decisions they make about who they want to represent them in the NH house, senate, executive council and the governor’s office.

My closing plea is in light of the US supreme court’s actions, it is more important than ever that every registered voter does the necessary research about candidate’s positions, and then vote accordingly.

Energy & Environment

Video discussion by Kat McGhee.

At 8:50 of the video Kat McGhee begins an excellent discussion that should be of interest to all of us.

New Hampshire’s latest energy strategy: blame other states
for rising costs

New Hampshire’s latest energy strategy: blame other states for rising costs

Gov. Chris Sununu’s administration says renewable energy investments by other New England states are hurting New Hampshire ratepayers. Clean energy experts say it’s actually the state’s overreliance on fossil fuels.

by Lisa PrevostAugust 22, 2022

Article:

New Hampshire’s latest energy strategy: blame other states for rising costs

Reactions: https://twitter.com/SamEBEnergy/status/1561892932080238594?t=sPmN2RzJgSXj0x5LGBDTQg&s=03

Advocates say New Hampshire’s reliance on natural gas puts cost pressure on the regional grid. Credit: PSNH via Creative Commons

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s administration is taking aim at the five other New England states, blaming their investments in renewable energy for higher electricity costs regionwide.

The New Hampshire Department of Energy’s new 10-year energy strategy, as in past years, prioritizes cost-effective energy above all else, and calls for free-market selection of energy resources, regardless of the fuel source. The latest version also repeatedly suggests that New Hampshire ratepayers will suffer as a result of other states’ aggressive procurements of offshore wind, solar and other sources of renewable power.

“Neighboring state renewable mandates create upward pressures on electricity prices from higher-cost renewables by increasing their share of the regional fuel mix,” the plan says. “As such, there is a significant risk that those increased costs will be passed to New Hampshire ratepayers even though New Hampshire policy is not driving those costs.”

Clean energy experts say that message is completely off base. Moreover, they say, it distracts from the primary reason for the state’s relatively high electric rates: overreliance on fossil fuels.

“Procurement strategies and programs like renewable portfolio standards do prioritize zero carbon electricity resources, but they are paid for by the states that put them in place,” said Greg Ohadoma, a policy associate at the Northeast Clean Energy Council in Somerville, Massachusetts. “Ultimately, New Hampshire ratepayers will benefit from the economies of scale and the downward pressure on renewable energy pricing that its fellow states have spurred.”

And the fact is, renewable energy costs — offshore wind in particular — “are coming in lower than ever before,” said John Carlson, manager of state policy at Ceres, a nonprofit sustainability advocacy organization based in Boston. “The recent high prices in New Hampshire are in fact being driven by natural gas prices, not by more stable renewable energy production and associated investments in neighboring states.”

New Hampshire is part of the regional energy grid run by ISO-New England. Natural gas accounts for the grid’s largest share of electricity generation, at 53%.

After deregulation, “alongside the fracking boom, we had a 15- to 20-year glut of gas-fired power plants,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy NH. “Now we have a global energy shock and that decision is coming home to roost.”

Like the rest of New England, New Hampshire has some of the highest electricity rates in the country. The average resident spent $4,078 on energy in 2019, almost 10% higher than the national average, the report said.

Rates are now doubling for many of the state’s consumers, with the utilities pointing to rising natural gas prices related to the war in Ukraine.

In an effort to diversify the regional energy supply and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the other New England states have solicited more than 8,000 MW of power supply through large-scale clean energy procurements since 2015, according to ISO-New England.

New Hampshire stands alone in the region as not having adopted a legal mandate to reduce carbon emissions. The rest of the states are legally committed to cutting emissions by 80 percent by 2050. And earlier this year, Rhode Island became the first state in the country to pass a law requiring the state’s electricity use to be wholly offset by renewables by 2033.

New Hampshire’s renewable portfolio standard, which requires electric suppliers to provide certain percentages of renewable energy, is anemic compared to the rest of the region. Its projected growth in solar adoption is the weakest in the region, according to ISO. And while more than two-fifths of New Hampshire households heat their homes with fuel oil, the state has “paid almost no attention to trying to transition to other fuel sources,” said Nick Krakoff, a staff attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation in New Hampshire.

The Sununu administration’s latest energy strategy, which is intended to guide state policymakers, does not propose a different path. Nor, Krakoff notes, does it express any sense of urgency around climate change.

“There are a few references here and there, but there’s a real lack of concern,” he said.

The plan’s recurring themes are opposition to any type of government incentives to “promote the so-called ‘clean energy transition,’” and support for policies that “prioritize the most cost-effective energy production and delivery.”

“Some states may choose to accept significant above-market costs to achieve a particular resource mix,” the plan says. “With some of the highest energy costs in the nation, New Hampshire should be particularly sensitive to policy-imposed costs on ratepayers.”

Given that focus on paring costs, one might have expected the plan to place a much higher priority on energy efficiency measures as an inexpensive way of cutting consumer bills, Krakoff said. Rather, it simply acknowledges that a state program exists — if only barely. The legislature last year restored some funding for the program after the state Public Utilities Commission rejected a much more ambitious funding plan.

“All the other states in New England have pretty robust energy efficiency programs,” Krakoff said. “That’s going to continue to reduce energy use in those states, and New Hampshire’s share of regional grid costs is going to rise.”

At least 18 Granite State communities are aiming to cut energy costs on their own by pursuing power purchase agreements under the state’s community power law. The state Public Utilities Commission recently approved final rules for the program, which authorizes municipalities to procure power, using the collective buying power of all of their residents and businesses to secure competitive prices.

