Governor Shaheen says a slowing economy means state agencies need to trim budgets by one percent and state citizens need better unemployment coverage.
Governor Shaheen has lately been at pains to stress that state economic woes are overrated, But at last she acknowledged New Hampshire?s claims of uniqueness don?t include immunity from a national economic slump.
'We are doing better than the rest of New England, but it?s still clear that the economic slowdown throughout the country is having an impact on New Hampshire, so I?m announcing two actions that we?re taking to do what we can at the state level to address a slowing economy in New Hampshire an slowing revenues.'
Those actions are a one percent cut to state budgets, and an expansion of unemployment benefits. The governor says her plan won?t cost any jobs, or raise taxes on businesses, and will save the state 5 million dollars for the second half of the fiscal year. Shaheen says the new policies are a precautionary measure necessitated by steep increases in business tax refund requests. So far those requests are 17 million dollars higher than last year. That signals the impossibility of meeting the 21 million dollar growth in revenues projected during last years budget process. Given that, the Governor said she couldn?t rule out further cuts should the revenue crunch become more acute. But Shaheen did pledge to make no cuts that would endanger public safety.
'There are obviously areas of the budget state police corrections where certain staffing levels are required and certain expenditures to maintain public safety. We obviously won?t be cutting areas where we think there will be a potential impact to the heath and safety of our citizens.'
According to revenue Commissioner Stan Arnold, the governor?s cuts reflect the reality that at this point the state is working with fairly limited information. Arnold cautions that until state revenues from estimated payments of business taxes are squared with businesses actual tax liabilities, the fiscal picture will remain somewhat murky.
'We probably won?t know the actual situation until march, so what we need to do is take some minimalist steps anyway to start preparing if the situation is actually worse what were looking at now. At the same time you don?t want to overreact, sometimes you can drive the economy into a recession if you keep saying how bad it is.'
The Governor hopes to have her proposals before lawmakers as soon as possible. Both require legislative approval.
