An important bill for school district governance, SB383 ” Relative to local tax caps “, was signed into law by Governor Sununu on 2 Aug 2024. SB383 is a prime example of Republicans in the House and Senate coordinating together with the Governor to deliver a big win for NH taxpayers! This bill was prime sponsored by Senator Keith Murphy, with lead co-sponsor Rep. Dan McGuire, who both navigated this bill through the long legislative process. SDGA also played a significant role in formulating and advocating for this important bill.
https://gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/billinfo.aspx?id=2088&inflect=2
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Most significantly, SB383 adds the new school district budget cap to the RSAs, which provides a budget (spending) cap that annually adjusts the maximum allowed school budget by a selected inflation index and change in school population. This budget cap also requires a 3/5 supermajority to override, to ensure spending above the cap is truly urgent. Adopting the school district budget cap will undoubtedly lead school boards and budget committees to better prioritize needs over wants in developing school budgets, exactly what is required as school spending in districts across the state continue to rapidly rise while school enrollment is decreasing. It is rewarding to see the school district budget cap, first proposed in 2022 by Rep. Diane Pauer as HB1393 with support from SDGA, to get adopted into law in 2024.
SB383 also adds an important new tax cap method to RSA 32:5-b, a method to cap tax effort based on a selected inflation index and change in town or school population. This new flexible method is a solution for towns and school districts who did not favor the current RSA 32:5-b methods that use an annual fixed percentage or dollar amount increase on capping the tax effort, because these fixed methods do not take into account high (or low) inflation or increasing (or decreasing) town or student populations. Thank you to NHMA for their assistance in developing this new tax cap method, which is a variant of the school district budget cap, that is available to both school districts and towns.
By providing important new options for local control of tax efforts and budgets, based on widely recognized adjustment measures of inflation and changes in town/school population, provisions of this bill are likely to be adopted by towns and school districts across the state to help ensure prudent and prioritized spending. On the SDGA website https://www.sdganh.org , we will post example petitions to adopt (1) the school district budget cap or (2) the new RSA 32:5-b tax cap method by mid-November, if not sooner.
I also recognize co-sponsors Sen. Avard, Sen. Innis, House Majority Leader Osborne, Rep. Carol McGuire, Rep. Edwards, and Rep. Len Turcotte (SDGA member). Thanks also go to the Senate Election Law and Municipal Affairs Committee and the House Municipal and County Government Committee for making the important technical amendments to the bill and providing OTP/A recommendations for the bill passage to the Senate and House floors respectively. Also, thank you to Rep. Diane Pauer (SDGA member) for her excellent House floor debate on SB383, helping to get the amendment and bill as amended passed on a 184-177 roll call vote through the narrowly divided House. A great team effort by all!
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