Representative Jason Bedrick

Here’s a Letter to the Editor I submitted to the local papers:

Vote for the Local GOP Ticket

Rep. Jason Bedrick, Windham

As you may have read, this year’s GOP primary was a close one. After a recount, I placed 14th out of 23 candidates with 903 votes, just one vote behind Rep. Mark Pearson, whose 904 votes secured his nomination for the last of the 13 spots.

In the general election, I will gladly cast my vote for Pearson and the other GOP candidates. As a legislator for the past two years, I’ve seen firsthand what a Democrat-controlled House, Senate and Governor’s office means for the state of New Hampshire. Democrats increased spending by 17.5% by relying on obviously inflated revenue estimates. Now we’re facing a $300 million deficit and looming tax increases.

None of the local Democrat candidates for state representative have taken the Taxpayer Pledge to oppose a broad-based sales or income tax. (See http://cnht.org/pledgers.php) In fact, several prominent Democrat candidates for the state legislature around the state have publicly declared their support for an income tax.

The imposition of either of these taxes would spell the end of the New Hampshire Advantage at a time when the economy is already in serious trouble. Even a 1% sales tax would provide a disincentive for out-of-staters to shop in Salem and other border towns, which would have a drastic effect on our local economy. Income tax proponents argue that it would lower property taxes, but everywhere it’s been tried the taxpayers find themselves stuck with the same property taxes plus an additional income tax.

By all accounts from the letters to the editor over the last few weeks, the leading Democrat candidate for state representative in our district is a nice person who listens to people and works hard. But where does she stand on the issues? If she really opposes new taxes, why doesn’t she take the Pledge? Will she stand up to her party leaders when they push irresponsible revenue estimates, reckless spending increases, and new taxes? Or is it more likely that she’ll happily go along with the majority of her party? Every indication points to the latter.

Though we didn’t always agree on all the issues, the local GOP representatives worked hard to do what’s right for our towns and the state of New Hampshire. Mary Griffin is known and loved by all as the “peace maker” who compromises on policy without compromising principle. Charlie McMahon is the leading expert in the House on health care issues, and he lead the fight to fully fund the developmentally-disabled wait list. Russ Ingram puts his business skills and common sense to good use. Mark Pearson is a thoughtful and dedicated public servant. Ron Belanger and Anne Priestley are each a wealth of institutional knowledge. Marilinda Garcia and DJ Bettencourt are bright, energetic, principled, and rising stars in state government. Bob Elliott thinks deeply about the issues and always does his homework.

All of them have proven themselves to be good stewards of the state and fitting representatives for Salem and Windham. Having spoken with newcomers David Bates, Margaret Crisler, and Walter Kolodziej on many occasions throughout the campaign season, I’m confident that they will be just as hard-working and dedicated to NH values as their colleagues.

If you want your representatives to support fiscally responsible budgets, sustainable growth, and low taxes, then please cast your vote for the local Republican ticket on November 4th. And remember, the legislature eliminated “straight ticket” voting this year, so make sure to fill out the circles next to the names of all the candidates whom you support. I’ll see you at the polls!

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From the Union Leader:

State Spending shouldn’t be decided by 11 people

By CHARLES M. ARLINGHAUS

STATE BUDGET deficits and needed spending cuts have transferred power to the elite Legislative Fiscal Committee, a sort of super Legislature where 10 privileged members exercise power on behalf of the other 414 senators and representatives.

One of the most prestigious positions in state government is to serve on the joint House-Senate “Legislative Fiscal Committee.” It was established to oversee the legislative budget office, but with a broad portfolio to investigate any matter related to any part of the finances of the state — essentially everything government does.

Its primary duty is to receive funds. It is authorized, without any vote or amendment to the budget, to accept any non-state funds such as federal grants or private donations for any program. Accepting a grant doesn’t affect state revenue or expenditures, but Rep. Marjorie Smith this year quite sensibly tried to include as many anticipated grants in the official budget document as possible rather than leave them to the fiscal committee.

A more controversial role is the one currently being exercised by the committee. The fiscal committee must approve any spending cuts the governor makes to the budget. In this role, it assumes some of the executive branch role at the same time it acts on behalf of the other 97 percent of the Legislature.

