NH Children’s Lobby

 

State budget is bad for kids and families

 

Governor Lynch has announced his intention to let the state budget become law without his signature. We understand the practical situation in which he finds himself in that a veto would be unlikely to result in a budget that is any better than the one adopted by the Legislature. With that reality, advocates must turn their actions to taking steps now to begin to undo the worst of the cuts imposed by this budget. It will be especially important to establish mechanisms to monitor the impact of these cuts.

 

This is a budget that destroys the New Hampshire advantage by undermining the human capital that makes us strong. This is a budget that does not put people first, but rather political ideology. The shortcomings of this budget are almost too numerous to list, but they cut across virtually all sectors of the human service safety net:

 

• Virtual elimination of the Children in Need of Services program, leaving only a small remnant to serve some of the most challenged and challenging children in the state.

• Cuts to mental health services for both children and adults based on a revamped system with details yet to be determined and implementation of an untested system.

• Virtual elimination of alcohol prevention programs and drastic reductions in treatment, leaving more than 30,000 individuals without access to these services.

• Denying financial assistance to 500 children in intact families who have exhausted their unemployment benefits, through elimination of the TANF-UP program.

• Denying thousands of children access to childcare assistance by the re-creation of a child-care waitlist.

• Making it less likely that children in foster care will find safe, permanent adoptive homes by eliminating adoption subsidies, limiting the number of families that will be financially able to adopt children, many of whom have special needs, from foster care.

 

Support for services upon which thousands of people across the state rely is substantially lower in the Legislature’s version of the budget because it elected to use revenue projections for the coming biennium that were tens of millions of dollars below those put forward by the Governor as well as by independent analysts.  What’s more, through changes in the tobacco tax and the business profits tax, the Legislature’s version of the budget would actively reduce revenue in both the coming biennium and in future ones, thus diminishing New Hampshire’s capacity to repair the damage done to its families and communities.

 

Understanding that the budget adopted by the Legislature will become law, the NH Children’s Lobby stands ready to work with advocates both within and outside government to do whatever is necessary to undo these cuts, if not now, then in future sessions of the Legislature.

 

For a more detailed list of the cuts in service made by the budget adopted by the Legislature,  click here.

 

If you would like to be part of this effort, please email us at LightfootJ@cfsnh.org