This is not a Louisa May Alcott book, but a call to action. You don’t need to vote in District 2 to answer the call because the action item is to RECRUIT someone in District 2 to primary Senate Ways & Means chair Tim Lang, the namesake of the 2022 Gunstock Lang Gang. You might know someone, or someone who knows someone, in one or more of the following towns: Ashland, Belmont, Campton, Center Harbor, Gilford, Holderness, Laconia, Meredith, New Hampton, Sanbornton, Sandwich, and Thornton. Tim Lang is clearly NOT operating within the philosophy of the purpose of government being to protect your rights. Let’s discuss some of Tim’s crimes against NH in backwards chronological order. It’s not an exhaustive list, but some highlights, or should I say “low lights?”
Ways & Means met yesterday, and Tim voted with the enemy camp in favor of a PAINT TAX (HB 451). Landrigan tweeted about it, and it later received some WMUR attention within 24 hours. “Dems gonna do what Dems do,” as the saying goes, which is mostly expand government and raise and/or create taxes. HB 451, though Tim claims, is really a tax savings, creates a new government program, and creates a new tax, in which Adam Sexton calls attention to the quiet part out loud, “…costs would be covered by a new fee…” in his WMUR video. Tim’s stance is akin to Kevin’s argument defending his vote to enshrine Mass Health a few years ago.
The whole Senate voted for it, but when I confronted Kevin with a polite “I am very unhappy with the way you voted on that,” he gave me the “uncompensated care is a hidden tax and this bill addresses that” talking point, which Tim leveraged into a NH Journal article shortly after that. It’s unknown (to me) if Tim plagiarized Kevin or if he was merely speaking from a senate hive mind, but let’s move on to HB 2.
There was plenty of talk about Group 2 last summer during the budget bill’s Committee of Conference, which Tim Lang was part of. A few isolated sound bytes from Tim were available during the negotiations, and he was seemingly NOT on board with Queen Sharon and Regina’s concerns or even Senator Gray’s proposal. Unfortunately, as Kevin Landrigan lamented in a tweet, “so much for open transparency,” most of those 3 long days were spent behind closed doors, with the livestream video in “intermission mode.” I surmise that Tim was on the invite list to that VIP luncheon at Bridges House with Kelly Ayotte that Queen Sharon was excluded from. I can’t prove it, but if someone else can, I welcome their report in the comments.
Tim Lang is a member of Senate Finance, a committee that is often what Kevin calls “a 2nd bite of the apple,” but one in the form of an opportunity to kill a bad bill that the first committee passed. A good example is SB 255, Kevin’s telecommunications tax, which would have been a new, broad-based tax. On top of that, it would establish a new COMMISSION for crisis stabilization services, which is more expansion of Big Government. Tim voted OTP on that bill, but the good news is that it died on its own, possibly because Regina wanted to insert it into HB 2 and was unable to during the budget negotiations. Beware that enemy of 91A Rep Potucek has filed a bill that’s essentially a redo of SB 255, so expect it to be like Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, but only in a non-budget bill year.
SB 275 was a Watters product that would have created tax shelters for child care facilities, and I had a huge problem with places like District 13’s Small World, valued at $11.3M, getting a break while homeowners in Nashua are being taxed more and more towards their own homelessness. When that bill had its Ways & Means committee hearing, I got there early and signed in first.
While the Senate has a better track record than the House in calling on speakers in the order they signed up to speak, Tim flexed his muscles as little men often do and saved me for last. Why? Well, it’s the same answer to why a cat or dog licks its package, and that’s BECAUSE HE CAN. Not only that, he either pretended to forget me or was hoping I would get impatient and go away. You can watch the video or just this sound byte and decide for yourself.
After the committee adjourned, Victoria Sullivan told me she and Senator Murphy were a NO on SB 275, thus making Tim the deciding vote, and I inquired about him. She said, “We’ll get him on board,” but with Tim being the spiteful guy that he is, he decided to save that bill for last. What I mean is that he held an executive session for all the other bills in that committee first, but you might think that some bill has to be last. Not only was it last, but he held onto it until the last minute, 2 weeks later than the 2nd and 3rd to last, as crossover time was upon him. You can’t make this stuff up, so here’s the sound byte of him entertaining all kinds of ideas on how to shove it through rather than just euthanizing it weeks earlier with the help of the good Manchester senators.
HB 1002 is the RTK tax, a new tax. Oftentimes I’ve complained to Kevin about cosponsoring bad bills and he would regularly say “oh it’s just to have a conversation” and would quickly follow with an “I’ve voted against plenty of bills I’ve cosponsored.” That’s all fine when there actually is a roll-call vote to go on record with a NO vote, but HB 1002 was quietly shoved through the Senate chamber on the Consent Calendar on 5/2/24 with a VOICE VOTE. Both Kevin and Tim were cosponsors, but extra culpability falls on Tim because he signed in for the 4/9/24 Senate Judiciary committee hearing and I took a picture of the clipboard so I can say “I have the receipt,” even though he tried to deny his evil deed when Nurse Terese and I ran into him and Howard Pearl while walking from the state house to Terese’s car the day before the whole senate voice voted to adopt the Consent Calendar with HB 1002 included. As Terese and I were walking away from that encounter, she said “you know they’re laughing at us,” to which I said I had no reason to disagree.
Then there was the whole Gunstock affair going on in the summer of 2022 while Tim Lang was running for that open seat created by the retirement of Senator Giuda. You can dive as deep as you want on that one because Grokster Skip wrote about it almost daily, and his articles are archived in the site search engine.
In the essence of keeping this article short, I will wrap things up with a plea to District 2 to elect a senator that is worthy of Senator Giuda’s seat because Tim Lang needs to be shown the door.
