The State Supreme court announced that is sees a conflict between current state law and spending cap initiatives approved by voters (Manchester in particular). This is not unexpected but it is fortuitous, and to some degree ironic. In their quest to defend any liberal-leaning municipalities desire to spend beyond the ability of their residents to pay for it, groups like Keep Manchester Moving have just financed the blueprint by which the now Republican super-majority state government can adroitly engineer a fix.
That fix will probably come in the next session, may result in a state level spending cap as well, (to control state spending, not necessarily as a mandate on the towns or counties) and should cast the courts decisions into the category of "one left wing step forward, two left wing steps back." But then, that’s the problem with being arrogant enough to use out of state money to advance the California/New York/Massachusetts tax and spend model to secure a future of union/left wing power with taxpayer money in a state that is only 1/3 democrat. The other 2/3rds might object.
Hello November 2nd.
So Keep Manchester Moving can act like it has won, while they climb down into the basement with all the other left wing groups that got high on their own supply having mistakenly miscued voter outrage against one then-unpopular (now former) president, fueled further by war-weariness, as a mandate for their crazy, tax and spend, government-first agenda in New Hampshire.
It was more like an ideological one night stand. An evolutionary political dead end. It was a progressive bait and switch. An empty headed trophy wife or the object of a beer-goggled bender. People signed up for the rhetoric but the hangover brought them back to reality. And twenty years from now we can look back on this and laugh. "Heh, remember when we tried progressivism? Man that was stupid. We almost ruined everything. Good thing we learned our lesson."
And now, we’ve learned another one. How to protect taxpayers from the lofty aspirations of meddling do-gooders who would spend first and ask for taxes later, memorialized in the words of democrat House Rep Dan Eaton; "It makes sense to know how much you are spending before you decide how much money to raise."
The democrats followed this guiding principle for four years in NH, having forgotten that you have to know whose money you are actually spending, before you assume you can spend as much of it as you like.
Manchester Moving has defended that principle to it’s logical conclusion. The existing cap is not (according to a bench full of unelected jurists) compatible with existing state law. So now 302 representatives, elected by the people of the state, (assuming all the democrats object) can use their constitutional authority to fix it and Manchester Moving can take their Progress Now backers and move in next to Rep Eaton to live in the shadow of their own arrogance, having been kicked off the playground by the people whose money they just assumed they had the right to spend…to basically protect the unions and the base of their political power.
