To set the stage: Town meetings are dominated by the people who receive, benefit from or massage taxpayer loot. The “official ballot referendum town meeting” or SB2 procedure took away from town meetings the power to make final budget decisions for the upcoming year.
It became a “deliberative town meeting” and merely decided the wording of budgetary questions. These went onto the secret ballot, along with the selection of municipal officials.
Deliberative town meetings involved fewer voters than the old style had. However, Election Day involved many more voters than town meetings ever did – including the infirm, snowbirds, people with jobs who vote absentee, and deployed members of the military services. Limiting spending finally became feasible – and the big spenders began scheming.
Those managing deliberative town meeting first turned to sabotage. Warrant articles “To see if the town will appropriate $1 million” were amended to read “To see,” but we now have a law against that. Unfortunately, we cannot legislate against every bad-faith tactic. In one notorious Exeter meeting, a motion of No Confidence in the Superintendent was amended to be a “motion of Confidence”? Yawn!
Adopting or rescinding the SB2 procedure required a 60% vote. In 2019, a Democrat legislature finally hit upon the solution, amending RSA 131 so that the vote to switch to a secret ballot was made not by secret ballot but at *town meeting itself*. Advocates said this would produce a more immediate result, but the obvious intent and the result was to break SB2. No town meeting is going to marshal a 60% vote to give up some of its own power! And indeed, it seems no town in New Hampshire has adopted the SB2 procedure since 2019 Chapter 131 became law.
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House Bill 1175 would reverse this change and put the decision to adopt the SB2 procedure back on the secret ballot. It will still take a 60% majority to adopt or rescind, but will throw the question open to all the town’s voters, rather than those who can devote an entire evening to town meeting, no matter how you feel about being hissed at by schoolmarms and wondering if they will retaliate against your kids.
House Bill 1175 is the biggest game-changer, in terms of citizen control of government overspending, that has a chance of being passed this year. It was assigned to the Municipal and County Government Committee but does not yet have a hearing date. My town’s library has a message on the marquee that suggests that the insiders understand the threat and are organizing to defeat it. Grok readers ought to understand the promise and contact their representatives.
