Here we welcome a free and open exchange of opinions and commentary on the public policy issues facing New Hampshire. Our mission is to raise new ideas and improve public policy debates in our state through quality information and analysis.
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.
The Center this week released the 2012 edition of "What is New Hampshire?", our annual compilation of data and analysis on the people,
strengths and challenges of the state. Think of it as a New Hampshire guidebook for your mind.
One of the central themes weaving through the report (available here) is the lingering impact of the Great Recession on New Hampshire. The state has emerged in a relatively strong position from recession. Yet New Hampshire also faces significant challenges in
coming years, related not only to the transformations wrought by the
economic downturn, but also shifting trends in our long-term
demographics. While the implications of the
changes now underway are still unclear, they do raise critical policy
questions.
We begin this year's edition of "What is New Hampshire?" with an
analysis of this new economic reality into which New Hampshire is
now emerging, a topic we'll address in greater depth in a publication later this month.
If it's Friday, it's time for another round up of policy reads. Here's a sample of the links, articles, reports and studies that caught our attention this week:
We're starting a new feature here at Policy Blog. Every Friday (or as often as we can remember) we'll share a handful of recent reports, news articles and blog postings that we think raise interesting or provocative public policy questions. Please share your thoughts about any of these pieces.
New Hampshire is moving into Town Meeting season, when local budgets get debated and decided upon by citizens. To mark that annual ritual, the Center has developed an updated analysis of how the Great Recession has impacted local government operations across the state.
Our new report (available here) also provides examples of the data the Center has collected on each city and town in the state. New this year, we've also designed an interactive map, available on our website, which displays differences in municipal financing patterns, including a comparison to statewide averages for each city and town.
New Hampshire's traditions of strong local control and town-based governance are deeply rooted in the state's politics and culture. But we at the Center have lately been thinking of ways that more cross-border, regional approaches might improve decision-making across the state.
The Center’s latest Policy Note examines the potential impact of the recent slate of reforms to New Hampshire’s pension system. While those reforms will likely lower overall pension costs for public employers as a whole, the impact will vary considerably between the state and local government levels. In fact, under every likely scenario analyzed by the Center, the new reforms will yield year-over-year savings for the state, while local governments – the towns, cities and school districts who pay into the retirement system – will see higher pension costs, year over year.
You can read the full Policy Note for a more thorough analysis, but here are a few graphics illustrating the trends behind the recent push for reform and the potential fiscal impacts of those changes.
In honor of Tax Day, here are a couple of graphs to get you in a fiscal frame of mind.
The first shows New Hampshire's resident tax burden as a percentage of personal income, compared to a handful of states with similar socio-economic factors.
The New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies is again partnering with New Hampshire Public Radio on their 2010 Town Meeting website. Town historic spending and revenue is available on our website. We also have information available on SB2. One frequent question we get is: What share of New Hampshire local governance follows the traditional town meeting format?
New Hampshire state aid to local governments was a much debated topic in the recently completed State budget negotiations.The Governor proposed cutting state revenue sharing in February, but increasing state aid to schools, as part of the adequate education funding.School building aid was cut out of the House budget altogether, but then restored by the Senate and the Committee of Conference.What do these changes mean for the balance of appropriations between the state and local governments?
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