New Hampshire politicians have invoked plenty of villains over the years: Out-of-state special interests. Unaccountable judges. Massachusetts.
But these days, many in the State House have fixed their gaze on what they consider new threats to progress: the local selectboard, school board and zoning board.
“We might have to put a leash on some of these local governments, “ House Majority Leader Jason Osborne told WMUR in January. “We have a state with a constitution, and we have a duty to protect our citizens. These towns do not have a constitution, and do not have this duty. If they are infringing on the rights of our citizens, it’s our duty to step in and protect them.”
The concept of local control — that political decision making is best when it takes place closest to the people — may be close to gospel in New Hampshire politics. But that same idea is also increasingly under threat in New Hampshire, as leading Republicans push bills this session to limit local governments’ power to make decisions on a variety of issues.
On policies ranging from immigration to education to the state’s housing shortage, one throughline this year is the contention by GOP leaders that local governments and local policymakers are barriers to progress.
Taking on 'fringe interests'
One recent example — and the “leash" Obsorne referred to — was a proposed state-mandated cap on local school budgets. The bill would restrict local school boards from increasing spending beyond the rate of inflation, unless a supermajority of voters chose otherwise. House GOP leaders said the move was necessary to prevent “fringe interests” from voting to raise local school budgets.
The effort to impose that cap won initial approval in the House, but a move to insert the policy into the state budget failed last week, due to a splintering within the Republican caucus. The ultimate fate of a state-imposed local budget cap remains uncertain — there is talk of it being revived — but the fissure within the GOP ranks remains.
“I'm surprised that members here that call themselves ‘Free Staters’ are for this,” said Hudson Rep. Ralph Boehm, one of several Republicans who spoke out against the proposal as lawmakers debated the budget last week. “Members that say they are against big government are now for big government. What’s next: a bill telling towns how to zone?”
The mention of statewide zoning wasn’t accidental. Nor was Boehm’s reference to the Free State Project, a libertarian movement aimed at shrinking government power in New Hampshire: Several lawmakers who moved to the state with that project are the ones behind bills that would erode local control.
One of them, Manchester state Sen. Keith Murphy, has been a key player in the recent debate over scaling back local zoning authority. As he testified on his bill to set statewide standards for housing lot sizes this week, Murphy made no bones about the fact that this and other bills under consideration aim to limit the reach of local government.
“This provides guardrails around local control,” Murphy said. “No different than we’ve done about any number of other topics, dealing with schools, dealing with local elections, dealing with free speech. All of these things we have regulated this term.”
'Not what New Hampshire is about'
The proposed zoning changes appear to have generated the most significant pushback from conservatives this year. Former state Rep. Neal Kurk of Weare — a longtime leader among State House conservatives — was one of several Republicans to oppose Murphy’s bill at its House hearing.
“This bill is the first step in destroying the state in order to save the state, and that’s not what New Hampshire is about,” Kurk said.
Efforts to create statewide zoning standards are also opposed by the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers, a grassroots group focused on limiting government spending. Jane Aitken, a leader of the coalition, says state efforts to limit local discretion on zoning is wrong and runs counter to the principles of limited government she believes all right-of-center voters should prize.
“There is a faction of Republicans that really claim to be libertarian-minded, and it seems they want to go to a central-planning government to do it and mandate it,” Aitken said. “So it kind of is contradictory.”
'Wriggling out' from local control
But not all conservatives see it quite that way. Drew Cline, head of the Josiah Bartlett Center — which bills itself as a New Hampshire’s free market think tank — sees the GOP’s current push for a statewide policy on zoning mostly as proof that the state’s housing crisis is real and is harming people. But he also sees other factors driving Republican efforts to rein in local decision making: a residual distrust of local governments spurred by the pandemic, a decline in municipal experience among state lawmakers, and a steady growth in local regulations over myriad aspects of people’s lives.
“You've got school districts, you've got planning boards, you've got county councils, and town councils wanting to exert a lot of control, and you’ve got individuals wanting to wriggle out from under that local control,” Cline said.
The outcome of that wriggling may depend on how Gov. Kelly Ayotte sees this debate. So far, Ayotte has given herself some room to move. On one hand, she’s voiced staunch support for overriding local authority when it comes to outlawing sanctuary policies for undocumented immigrants. But the governor has so far stopped well short of endorsing the sort of statewide zoning changes that would undercut traditional Republican notions of local control.