The municipalities will be able to actively manage their power portfolios in order to meet their chosen goals, whether that be to lower costs, provide more renewable power, or both.

Towns, cities prepare for Aug. 23 zoning law changes aimed
at boosting housing market

Towns, cities prepare for Aug. 23 zoning law changes aimed at boosting housing market

BY: ETHAN DEWITT – AUGUST 16, 2022 5:45 AM

Towns, cities prepare for Aug. 23 zoning law changes aimed at boosting housing market

As New Hampshire’s school boards prepare for the school year, local planning boards are facing a different action deadline: Aug. 23. That’s the day towns and cities must start adhering to a package of new zoning and planning laws passed by the Legislature this year.

There are new deadlines. There are requirements for better explanations for approvals and denials. And there are mechanisms for towns to approve and help finance workforce housing, a key aim of the bill.

Towns and cities are already rushing to get up to speed. An Aug. 10 online webinar presented by the New Hampshire Municipal Association and the state’s Office of Planning and Development saw 400 town officials, planning board members, and zoning board members log on for a detailed briefing – eight times the standard attendance.

Some municipalities, such as Keene, have already incorporated many of the required changes voluntarily.

“Much of what is in the new law we already practice,” said Jesse Rounds, the community development director in Keene.

Others may need to step up their efforts.

Here is what’s about to change.

More transparency

Some of the changes in the law, House Bill 1661, require town and city land use boards to be more upfront with residents and developers over how the process works.

The law requires that cities and towns post all fees necessary for land use permits somewhere in public.

It also requires that land use boards issue written reasons for an approval or a disapproval. Exactly how much detail the boards must give is determined by how controversial the application was, the law states. If a board fails to release written findings of fact supporting its refusal, the move will be grounds for automatic reversal in superior court.

Natch Greyes, government affairs counsel for the New Hampshire Municipal Association, noted that the land use boards should be acting in a “quasi-judicial capacity.” “You have to explain what you’re doing, just like a judge would,” he said. Those decisions might later be relied upon if a developer decides to appeal the decision, he noted.

“Obviously, if you’ve had the hearing if you’ve made the decision, really the written findings are just encapsulating what you discussed and decided,” Greyes said.

The existing statute already requires providing written findings of fact, but the potential for automatic reversal if a town fails to do so is new.

Tighter deadlines

The new law attempts to speed up the decision-making process, potentially allowing for more approvals than usual.

Zoning boards will now have up to 90 days to make a decision on an application, unless the applicant agrees to an extension. If the zoning board doesn’t have enough information to make a decision, the board may deny that application. That 90-day clock starts upon the board’s receipt of the application.

The law also effectively grants planning boards up to 95 days to make a decision; it eliminates the ability for planning boards to get a 90-day extension. Any extension is now possible only if the applicant agrees to waive the deadline.

Meanwhile, appeals have more requirements. If the board acted with gross negligence, bad faith, or malice, then attorney’s fees may be awarded to the applicant. But if there was malice in appealing to the court, attorney’s fees could be awarded to the board. That latter case could happen if an applicant proceeded with an appeal even if they knew there was no reasonable basis for it, Greyes said. The former case could happen if a board demonstrated bias or prejudice against the applicant.

Consistent housing incentives

Towns that offer more relaxed zoning conditions for housing for older persons are about to face a choice. The new law requires any incentives in zoning laws that apply to housing for older persons to also apply to workforce housing.

That means any developer submitting an application under the workforce housing statute can rely on the same provisions the town offers to older residents in its zoning ordinances, whether they are dimensional incentives or density incentives. That change will not take effect until next year – July 1, 2023. Towns that want to change their zoning ordinances will need to do so during town meetings next spring.

Noah Hodgetts, municipal and regional assistance principal planner at the state Office of Strategic Initiatives, said “it wouldn’t hurt” for towns to update their ordinances to clarify that the same incentives apply to both types of developments. The requirement affects zoning ordinances but does not apply to tax incentives.

New investment opportunities

Beyond new requirements, the law also creates incentives for towns to build more housing.

It expands the definition of “public use” and allows the municipality to buy or acquire land for workforce housing through any existing process other than eminent domain.

And it allows towns to create “municipal economic development and revitalization districts” and apply them to workforce housing. That designation would allow municipalities to create a “tax increment financing” district, a mechanism that allows towns to help subsidize the construction of the development using future tax revenues generated by the property.

Better training

Part of the new law intends to increase awareness of existing zoning laws among planning and zoning board members across the state.

The Office of Planning and Development has created two 30-question multiple choice tests – one for zoning boards and one for planning boards – that will allow municipal employees and board members to demonstrate their knowledge of zoning laws. The tests allow those board members to receive a certificate for passing the test, and they also allow others to carry out the test anonymously, without credit.

There are no legal ramifications for not taking the test; if a planning board member doesn’t take a test, it will not be held against them in a lawsuit against the board, Hodgetts said.

The Office of Planning and Development is currently developing new training materials that it can offer to municipal employees and land use board members, Hodgetts said.

Protections for religious organizations

Towns and cities are also contending with House Bill 1021 this summer, a law that limits zoning provisions relating to religious properties. This law, which took effect July 1, bars most municipal limitations against religious properties.

Modeled after the “Dover amendment” in Massachusetts, the law overrides any zoning ordinance that is deemed to prohibit, regulate, or restrict land or structures used primarily for religious purposes.

