Pro-SB11 PR Campaign Underway... - Granite Grok

Pro-SB11 PR Campaign Underway…

Supporters of SB 11, the bill that would allow a new layer of bureaucracy for the purpose of taxing and managing intermunicipal water districts, are waging a public relations campaign on the premise that the opponents of the bill are seeing things that are not there.  Unfortunately for them, the real problem is that there is nothing in the bill to prevent any of the things we see.

Call us cynical but we do not trust rules-makers and bureaucrats to imagine limitations on their authority that are not spelled out clearly.  In fact, as proper cynics, we do not even give them much credit for constraining themselves when the language seems clear.  The language in SB11 fails on all counts.

So I have begun my own counter-campaign on that premise, and emailed the entire New Hampshire House Republican email list with the email below.  Feel free to use this premise or one similar as you reach out to your own representatives.

And a reminder.  Water, water rights, property rights, and fair taxation are not partisan issues.   It is your well, your water, your rain and run-off , and your money that could be taxed; no matter what we’d like the words in SB11 to mean, there is no specific language in it that seeks first and foremost to protect the people of New Hampshire.  Until such language does exist this effort must be opposed.


Proponents of SB11 on both sides of the aisle have gone on a PR campaign to suggest that there is nothing in the bill that empowers anyone to do the things the opponents claim.  That we are seeing bugbears.  My response to that is simple.

There is nothing in the language of SB11 that would specifically prevent any of the things that the bill’s opponents claim and that is a far more critical point.

Can you, with clear conscience, read the entirety of SB 11 and guarantee your constituents that at some future date, some regional board could not in fact charge fees for municipal services to which they have no access or use?  Can you read the text of this bill and declare definitively that at no point after its passage the ownership of personal property or water rights could not be put into question?

If there is “clear language” that protects well and septic owners in your districts, I do not see it.  To presume the rules makers and bureaucrats will see it there seems more far-fetched than anything any of the bill’s opponents could imagine.

Please vote to table SB 11 so that it can be re-written with clearer language, or if that is not possible to kill the bill.

Best Regards,

 
Steve Mac Donald
Merrimack, New Hampshire

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