A New Hampshire Legislative Committee voted overwhelmingly yesterday to increase the state's cigarette tax by 28 cents.
The increase would raise 87 million dollars.
But several committee members were unsatisfied with the tax hike.
They said it didn't raise enough money.
New Hampshire Public Radio's David Darman has more.
Some of the members of the House Ways & Means Committee said they didn't like voting for the tax increase.
But they felt like they had to do it, to balance the state's budget.
Representative Mike Whalley is a Repulican from Alton Bay.
that 28 cents increase on the cigarette tax will fund fully the 460 million dollars that they're intending to distribute in the education funding. so that's what i think we have accomplished. we were asked to fund that in full and i think we've done that.
Some lawmakers tried to raise even more money.
One proposal would have simply raised the cigarette tax to 36 cents per pack.
But the measure got little support.
Representative Steve Vaillancourt of Manchester also tried to have the committee consider revising the way the state taxes beer.
But his measure was ruled out of order, because it didn't conform to proper parliamentary procedure.
After the committee had finished its work for the day, Vallaincourt said he thought his beer tax should have been considered.
i think not to do that, regardless of whether you're desperate for the money or not is simply an abdication of responsibility but we've come to do that on a regular basis around here.
Other committee members were also frustrated that more ideas for raising revenue weren't considered.
Democrat Susan Almy of Grafton said she had wanted to propose several money raising ideas to other members.
But she says parliamentary rules and the legislative calendar have left her committee little or no time to consider them.
we can discuss them but i see no mechanism for getting them to change the House budget. and if the House budget does not change than that is the House position when we meet the senate at the end of the process. and at that point, we're at the mercy of whatever the senate decided to do, or we stay with our catastrophic budget.
The committee is scheduled to meet again next Tuesday.
But the last day for the House to act on bills is just one day later.
The House will likely consider the 28 cent cigarette tax at that time.
Speaker Doug Scamman supports it, as does Governor John Lynch.
Senate President Tom Eaton opposes it.
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