Towns may subject religious properties to a number of standard zoning requirements, such as regulating the height of structures, yard sizes, lot area, setbacks, open space, and building coverage requirements, as long as those requirements are applied equally to religious and nonreligious properties. But a town may not take actions that “substantially burden religious exercise,” the law states.

The types of regulations that towns may no longer impose on religious properties include “lighting, signs, noise, on-site and off-site drainage, erosion and sediment control, layout of streets and sidewalks, utility design and installation, open space, pervious/impervious area, landscaping,” and parking requirements, according to New Hampshire Municipal Association legal guidance.

Greyes said the law’s sparse phrasing and lack of defined terms makes it difficult to interpret. There are no definitions for what “primarily religious” or “substantially burden” mean. Some town officials asked whether they could stop a church that decided to host a firing range as part of its offered services. Greyes said the Municipal Association is not sure: If the property has a dual use, such as as a store or a house, the determination may be tricky, he noted.

Both Greyes and Hodgetts said the law would likely have the biggest impact when it comes to parking around churches.

“This creates a huge exemption,” Hodgetts said. “There’s no two ways about it.”

Incremental changes

As towns and cities align their practices with the new law, new developments are still likely to be approved on a case-by-case basis.

In Keene, city leaders are supportive of increasing workforce housing, Rounds said. The city is continuing to update its zoning district code to do so; it recently allowed mixed-used properties offering multifamily housing in its commercial district, according to Rounds.

“We’re now going back through the code looking for opportunities for: ‘Okay, can we provide additional incentives to develop innovative solutions, like putting workforce housing on the second and third floors of commercial buildings?’” Rounds said. “‘Are there other opportunities like that throughout the city that we can take advantage of?’”

But even with new deadlines and tools, the approvals will depend on the project, Rounds said. Even updating the code will likely continue to be piecemeal.

“We’re doing that sort of on a rolling basis and that’s going to be a forever project,” he said.

Belknap County group targets ‘extremist Free State agenda

https://www.nhbr.com/belknap-group-seeks-to-unseat-entire-county-house-delegation/

Belknap County group targets ‘extremist Free State agenda’ in NH House delegation

Newly formed PAC seeks to seeks to endorse ‘reasonable and responsible’ candidates

July 11, 2022
Michael Kitch

Brian Beihl, a campaign consultant and organizer, is overseeing the Citizens for Belknap election undertaking.

Citizens for Belknap – a newly formed group whose members include Republicans, Democrats and independents – has mounted an effort to replace the leadership and other members of the county delegation at the polls.

The organization has registered as a political action committee, which will endorse and support candidates from both parties running for the county’s 18 seats in the House in both the primary election in September and the general election in November. This week the group opened its campaign and began distributing yard signs, placing advertisements in local newspapers and posting a petition online.

“Many of our citizens are appalled by the behavior of our county delegation toward the Gunstock Area Commission,” said Al Posnack of Alton, who chairs the PAC. “But our concerns are not just about Gunstock, but about health care and public safety as well.” He singled out Reps. Mike Sylvia of Belmont, who chairs the delegation, and Norm Silber of Gilford for “pursuing an extremist Free State agenda.”

For the past several years, county government has been roiled by conflict between the county delegation and the county commission and department heads. The conflict has been marked by disagreements over the preparation and management of the county budget, especially appropriations for the nursing home, leading to litigation over the respective authority vested in the two bodies.

Infighting between county officials aroused little outcry from the public. But when the leadership of the delegation sought to control the management and operation of Gunstock Mountain Resort, with an eye to leasing the facility to a private entity, opposition from residents was immediate and vociferous. More than 2,200 residents petitioned to maintain the status quo. When the delegation placed four of its political allies on the five-member Gunstock Area Commission a group called Citizens for Gunstock was formed, and it morphed into Citizens for Belknap.

All 18 members of the House delegation are Republicans, including a number of outright libertarians and Free Staters cloaked in the mantle of the GOP. Fifteen of them earned the highest grades awarded by the NH Liberty Alliance for their voting records in 2021 while the other three fell just one mark short. A third of the delegation earned the highest ratings midway through this year’s legislative session and another 10 ranked just a notch below them.

Sylvia, chair of the delegation, was the prime sponsor of a constitutional amendment calling for New Hampshire to secede from the United States. Reps. Glen Aldrich of Gilford, Ray Howard of Alton and Paul Terry of Alton joined Sylvia in voting for the resolution, which the House rejected by a vote of 323-13.

“These individuals pretended to be Republican representatives for the good people of Belknap County, but instead supported a New Hampshire constitutional amendment to secede from the United States,” said former Rep. Brian Gallagher of Sanbornton, a conservative Republican. “I can’t think of a more unpatriotic act, and such an action violates their oaths as state officials and their Pledge of Allegiance to the United States.” He noted that Sylvia, Aldrich and Terry are seeking re-election.

Citizens for Belknap intends to endorse “reasonable and responsible“ candidates from both parties in the primary and general elections with the overriding goal of replacing the leaders of the delegation by defeating them along with their most ardent followers at the polls.

Brian Beihl, a seasoned campaign consultant and organizer who is overseeing the undertaking, said he has been pleased by the initial response to the effort from voters. In particular, he pointed to the number of longtime Republicans disaffected by the pretense of extremists and radicals disguising themselves as Republicans.

The election has widened a rift among Republican members of the delegation, some of whom have chafed at their leaders’ imperious use of power, blatant lack of transparency and open disrespect of the public. Altogether, 14 of the 18 incumbents seeking re-election are facing contested primary races in five of the county’s eight House districts.

