Policy Blog NH

Getting closer to a budget: Senate revenue estimates

The Senate Ways and Means Committee approved its final estimates of revenues from existing state taxes this morning. It’s an important further step in the process of writing a state budget for the next two fiscal years, 2014 and 2015. The committee’s estimates set the stage for the Senate Finance Committee to begin making spending decisions. Yet the forecasts approved today also leave unresolved a series of questions that will further shape New Hampshire’s budget debate in the coming weeks.

Understanding hospital charges

There's been a great deal of public surprise about a recent report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on the variation in how much individual hospitals charge for a given procedure. The data is interesting (available here) but it only tells part of the story. In the end it doesn’t tell you anything about what a given hospital actually gets paid for providing a service, nor what it actually costs the hospital to provide that service.  

March revenues come into focus

With only a few days to go in the month, March state revenues are almost $20 million above forecasts. The boost is driven largely by a $14 million gain in business taxes.

What if NH does nothing on expanded gambling?

Since we published our updated analysis of the potential impacts of expanded gambling in New Hampshire earlier this week, several policymakers and others have responded that our model failed to note the likely financial loss to the state if Massachusetts establishes casinos and New Hampshire takes no action on legalized gambling.

Expanded gambling in NH: A new analysis

The proposal to legalize expanded gambling in New Hampshire has been put at the center of this year's budget debate, ever since Gov. Hassan suggested using revenue from casino license fees in the state budget. While expanded gambling has been considered numerous times in recent years in New Hampshire, this year's debate is getting increased scrutiny, given the governor's support and the $80 million in potential revenue she's counting on to balance her two-year spending plan.

The Center recently updated its model of the potential impact of expanded gambling on New Hampshire, including estimates of state tax revenues, social costs of problem gambling and the potential effect of new casino development in Massachusetts. Our new analysis suggests that at a tax rate of 30 percent of less (which is the rate spelled out in the major gambling bill now in the Legislature), casino gambling would yield no net long-term benefit to the state.

Our recent report probes some of the other variables in the gambling policy debate, including license fees for developers, investment requirements and the potential jobs created by new gambling facilities. Read the full report here.

How does NH stack up in sequestration?

We've all been hearing quite a lot lately about the sweeping federal budget cuts set to take effect later this week, the so-called "sequestration." The series of $85 billion in cuts will touch many corners of government spending, and everyone from the White House to local state media have been trying to calculate the potential impact to states, local governments, businesses and individual citizens.

A visual snapshot of the Governor's budget

When analyzing the state budget, we naturally focus on the numbers -- the dollars and cents spent on programs and raised as revenue. And those numbers are certainly the best way to assess the impact of any spending plan. But here's another way to understand the budget proposal put forth by Gov. Hassan last week -- in words.

We created this "word cloud" of the Governor's budget address. The size of the word represents the frequency with which it appeared in her speech. (We removed common words like "and" and "the," as well as "New Hampshire," since they appeared so frequently.) You can click on the cloud to see a larger version.

What do you see in this image?

Step 1: The Governor’s 2014-15 Budget Proposal

New Hampshire's biennial budget-writing process took its first official step Thursday morning, as Gov. Hassan released her budget proposal for 2014-15. Here's some data and analysis to provide context for this discussion, as we continue to break down the numbers in greater detail in the coming days.

Measuring NH in 2013

We've just published our annual edition of "The Year in Graphs," a visual guide to some of the policy issues likely to make news in New Hampshire in 2013. With these 8 charts, we aim to give you a general sense of some of the challenges facing policymakers in the coming year.

You can find "Measuring New Hampshire in 2013" here.

Mixed outlook for NH economy

Center Economist Dennis Delay is presenting his forecast for New Hampshire's economy at the fall meeting of the New England Economic Partnership today.

Delay forecasts a continued slow recovery for the state, with small increases in employment and the real estate market over the coming months. We'll post the full forecast shortly; in the meantime, you can read an overview from today's Union Leader.