(So glad we have Kathy on our side. - promoted by Mike Hoefer)
[This is an unedited version of an op ed that ran in the UL yesterday]
The New Hampshire legislature on vacation, but the fallout from its session earlier this year is making news. A drop in cigarette revenues cost the state about $6,600,000 in July. Speaker Bill O'Brien and company enacted a ten cent cut in the cigarette tax, but prices did not change for smokers, because the tobacco companies raised their prices. House budget writers ignored every signal that the federal government was about to impose a $35,000,000 penalty for medicaid errors dating back to the Benson administration. Their irresponsibility has caused a gaping hole in their ballyhooed "balanced budget."
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New Hampshire hospitals are laying off hundreds of employees because O'Brien and his Republican colleagues took away federal money that had paid hospital costs for the poor. Manchester's Mayor Ted Gatsas, himself a Republican, blasted drastic cuts to the state's program for at risk juveniles, saying "there will be 60 children walking around the streets of Manchester that will have some problems, violent, they have nowhere to go. At some point they will end up being incarcerated at a cost of $33,000 a year." The budget also ended a program providing meals, laundry and other services to low income frail elderly in public housing. The program keeps these seniors living in apartments at a cost of about $7,300 per person, rather than the alternative of nursing home care at a cost of about $100,000 per person. It just takes plain common sense to see that ending the program is fiscally shortsighted, but common sense is in short supply in the New Hampshire legislature.
Under O'Brien's leadership, the legislature has botched things up to a fare thee well, resulting in significant job loss,and a sea of red ink. Their proposed answer to curing the shortfall caused by their incompetence is to strip UNH of more of its funding (can we really call it a public university anymore?). In a move that is petty and punitive, they want to eliminate a $60 a month payment to impoverished mothers who have the misfortune to become pregnant again.
Despite the budget woes, Speaker O'Brien is using public resources on a foolish piece of litigation that will do nothing to educate one child, or provide one meal to an impoverished senior, or even fix one pothole. During the last legislative session, the Speaker cleared the House visitors gallery and locked the doors, ignoring a constitutional requirement that the gallery doors must be open.
The language in Part 2, Article 8, is straightforward; "The doors of the galleries, of each house of the legislature, shall be kept open to all persons who behave decently, except when the welfare of the state, in the opinion of either branch, shall require secrecy". Ignoring this plain language, the Speaker refuses to admit he was wrong. Instead, House legal counsel Ed Mosca is defending a suit brought to keep the gallery doors open. He and O'Brien are making the unique argument that Part 2, Article 8 does not apply to the galleries in this State House because the current State House was built after this provision of the New Hampshire Constitution was adopted.
Mosca explains away the clear language of Part 8 by claiming the drafters' intent merely was to require the legislature to conduct open sessions, not to provide an area for the public to view legislative proceedings. Since the legislature live streams its proceedings over the internet, he says, open galleries are not necessary. Too bad if you do not have access to a computer, or would like to observe the proceedings in person. Mosca and O'Brien state the legislature has the right to eliminate the public gallery altogether, and could convert it to a cafeteria or a wi fi lounge. So much for open and transparent government, and the New Hampshire Constitution.
Constitutional conservatives may be surprised to learn that the Speaker believes the constitution is a living document, open to interpretation in light of changing times. Gun owners should pay attention, because using the logic of Mosca and O'Brien, the right to bear arms would only apply to muskets, pistols, the occasional blunderbuss, or other firearms in use at the time the Second Amendment was adopted. Kiss those assault rifles and automatic weapons goodbye! That works for me, but how will conservative Republicans defend the "liberal" constitutional philosophy adopted by Mosca and O'Brien?
Maybe O'Brien did not know he could not lock the doors. Maybe he is just stubborn and refuses to admit he was wrong. Whatever the reason, if New Hampshire cannot afford to support the frail elderly, or children in need of services, or children born into poverty, then New Hampshire certainly cannot afford to defend Bill O'Brien's wrongheaded refusal to follow the state's constitution.
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