EDITORIAL
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In an opinion piece published April 12 by NH Journal, Republican House Majority Leader Jason Osborne and Senate Majority Leader Regina Birdsell chastised the state’s towns and cities, all of them, for spending too much on public education.
“The state sent more money than ever. Your property taxes still went up 20 percent,” Osborne and Birdsell wrote. “If ‘down-shifting’ were real, that would be impossible. The truth is simpler, yet harder to accept: your local government got a record check from Concord and spent even more on top of it.”
Downshifting costs, and blame, to red towns and blue towns alike has been instrumental to the state GOP’s “New Hampshire Advantage” ruse for a long time. In her inaugural address more than a year ago, Gov. Kelly Ayotte said, “Property taxes are a burden in New Hampshire in spite of the fact that the state is sending more money than ever before down to the local level.”
In her February state of the state address, she added: “Our towns and municipalities need to get serious about fiscal responsibility.”
What they all fail to mention, consistently, is that no state contributes less to public education than New Hampshire. When Osborne and Birdsell boast that state per-pupil spending climbed to over $7,100, they should include the caveat that New Hampshire’s average annual per-pupil spending is $22,252 and most of the remainder is made up through local property taxes. For comparison, according to a 2025 National Education Association report, in 2024 Vermont spent $28,697, Maine $22,153, and Massachusetts $26,123. Their state contributions to public school spending were 85%, 46%, and 42%, respectively. That same year, New Hampshire’s contribution was under 29%.
Here’s another per-pupil spending comparison, this time with a distant four-state cluster: Utah spends $11,289, Colorado $16,889, New Mexico $15,183, and Arizona $11,808. Their state contributions range from 40% (Colorado) to 68% (New Mexico).
The point is, public education costs are different in the Northeast, and that’s reflected in our per-pupil spending, for which every New England state ranks in the top 10.
New Hampshire Republicans know this (I think), but it seems their only idea to address the property-tax problem is to wish away our cost-of-living reality and demand that towns and cities do the same.
That’s quite a hill to die on.
The frustrating part of all of this isn’t just Republicans’ stubborn refusal to acknowledge the structural imbalance. It’s that public education — from early care through college — should be one of the crown jewels of a society as rich as ours, along with access to affordable health care, robust aging and disability services, and dedicated environmental stewardship.
But listen to what our leaders boast of instead: increased incarceration, mass deportation, anti-diversity efforts, the abandonment of clean energy, and school vouchers. Indirectly they tout cuts to assistance for poor people, fewer rights for pregnant women but more for people who reject science, and the consistent sacrifice of our natural resources at the corporate altar.
This is clearly not a problem-solving agenda, so we should call it what it is: It’s itch-scratching. It is not by accident that our former-attorney-general governor is fixated on crime and our Free Stater House majority leader, on hacking away at the pillars of government itself.
So where does all of that leave us?
I don’t believe there is an appetite in New Hampshire for an income tax or any major tax overhaul for that matter. Democratic politicians know this, and that’s why most of them are silent on the issue, often arguing instead for a more sensible allocation of the financial resources we do have. Almost all of the income tax noise is coming from the right, because Republicans are never happier than when running against phantoms, whether they’re imagining violent immigrants, trans women lurking in public restrooms, teachers channeling Che Guevara — or the prospect of a new or higher tax.
To that point, just this morning Ayotte sent out a Tax Day press release calling for a state constitutional amendment to ban an income tax. That is the phantom she will continually breathe life into as the defining issue of her re-election campaign — you can bank on it.
But amid the misdirection, we’re not doing ourselves any favors by allowing our leaders to shed responsibility for the effects of the policies they institute and maintain.
New Hampshire is a fully Republican state, operating under a Republican philosophy that consistently deprioritizes public investments in deference to private enterprise, even as the resulting decline in services and support exacerbates hiring and other challenges for those very businesses. Property taxes are high here not because our local communities are irresponsible but because that is the system we have collectively chosen, continue to choose, and must abide by. Until we can’t anymore.
Meanwhile, if politicians are going to tout the “New Hampshire Advantage” at every turn, they should at least have the courage to acknowledge the price they are asking residents to pay for is that tax “advantage.”
New Hampshire’s high property taxes are not separate from the advantage Republicans exalt but a fundamental part of the design.
So, to then turn around and blame local leaders makes as much sense as yelling at the weather.
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Dana Wormald, a lifelong resident of New Hampshire, has been a newspaper editor for more than 25 years. He began his career on the Concord Monitor’s news desk in 1995 and later spent more than a decade at the New Hampshire Union Leader. In 2014, he returned to the Monitor to serve as opinion editor, a position he held until being named editor of the Bulletin. Email: dwormald@newhampshirebulletin.com