Andru Volinsky’s recent op-ed about Claremont’s financial crisis assumes a premise that is flatly wrong: that the New Hampshire Constitution requires the state to tax and fund local schools. It does not.
Our Constitution is clear. Part II, Article 5 authorizes the legislature to levy taxes only when they are “proportional and reasonable” and only for the support of government, defense, and protection of the people. Education is not listed. Taxing for schools is simply outside the scope of Article 5.
Historically, Rev. Nathaniel Bouton’s 1833 History of Education in New Hampshire shows that education was always a local responsibility. Towns, and later districts, raised their own money to build schoolhouses and pay teachers. This was done by consent, within the community, not by state mandate.
In 1784, the Bill of Rights enshrined conscience protections. Article 6 stated no man could be compelled to support the schools of a sect he did not belong to. After the 1968 amendment, even the word “towns” was removed, leaving no constitutional body with authority to compel school taxation. The people never transferred that power to the state.
What happened in the 1990s with Claremont was judicial invention. The Court read a new “state duty” into Article 83 (“cherish the interest of literature”), creating taxing authority that the people had not granted. That is the textbook definition of usurpation.
The plight of Claremont today is tragic, but the remedy is not another unconstitutional bailout. If New Hampshire wants the state to fund schools, it must do so honestly, by constitutional amendment, asking the people for consent. Until then, the education tax remains contrary and repugnant to our fundamental law.
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