New Hampshire Senate moves to restore panels wiped out by House, with some changes

Yahoo

4 days ago

Sens. Regina Birdsell, Tim Lang, and Cindy Rosenwald sit at a Senate Finance Committee session, May 29, 2025. (Photo by Will Skipworth/New Hampshire Bulletin)
In April, the New Hampshire House passed a budget that eliminated a number of state boards, including the Commission for Human Rights, the Housing Appeals Board, the Commission on Aging, and the State Council on the Arts.
This month, Senate Republicans are moving to save those entities. But each could look slightly different moving forward.
In a series of votes, the Senate Finance Committee gave initial approval to amendments that would reverse the cuts — with conditions. Those amendments must be approved by the committee again next week, and then by the full Senate on June 5.
Here's what the Senate has proposed.
The House budget had eliminated the Arts Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, including the New Hampshire Council on the Arts. That division had received about $1.7 million in state funding, and $2 million in federal funding.
The Senate's proposed amendment, passed Thursday, would restore the division, but change how it is funded. Rather than receiving general fund dollars, businesses could donate to the Granite Patron of the Arts Fund, and receive 50% of that donation as a credit against the business profits tax. The tax credit could give out a maximum of $350,000 a year, which would translate to a maximum potential budget of $1.4 million over two years for the arts fund.
The amendment is a shift in approach for Sen. Tim Lang, a Sanbornton Republican, who earlier proposed reducing funding for the Arts Division to $1.
'My inbox was filled when I allocated $1 for the Council on the Arts, and I took that to heart and I made changes,' he said. 'This will allow for a tax break system — it will still allow them to collect donations, but make it more incentivized by allowing those corporate donations or private donations.'
Democratic Sen. David Watters, of Dover, called the compromise 'very helpful.'
'I think that making sure … that we have the core operations covered, so that there can be somebody who actually goes out and tries to sell these tax credits, that is good, and I think that will keep the office functioning,' he said.
The Senate restored funding to the Housing Appeals Board, which is designed to give developers and residents an alternative to the state court system to resolve conflicts with local zoning and planning boards. The House had cut that panel entirely, which costs $560,864 over two years.
But Senate Finance Chairman James Gray said the committee would recommend eliminating a position within that board, and would attach the board to the state's Board of Tax and Land Appeals, which handles disputes over state and local taxes as well as property assessments.
Gray said the attachment was designed to save on personnel costs to run both boards.
The Senate Finance Committee recommended reviving the Commission for Human Rights, a panel designed to investigate discrimination complaints and pass them on to the Attorney General's Office for potential prosecution under state anti-discrimination statutes. The House had abolished the commission, but the Senate restored it, at a cost of $2.7 million over two years.
But another Senate amendment would require the Department of Justice's civil rights unit to oversee the commission. The amendment would also mandate that the chairperson of the commission be a licensed attorney in the state.
The committee also proposed restoring funding to the State Commission on Aging, at $150,000 per year. Currently, that is funded at $280,432 per year; the House had voted to eliminate the commission. The commission, established in 2019, is charged with making recommendations on how the state can support older residents and increase the health care workforce for direct care.
The votes this week came as the Finance Committee decided to follow a rosier outlook for revenues the next two years. On Wednesday, Lang, who is also the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said Department of Revenue Administration Commissioner Lindsey Stepp had recommended new projections for the state's business profits tax, meals and rooms tax, and real estate transfer tax.
The new projections would increase business tax revenues by $75 million over the biennium; the meals and rooms tax by $27.8 million; and the real estate transfer tax by $5 million.
Lang cited analyses from Morningstar and Kiplinger, two research firms, that suggested New Hampshire could benefit from uncertain economic conditions by attracting people seeking to save money or take local vacations.
Sen. Dan Innis, a Bradford Republican, backed up Lang's analysis, arguing he believes revenues will come in even stronger than Lang's proposed increase.
But a Democratic senator, Cindy Rosenwald of Nashua, said she disagrees with the move to increase projected business tax collections. Rosenwald said she had her own conversation with Stepp, and had received a more mixed assessment of businesses.
'If the tariff stuff doesn't calm down, that's going to lead to more business uncertainty, but if the extension of the federal tax cuts gets made (in Congress), businesses will like that, because they like certainty,' Rosenwald said. '…So I'm not comfortable with increasing the business tax rates.'
Adopting those new projections will allow the Senate to plan for nearly $108 million more in revenue over the next two years, which could help it ease some cuts imposed by the House. The committee voted to approve the new revenue figures on party lines, 5-2.
The committee voted on Wednesday against a proposal to increase the amount of money transferred to the state's affordable housing fund from $5 million to $7 million. That money comes out of the state's real estate transfer tax.
Watters argued that the fund should be increased to allow more development because the current amount is not enough. Initially, Democrats and affordable housing advocates had pushed for the annual transfers to the fund to be doubled, to $10 million.