It went out to all the Republican State House members. It is about the defeat of CACR-12, the school funding constitutional amendment. It shows, in part, why O’Brien is so good at his job. He may be the best, most principled Speaker the New Hampshire State House of Representatives has had in the past 100 years or more. Read on….
From: O’Brien, William
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2012 4:56 PM
To: Republican House Members
Subject: CACR 12 and House Republicans
Dear Republican colleagues,
Last March, House leadership held a press conference in which we announced that we would work with the Governor in an effort to craft a compromise education funding amendment. We said then, and still believe, that having the Governor’s support would be critical to achieving 2/3rd of the popular vote in November. That said, we also pointed out that if we were going to compromise with the Governor on passing an amendment, it would be critical that the Governor…
…bring Democrats with him who would support the amendment, as we knew that there would be some Republicans who could not support the types of changes that the Governor would require to garner his support. We said that we would need a 60% majority that included House members from both parties in order to have a truly bi-partisan and successful solution.
As you know, the effort to pass CACR 12 fell short yesterday, though not for lack of support by Republicans. In the end, 223 of 224 favorable votes were cast by Republicans. The fact that only 1 Democrat supported the amendment shows that Governor Lynch simply did not keep his end of the bargain.
While I am disappointed that we could not pass the amendment with just Republican votes, the reality is that no one in our party “is to blame” for the result. Back in March, we said that we would need more than a handful of Democrats to support this for CACR 12 to pass, and that prediction was exactly accurate. We were willing to compromise, but the party with whom we were working to create a bipartisan solution in the end provided us nothing in return.
I want to thank the 83% of Republicans who joined us in this attempt to craft a New Hampshire solution to end the drama of the various Claremont andLondonderry decisions. You put the good of the state ahead of any specific concerns you might have had, and I commend you for your support. I know many of you took a leap of faith in doing so and your trust is much appreciated.
I also want to thank the 17% of Republicans who opposed the amendment for your willingness to keep an open mind and listen to us present our case for solving this problem. To a member, I found all of you were very willing to listen and you served your constituents well as you carefully considered the issue. While I might disagree with where you ended, I believe that these were principled decisions, made after careful deliberation.
I certainly hope that we will be able to work together on an education funding amendment again next year. This problem is unlikely to go away until the legislature gives the people an opportunity to resolve it. In fact, I would expect that we will see further litigation brought in the coming year, so we need to work together to build consensus around a solution that gives responsibility back to the legislature and local communities.
Obviously, from our perspective, it would have been best for New Hampshire if we could have given the voters a chance to vote on CACR 12 this November. Others among us voted yesterday out of a belief that our shared concerns could be best addressed through one or more other approaches. Clearly, however, we all believe that any approach must ensure that the courts are not part of setting educational policy in New Hampshire and that we must not abandon New Hampshire’s traditional support of both local solutions and parental educational choices outside of public schools. Let’s work together to ensure we achieve that approach next year. And let us also work together, as a unified legislative party, to recognize and publicize the amazing gains we have made this year in fulfilling the promises we made to the people and to ensure that they recognize that we will, and should, build on those gains next term.
Sincerely,
William O’Brien
Speaker of the House