In this morning’s Manchester Union Leader the front page has a report on how Granite State businesses looking at expansions would like to grow in New Hampshire but are forced to look outside the state because our energy costs are prohibitive.
“If we don’t have an assurance of reliability and a drastic reduction in our energy costs, a lot of us will be packing our bags and going,” John Olson, Whelen [Engineering’s] executive vice president said at a New Hampshire energy symposium at the Radisson Hotel.
Sig Sauer and others agree. High electricity rates not only demand they look elsewhere for expansions, but they could also scare away or drive out manufacturing altogether. This is a problem that (believe it or not) one Republican State Senator does not think the State Legislature should address.
…Sen. John Reagan, R-Deerfield, said he doesn’t think the Legislature should get involved.
Businesses looking to locate in New Hampshire factor in things like availability of workers and cost of doing business. High electric rates are “a cost of production,” Reagan said in an interview.
Perhaps Sen. Reagan offered more context than this pull quote allows but can we all agree that the state legislature is already involved?
We have Laws on the books passed by meddling legislatures of yore like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and green energy portfolio standard. Both by design seek to change behavior by making electricity more expensive. Industry experts are telling you that it works. They will expand in other states. They may move to other states, where less meddling legislatures didn’t use government force to drive up costs. And they will take the jobs with them.
Legislators are welcome to think that they know better but should be prepared to pay a political price for ignoring what the state has done in the past (and not just with energy) by choosing not to undo to it.
You have a Republican governor and a Republican majority legislature. You have two years to make the state as business friendly as it can be. Democrats would not squander the same gift. They’d take a hard left and drive as far and as fast as they could hoping to get far enough that it wouldn’t matter what voters did in response.
That is exactly how we got here in the first place. Democrats rammed all this garbage through when they had the majority and a Democrat governor. They blew out the budget added new taxes and regulations, and when the joyride ended the State was stranded deeper into liberal territory than it had ever been before. We have been trying to drag it back ever since and the only thing stopping us has been spineless Republicans and Democrat governors.
Well, we finally got ourselves a Republican governor so grab your partner and dance. The song could be over in two years. If you show job creators that you are serious they will stay here and expand here for all the other reasons that make New Hampshire appealing. If you waste time and do nothing, then they’ll behave accordingly and send jobs and commerce (along with the tax revenue that comes from them) out of state.
We already have Democrats for that. We don’t need Republicans doing it too.
