Senator Ned Gordon of Bristol withdrew his "market basket" education plan from consideration by a Legislative Conference Committee yesterday, after several days of meetings with Senate and House Conferees.
NHPR's David Darman has more.
Senator Ned Gordon said he was pulling back his market basket education plan because there was no way to assure the plan?s fate.
11 127 We don?t know how this is going to succeed in the house, frankly, and certainly I?ve been doing my best to get as many votes as I can. If the democrats vote as a block against it, and there are other people, its possible that it might fail in the house.
Gordon said that he and other Republicans tried to appeal to Democrats. Opponents objected to the plan because they said it did not contain enough elements to assure that the ?market basket? approach would provide what they claimed, was an ?adequate education?. The Gordon plan would have paid for teachers, books, other supplies, and special education. But Critics like Governor Jeanne Shaheen said an adequate education should include libraries and principal?s salaries and other items. Gordon said he began seriously considering including these elements when the governor hinted she might accept his approach.
10 57 the debate somewhat changed last Friday, when the governor had a press conference and basically raised issues of constitutionality and she implied, at least, that she wouldn?t mind a market basket approach, that had more elements in it.
Gordon said he asked Attorney General Phillip McLaughlin to help him identify the elements that would make his approach constitutional, but when he added up the cost of these new elements, his plan became more expensive. That raised the statewide property tax to a projected 5.25 per thousand dollars of valuation. He says the increase didn?t play well with Republicans who supported the plan as originally passed, with a lower statewide property tax rate.
Not everyone who was upset with the plan was concerned with constitutionality or tax rates. Senator George Disnard of Claremont, a member of the Tax Revenue Conference Committee, said he was disgusted with the way the committee was run, since he wasn?t allowed to participate in any meaningful discussions about the plan.
05 when senator Gordon indicated he was speaking for senate conferees, he was not speaking for this senate democrat?. 05 23 I?m upset that the democrats have not been included in any of this discussion, or any of this planning, been included in all these meetings up to now, all of a sudden we found out there?s not one democrat on the committee. 05 34
Disnard said publicly what many Democrats had been saying privately. And, in fact, Republicans on the committee did hold most of their discussions out of the hearing room, far away from the public, and the press.
While Senator Gordon has scrapped his ?market basket? approach this year, he promises to bring it back next year, when lawmakers will have more time to debate its merits.
In the meantime, legislative leaders have said they want the conference committees to finish working on closing a looming deficit, and fully fund the state budget, no later than this afternoon.
For NHPR news, I?m DD
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