This Week’s Essential StateImpact

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StateImpact's weekly roundup of the stories that intrigued, impressed, entertained, amused, or otherwise caught your attention

It’s that time of the week again!  StateImpact’s tapping the collective wisdom of the crowd for our Friday afternoon roundup of our five most popular posts!  As always, just click the title of the link to catch up on any water-cooler-worthy stories you might have missed.

1. How Big Banks (Some With NH Branches) Benefitted From Secret Fed Loan Program:  Bloomberg published an amazing piece detailing a secret Fed loan program for banks that makes TARP look small-time.  And while New Hampshire isn’t known as a beachhead for big banks, the state does claim some outposts for Bank of America and TD Bank.  So we summed-up the juciest Bloomberg info and gave you the goods on how much those banks got.  And it was far and away the biggest piece we posted this week.
2. Leading Republicans Lose Positions For Opposing Right-To-Work: TheLobbyNH.com broke this story about one Republican state representative resigning a commission chairmanship, and three assistant whips in danger of losing their positions because they broke ranks with the party and opposed a Right-to-Work veto override.  (Incidentally, the next day, TheLobbyNH.com found out Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt changed his mind about the assistant whips, and they kept their jobs.  You can read our follow-up post here.)
3. Six Surprising Takeaways From The 2012 NH Business Outlook Survey: The Business and Industry Association commissions a survey toward the end of every year, taking the pulse of the state’s business community.  While firms were (unsurprisingly) “cautiously optimistic” about the economic outlook for 2012, we were surprised about some of their concerns going into the new year.
4. Is New Hampshire Really As Anti-Tax As It’s Cracked Up To Be?:  Last month, StateImpact compared New Hampshire’s attitude toward taxes to two very different places: Iowa and Washington State.  Of all our posts so far, this one really has legs.  Keep this up, and it could be our top post of the year!
5. Q&A: State’s New Transportation Commissioner Battles Budget Cuts:  The Department of Transportation has seen big cuts since the last legislative session.  What challenges does the agency face now?  And what does that mean for the future of work on I-93?  StateImpact got the answers from new DOT Commissioner Christopher Clement.