In Belmont, Travis O’Hara, one of a handful of Republicans who have repeatedly distanced themselves from the leadership, has challenged Sylvia for the seat in District 4.

Likewise, Silber, Sylvia’s closest ally, is one of seven Republican candidates vying for the four seats in District 6, made up Gilford, Gilmanton and Ward 2 in Laconia, where incumbent Republicans Glen Aldrich and Gregg Hough, both in lockstep with leadership, are also at risk.

Meanwhile, Belknap County Democrats has fielded a full slate of candidates in seven of eight districts. Shut out completely in 2020, Democrats fancy their chances of capturing at least six seats, with candidates they view as promising in Laconia, Gilford, Meredith and Center Harbor.

As of May, the 41,440 registered voters in the county consisted of 16,083 Republicans, 10,483 Democrats and 14,874 undeclared voters. In eight of the 11 municipalities Republicans represented the largest bloc of voters while trailing the number of undeclared voters in Gilford, Meredith and Center Harbor.

Decline and fall of NH House majority leaders company

https://www.nhbr.com/the-decline-and-fall-of-new-hampshire-house-majority-leaders-mammoth-tech-inc/

The decline and fall of NH House majority leader’s Mammoth Tech Inc.

Once over 500 employees strong, family-owned company now has none

July 13, 2022
Bob Sanders

When NH House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, R-Auburn, last ran for his seat in 2020, he boasted on his campaign website that he “brought over 100 good and high-paying jobs to our community.”

Those jobs are now gone.

Osborne’s company fired the last of his 20 New Hampshire employees on March 2 without notice, as he did with 500 others in his hometown of Defiance, Ohio, and around the country, despite $4 million in Paycheck Protection Program funding granted in 2020 to retain employees.

His company, Mammoth Tech Inc. – formerly Credit Adjustment Inc. – is facing a class action suit for failing to give that notice, a lawsuit by its Manchester landlord for not paying rent, a $1 million judgement for stiffing a staffing agency, another $181,000 judgment for reneging on a management company, not to mention two disability discrimination suits filed by a former pregnant employees, one settled and one ongoing.

“They could care less for their employees,” said Danielle Sullivan, a former Mammoth manager from Raymond, who has a hearing Wednesday morning on her claim for over $5,000 of back pay and vacation time she says she’s owned.

Sullivan, who worked for the company for 10 years, described working 15-hour days without being acknowledged.

Jason Osborne fired her via a mass email, in which he announced shortly before noon on March 2 that the company will “terminate” its entire workforce by the end of that day.

Sullivan, who was “the last one in the office to survive,” said this was “definitely a hardship. I had no idea of what I was going to do next. We based our lives on our two incomes.”

But it wasn’t the worst thing that happened that day, she said. One employee threatened to commit suicide.

“Osborne knew exactly what he did. I reached out to him on company Teams, on Facebook, basically begging him for our vacation pay,” she said. “He showed no compassion whatsoever.”

Jason Osborne didn’t return NH Business Review messages, but he did call his father, Michael Osborne, who founded the company in 1964 and is still the CEO. Michael Osborne told NH Business Review that his son asked him not to talk to the press.

“So I’m not going to talk,” he said. “But a lot will come out in the future, not whatever you’ve been hearing. Truth and justice will win. God bless you.”

In corporate filings, Michael is listed as the company president, and Jason as director. Lisa Bloomfield, Jason’s sister, is listed as another officer. Bloomfield, according to several sources, stepped back from the company, and Jason – as his name at the bottom of the mass layoff email attests – took a much more active role in the company, said Rachel Youngker, a manager who worked out of the Ohio office for 11 years before she too was fired on March 2.

“Jason kind of took over a year ago and forced out everybody else. There were two other presidents after they got rid of Lisa. There was a lot of family drama,” Youngker said.

According to sources familiar with the company, Michael and Jason Osborne have 90 percent ownership of the company and 100 percent of the voting shares.

The company started out small – six employees when founded. But it expanded rapidly in 2015 as one of the 11 companies that the U.S. Department of Education Default Collection Services Contact, and got a five-year renewal in 2019, according to a 2021 press release issued after the company changed is its name to Mammoth Tech Inc.

The value of those contracts reached its peak value – about $70 million – in 2020, according to the website USAspending.gov.

It was in 2015 that it entered into a staffing agreement with Firstsource Advantage LLC, located in Amherst, N.Y., that would help provide collection services to help pay the student debt.

In those heady days of early 2020, the company opened a new headquarters in Defiance, which donated 24 acres for its expansion, and gave it a tax increment financing break on its property taxes to help finance infrastructure.

The building cost about $3.5 million said Youngker. Some 220 people worked there before Covid hit.

The lease on the Manchester office at 228 Maple St. started in 2013, and after 2015 the company expanded, taking two more floors in the building, according to a law suit by building owner ZJIBV Properties LLC.

It’s not clear how many people were working there before Covid. Osbourn, on his campaign website, said he created 100 jobs. Some put the number more at 150 or even 200. But in March 2020, the workers there, like so many others, went remote. And they never returned.

Also in March 2020, the Department of Education moratorium initiated a moratorium on student debt collection. And at some point – no one is exactly sure why or when – the company lost its loan collection contract.

“The DOE just pulled it,” said Youngker. The DOE did not respond to questions by deadline.

Soon – despite the $4 million PPP boost in April 2020 – the layoffs began. By the first quarter of 2021, the New Hampshire office was down to 80 workers, according to the state Department of Labor.

