A lot of the LSRs are now viewable here; these are the placeholders for NH bills that our lawmakers in the NH House and Senate wish to bring forward and enact into law. One of them was put in by Democrat appointed Speaker Shawn Jasper:
2015-H-0019-R allowing municipalities to borrow funds from any fund controlled by such municipality under certain conditions.
Sponsors: (Prime) Shawn Jasper
This is craziness! From my time on my hamlet’s Budget Committee, the vast number of funds are set aside for dedicated and targeted purposes – new capital equipment like buildings or purpose driven vehicles (fire engines, DPW loaders and dump trucks) or for Parks & Rec’s special programs. It defeats the purpose of having a fund in the first place. In some cases, these funds were not funded by taxing town residents – the monies were given by others for the town to use within covenants.
So you have a case where either donors or taxpayers have ALREADY given or taxed for these funds in the first place, the town “liberates” that money for another purpose, and then what? Yeah, the taxpayers have to be taxed again to replenish those funds.
Now, from the LSR description, we don’t know what the “certain conditions” are to be – for that we will have to wait for Legislative Services to change that “intent” into legislative language. That said, these kinds of funds should NOT be used as internal banks, subject to the whims of mayors, councils, selectmen, budget committees, or any other entity in town. Remember, some of these were set up by warrant articles passed by the local voters – they should be viewed as lockboxes.
I really hope that this is not how JASSper is going to view the State budget…
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