Legislative Experience
Biography
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Legislative Experience
I have been a state rep from Lebanon for twelve terms now. The first term I sat on the Election Law Committee, my second term on Finance, and for ten terms I have been on the Ways & Means Committee, four terms as its chair. From both the minority and the majority party, I have crafted and negotiated new laws, usually together with Republicans.
The principal Republican on Ways and Means and I came in together, and have served on the same committee for eleven terms. You’d think we were in a rut, but things are always changing, the issues evolve or explode from nothingness, and we have forged a friendship (somewhat interrupted by the Democrats’ first term in the majority in 2008 since the Civil War) that has won the respect of both parties’ leaders and our own committee members, A Ways & Means committee that acts in a nonpartisan way on all but the few most partisan bills is a rarity, and I have been fortunate to contribute to and lead it. This term the Republican Minority leader, who declared war on the first day, sent three highly partisan Republicans to our committee. They learned to join in searching for solutions to constituent problems, to merge our varied talents to estimate revenues for the state’s budget, to forge friendships with Democratic seatmates, and when and how to draw the line and consult with their leader over in State House.
Long-term projects I have worked on included the reform of condominium governance, reforming and increasing DWI/substance abuse prevention & treatment, greater accuracy and transparency in the state’s finances and revenue control, and streamlining specific government functions to make it easier and cheaper to provide essential public services to families and businesses as our state revenues have been depleted by both Republican revenue-cutting and inflation. All of these have taken years of sustained effort to find coalitions and language that the many competing interests would accept and that would work in practice. I have also participated in the resolution of business, hospital and housing tax issues, and professional and environmental regulatory, fee and budget problems, from chiropractors to tax preparers, oil spills to snowmobile clubs.
I recognize that successful businesses are the essence of our economy and the source of jobs. We have had high business tax rates because the BIA chose 20 years ago to advance them to meet our education funding mandate, rather than face a general income or sales tax. Since 2015, the mantra of the NH Republican party has been to reduce the same taxes without making up the loss anywhere else.
In 2017, against the recommendation of my Republican-controlled committee, they added another four years of major additive cuts, without adding elsewhere to revenues, last January. The second half was due to start January 2021, but in order to get a budget in 2019 we had to agree to a deal with Governor Sununu to use a trigger. If budgeted revenues for July 2019 to June 2020 (our fiscal year) were less than actual revenues by at least 6%, he would get the last tax cut, but if the reverse, that budgeted revenues were at least 6% higher than actual ones, we would go back to the tax levels of 2016. We have come in just short of a 6% revenue loss due to the COVID recession – but the loss will be much higher in July 20 to June 21, and we will not have a higher tax rate to help keep services we all need intact.
Aside from the massive property tax, business taxes are our largest revenue source, and when they are cut, directly cause losses in services to households and businesses, and indirectly, increases in the property tax. We were already in trouble, because the large revenue increases of 2017-18 were due to the federal tax cut stimulus to large national and international corporations, which we tax. They were due to fade, and did, in 2018-19. Then came the COVID crisis, and its economic impact has dwarfed anything we have seen since the Great Depression. The Republican leaderships are still trying to cut more taxes. Indeed, a large part of their membership has taken to chanting “Taxation is Theft” during House Sessions. And taxation to them now includes fees for service. The end result of that would be non-government, anarchy.
The gamut of state-level taxes and fees must be as equitable and transparent across businesses and consumers as we can manage within an extremely complex and archaic tax system which we are struggling to modernize. But they must also become adequate to meet the needs of the state’s citizens, businesses and future. When they do not, essential services are shifted down to counties, towns and cities, and non-profits, The former groups all depend almost entirely on the property taxes homeowners, renters, and businesses pay. The non-profits are mostly operating on thin or no margin – think Headrest, WISE, LISTEN, the Senior Centers, Visiting Nurses, Spark!. Many of them – especially in regions with lower income or less community spirit than ours – have had to cut services for lack of payment, especially since COVID hit. Lebanon lost Hannah House and UDS because of overstressed state budgets, and I mention that a lot in Concord.
Businesses need trained, healthy and capable workers; adequate transportation and communications networks; law enforcement; and an accessible and reliable legal system. People need access to good jobs that pay enough for their needs, education and training, adequate treatment and support when disabled, sick or addicted, good communications, transportation options, public safety and an accessible, reliable, and fair judicial system. People pay more of their taxes and fees in property tax than businesses do, but even for businesses the property tax is the largest tax/fee burden they face. We all need the state government to have the revenues it needs to maintain a basic level of services. When it doesn’t, towns try to substitute for the lost support, and property taxes go up.
I am also working on workforce housing and homelessness, some in Concord, some here at home, and have for 23 years been on the board of the state ACLU, fighting to maintain our constitution and equal access to justice.
My father Tom Almy helped re-start Dartmouth Medical School in 1968, used telemedicine to reach doctors in remote hospitals when all they had was TV links, and lastly moved into gerontology. He wanted to move to NH at the age of 16 but got diverted by WWII, and we spent part of each summer mostly on NH mountains and lakes. My mother Katharine Swift pioneered in community mental health, establishing an outpatient clinic near where Salt Hill sits now and providing the professional back-up to use social workers to attend for the first time to the psychological needs of low- and middle-income residents. My middle sister Anne, a top natural resources lawyer at the US Department of Justice, died of tobacco and alcohol addiction 20 years ago, after sticking with Alcoholics Anonymous for four years – which is why I have focused a lot on addiction. My youngest sister Chris is semi-retired but but has been birthing a national research organization on the intersection of social and medical sciences, having fought that battle at NIH for two decades, where she prevented Jesse Helms from canceling the 1913-present annual contraceptive survey and other work that informs national reproductive care and research. She and her husband summer here, and the boys and grandkids visit.
I worked 22 years as a rural and then agricultural researcher/developer in Africa and Latin America, and came home with an asthma that cannot tolerate third-world-city air. I fell into the legislature by accident. At the time, it seemed like it might be an interesting retirement project, and I was right, except about the retirement part. I also serve on Lebanon’s Conservation Commission and Master Plan Steering Committee, on Lebanon Housing First, and on the ACLU-NH board, where I was chair for 6 years. I was president of my 22-unit homeowners’ association for 13 years, and have been again for 4 years – we are self-managed, so that makes me manager. From January to June, I am totally focused on Concord; the rest of the year, a mix of everything. I do like to kayak and visit our forests.
More Information
If you are interested in what we do, the bills and committee calendars are on line at:
House:
http://www.gencourt.state.nh.
Bill Search:
http://www.gencourt.state.nh.
Committees:
http://gencourt.state.nh.us/
Study Committees and Commissions:
http://www.gencourt.state.nh.
Susan Almy
266 Poverty Lane 4B, Lebanon
susan.almy@comcast.net
448-4769