Some workers switched to other contracts, which Sullivan said was it was called BPO, or business processing outsourcing. She helped North Carolina process its unemployment claims. Then there was the Chipotle restaurant chain contract, a customer service job.

“Mainly, we were dealing with customers angry about their food or delivery drivers. Not the most fun job in the world,” Sullivan said. In Defiance, callers were doing much the same for the El Pollo Loco Mexican food chain.

The name change had marked a shift away from primarily debt collection. So was the hiring of Hutter Capital Partners International Inc., a Barbados firm contracted to provide “an initiation study focusing on the optimization of people, process and technology across subcontracted sites and corporate locations,” according to its complaint against Mammoth.

The next month, Mammoth outsourced a chief operations officer job to Hutter, to “support the organizational achievement of its short- and long-term strategic plans” for $100,000 plus disbursement.

The moves didn’t keep the company alive.

Hutter said the company defaulted on Feb. 7, 2022, and won its default judgement back in March. Firstsource sent its first demand for payment for staffing services in March 2022, and won its judgment on June 27.

WARN Act

In New Hampshire, Mammoth’s dispute with its landlord began early.

August 2021, it notified ZJBV Properties that it was vacating the properties and no longer paying rent, citing a breach of the HVAC maintenance obligations, which the landlord denied. Discovery was supposed to begin in April, but Mammoth didn’t reply. In June, it too filed for a default judgement, and the judge gave it until Tuesday before granting it. On Tuesday, the judge denied the default judgement, but ordered the company to start answering the landlord’s questions in early August.

In the class action suit, filed in Ohio federal court, Theresa Leinger, an employee, alleges that Mammoth violated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act for not giving workers the required 60-day notice before a layoff. The complaint includes all 520 workers, the 60 who were in the Ohio office, and all remote workers. It seeks two months’ pay, plus back benefits and vacation pay.

In his mass email, Jason Osborn alludes to the WARN Act, but said the 60-day notice “was not possible in these circumstances, because the Company was actively seeking capital or business which, if obtained, would have enabled the Company to avoid the closure. Management believed that, had we given such notice on or before March 2, 2022, it may have affected the Company’s likelihood of success in its efforts”

He gave the same reason to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services’ Dislocated Worker Unit.

New Hampshire has a state WARN law too. But since there were fewer than 100 workers in the state, it doesn’t apply, said Deputy Labor Commissioner Rudy Ogden. If it did, the exception that the company itself didn’t know it was shutting down until the last minute might apply. But as soon as it did know, it was required to give notice.

There is some indication that Mammoth did know, at least a few days before. In an email, Youngker said she found out at the end of February from some higher executives who let it slip out that the company would shut down on March 18. “It was a very clear that they were shutting down and no possibility of reopening.”

But she also wrote “it was made very clear that if word got out, Jason and Mike have said they would sue anyone that released the information.”

She released it anyway, she said. “Then Jason found out that people knew about the company closing and that’s when he sent the email terminating everyone.”

In an interview, she said, “they were so wrong to us.” She was thinking about leaving the company, “but they begged me to stay.” A month later she was fired.

But in another email, Youngker, like Sullivan, was more concerned about others.

Alluding to the threatened suicide mentioned by Sullivan, Youngker said that person, like others, was a “second chance” hire, a person given another shot after overcoming addiction or a criminal past.

Most other companies, she said, wouldn’t give them still another chance, so “they knew they were not going to be able to get a job any time in the near future. The vacation pay would have helped them for a little longer to help them figure out something. We also had a lot of single parents. That’s what broke my heart and that’s why a lot of people don’t have respect for Jason.”

New education lawsuit on town-to-town inequality of property taxes

New education funding lawsuit focuses on town-to-town inequality of property taxes – New Hampshire Bulletin

New education funding lawsuit focuses on town-to-town inequality of property taxes

BY: ETHAN DEWITT – JULY 14,2022 5:48 AM

Penacook residents pay much higher property taxes than Concord residents – about $3 more per $1,000 of assessed property value. (Dana Wormald | New Hampshire Bulletin)

The village of Penacook is 6 miles up the road from downtown Concord. In nearly all respects, its residents are Concord residents.

But in the matter of paying for education, residents face different realities. Concord property owners paid $12.46 in annual local property taxes for every $1,000 of their home’s value in 2021. Penacook property owners, whose students attend a different school district, paid $15.41. For a $400,000 home, the difference between locations is $1,180 per year.

The discrepancy – and others like it among towns throughout the state – is a central theme of a new lawsuit taking on the state’s school funding model. This one, unlike another awaiting trial in Rockingham County, focuses on taxpayers.

New Hampshire’s school funding model allocates a minimum of $3,709 per child per year to every school district, a number that averages out to about $4,600 with additional aid. The rest comes from local property-tax dollars, raised and budgeted as towns see fit.

To Andru Volinsky, the lead attorney on the new lawsuit and a former Democratic executive councilor, the case for a new court ruling hinges on a simple calculation: The average total per-pupil cost for New Hampshire students was $18,434 in the 2020-2021 school year, according to the Department of Education. Confining the state’s share to $4,600 per student per year falls far short of the actual cost of educating a student.

“And once you accept that, that means that the balance – whatever amount – of public education is paid for based on local property taxes,” Volinsky said in an interview. “And that means that people are suffering a disadvantage and unfairness and inequality based on where they live.”

