From the text of the bill (actually, this is pretty much most of it): 1 Budget Committee Membership. Amend RSA 32:15, I(b) to read as follows:
(b) One member of the governing body of the municipality and, if the municipality is a town, one member of the school board of each school district wholly within the town and one [member] commissioner of each village district wholly within the town, all of whom shall be appointed by their respective boards to serve for a term of one year and until their successors are qualified. Each such member shall serve as a non-voting member and may be represented by an alternate member designated by the respective board, who shall, when sitting, have the same authority as the regular member.
While I was in Concord this week, I ran into ‘Grok, friend NH State Rep. Mark Warden, who is one of the sponsors of the bill and asked him “why the changes for SB2 Budget Committee?” since I have been an elected BudComm member in my hamlet for the past 6 years. Note: never again will I do an interview in a stairwell – apologies for the poor audio – but that was the only place we could find with decent lighting and a lack of foot traffic):
I also had the chance last night to quickly interview fellow BudComm member, Kevin Leandro, as he had given testimony to Mark Warden’s House Committee:
Personally? I agree with the intent of the bill. The purpose of the Budget Committe is singular: to protect the interests of taxpayers – and no other so-called “stakeholders”. We are not there to actually govern the town, we are not there to oversee employees, and ostensibly, not to set policy (although the very act of adding to or subtracting from the budget raises howls of “you’re not supposed to set policy”). To that last, sometimes controversial, statement, dollars can change policy for if we decided that the School District or the Selectboard is spending too much, we can effectively change their policy – but that is secondary to the stopping of wasting taxpayer monies.
While our BudComm is relatively large (12 members: 9 elected with 3 representatives from the School Board, Select Board, and the Water District), it seems unfair that the School Board and Select Board representatives can (and mostly do) act in cross purposes to the main mandate of the Budget Committee – their purpose is not to watch out for excessive spending but to defend their respective organizations’ budgets. Thus, they get a second crack at spending that the rest of the Budget Committee members do not have. And in a closely divided committee (ideologically: cutters / spenders or Conservative / Progressive – take your pick), it can be very hard to cut spending that a majority of the elected members may wish to do because of these ‘locked in’ votes.
Therefore, I believe this to be a step in the right direction and support the bill.
