New Hampshire

Distant Dome: Christmas Comes for Some in New Hampshire

Published

1 year ago

December 21, 2024

Press Room

Distant Dome: Christmas Comes for Some in New Hampshire

By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome

Christmas in New Hampshire is upside down if you are the Granite State’s government.

New Hampshire lawmakers have decreed that most of the “gifts” from the state do not go to the needy, but to those on the other end of the economic spectrum.

With Republicans again firmly in charge of the legislature and governor’s office, the “mandate” according to House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, R-Auburn, will focus on “lowering taxes, cutting wasteful spending, growing our economy, empowering parents with the Parents Bill of Rights and expanding the wildly successful Education Freedom Account program.”

The question is who benefits the most from “lowering taxes” and “cutting wasteful spending,” and what is “wasteful spending,” services for poor women who go to Planned Parenthood clinics because they cannot afford to go to a private practice physician?

For the better part of a decade now, Republicans have voted to cut the rates of the state’s two business taxes, the business profits tax and the business enterprise tax.

The larger collector, the business profits tax, receives the vast majority of its revenue from multinational corporations not based in New Hampshire, but who do business here.

The business enterprise tax is a value added tax on every business in New Hampshire although many very small businesses are exempt from paying.

Now you might think lowering the rate of the business enterprise tax would benefit local businesses more than cutting the rate of the business profits tax and that would be a no brainer for lawmakers, but no, they lowered the rate for the business profits tax more frequently and far greater than they did the tax rate of the business enterprise tax.

Who did that help more? Large multinational corporations received the bulk of that benefit not your local business owners who do not reach across continents and cultures to soften the blow of taxes.

And in a little over a week, the one state tax that actually taxes wealth will be eliminated although it produced $185 million in revenue last fiscal year. Can you imagine what $185 million would do spread across the university and community college systems to reduce tuition for New Hampshire students?

Who pays the interest and dividends tax? About 90 percent of the revenue comes from the top five percent of wealth holders in the state. That is not most of us or our neighbors.

Well you might say, what about property taxes which every home, building and land owner pays in the state, surely they too should have a lower tax rate.

Have you checked the tax bill you are about to pay in a little over a week? I don’t know about your tax bill, but mine had a hefty increase this year, and I suspect yours did too.

And with the state facing a budget crisis not seen in two decades, you are likely to see it go up even more after the lawmakers are finished crafting the next two-year budget this spring as more state costs are likely to be downshifted to local property tax payers as they were two decades ago when the state stopped paying its share of the retirement system costs for municipal, school and county workers as they had since the unified system was created during the last century.

That sifted tens of millions of costs to local property taxes that the state once paid.

There are two Christmas presents the majority of local property taxpayers sort of received in the last year, two superior court decisions declaring the state’s education funding system unconstitutional, inequitable and too meager to cover the cost of an adequate education, which is every child’s fundamental, constitutional right.

Those two decisions in the ConVal and Rand cases — if acted on by lawmakers — could have lowered the property taxes of the poorer communities hit hardest by the state’s education funding system like Claremont, Berlin, Franklin, Newport, Pittsfield and others.

But that change would increase the property taxes in communities with the lowest rates in the state with the greatest property wealth, so in New Hampshire’s upside down Christmas world, lawmakers did not take the bait and instead did nothing keeping the current system in place.

We don’t want the taxpayers in those property wealthy communities saying “Bah Humbug” this time of year lawmakers might as well have said.

Elementary and secondary education is not the only place New Hampshire lawmakers traditionally shortchange the poorer residents, they do so in post-secondary education as well with tuition costs that are second only to Vermont for in-state students in the country.

Is it any wonder New Hampshire students have the highest debt load of any in the country when they graduate from college?

While the university and community college systems have held tuition costs near steady for in-state students for the last few years, they cannot do that forever with shrinking enrollments, reduced programs and fewer full-time faculty members.

There is a Christmas flavored program that began four years ago, the Education Freedom Account program that was sold by Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut and others as an alternative for poor families whose children have trouble in the public school environment.

However 70 to 75 percent of the students were not in public schools when they joined the program, they were in private or religious schools or homeschooled.

In other words, parents already sending their children to private or religious schools or homeschooling have been able to gain a state taxpayer-funded subsidy to cover the costs the parents were paying.

The program is currently capped at 350 percent of poverty, which is a salary of $71,540 for a family of two and $109,200 for a family of four.

The legislature defeated an attempt to raise the rate higher last session to 425 percent of poverty level, or up to $133,600 annually for a family of four and $86,870 for a two-member family.

The federal government estimates the median income in New Hampshire for a family of four is $133,447.

One bill in the upcoming session would do away with any income cap which would allow anyone with school-age children to apply for a grant of about $5,200 per student, a provision that is bankrupting Arizona, North Carolina and several other states with no cap.