The plaintiffs in the new lawsuit, filed in Grafton County Superior Court on June 28, argue the taxes they pay are the products of that inequality. They include Robert Gabrielli, Jessica Wheeler Russell, and Adam Russell, all of whom pay property taxes in Penacook, as well as Steven Rand, a resident of Plymouth.

Plymouth faces an even starker divide than Penacook. Because it shares a school district with Waterville Valley and Holderness, two property-rich, summer and winter destinations, the tax rate Plymouth residents pay is vastly higher. Waterville Valley residents pay $3.33 per $1,000 of property value and Holderness residents pay $6.90, while Plymouth residents pay $13.69 for the same school district. The average tax rate in the state is $11.33 per $1,000.

New Hampshire is already facing legal action against the formula it uses to allocate state money to public schools. A lawsuit brought by the Contoocook Valley School District in Peterborough (ConVal) in 2019 – which was joined by 15 other school districts – is awaiting trial before Rockingham County Superior Court, after the Supreme Court declined to make a major ruling and sent it to the lower court to adjudicate disputed facts.

But while the two lawsuits tackle the same formula, their approaches differ. The ConVal lawsuit seeks to force the state to increase the amount of per-pupil funding it provides to school districts and better define what counts as an adequate education, arguing that the state is falling short of “adequate.” The latest lawsuit makes a similar case but is centered on the taxpayers.

“This is now to the level of simple math,” Volinsky said of the taxpayer lawsuit. “… Taxpayers are experiencing different burdens based on the value of their local property.”

Volinsky, and co-counsel Natalie Laflamme and John Tobin, say the goal of the lawsuit is to reinforce the principles laid out in the two Claremont Supreme Court decisions of the 1990s. The first of those cases determined that the state constitution required the state to provide an adequate education. Because the funds used to provide that adequate education came from state funds, they had to be paid for by state taxes. The tax, Volinsky argues, must be imposed at a uniform rate.

The second Claremont case found that the state’s funding system did not live up to the standard of adequacy – and forced the state to devise a new system to fund an adequate education for all students with equal taxes. But the adequacy grant system that has emerged since that second Claremont case has left a large shortfall that isn’t applied uniformly, Volinsky says.

School funding advocates say the result is a violation of Part II, Article 5 of the state constitution, which grants authority to the Legislature to “impose and levy proportional and reasonable assessments, rates, and taxes.” That provision formed the basis of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Claremont II that the state must create a formula.

In the two decades since that Claremont II decision, the state has tried a few approaches to creating a school funding system that’s applied more uniformly.

In 1998, then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen endorsed an approach in which the state would impose a standardized tax for residents of every town, but then would adjust each town’s tax rate to allow them to keep the excess revenues. That approach, known as the “ABC plan,” was deemed by the state Supreme Court to be unconstitutional and incompatible with the Claremont II decision.

The state’s efforts continued with the creation of the statewide education property tax, a system still in place today. That tax is added onto a town’s local education tax, and the rate varies year by year. The Department of Revenue Administration sets the rate to the level necessary in order to raise $363 million each year.

Advocates of the statewide education property tax, known as SWEPT, say that it helped to standardize a portion of the cost of education. But education funding advocates say it still does not prevent inequity.

In 2011, lawmakers removed the mechanism that distributed excess SWEPT revenues from wealthier towns to poorer towns, a process referred to as “donor towns.” That change means “property rich” towns – whose pricier properties and businesses generate much more education tax dollars – may now keep any of the extra SWEPT dollars they raise, and use those funds to lower their other property taxes for residents. It also means that “property poor” towns are no longer getting a boost from their wealthier neighbors.

In 2021, lawmakers passed a budget that temporarily lowered the total amount of SWEPT revenues the state needs to collect from $363 million to $263 million for the next biennium. The measure has been billed by Gov. Chris Sununu and Republicans as a cut to property taxes. But critics have noted that the $100 million across-the-state cut was paired with a halt in targeted aid programs that benefited poorer towns. Poorer towns will need to raise local property taxes to cover the loss of aid, while property-rich towns, which don’t need the aid, will largely benefit from the tax cut, according to an analysis from Reaching Higher NH, a left-leaning education think tank.

Christina Pretorius, policy director at Reaching Higher, noted that many aspects of the state’s funding formula have stayed the same for years. The base adequacy of $3,709 has only slightly increased in recent years, and the $363 million funding target has stayed the same since 2005.

That’s meant an increasing financial burden for towns, she said.

“As the years went on, and the costs go up, that was a static number, so, year after year towns are depending even more on local property taxes,” Pretorius said.

Now, Volinsky’s taxpayer lawsuit asks the Supreme Court to better define what a constitutionally adequate education looks like, and how much the state should raise to get there. Volinsky sees a two-step process toward success. Step one, Volinsky says, is getting the court to declare that $3,709 is not adequate. Step two is getting a ruling that finds that school districts in the state must have comparable funding, a decision that would upend the current system.

It is unclear whether the new lawsuit or the ConVal lawsuit might produce the kind of sweeping decision favored by the court in the 1990s.

The Supreme Court did not reverse the Cheshire County Superior Court’s ruling in favor of the school districts in the ConVal lawsuit. But in sending the case back to the superior court for review, the Supreme Court delayed a final decision in that case for years. The ConVal lawsuit is set for a trial in January 2023 in Rockingham County Superior Court.

To Pretorious, the lawsuits may each help the Supreme Court illuminate the state’s proper constitutional role in education funding – in different ways.