The two-year budget passed last year would be in serious deficit without action. Revenues are expected to be much higher than last year but significantly below the estimates used to balance the budget. The shortfall is expected to be close to $200 million.

When revenues are less than expected, spending cuts quickly follow. The current budget increased spending to $3.189 billion from $2.713 billion the previous biennium. The increase of 17.56 percent amounts to about $476.5 million. Therefore the cuts needed are about 6 percent of the total budget, much less than half of the increase.

The governor, as chief executive officer of the state, has proposed two rounds of spending cuts totaling about $80 million. In the course of evaluating what he chose to cut, some observers have quarreled with his choices.

…

Read more here.

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I was the third candidate to respond to NH Insider’s “10 Questions”. You can read my answers here.

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I’m excited to announce that the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance (NHLA) named me the 2008 “Legislator of the Year“ at their annual Liberty Dinner! The NHLA also released the 2008 Liberty Scorecard. Here’s how our district scores:

Bedrick, Jason (R) A+
Bettencourt, David (R) A
Dalrymple, David (R) A
Garcia, Marilinda (R) A
Ingram, Russell (R) A
McMahon, Charlie (R) B+
Griffin, Mary (R) B
Pearson, Mark (R) B
Priestley, Anne (R) B
Belanger, Ronald (R) C+
Elliott, Robert (R) C+
DiFruscia, Tony (R) F

You can compare these with the House Republican Alliance scores I sent in my last update. Also, the last page of the NHLA scorecard contains an explanation of how the grades were awarded and a list of the 50 graded bills.

From the NHLA:

This is the 5th annual Liberty Rating issued by the New Hampshire Liberty
Alliance, based on 19 roll call votes in the House and 14 in the Senate. Bills have
been carefully selected for inclusion which clearly demonstrate the level of respect
our elected representatives show for our individual rights and liberties.

This year we offer our sincerest thanks to the NHLA Legislator of the Year,
the Honorable Representative Jason Bedrick of Windham for his unwavering
support of liberty. His voting record proves his dedication to the principles upon
which this great state, as well as this organization, were founded.

The Liberty Rating is based on pro-liberty and anti-liberty votes and their
impact on the state of NH.

Pro-liberty votes protect individual freedom of choice and personal responsibility,
recognize the superiority of freedom over coercion, respect the citizen’s right
of self-ownership, promote good government, and recognize the value of voluntary
economic decisions.

Anti-liberty votes replace self-governance with interventionist ownership,
assume agencies backed by force are superior to voluntary choices backed by
personal accountability, and assume a better economy can be designed by a
central authority that compels communities to pay for policies people do not
willingly support.

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Yesterday I participated in one of the strangest sessions of the term, but before I get to that, I have an announcement to make: I will be seeking a second term as a state representative for the towns of Windham and Salem!

I’m told that there will be upwards of 25 people vying for the 13 seats, so getting the word out about the good candidates will be crucial. Please visit my new website at www.jasonbedrick.org!

Also, make sure to check out the House Republican Alliance legislative scorecard at the end of the update. Windham/Salem legislators received 5 As, 5 Bs, 2 Cs and an F — find out who scored what!

Tax, Borrow, and Spend!

Yesterday, the Speaker of the House ordered the doors barred, keeping legislators under House arrest until just after midnight to pass a bill to “balance the budget” by filling the gap with debt. Democrats have abandoned NH’s traditional “pay-as-you-go” fiscal responsibility, paying for their new programs with what amounts to a credit card (and we don’t even get Sky Miles!). A recent Union Leader editorial called this the “tax, borrow and spend” plan.

Using debt to finance a budget is essentially placing a tax on the future. Unless fiscal sanity is restored, our grandchildren will still be paying off the $80 million in bonds the legislature authorized yesterday.

Moreover, the “special session” bill had no public hearing, no committee work, and a mere 24-hour notice. In fact, the bill itself wasn’t drafted until the morning of the session, so all amendments had to be drafted in the same day. What ever happened to careful deliberation? What ever happened open government?

This is not the New Hampshire way.

Report Card Time

Here are the House Republican Alliance Scores for the combined 2007-2008 session. We’ve broken them down for you in this chart.

