The Legislature holds the purse strings and House Speaker Bill O’Brien wants to prove it. O’Brien is backing a measure to divert money generated by the state’s insurance tax to New Hampshire’s rainy day fund. NHPR’s Josh Rogers reports
The measure aims to fatten the rainy day fund by $26 million, which was the state’s surplus in fiscal year 2011. Speaker O’Brien told the House ways and means committee that socking the money away amounts to simple prudence.
"Whenever there is unspent money in government coffers, always people will come forward quickly with all kinds of ways to spend that money."
Critics of the bill call it gimmickry. The say the money could be used to pay for services, pay down bond debt, or cover the $35 million of Medicaid money the state owes the federal government.