“It’s symbiotic,” she said. “One talks about how much education actually costs: the real cost of providing an adequate education, the real cost of educating our kids. Whereas the other one talks about how we raise that money.”

Most Extreme Radical Right Bills *

Addressing Carbon Pricing, Climate Science and HR 17 *

Why stronger gun laws would benefit NH

Opinion: Why stronger gun laws would benefit NH

By DAVID COTE and STEVE SHURTLEFF
Published: 7/22/2022 6:02:59 AM
Modified: 7/22/2022 6:00:07 AM

Rep. David Cote is House Democratic Leader and Steve Shurtleff is former House Speaker.

House Republican Majority Leader Rep. Jason Osborne recently said he “could not tell you” why stronger gun laws would benefit New Hampshire and argued that we “don’t have a problem” with gun violence. Days after these statements, Gov. Sununu signed HB 1178, an extreme bill prohibiting New Hampshire from enforcing federal firearms laws and regulations and barring NH law enforcement from assisting federal agencies like ATF and FBI with such enforcement.

Sununu’s endorsement of this dangerous law to ostracize New Hampshire from the rest of the country came just before the U.S. Congress passed, and President Biden signed, the most significant bipartisan gun safety legislation in 30+ years.

With actual bipartisan progress in Washington on gun violence, New Hampshire Republicans now leave our communities and schools vulnerable and without the express ability to enforce federal law like the Gun Free School Zones Act or expanded background checks that close loopholes allowing domestic abusers to get firearms. By exclaiming that New Hampshire will not enforce laws and policies to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals, Republicans have signaled to criminals that “NH is open for business” for illegal firearms trafficking and criminal activity.

If Republicans really believe we do not have a problem with gun violence in New Hampshire, they might be shocked to read the paper or turn on the local news. In just the past month, a pregnant woman was the victim of a stray bullet in Manchester, two sets of couples were shot and killed in Gorham and Concord, a woman was murdered by her husband who subsequently killed himself with a firearm in Alstead, a road rage incident left a Granite Stater seriously injured and patrons experienced gunfire at a local family restaurant in Nashua.

Gun violence is an American epidemic from which no state is immune. The tragic statistics tell the story that Republicans ignore: Gun deaths in New Hampshire have increased almost 40% since 2011 compared to a 33% increase nationwide. Tragically, too, gun suicides in New Hampshire have increased 61% compared to a 12% increase nationwide, according to EveryTown.

If loss of life is not enough reason for safe firearm policy, perhaps Republicans might also be shocked to learn that gun violence costs New Hampshire $933 million each year, of which taxpayers contribute $17.6 million. These costs include physical and mental health care, law enforcement response and investigation, court costs, incarceration, and loss of work, among others.

Now, with the passage of HB 1178, New Hampshire stands to lose out on millions in grant dollars to help address mental health, school safety, firearms trafficking, drug and human trafficking, and other initiatives from the federal government, all because Republicans want to advance an extremist agenda with no regard for Granite Staters safety.

Yes, New Hampshire is no stranger to gun violence. Tragically, we were one of the first states in America to experience a school shooting event in 1985 at Concord High School. There were no protocols for active shooter emergencies when a student entered the high school with a rifle, threatening classmates, administrators, and law enforcement officers. Now, New Hampshire students must suffer through multiple active shooter drills a year and still no substantive policy has been enacted to keep weapons out of the hands of bad actors.

Under current NH law, it is still legal to carry a firearm, concealed or not, on school grounds and Republicans refuse to change the law. With the passage of HB 1178, NH law enforcement faces a gray area in how to enforce the federal Gun Free School Zones Act given it is not mirrored in NH statute. House and Senate Democrats alongside NH county sheriffs have asked the Attorney General for guidance and have been met with even less clarity on how the extreme legislation will impact our state.

While dozens of New Hampshire school boards, teachers and administrators have been asking for the right to prohibit firearms on their own campuses, in 2019 Governor Sununu vetoed Democratic legislation to do just that. Call it partisan spin? The same law would’ve empowered certain individuals like school resource officers or designated teachers to carry concealed weapons should they be trained to do so.

To make matters worse, just last year Governor Sununu signed a law removing the brandishing of a firearm from the reckless conduct statute. Consequently, it is now perfectly legal for someone in an elevated conversation with a teacher, guidance counselor, sports coach or administrator to gesture to a firearm in their holster, unnecessarily escalating conflict with no recourse.

The families, friends, colleagues and neighbors of Granite State gun violence victims know all too well that gun violence is a problem in New Hampshire. For decades, they have shown up at the State House to testify to their experiences as survivors of gun violence in our communities and Republicans have refused to respond with a solution.

Ironically, in responding to calls for a solution in 2018, Governor Sununu said that “the federal level is the appropriate place” for firearms legislation. Now, Sununu has changed his tune and completely ostracized Granite Staters and our law enforcement from national efforts to curb gun violence.

It’s clear, every day Granite Staters, educators and law enforcement could “tell you why” we need policies to protect public safety. The question is: will the Republican governor and legislature listen?

https://www.concordmonitor.com/My-Turn-HB-1178-47289521

State’s Education Funding System Is a Mess

State’s Education Funding System Is a Mess

By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org August 20, 2022

The problem with taxes is most people do not know how they work.

Taxes by their nature create winners and losers, usually more losers than winners.

But because the majority of people do not understand the finer points of taxation, the state has an upside down system for one of its biggest expenses, public education.

The system benefits those who live in property wealthy communities while penalizing those in property poor communities and their children.

