Business and Economy

The New Hampshire Senate is considering a bill aimed at reducing the so-called  "skills gap". The bill would offer tax credits to businesses that partnered with the community college system to create workforce training programs.

Speaking in favor of the bill, Ross Gittell, the chancellor of the New Hampshire Community Colleges, said the program would be a win-win-win.

By far, our most popular post to date is a map we created using federal data on which states offer minimum wage and overtime guarantees to home health workers, and which don't.

The debate over the economic impacts of HB 593 (or "The Casino Bill," if you will) continues. As Kevin Landrigan of the Nashua Telegraph reports, discussion of the bill continued Monday, when the House Ways and Means committee listened to about three hours of public testimony:

"The state stands to lose $150 million of existing tax receipts to Massachusetts casinos if efforts to expand gambling in New Hampshire sit idle.

A new report finds that Granite State communities are leaning more and more heavily on property taxes. Examining data from 2007–2010, the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies found:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, small government–at all levels–is something of a signature issue in the "Live Free or Die" state.

Cancer Treatment Centers of America is eyeing a spot in New Hampshire. The for profit chain wants to build a hospital in the Northeast. CTCA successfully lobbied Georgia to change its regulations so a specialty hospital could be built in that state. The company is hoping lawmakers in New Hampshire will make similar changes.

The House Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services Committee has already heard a number of controversial bills targeting collective bargaining. And unions have responded in force. This afternoon, tensions promise to be particularly high between Republicans and organized labor as the committee holds a public hearing on the resurrected so-called "Right To Work" legislation.

A new report released by the New Hampshire Housing and Finance Authority shows home foreclosures spiked in December 2011–up 35 percent from that November.

Jane Law of the Housing Authority says foreclosures have been declining since their peak in 2010, and December's jump might be an anomaly,

"The biggest factor is just mortgage companies are just kind of clearing out some inventory before the end of the year, which is the end of their tax year usually."

Law says while there were two percent fewer foreclosures over the course of 2011 than in 2010, the recovery in the home market will be slow.

After years of speculation on a "jobless recovery," finally, things could be looking up–at least for the moment. This week, the Bureau of Labor statistics reported some serious gains on the national jobs front for January, with the creation of 243,000 jobs.

One of the big issues in the New Hampshire business community this legislative session is the push to continue deregulating utilities. The state's current power regulation model is something of a hybrid between old-fashioned regulation and deregulation.

One of the key consequences of the economic collapse a few years ago was the passage of a massive piece of legislation called the "Dodd-Frank Act." The bill was co-sponsored by (now-retired) Democratic Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut and (soon-to-be-retired) Democratic Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank. In a nutshell, their idea was to prevent another massive financial crisis by more heavily regulating key players in the financial industry.

Given that manufacturing got prominent play in the State of the State address and is a key piece of President Obama's new jobs initiative, StateImpact's in full-on data-slicing mode.

We'll admit it: The telephone pole property tax sounds like a dry topic for the 2012 Legislative session at first glance.

And at second glance, for that matter.

But fortunately for us, John Toole of the Eagle-Tribune took a third look, rustled up some sources, facts, and stats, and managed to make the story not only interesting, but also compelling. We highly recommend you check out his article.

Recently, the White House has had manufacturing on the brain. From the State of the Union address to Vice President Joe Biden's recent visit to Albany Engineered Composites in Rochester, the Obama administration has been pushing its plan to create more jobs in the manufacturing sector.