With the state's election of John Lynch as governor, the possibility of raising the tobacco tax is back on the table.
Unlike Governor Benson who vowed to veto any new taxes, the governor-elect said he would consider a modest cigarette tax increase to help pay for education.
Undoubtedly, Lynch's victory stirs up concern among businesses that sell tobacco...especially those on the state's borders.
But before opponents and supporters start trotting out their familiar arguments; New Hampshire Public Radio's Dan Gorenstein talked with one store owner to see how he was taking the news.
My name is John Ganos and I own and operate the Route 13 Stateline Convenient Mart and Tobacco Haven in Brookline, NH. I run two businesses here. One is a stateline convenient mart which has cold beer, convenient items, and Tobacco Haven, that sells everything tobacco, and we are here on the stateline.
Ganos rests comfortably at the back of his store, in one of the few leather chairs set up for cigar smokers.
Business has been good for Ganos.
In the past few years, he demolished his original store, an old farm house.
And in its place, he built a 1 million dollar 3-unit strip mall.
That investment is part of why Ganos nervously watched the election results roll in last week.
As the night stretched on, all he could think about was Governor Benson's missteps.
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1:29 what was going through my mind, was basically what has been going through my mind for years now. It's too bad that Benson was so successful at angering people, his confrontational style, that couldn't compromise with people, and attempt to solve the problems of the state with a little more give and take.
Ganos wanted another two years with Benson because of the governor's opposition to the tobacco tax.
But now he's worried.
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7:13 ... Under Benson I was secure that I wouldn't have to worry about selling tobacco...But now I have to be back in the position of having it back up in the air, wondering what's going to happen. How much of an increase are we going to have to deal with. Is it going to be harmless, somewhat significant, do very little harm to my gross volume, or extremely significant.
Ganos likes to say, if he were a dictator, he would just institute an income tax.
He even voted for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Fernald in 2002, who ran on the income tax.
But governor-elect Lynch has sworn to block any new broad-based tax.
The only new revenue Lynch has said he would consider is a slight tobacco tax increase, hiking it up from it's current 52 cent a pack rate.
Ganos fears the new governor is going to mess with what he considers a sacred cash cow for the state.
The store owner remembers growing up in Lowell and seeing with how much business state line stores did.
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:25 they'd drive up Route 38 to R and B Superette, and Stateline Market, Ray's State Line on the border, and all the stores up there. Once a week, a guy would cash his check, and boom, he's in NH buying his case of beer and carton of cigarettes. Saving money. It's been going on for 50 years....Why do you think NH was the first state to come up with a lottery? Do you think that was a fluke? Out of all the state's in this country, why? That's why, b/c so many people were border crossing. They couldn't do it to the people who lived here, the farmers who were living here, the lumberjacks, and back woods people, they weren't buying sweepstakes tickets. They weren't gamblers, it was all the people coming up to the Rock on 28 in Salem who were buying all the sweepstakes tickets.
It's easy to romanticize the state line stores, hardworking small businessmen, raking in all the cash from Maine, Vermont and especially Massachusetts.
And whenever anybody in Concord suggests raising the tobacco tax, Ganos and others flood the statehouse, warning of state line store shutdowns around the state.
But these sell tobacco- a product known to kill its users...a product whose users cost the state's health care system millions of dollars a year.
That's an argument Ganos resents.
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6:17 I don't ask anyone to feel sorry for me. Nobody should, but I am just saying, look at what you are doing....gee I guess I am a bad guy b/c I sell tobacco. Am I not a business man, selling a legal product?
This upcoming session Ganos is resigned to tax increases.
He concedes his business can survive some tax hike.
Ganos says even as much as a 20% increase per pack, or ten cents, would have only a nominal affect on sales.
But that increase wouldn't be enough to reach the 20-25 million dollars Lynch talked about during the campaign.
To raise that much, the state would have to boost the tax by about 20 cents.
When talking about the rate, the store owner thinks in terms of a price of a carton of Marlboro's.
5:58 a fellow from MA, can save almost $20 dollars on a carton of Marlboro's by coming to NH. And he is not going to do it to save 3,4,5 dollars, it's got to be a significant number for him to want to get in the car, spending money on gas and coming all the way up here and save money on cigarettes.
Ganos says he expects he'll be traveling back to Concord if the legislature picks up the issue again.
He says his pitch to lawmakers will be simple: there's a connection between price and sales.
For NHPR News, I'm DG.
