This should be the last post in this series as my last official meeting was back in January at the Public Hearing for the School District Budget. Officially, I “retired” and did not run for re-election for a fourth term back in March.
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Tales from the BudComm
Tales from the BudComm – The “two bites at the apple” edition
Last night, again, was the public hearing for the Town and School District; my previous post covered the discussion of getting the Budget Committee to endorse siphoning off peoples’ tax monies to “charities” that live off government tax monies (else they’d go belly up). This was is about the School Board trying to have their … Read more
Tales from the BudComm – the (Last-1) post
Last night was the Public Hearing for both the Town and the School District; about 100 people showed up with the majority of them being employees of both + elected officials from both. Thus, other than a few self-interested members of the public, most were self-interested from a special interest group perspective. Pretty much everything … Read more
Tales from the BudComm – about that $100,000?
For you folks out there on BudComms how many of the departments, Municipal or School District, have revolving funds? Yeah, a bit wonkier than my normal Tales from the Budcomm (TftBC) posts but this is important. What’s a revolving fund and why am I writing about it?
Tales from the BudComm – white hats or black hats?
Or alternatively: Is your town budgeting for RansomWare? That’s when hackers infiltrate an entity’s computer network and take complete control over all of the IT assets and then, like a human hostage, hold them up for ransom (“pay us $XXXXX or your files will be encrypted by us forever”). The next on my list of … Read more
Tales from the BudComm – Progressives hating on NH’s history of volunteerism
It must be nice to think that other peoples monies is yours to spend. I don’t. The budget season has just left the starting gate for this year and this past Thursday was the first “get stuff done” (as opposed to organizational stuff). Thus, time for budget sub-committees to start bringing the results of their … Read more
Tales from the Budcomm – the last season
Yep, after three three-year terms, this is the last budget season for me based on a promise I made to TMEW. New members are on-board, sub-committees member assignments are done and the scramble to set appointments with the department heads is already in gear. By the middle of January, each budget for each municipality and … Read more
Tales from the BudComm: where either the Selectmen or the Town Administrator aren’t hep with a Free Marketplace
“Actually, the town has MADE it their issue.“ Tonite was the organizational meeting for the Budget Committee – and the last year of my last term per my promise to TMEW (The Most Esteemed Wife). Pretty much a time to quickly review the minutes of the last meeting, vote for Chair and Vice-Chair, and sign … Read more
Tales from the BudComm – c’est la, I guess
On Tuesday I went down to Concord to testify on behalf of passing HB576, my “No means No” when Budget Committee use their fiscal policy setting Powers to tell Selectmen and School Boards that they don’t approve of those “purposes”. I thought that I had prepared well, spoke well (I did ask some of the … Read more
Tales from the BudComm – It’s HB576 testimony time!
Last night I received a call from NH State Rep Harry Bean – my representative, former member of the Budget Committee, and a sponsor of my bill, HB576 which is meant to be a technical fix to RSA32, the Municipal Budget Law. Turns out, the NH House Municipal and County Government Committee is hearing testimony … Read more
Tales from the BudComm – Deliberative Session version (Part 1)
This past week was the Deliberative Sessions for both the Town and School Districts. The townfolk review the budgets presented by the Budget Committee and all of the warrants (spending issues submitted either by the Selectmen or the School Board, plus any citizen-sponsored “petition warrants” for kind of purpose. Three petition warrants, one for the … Read more
“Who serves whom? Do the Townsfolk Serve their Employees?”
As I wrote here: “who serves whom? Do the townfolk serve their employees?” Let that set the table for this. It’s not quite a Tale from the BudComm but it has financial ramifications. If it passes. There will be a petition warrant on my hamlet’s ballot which would move the Second Session (the actual voting) … Read more
Tales from the BudComm – Coerced charity is not charity
“We can legally do it – but is a simple majority vote to give your property tax monies to a charity that you otherwise would not actually moral?” Every year since I’ve been politically active and paying attention, “outside agencies” keep coming to my hamlet to get the townfolk to give them money. No, not … Read more
Tales from the BudComm – a technical correction
As I have said before, it turns out that “No doesn’t mean NO!” when it comes to SB2 Budget Committee deliberations because of a “technical flaw” in RSA 32 (and to a smaller degree, RSA 40). While BudComms must deal at General Ledger line levels (we are prohibited from just “lopping off” or “adding to” the net bottom lines of municipal or school district budgets, after our presented budget(s) are accepted, modified, or denied by the Legislative Body (er, the voters in a given town), the Governing Bodies (Selectmen, School Boards) then submitted the finalized budgets to the NH Department of Revenue Administration (“DRA”) using forms known as “MS-Form”). Essentially, they are “roll up” forms – instead of listing all of the individual line items, they simply show aggregated totals of the department budgets (e.g., the entire Police budget in a single line).
Once done, and the “Purpose” (very important word, that) has been set, the Governing Bodies are then able to transfer monies from one lower level GL account line item to another – including into those line items that BudComms may have zeroed out. So, I’m looking to crowdsource for a bit of help.
Tales from the BudComm – So how do you rectify those two statements, Sean?
As I said in the last issue in this Tales from the BudComm series, I became real concerned when freshman Joe Wernig first said, and then Chair Sean Murphy assented, that we weren’t supposed to be changing GL accounts – the line items in the “recommendations” (verbiage from RSA 32) that the School District / Municipality give to the BudComm. The troublesome verbiage in the transcript is after the jump.
So this past meeting, I decided to pin Sean Murphy down on his assent on Wernig’s supposition that changing any amount is MicroManagement and that’s no our job. Either we do change the GL Line item amounts because we think that the recommendations are too high (or too low), or what are we doing is a farce and waste of time. And I told him that. Here’s the snippet from the hour long meeting when Sean Murphy recognized me during the meeting to raise the issue.