Guest Post - Dan Tamburello - Reporting from the "Lawmakers and Clergy" 4/8/11 meeting at the Salem Boys and Girls Club - Granite Grok

Guest Post – Dan Tamburello – Reporting from the “Lawmakers and Clergy” 4/8/11 meeting at the Salem Boys and Girls Club

On the days that the NH House was debating and passing its budget, HB 1, a couple of last weeks ago, there were many cries of "immoral" from those that directly benefit from NH expenditures.  There were also similar complaints from members of the clergy.  The following is a report from a meeting that was scheduled by a number of the clergy to have a forum / panel discussion at the Salem Boys and Girls Club last week to discuss this issue.

While the ‘Grok was unable to get to the meeting, which was self described as:

Our goal is to have this forum be a productive discussion about priorities for the state budgeting process and a way for lawmakers and clergy/religious communities to provide services to meet the needs of the citizens of NH…We need to come together if we are to be the state we all want to live in and a state that does not neglect the needs of the vulnerable.

Dan Tamburello was kind enough to take notes and submit this report – we thank him very much.

Note: in all this discussion, the question remained of what is the role of the Church in all this?  The entire discussion seems to twirl around the idea that Govt is the final arbiter of what is moral and not – and the enforcer of such.   And while the phrase "social justice" was discussed, I didn’t see a strict definition of what it actually means in concrete terms (the new "Halliburton"??)

Also, and rather telling, was the lack of a theological discussion in all this: the role of "free will".  In essence, it seems that all these clergy are putting their faith into Govt, and not into God and His People. 

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Meeting notes and observations from the "Lawmakers and Clergy" meeting on 4/8/11 at the Salem Boys and Girls Club.

Panel*:

  • Rev David Yasenka, Chair, Lutheran Church in Salem
  • Sen. Morse
  • Sen. Rausch
  • Other clergy representing; the United Church of Christ, the Lutheran Church, the Episcopal Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Methodist Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the NH Council of Churches, Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services.
  • A town councilor from Hampstead

*no person on the panel appeared to have a copy of either the State or Federal Constitutions or a Holy Bible in their possession.

Audience included several State Representatives: JR Hoell, Regina Birdsell, John O’Connor, Mike Ball, Dan Tamburello (myself), Kenneth Gould, Gary Azarian, and perhaps one other I did not recognize. State Reps were seated in front in reserved seating.

Others in the Audience were:

  • (1) individual with a pretty good sized video camera whom I did not know
  • a white haired blond woman in her 40s or 50s; she was an administrator of some sort of public assistance organization in Salem, who distributed a flyer that had a text transcript of a phone conversation someone left on a lady’s voicemail that attempted to get a free cell phone from some NH State program that provides free cells to Seniors and could not get one through the program.
  • a number of civilians/citizens…maybe 20?
  • at least one reporter

The meeting began at approx 6pm. I missed the first few minutes (I arrived at ~610pm with Mike Ball). Rep. John O’Connor confirmed to me that they DID NOT begin the meeting with the Pledge of allegiance or a Prayer. Neither did they end it with prayer of any sort.

FORMAT:

Rev Yasenka was the “chair” and led the entire event. Officially, no one was allowed to ask any questions except those on the panel, unless they were previously submitted to Mr. Yasenka via email or written on a card and handed to them at that time. This was supposedly done “in the interest of time”. I violated this policy on at least three occasions which I will note below…to Rev Yasenka’s credit I was not refused…

Rev. Yasenka had distributed to every member of the panel what looked like a container of 100 pennies and a piece of paper.  A budget slide depicting…


…the 2010 budget was shown to the audience and panelists and stated what the percent of each budgetary allocation was. He had them do an exercise where they took money from the “penny” budget and stacked them in each “bucket” so to speak on the paper. This is approximately the time in which I arrived.

1st unauthorized question from Rep Tamburello: I asked for clarification on the budget being presented if it reflected 2010 numbers since it was not noted anywhere on any of the slides.  Rev. Yasenka indicated that they were working with 2010 numbers.

The Panel was then asked to move pennies to where they would like them and state what their deviations were from the original budget.  A few individuals piped up with minor changes.

The Panel was then asked to discuss anything they would like to change (e.g. ADD) to the budget…in other words bring in outside money or a new revenue stream.  This was represented by a small plastic cup containing pennies from Rev Yasenka which he jingled tantalizingly to the panelists.

One Panelist said that he and his wife had recently done their taxes and that his wife owns a business and that she had to pay taxes from the BET or BPT in NH but that he had to pay none.  He was upset by this and thought it unfair.

Second interruption by Rep Tamburello: I asked if the individual would mind identifying what it was that he did for a living since I had missed the introduction portion (I was thinking he was a Reverend)…he stated in response that he worked for Lutheran Charities.

[I withheld a follow up in the interest of following the “ground rules” …follow up I would have asked: Do you sir, own a home…yes?…do you pay taxes on that home?….ohhh]

One female Panelist [unknown Rev with long gray hair and clogs] piped up that she would like an income tax in the interest of social justice…fair taxes…etc.  At that time the Rev Yasenka rewarded her with 5 more pennies.

There was some discussion about people who work in Mass not paying “their fair share” of “taxes” to NH. Senator Rausch responded with a refutation of the efficacy and efficiency of income tax in NH.

Another panelist, a Male Reverend, chimed in supporting income taxes as a means of implementing “social justice”.  I believe Sen Morse responded with a different response to him shooting down the idea of an income tax.

Sen Morse reiterated that budgets should be done with programs first and then find the money to pay for them (a statement made previously to the Concord monitor and then retracted??).  He also stated that he thought the House budget was more or less accurate with their revenue projections.

Sen. Rausch got into a back and forth with a member of the panel about paying for programs regarding wants v. needs…Sen Rausch used the anology of shopping for a car and compared Cadillacs to Chevys…everyone wants a Caddy but not everyone can afford it…the rev took a little offense to this…he clarified his position and she felt better about the analogy.

A recurring theme was about making sure that we weren’t putting society’s “most vulnerable” at risk.

Another recurring theme was using the government to implement “social justice”.

Both Senators did a fairly decent job of bringing reality into the conversation at several times. Both refuted sales and income taxes as solutions.

Sen Morse indicated that the Senate’s budget might try to add in a few thing’s that the House had cut but there would be no new revenues…in other words, any monies would come from another line in the budget…effectively a zero sum game.

They then were preparing for a final “round table” when I interjected a third time.  This time I made sure the entire panel was aware that of all these discussions about money for this or that not being available, if you add up all of the social programs and divide it by the number of recipients, 2010 budget had $14,000 per capita and the proposed budget by the house had $13,000, which was less than a 10% cut.  I think this was a surprise to some of those present.

They did a final roundtable where all of the panelists were able to make comments. There was nothing significant to report from those, IMHO.

The meeting ended at 8pm.

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