New Hampshire policy, followed through to the outcome.
Articles & Analysis
17 analyses, newest first. Each one states its key finding, its sources, and what it does not establish.
Nothing matches that filter.
So New Hampshire has a formula designed to compensate for differences in fiscal capacity while simultaneously relying increasingly on the revenue source whose capacity varies most dramatically from town to town. That tension is at the center of the funding debate.
When government imposes additional costs on a business, politicians frequently discuss competitiveness, investment, employment and economic growth. When government imposes additional costs on someone poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, lawmakers defending the policy call it personal responsibility.
This isn’t a debate about saving homeowners $50 or $100. For Claremont, shifting even part of the state’s current contribution back onto the local tax base could mean four-figure annual increases for an ordinary homeowner.
Bedford sends seven representatives to Concord. Once there, those representatives vote on statewide budgets, education policy, housing policy, municipal authority and dozens of other decisions whose effects eventually return home.
So I care less about whether government spending goes up than I do about whether our total healthcare bill goes up. And CBO found that it doesn’t necessarily have to. Depending on how the system is designed, America could spend hundreds of billions less than we’re projected to spend under the current system.
The ethical question begins when there is a meaningful difference between what political leaders tell ideological allies and what they tell ordinary voters. And that is why Osborne’s “straight face” statement matters so much.
When government programs are targeted toward struggling households, politicians routinely debate eligibility requirements, limits and accountability. Sullivan’s signature education policy moved in the opposite direction. First, she sponsored legislation opening EFAs regardless of household income. Then she sponsored legislation seeking to remove the enrollment cap and priority guidelines.
When lawmakers wrote the 2025 state budget, they created new premiums for some people receiving Medicaid. Those premiums are expected to bring millions of dollars into the state’s healthcare financing system and General Fund.
Two things can happen when the state subsidises something: it causes a choice that would not otherwise have happened, or it pays for one that was happening anyway. New Hampshire does not publish the data to tell them apart.
HB 1300 limits growth in the local school tax levy and caps SAU central-office spending. Neither provision identifies a cost the district stops owing.
A cost the state stops carrying does not stop existing. What the record supports is a fiscal-capacity argument, not a one-to-one claim that every dollar of forgone state revenue became a dollar of property tax.
A public dashboard now shows Education Freedom Account participation by municipality. It does not show what the accounts changed — and the statewide reporting that would answer that question does not exist.
Two towns can need the same money per student and set very different tax rates, because the property standing behind each student is different.
A comparison of two decisions by the representative for Sullivan County District 7: a bill that would have moved $28 million of pension cost off local property taxes, and an expansion of state education spending to $51.6 million.
A four-town comparison of property value per student, operating cost per pupil and the resulting education tax rate.
A development model for privately owned cottage communities of 15 to 30 small homes on shared land and shared infrastructure, with a worked cost breakdown.
An editorial graphic about deferred cost — the practice of recording a saving now by postponing an obligation that grows while it waits.
