From the Union Leader…
An anti-tax group that aims to curb municipal spending has wrapped up its petition drives in Manchester and Concord, announcing it has collected enough signatures to ensure its proposal will go before voters in both communities this November.
Officials with the conservative New Hampshire Advantage Coalition turned over a stack of petitions to the clerk’s office in each city yesterday. Another set of petitions was delivered to City Hall in Somersworth on Tuesday.
“The fact that more than 4,000 petitions are being handed in today proves there’s a large number of people who are very concerned about overspending,” said Mayor Frank Guinta, the group’s honorary chairman.
If approved, the group’s proposal would limit the amount of taxpayer money a city could spend each year, forcing officials to keep expenses in line with the rate of inflation. The cap could be overriden by a two-thirds vote of the city’s governing board.
One organization, Granite State Progress, has vowed to combat the initiative, arguing it would hamstring city budget writers in the face of rising gas and prices and other costs.
“This isn’t just about putting a cap on taxes. It really puts a cap on our public services,” said Zandra Rice Hawkins, the group’s executive director.
The New Hampshire Advantage Coalition has already taken steps to put its proposal on the November ballot in Rochester. Petitions are still circulating in Bedford, Londonderry, Merrimack and Portsmouth.
In each community, the proposal will have a few more hurdles to clear before it earns a spot on the ballot. All of the signatures will have to be scrutinized. Also, the Attorney General’s Office will be asked to say whether the proposal passes legal muster.
State agencies struck down a similar referendum in Manchester in 2005, saying it was legally flawed.
Mike Biundo, chairman of the New Hampshire Advantage Coalition, said that proposal was different from his own, which resembles spending caps already on the books in Laconia and Dover.
Proponents say they will campaign hard for the referendum heading into the fall. The New Hampshire Advantage Coalition has already bought $140,000 worth of ad time on WMUR-TV. Ads will run in October, Biundo said.
At least 28 volunteers collected signatures for the group in Manchester this summer. To earn a spot on the city ballot, the group needed the signatures of at least 3,898 registered voters. A tally yesterday came out to 4,070 names.
In Concord, the magic number was 1,102, according to the group’s executive director, Tammy Simmons. She said the group exceeded that number by roughly 900 signatures.
Collecting the signatures was not difficult, Simmons said.
“You’d explain what it was,” she said, “and people would say, ‘That’s it? Shouldn’t that be the way it is now?’
“Mainly, I would say most of the resistance came from city employees and school teachers. Those were the people that were most vocal about not wanting to see it on the ballot.”
Existing spending caps in Laconia and Dover have met with mixed responses. Dover’s tax rate rose about 3 percent this year, the first year the cap was on the books. Mayor Scott Myers, an independent who had expressed some reservations about the cap during the campaign last fall, said the city was forced to make some difficult cutbacks to make up for increases in state and county taxes.
Among the expenses that were cut, he said, were road repairs and police outreach programs.
“Do I think the wheels are going to fall off and were going to come to a standstill? No,” Myers said. “But I think when you start looking longer term, the potential is there to have some of these (problems) accumulate.”
Matt Lahey, the Democratic mayor of Laconia, said his city has had a largely positive experience with its own spending cap, approved three years ago. Laconia’s tax rate rose 4.6 percent this year.
Lahey notes the city has been lucky to have a large number of new buildings constructed. However, he said, “If it ever comes to a time when there’s a significant drop in that new construction, then it can be a problem.”
Biundo said Manchester taxpayers would have benefitted this year if a spending cap had been in place. Manchester’s tax rate is projected to rise 3.7 percent.