The first percentage under Total reflects the total of the combination score for 2007-2008, the second number under Voted indicates how many votes out of 122 possible votes were cast. The Platform number indicates how many votes were in alignment with the Republican Party and the final percentage reflects the overall Attendance record, which one should compare with overall scores when evaluating platform support. For example, someone could have voted only 10 times out of the 122 possible votes, yet always voted with the Platform, thus scoring a 100%. However, their attendance score would have only been an 8%.

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Last week the House met to decide whether to concur with Senate changes to House bills or to non-concur and possibly request committees of conference. In layman’s terms, we were deciding whether to take it, leave it, or duke it out.

Republicans made a few last-ditch efforts to kill some bad bills (such as HB 1436, the evergreen clause bill and HB 1309, redefining tax-free “cigarillos” as taxable cigarettes) and attempted to modify the House Ways & Means Committee revenue estimates (HR 28) which ridiculously predict that revenue from the gas tax will remain constant over the next two years despite the fact that they’ve already been declining for a few months. Unfortunately (and predictably), all these efforts failed.

The biggest battle of the day was over HB 1645, a bill to reform the state retirement system. The House plan was favored by the cities and towns because of its measures to “stop the hemorrhaging” of the retirement system (in the words of the Democrat Chair of the Executive Departments & Administration Committee), while the Senate version was favored by the public workers unions. It’s an excruciatingly complicated issue, but a recent Concord Monitor editorial effectively summarized the major differences between the two plans:

The House passed a tough plan to bring the funding level up to snuff; cities and towns support it. The Senate plan accomplishes many of the same goals while preserving more benefits for employees. The House plan, for example, raises the retirement age for police officers and firefighters from 45 to 50. The Senate plan does not. The House plan replaces four public employee slots on the 14-member board of trustees with people with financial expertise. The Senate plan retains the overwhelming employee majority on the board.

The House plan does the better job of bringing public employee pension and health care benefits in line with times that are harsher for taxpayers and private-sector employees. It also saves taxpayers more money in the long run. Since adopting the House version could cause court fights that could slow or stall progress, progress will take compromise.

I must commend the Concord Monitor’s editorial board for endorsing the House version of the bill, but I should note that when they write that “the House version could cause court fights” they really mean “if the House version is adopted, the public workers unions will go bonkers and use every means at their disposal, including lawsuits, to prevent these necessary changes from being implemented.”

Right now, certain members of the House and Senate are meeting to draft a compromise version of the bill. I’ll keep you posted as to the outcome.

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From the Union Leader:

Tax, borrow, spend: Lynch’s budget plan

GOV. JOHN LYNCH was supposed to be a kinder, gentler Craig Benson. He’d be the millionaire former business executive who balanced the state budget without raising taxes, but also without angering state employees by slashing jobs or upsetting the apple cart too much.

Oops.

During four years in office, Gov. Lynch has shown that he has no interest in cutting taxes, but lots of interest in raising them to pay for increased state spending.

The governor cannot hide behind the excuse that he had to raise taxes because the economy is bad. He raised taxes his first year in office — when the state budget was in surplus. In 2005, he proposed and got a 28-cents per pack cigarette tax increase. Last year, he got another 28-cents increase. This year he proposed a 25-cents per pack hike. That’s three cigarette tax hikes in four years.

Last year the governor proposed — and got — tax increases totaling more than $100 million. They helped pay for the largest general fund budget increase in 20 years — 17.5 percent.

Unfortunately, they didn’t pay for all of it. The hole in the state budget exceeds $200 million and is growing. To fill it, the governor is raising taxes again. He’s pushed a new tax on charity poker, another cigarette tax hike, and raising the discount offered to wine dealers through the state liquor stores.

His enthusiasm for tax hikes has encouraged the Democrat-controlled Legislature to go for even more. In fact, the very first bill passed in the House after the governor’s State of the State address in January was a new tax on animal vaccines.

This new revenue is not enough to cover the massive spending increases approved last year. So the governor has recommended borrowing money to pay for $80 million in school construction aid that always had been paid with cash from the general fund.

Tax and spend? Gov. Lynch says, “OK!” Borrow and spend? “OK to that, too!”

This is not what the people of New Hampshire expected from the former furniture company CEO who famously made tough decisions to turn around a failing business.

The people expected the governor to make the same type of hard-nosed decisions he made then. Instead, he sold out to the Democratic Party’s host of special interest groups that directly benefit from increased government spending. And as a direct result we’ve seen our state budget and taxes grow at irresponsible and unaffordable rates. What a disappointment.

