The New Hampshire Senate is set to vote on a budget. Here's what's in it.

Yahoo

04-06-2025

The New Hampshire Senate in session on May 15. Senators will vote on the proposed budget on Thursday, June 5, 2025. (Photo by Ethan DeWitt/New Hampshire Bulletin)
Nearly four months after Gov. Kelly Ayotte pitched a state budget to lawmakers with optimistic revenue projections and few cuts, the two-year spending proposal has seesawed dramatically.
The House, citing more dour economic predictions, pushed through $643 million in state spending cuts to Ayotte's proposal, drawing her criticism. The Senate produced revenue projections that moved closer to Ayotte's vision, but not all the way, further frustrating Ayotte.
On Thursday, the 24-member Senate will vote on its final proposal, setting up what will likely be a contentious stretch of negotiations with the House in the next two weeks before the budget bills, House Bill 1 and House Bill 2, must make their way to Ayotte's desk. The Senate's budget would spend $15.9 billion in state and federal funds over the next two years, compared to $15.5 billion in the House's budget and $16 billion in Ayotte's proposal.
The Senate's budget proposal, finalized by the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday, does not cut as deeply as the House's proposal from April 10. But there are still reductions, and Senate Democrats are likely to oppose the final measure.
'Our job as legislators is to lower the cost of living for our constituents, improve access to health care and safe communities, strengthen kids' and grandkids' educational opportunities, create our thriving Main Street communities, and so unfortunately, this budget just doesn't address those priorities,' said Sen. Rebecca Perkins Kwoka, the Senate minority leader and a Portsmouth Democrat, ahead of the Finance Committee vote Tuesday.
Senate President Sharon Carson praised the final budget, stressing that it came amid a difficult economic reality for the state.
'What I think a lot of people forget was, over the last two bienniums, we had a lot of money, and most of it was an infusion of cash from the federal government,' she said at the same committee meeting. 'We spent that money, and we were very smart about how we spent that money, but it was gone.'
'… I look at this budget as a readjustment from having all that federal money to now we're focused on what we have: How much money do we have? I think it keeps us on a path to prosperity.'
Here's what's in the final package to be voted on by the full Senate Thursday.
In general, the Senate budget overturns many of the more drastic cuts made by the House in April, according to an analysis Wednesday by the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute.
The Senate budget would restore a number of agencies and boards that were eliminated by the House — including the Office of the Child Advocate, the Housing Appeals Board, the Commission for Human Rights, and the State Commission on Aging — albeit with some modifications and staffing cuts for each entity.
The Senate's plan would also roll back the House's deep cuts to the Department of Corrections. While the House had proposed 190 cuts to positions, the Senate winnowed that down to 60, with many of the proposed positions currently unfilled.
The Senate's proposal would increase the amount allotted to the settlement fund for the Youth Development Center lawsuits. The state is currently facing multiple lawsuits from people who allege they were abused by staff members at that center. The Senate budget would include $20 million in the first year and would plan for the state to raise $80 million by selling the Sununu Youth Services Center building in Manchester, all of which would be set aside to pay out any settlements.
But the Senate's budget would make some deeper cuts compared to the House budget, such as a reduction in special education funding to public schools. The Senate budget would also impose $32 million in 'back of the budget' cuts — undefined funding reductions that would require the Ayotte administration to find positions or programs to meet the cuts.
In one of the biggest changes, the Senate reversed course on a controversial piece of the House's budget: the 3% across-the-board rate cuts to Medicaid providers. The Senate bill includes $52.5 million in funding that the House had taken out and restores the funding.
The Senate budget also restores funding to developmental services and community mental health programs the House had cut.
The Senate bill does keep in place Ayotte's proposal to include premiums for beneficiaries of the Medicaid expansion program – known as the Granite Advantage Health Care Program. But where Ayotte proposed premiums determined by a percentage of recipients' income, the Senate bill would make those premiums set amounts: $60 per month for a household of one increasing up to $100 for a household of four.
Democrats have objected to those premiums, calling them an 'income tax.' And they have opposed the repeal of the Prescription Drug Affordability Board in the Senate's budget.
Affordable housing advocates and Democrats have raised objections to the lack of funding for affordable housing efforts in the final budget.
In a press release Wednesday, Housing Action New Hampshire said the Senate's budget 'falls short in addressing our state's housing shortage,' and noted that it did not include a proposal to double funding to the state's Affordable Housing Fund and the Community Development Finance Authority Tax Credit. Democrats had proposed doubling both efforts from $5 million to $10 million a year. The Senate budget also adds no new funding to the Housing Champion Program, designed to give grants to towns that update their zoning codes to encourage development, though the Senate bills would extend the expiration date of the existing Housing Champion Program funds.
Senate Republicans argued deregulation, not funding, is most important to housing construction in the state. 'I think we're at a place where we recognize that the role of the state is to facilitate housing construction, maybe not to pay for it,' said Sen. Dan Innis, a Bradford Republican.
And Sen. Tim Lang, a Sanbornton Republican, pointed to the $11.55 million allocation from the Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund toward local water infrastructure projections as an example of the state supporting housing development needs of communities.
The House's budget had fully depleted the state's Renewable Energy Fund, which is designed to provide grants to support clean energy projects in the state. The Senate's budget would keep $2 million in the fund. Democrats raised concerns that that isn't enough to make a meaningful difference.
The Senate's budget rolls back a $50 million cut to the University System of New Hampshire included in the House budget. The final Senate budget would allocate $85 million per fiscal year to the university system, which is $67.5 million higher than the House's numbers over two years, according to NHFPI.
But Innis, a professor of marketing and hospitality management at the University of New Hampshire, said he wished that funding was higher, even as he praised the budget overall.
'We're funding higher education in New Hampshire at half the rate we were 20 years ago. That's embarrassing,' he said Tuesday. 'It just is.'
The Senate has preserved language added by the House that seeks to prevent any efforts at the state or local governmental levels to pursue 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' policies.
The language reads: 'No public entity shall implement, promote, or otherwise engage in any DEI-related initiatives, programs, training, or policies. No state funds shall be expended for DEI-related activities, including but not limited to implicit bias training, DEI assessments, critical race theory, or race-based hiring, promotion, or contracting preferences.'
The move aligns with efforts by the Trump administration to withhold federal funding to public school districts that maintain such programs.
Perkins Kwoka denounced the language, and predicted it would invite a lawsuit should it be passed in the budget. Last year, a federal court struck down a 2021 state law that prohibited advocacy on certain topics related to race and gender, after teachers unions sued arguing it was unconstitutionally vague; the state has appealed that ruling to the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
'It certainly harms our business environment to sort of be behind the curve on embracing an America that is truly inclusive,' Perkins Kwoka said.