What are the most significant ways that New Hampshire has changed over the past 25 years? The economic profile has changed enormously and the demographic profile has changed... [before 1970] the state of New Hampshire had something called the stock and trade tax, which meant that businesses - manufacturing businesses, retail businesses, automobile dealers - pay a tax every year on their capital assets; therefore the state had a very labor-intensive economy, because companies that had high capital expenditures would not invest in New Hampshire... The Citizens Task Force [of which Rudman was legal counsel] recommended, and Walter Petersen and his team put through the legislature in a special session in 1970, enormous change, in which we got the business profits tax and a number of other things, and eliminated [the stock and trade tax]. If you want to go back and track New Hampshire's high-tech growth and the great change in the economy of the state, it dates back to that time.
What in politics and government has changed the most over the last quarter century? The campaigns themselves have become so nasty that they've kind of leaked over into the conduct of our affairs in both the House and Senate. These campaigns are so negative, they are so scurrilous in some ways, they are so full of lies and blatant distortions, that people don't have very good feelings about each other in these bodies. That has changed since I was there... [but] you go back all the way back to the Founding Fathers and the early days of the Congress - this is not new. In fact in some ways, it was worse back then than it is now, some of the scurrilous things that they said about each other. So I guess politics is a contact sport in this country, and it's pretty hard to have statesmen flourish in that kind of atmosphere.
What would you consider your favorite spot in New Hampshire and why? I have a lot of wonderful memories of Lake Sunapee and that whole region... when my children were young we used to go up and waterski and do some boating and fishing. The Sunapee region I've always loved, that whole area of the state, as well as the White Mountains. But, you know, it's pretty hard to pick a favorite, there's so many great places.
Where do you think New Hampshire should put its energies in the next 25 years? There are two issues that are vital to New Hampshire to continue the quality of life that we have. Number one, we have to continue to fight hard to protect the environment of our state, to make sure that that environment which is so pristine and so beautiful is kept the way it is, and with all due respect to business interests, that there be a balance between development and the environment. And secondly, I think it's extraordinarily important that we continue to upgrade education of our young people, right from kindergarten through high school, and our state university and vo-tech system.
