Let’s call it a thought experiment, if nothing else. Fact: It is illegal for the New Hampshire state government to impose unfunded mandates on counties, cities, or towns. Fact: The state has been accepting air-dropped illegals and refugees for years.
Or, to be more clear, it has not done enough (if anything) to stop them from being transferred within your local political borders, often without your knowledge and without any accounting for the costs.
The burden created by the influx is born at the town level with limited support from aid agencies or the feds.
Related: Refugees Bring Tuberculosis to New Hampshire
Every added dollar that is not paid for becomes an unfunded mandate by the state.
One of the best examples of this is resettled refugee populations of non-English speaking families whose kids end up in the public school system. Local taxpayers are asked to pay for accommodations, including special learning and translators whose salaries and benefits accumulate to more than a minor annual expense.
Cities like Manchester and Nashua have found themselves with students speaking dozens of languages whose presence, while not unwelcome on principle if they are legitimate political refugees, need someone (or someones) who can communicate if we are even to begin to teach them English so the Democrats can teach them to call you a racist in your own language.
These are not the only costs.
Housing – in a market with a housing shortage comes with not-so-hidden costs.
The larger policies behind the need to relocate foreigners to the interior, like open borders, are also responsible for both the original opioid epidemic and the current one, both aligning perfectly with DACA and other open-border policies that have allowed cartels and smugglers to flood the country with drugs and gangs (and violence and human trafficking) to distribute them.
Local law enforcement budgets are impacted, and these are paid doe by local taxpayers.
Addiction is again peaking, as are overdose deaths, the cost of which is not just in families, stability, peace, and lives but by local government, medical costs, therapy costs, and the mental health cost.
Again, more unfunded mandates.
And these are all, with exceptions few and rare, a result of Democrat policies and demands.
If the Left wants anyone to take them seriously when they say they want to do something about drugs, addiction, and overdose deaths, the first thing they need to do is close the border. If you need some excuse so you are not embarrassed, might I suggest a “Public Health Emergency?”
If the Left would like anyone to take them seriously when they say they want to do something about local property taxes, they must stop advocating for policies that cram unfunded mandates down on local taxpayers above and beyond the out-of-control costs of government-run education.
One more point. Our Federal ambassadors to New Hampshire, the Democrat Congressional delegation, are proud to announce that they are robbing other people to pay for the costs of these policies in New Hampshire. In reality, this money comes with costs of its own.
No federal dollar comes without rules. Compliance costs can and do exceed the value of the burgled funds. And, more often than not, it will end up costing your local government more long-term than the stolen money they advertised as free.
Another unfunded mandate crammed down on counties, towns, and cities by the state is in violation of the State Constitution.
I think it merits some consideration, some thought.