The education funding commission that met two years ago, hired a noted national consulting firm to review state education data and student performances and the results showed what most everyone already knows: student performance is better in property wealthy school districts than in property poor districts.

The group proposed a funding formula based on a statewide property tax that would provide the necessary resources for every district and its students to perform at the state average level.

The consultants did not propose more spending on education, but did propose changes to how the money would be raised.

However, the statewide property tax is a hard sell given its history of outrage from donor towns so commission members were reluctant to endorse it.

The commission did endorse the consultants’ proposed change in how the state determines an adequate education, moving from the current input-based formula to one based on educational outcomes, but that was shot down by the current legislature last year.

The 2021-2022 lawmakers however decided to mess around with the statewide education property tax that funds a good share of the state’s education aid to school districts.

A statewide property tax is a state tax in theory, but raised at the local level. If you view it as a state tax, that would have made the consultants’ proposal fairer to both students and taxpayers, although those in property wealthy communities would not view it that way.

As most people know, New Hampshire is at or very near the bottom of the 50 states for public education support and at the very bottom for supporting higher education.

More than 60 percent of the money paying for public education comes from local property taxes with vastly varying rates, which is in essence unconstitutional under the state constitution as the state Supreme Court told lawmakers more than two decades ago.

Now let’s look at two approaches to taxes.

When Democrats were the majority in the legislature in 2019-2020, they approved $47.5 million in the last biennial budget to provide property tax relief for the more property poor communities in the state in what was called disparity aid.

The current budget approved last year by the Republican controlled legislature did away with the targeted aid to poorer districts and replaced it with $100 million used to reduce the current statewide education property tax assessment for the state down to $263 million.

The statewide property tax is based on a community’s equalized valuation, which is essentially adjusting the property value in each town at 100 percent of market value.

It is one way to accurately compare one town’s property tax rate with another’s as many communities’ assessments are either above or below current market value.

The legislature also included an additional $15 million for the property wealthy communities that retain the excess revenue they raise under the statewide property tax that is above what they would receive in state adequate education grants which are $3,787 per pupil.

Some communities raise more than the per student cost of the state-determined adequate education and retain the additional money so there are no “donor towns.”

Using figures from Reaching Higher New Hampshire, the affect of this change to the statewide property tax punishes property poor communities while enhancing state aid to the wealthiest.

For example, Moultonborough, with one of the lowest property tax rates in the state, did not receive any state money from the $47.5 million, but receives a savings of $1.8 million with the statewide property tax reduction meaning it is $1.8 million to the good.

On the other hand, Claremont, with one of the highest property tax rates in the state, received $2.5 million in state targeted disparity aid, but will only see a $372,497 reduction under the statewide property tax relief, meaning the community will lose $2.1 million in state aid, resulting in a $2.86 per $1,000 of valuation increase in its property tax rate.

Even a community in the middle of the property value spread like Derry, loses money with the savings in statewide property tax distribution.

Derry received $3.37 million in targeted aid, but just a $1.8 million reduction through the statewide property tax aid, meaning the state contribution will be reduced by $1.56 million, and increase the property tax rate by 43 cents per $1,000.

Berlin is an example of a community that will see its property tax rate increase substantially with the change.

Under the disparity aid last fiscal year, Berlin received an additional $1.64 million in state aid, but will only save $176,808 from the statewide property tax paid by the state.

The difference is a minus $1.47 million increasing the property tax rate by $4.14 million per $1,000.

Portsmouth on the other hand, did not receive disparity aid, but will receive a statewide property tax reduction of $3.3 million along with $2.3 million in supplemental aid to make up for the lost excess statewide property tax revenue it keeps.

One of the biggest winners is Nashua, which did not receive additional state disparity aid last year but will see a $5.75 million reduction in its statewide property tax obligation.

Another community losing more than $1 million in state aid under the switch is Rochester, at $2.1 million.

While Republicans touted the property tax savings of the $100 million, many communities in New Hampshire will receive less state aid than they did from the $47.5 million in disparity aid targeted to the property poor communities.

Anyone who tells you the state’s education funding system works fine, needs to do a little more research.

Unless there are changes, the inequities will only become worse, particularly as more and more money is funneled into education freedom accounts, which have created millions of dollars in new state obligations.

The money for the program comes from the state’s education trust fund which also funds state adequacy aid and per pupil aid to charter schools.

The law has an unusual provision that if the education trust fund does not have enough money to pay for the education freedom grants, they are to be drawn on the state’s general fund without approval from the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee or the governor.

State budget writers estimate state revenues will produce $2.69 billion this fiscal year, although it could be more if the current revenue trends hold but not as much as last fiscal year which was fueled by federal aid that fired up the state economy and produced record profits for many large corporations.

Of the total state revenue, a little over $1 billion is earmarked for the education trust fund.

The first year of the education freedom account program costs the state between $8 million and $9 million, with about 90 percent of the money paying some of the tuition to private and religious schools for students who were not in public schools the year before.

The Legislative Budget Assistant predicted the state’s exposure for students in private and religious schools is about $70 million annually under the expansive program.

With more and more money for education freedom accounts, the pressure will grow on the education trust fund.

When the program was established in 2021, proponents did not approve any additional levy or rate increase to pay for it.

Instead the Republican controlled legislature and governor reduced the tax rates for business, and rooms and meals taxes and began phasing out the interest and dividends tax.

You might believe that is irresponsible budgeting especially when the education funding system is in drastic need of an overhaul.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

* NOTE: These files are in PDF format which is not supported by most Android phone browsers.

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