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My friends over at the great Granite Grok blog posted a piece of satire I wrote mimicking the Democrat press release which attacked the New Hampshire Advantage Coalition. See if you can tell which one is real!

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Last week the House voted down the Governor’s newest attempt at a constitutional amendment 222-140. It was a horrible amendment and its defeat was a terrible blow against the Governor and the Speaker, who chose the amendment as the first time to take a public position on any issue. More on the substance of the amendment in the “Ugly” section below.

The House had very high attendance for the Wednesday session, but abysmally low attendance for the Thursday session. In fact, we spent most of the day below the 2/3rds quorum, which required a 2/3rds majority to act on any bill. At one point we even fell below the 50% attendance necessary to take any action at all so the Speaker instructed the Sergeant-at-Arms to gather some of the legislators who were in the antechamber and hallway and bring them to Representatives Hall. Toward the end of the day, the Speaker ordered the Sergeant-at-Arms to bar the doors to prevent any legislator from leaving.

As for the bills:

HR 25: This House resolution would have urged Congress to fully implement the Secure Fence Act of 2006. The Democrats cowardly voted to “table” this resolution before we could even fully debate it. Even more upsetting is that it was a Republican who made the tabling motion…

SB 210: An unnecessary regulation of the plumbing industry.

CACR 34: Where to begin? While I support a constitutional amendment regarding education, this is the wrong one. It does nothing to refutes the Court’s activism — in fact, it writes the Claremont decision into the state constitution.

The amendment gives the authority to the state to target aid, so long as every community gets a “meaningful share” — a what? What’s a “meaningful share”? Some said it was between 25%-75% but who really knows? This sort of vague language is an opening for the Court to decide. (Remember, they defined “cherish” as the requirement to “define and fully fund an adequate education” so you can’t leave anything to their imagination!)

The amendment also states that an “adequate education” is that which prepares the student to become a “productive and contributing citizen” — huh? Some might argue that in today’s economy, a college degree is necessary to be a “productive and contributing citizen.” Others could plausibly argue that only an 8th grade education is necessary. Does someone really need to know calculus to be a productive and contributing citizen? For that matter, do they need art classes? Had we not defeated this bill, I’m sure the Court would have been happy to provide an answer.

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This week there were no “good” or “ugly” bills to report. There was one bad bill and then two absolutely horrific bills. Tomorrow the House will consider CACR 34, a constitutional amendment relative to “adequate” education. The Union Leader, which supported last year’s constitutional amendment, correctly identifies the flaws with the new amendment in today’s editorial: “No on CACR 34: Quarter-loaf is not enough.”

Note that SB 530 and SB 539 were amended by the Finance Committee so my report is different from my previous reports on these bills.

The Bad: Bills that SHOULD NOT have passed, but DID.

SB 350: Another increased “fee” which is being used to raise revenue rather than simply to cover the cost of providing a service. That’s the purpose of taxes, not fees. This bill extends the surcharge on certain probate courts entry fees.

SB 530: This kindergarten aid bill mandates kindergarten for all communities, including the 12 school districts which have not voted to offer public kindergarten. This bill is unconstitutional because it creates a new state mandate without fully funding it, a violation of Part I, Art. 28-a of our state constitution. It also repeals current state law that prohibits school boards from spending any money beyond that authorized by the voters (the “no means no” statutes, RSA 32:8 and 32:11). This one would be in the running for Worst Bill of the Year but the next one is even worse!

SB 539: The latest education funding plan adds $128 million dollars to create a nearly one BILLION dollar plan over the next biennium. This is in a year when we’re facing a $200 million deficit and the bill contains no means of raising the necessary funds. This bill is paving the way for new broad based taxes, most likely an income tax. The arbitrary costing formula relies on the number of “free and reduced lunch” students as well artificially inflated teacher and staff salaries (apparently an “adequate education” requires that all staff, including janitors, have at least three years of experience — I’m not making that up!). The bill re-establishes 37 donor towns and it also violates the state constitution’s ban on unfunded mandates (Part I, Art. 28-a).

Fiscally irresponsible, arbitrary, irrational, and unconstitutional, this might well be the Worst Bill of the Year!

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