(CONCORD) A bill giving New Hampshire auto dealers the ability to tear up their existing contracts with the factory could land the state back in court. SB 126 would not only strengthen the current Auto Dealers Bill of Rights to let local dealers ignore terms of their franchise agreements, but expand the law’s provisions to farm equipment franchises. That has prompted equipment manufacturers to threaten legal action if the Legislature tries to tear up its existing contracts.

The New Hampshire House will consider SB 126 tomorrow. The bill has already cleared the Senate on a vote of 21-2, and the House Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee recommends the bill’s passage with some changes 15-2. Both versions would prevent auto manufacturers from forcing local dealers to remodel their showrooms more than once every 15 years, and limit other contract conditions already in the franchise agreements. Dealers contend they are unfairly forced to agree to onerous and expensive conditions in order to keep their franchises. Car makers argue they need to maintain a uniform brand identity across dealerships, and that existing law gives dealers plenty of leverage since manufacturers are barred from selling cars directly to the public.

SB 126 would also expand local franchise protections to farm equipment franchises, and the makers of those products say the state doesn’t have the legal right to abrogate its contracts with local dealers. Kevin Fitzgerald, an attorney at the Manchester firm Nixon-Peabody LLP, sent a letter last week to Governor Maggie Hassan on behalf of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers threatening to take the state to court if SB 126 passes.

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The left’s simmering disdain for free speech went public this week. The Obama Administration’s abuse of power finally turned much of the left-leaning press corps against this increasingly Nixonian White House.

The final straw was the revelation that the Justice Department secretly seized two months of phone records from 20 separate Associated Press phone lines. The seizure was part of a criminal investigation into leaks revealed in May 2012 AP story on the foiled Underwear Bomb plot.

(CONCORD, NH) Senator Jeanne Shaheen twice urged the Internal Revenue Service to investigate politically-active groups seeking tax-exempt status, even as the IRS was two years in an operation illegally targeting conservative organization.

The New Hampshire Democrat first joined six Senate colleagues in a February 16, 2012 letter to then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, urging him to investigate groups seeking tax-exemption under Section 501(c)(4) of the federal tax code. This provision allows “Social Welfare Organizations” to avoid federal taxes, but prohibits them from intervening in political campaigns. Shaheen and company pushed Shulman to crack down on 501(c)(4) organizations funding politically-themed ads.

NH grapples with the end of a 20-year old budget gimmick

The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, New Hampshire’s free-market think tank, today released a new study on the state’s twisted history under the Medicaid Program. Meet the MET: New Hampshire budget writers grapple with a brand new tax that’s been around for 20 years details the history of the Medicaid Enhancement Tax, how the current budget increased tax liability for New Hampshire hospitals, and how unrealistic revenue estimates could ruin Governor Maggie Hassan’s budget proposal.

“For the last two decades, the MET wasn’t a real tax, so budget writers didn’t pay close attention to how it worked,” said Grant Bosse, the study’s author. “By better understanding the mechanics of this complicated revenue stream, they can ensure that MET misunderstandings don’t blow a multimillion dollar hole in the state budget.”

Much like the amplifiers used by Spinal Tap, political discourse in New Hampshire this year has been turned up to 11. And just as an over-modulated sound system will distort your music, it’s been pretty hard to hear any reasonable discussion of politics over the din of partisans being outraged at each other.

Anger is a useful emotion when appropriate. It’s also far too easy to manipulate by political hacks looking for short-term advantage. Anger makes for great copy, snappy headlines, and effective fund-raising emails. Last week, it seemed like the only tool that either party knew how to use.

After 15 years trying to take a bite out of the internet, state tax collectors took a huge step closer this week. The U.S. Senate voted to advance legislation allowing states to force online retailers to collect sales taxes for them.

The 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision Quill Corp. v North Dakota prevented states from drafting out-of-state businesses as tax agents unless they had a significant physical presence in that state. The internet sales tax bill, dubbed the Marketplace Fairness Act by some staffer who’d read Orwell, would force retailers to collect taxes based on the buyer’s address, even if the seller was in a state with no sales tax.

At issue isn’t the sales tax itself, but the little understood use tax. Massachusetts assesses the use tax on residents who buy cars in tax-free New Hampshire but register them in the Bay State. The law actually requires Massachusetts residents to keep track of everything they buy in New Hampshire that would be taxed if bought in Massachusetts. Few do so.

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Contrary to what you may have heard from CNN, the president, or other unreliable sources, this is how the U.S. Senate is supposed to work. Senators debated legislation, considered competing amendments and voted. The process isn’t broken just because you didn’t like the result.

That hasn’t stopped gun control advocates from declaring the end of republican democracy after the Senate failed to pass the latest attempt to whittle away a few more slivers from the Second Amendment.

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New Hampshire is getting really good at the shakedown.

Last week, a Merrimack County Superior Court jury found Exxon Mobil liable for contaminated well water with the gasoline additive MTBE and awarded the state $236 million, easily the largest jury verdict in New Hampshire history.

Methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) is an oxygenate. It’s added to gasoline to raise the oxygen level, which not only prevents knocking in older car engines but also burns the gas more completely, resulting in cleaner emissions. In 1990, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, which among many other provisions required that oil companies add oxygenates to their product in order to reduce tailpipe pollution.

(CONCORD, NH) New Hampshire’s decision to borrow money for three years to pay for the state’s Building Aid Program is adding a $27.6 million crunch to the current budget debate. Despite suspending new school construction projects from applying for state assistance several years ago, state taxpayers still owe more than $495 million over the next thirty years, and an additional $168 million just to pay off the bonds for the three years lawmakers took out loans to fund the program.

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Back in 2003, Doug Hall from the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies concluded a wide-ranging overview of the state budget with a list of ways to balance the budget, some real and some not so real. In outlining the various budget tricks that could be used to make an unbalanced budget appear balanced, Hall was trying to alert policy-makers on potholes to avoid. Reading through the budget bill approved by the New Hampshire House this week, I’m afraid they used Hall’s warning as a do-it-yourself guide to budget gimmickry.

New Hampshire has a bipartisan tradition of fiscal sleight-of-hand. It’s tempting for politicians to hand out money without being held accountable for taking from taxpayers.