It’s not every day you hear state officials quoting Kipling and Goethe. But in a keynote speech this morning, Sam McKeeman, the Programs Manager at the Maine Bureau of Human Resources, recited the first stanza of Kipling’s “Six Honest Serving Men” to 350 or so people, gathered at the Police Standards & Training Council building in Concord, New Hampshire. Continue Reading
Stuart Williams / Flickr
This November, commuter rail in Maine begins running all the way from Brunswick, Maine, to Boston. Meanwhile, Massachusetts is preparing to extend lines from Springfield to Burlington, Vermont. That leaves some people in New Hampshire feeling a little left out.
Peter Burling is the former chair of the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority. Speaking at an event this week hosted by the New Hampshire Business Industry Association, Burling said that without commuter rail, New Hampshire will lose its competitive edge. “Everybody around us is doing something amazing. We are becoming the donut hole in the economic system,” he told an audience who had gathered in Concord to hear panelists discuss the future of rail in New Hampshire.
This story was written and produced for broadcast by Sam Evans-Brown, and edited for StateImpact New Hampshire by Emily Corwin. Hear the original broadcast.
Roger Goun / Flickr
It’s been a difficult year for New Hampshire fishermen. Although fishermen have stayed within their catch limits, stocks of codfish haven’t rebounded from a decade-old collapse as quickly as expected.
Facing cuts and closures imposed by regulators, New Hampshire fishermen say the government is putting them out of business. And Thursday, the government heard their call.
The federal government declared a disaster in the Northeast Multispecies Groundfish Fishery, which could mean relief for struggling fishermen. Continue Reading
Chris Hays / Flickr
Just 21 percent of all arts and culture organizations in New Hampshire create a total of $115 million in economic activity in the state.
That’s according to a report released today by the N.H. State Council on the Arts. Those 161 organizations support the equivalent of 3,493 full-time jobs, and generate $11.6 million in local and state government revenue. The study did not include for-profit institutions or individual artists, and it did not multiply results to account for the 773 nonprofit arts organizations that did not participate in the study.
Arts and culture organizations represent less than 1 percent of the state’s GDP, New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies’ Steve Norton points out, but studies like this one have shown “that they play a larger role when you think about indirect impact.” Continue Reading
Ben McLeod
The University System of New Hampshire’s board of trustees is requesting that the legislature restore its state funding. At a board meeting Tuesday the board approved a budget request re-appropriating the nearly $50 million that was cut by the legislature last year. In exchange for the funds, the USNH is offering to freeze in-state tuition for two years and increase financial aid for residents.
Continue Reading
Two employees at work at Smith's farm
New Hampshire is leading the nation in women farmers, U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan and New Hampshire Commissioner of Agriculture Lorraine Stuart Merrill announced earlier this week in an op-ed to the Union Leader. “One out of three New Hampshire farms has a woman as principal operator: nearly a 50 percent increase since 2002, and more than twice the national average,” they wrote.
In light of this, we thought we would highlight the story of Monadnock farmer Tracie Smith, who was featured in StateImpact New Hampshire’s project, Getting By, Getting Ahead.
All four gubernatorial candidates competing in tomorrow’s primary agree on one thing. The biggest challenge facing New Hampshire in the next decade is the economy. In particular? Jobs. That’s according to an NHPR questionnaire put to all six candidates last week. The four major candidates say they will focus on education and job training in the state. Read all six answers below. Then, check out our Primary Primer at NHPR.org. Continue Reading
Amanda Loder / StateImpact New Hampshire
Democratic candidate Maggie Hassan is pushing education funding as key to bolstering the state's economy.
Next week, New Hampshire voters will decide who gets to run for governor this November. And despite the fact that most states would envy our 5.4 percent unemployment rate, jobs and the economy are the issues driving the primary elections. StateImpact lays out the similarities–and differences–between the plans of the leading Democratic candidates.
Q: What is each candidate proposing?
A: Broadly speaking, they’re very similar. Of course, on some level that’s not surprising, considering Maggie Hassan and Jackie Cilley are both Democrats. But unlike the Republican proposals, where you can pretty much go down the line and point out differences on how much they would cut various taxes or their stances on tax credits, it’s a tougher job to boil down their Democratic counterparts’ views at this point. Continue Reading
New Hampshire Public Radio
Republican Ovide Lamontagne favors making cutting business taxes while also offering new tax credits.
Next week, New Hampshire voters will decide who gets to run for governor this November. And despite the fact that most states would envy our 5.4 percent unemployment rate, jobs and the economy are the issues driving the primary elections. StateImpact lays out the similarities–and differences–between the plans of the leading GOP candidates.
Q: How are Kevin Smith and Ovide Lamontagne’s proposals alike?
A: They’re both going the traditional conservative Republican route of cutting business taxes in some way, in the hope that it draws more enterprise into the state. Which they say would import more jobs. And they would off-set that drop in tax revenue from businesses at first by making budget cuts. The idea is that it doesn’t put more money into the state coffers immediately. But over time, as the number of tax-paying businesses increases, revenues will increase even though taxes were actually cut. You just have more people paying into the system. Continue Reading
NHPR
Republican Kevin Smith is proposing deeper business tax cuts than his primary opponent, Ovide Lamontagne.
With the gubernatorial primaries about a week away, the team at StateImpact is taking a closer look at how the leading contenders would boost New Hampshire’s economy. If you tune into Morning Edition tomorrow and again on Thursday, you’ll catch our quick comparisons of the two Republican and Democratic plans. (And, of course, we’ll be posting those discussions here on the blog.)
But in the meantime, Norma Love of the Associated Press looked into how the key Republican contenders’ plans could affect the state’s budget: Continue Reading
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