But the program has gifted many religious and small private schools struggling to survive with a great deal of state money, money that once was forbidden for religious schools.

And another beneficiary of the program, the single biggest vendor for the parents using state money, is Amazon.

Does Jeff Bozos really need any more of your state tax dollars? I doubt it, especially at Christmas time.

Merry Christmas and to all a good night.

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

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London

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New Hampshire

N.H. woman accused of civil rights violation after allegedly shooting at lost man because he was Black

Published

3 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

N.H. woman accused of civil rights violation after allegedly shooting at lost man because he was Black

Local News

Diane Durgin, 67, is accused of shooting at a Black man who inadvertently drove to her property after a prearranged truck part sale, prosecutors said.

A New Hampshire woman is accused of violating the state’s Civil Rights Act four times after she allegedly shot at a man because he was Black, prosecutors said.

Diane Durgin, 67, of Weare, N.H. could face up to a $5,000 fine for each violation she is found to have committed, the office of New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said in a press release Tuesday.

Durgin is also charged with criminal threatening against a person with a deadly weapon and attempted first degree assault with a deadly weapon, Michael Garrity, a media representative for the New Hampshire Attorney General, said in an emailed statement to Boston.com.

Durgin had a final pre-trial conference last week, Garrity said.

In a civil complaint filed Tuesday, Durgin is accused of threatening physical force against the victim, the AG said. Prosecutors asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction barring Durgin from repeating her alleged behavior and from contacting the victim and his family.

During the morning hours of Oct. 20, 2024, the victim claims, he “mistakenly” drove to Durgin’s home after a prearranged purchase of a truck part with a seller online, prosecutors wrote as part of their request for an injunction.

When the man — whom prosecutors identified in court documents as X.G. — arrived, Durgin allegedly stepped out of her home and approached his car with a gun “holstered by her waist,” prosecutors wrote.

Upon noticing that X.G. was Black, Durgin allegedly “removed her gun and pointed it at X.G.,” prosecutors said in the injunction request.

While X.G. explained that he was lost, Durgin called the victim a “Black mother[expletive],” and threatened to “kill him,” prosecutors allege.

As the victim attempted to drive away, Durgin allegedly took her gun and fired two shots at the fleeing man’s car, missing both times, the AG’s office said.

While on the phone with a dispatcher, Durgin allegedly said she shot the man’s car because the victim is Black, the AG said.

“The guy is Black. And he, he…he says he’s meeting someone here and I think he’s coming here to steal,” Durgin allegedly said.

Police located X.G. and brought him to the Weare Police Department, stopping along the way at the correct seller’s home to complete the truck part purchase, prosecutors wrote in court documents.

To prove a violation of the New Hampshire Civil Rights Act, the AG must show that Durgin “interfered or attempted to interfere with the rights of the victim to engage in lawful activities by threatening to engage in or actually engage in physical force or violence, when such actual or threatening conduct was motivated by race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, or disability,” prosecutors said.

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New Hampshire

Up to 4 inches of snow expected in NH tonight. See latest forecast

Published

15 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

Up to 4 inches of snow expected in NH tonight. See latest forecast

It may be March, but winter in New Hampshire is far from over. Just one week after a blizzard tore through the state with heavy snow and high winds, the state is getting another round of snowfall.

The state will get three to five inches during the evening and night of Tuesday, March 3, says the National Weather Service (NWS) of Gray, Maine. While the accumulation will not be significant, the snowfall may cause dangerous road conditions and a layer of ice on the ground in certain parts of the state.

Here’s what to know before tonight’s snow in New Hampshire, including snow totals and timing.

When will it snow in NH tonight?

According to the NWS, it will start snowing in New Hampshire during mid-afternoon or early evening and continue through the night. Specifically, snow will arrive to the southern part of the state around 2-3 p.m., spreading northwards through the rest of New Hampshire by 5 p.m.

Rain or freezing rain will mix in later this evening across southern New Hampshire, creating a wintry mix. All precipitation should move out of the state by midnight.

Due to the timing of today’s snowfall, the Tuesday evening commute will be affected, with the NWS warning to slow down and exercise caution while driving.

How much snow will NH get tonight?

New Hampshire will get one to four inches of snow tonight, with one to two inches in northern New Hampshire, two to three inches in southern New Hampshire and three to four inches in the center of the state, with the possibility for five inches in localized areas.

In the Seacoast specifically, Portsmouth, Rye, Hampton and York are expected to get between two to three inches of snow, while Dover, Exeter and Rochester may get up to four.

The wintry mix may also cause a light glaze of ice across southern New Hampshire.

NH weather watches and warnings

The NWS has issued a winter weather advisory for the state of New Hampshire, in effect from 1 p.m. on Tuesday, March 3 through 4 a.m. on Wednesday, March 4.