District 27: Affordability on the ballot
Affordability is on the ballot this November, and so is the credibility of candidates’ plans.
Tim Coffin, an Independent candidate for state representative in Francestown and Deering, spent his career in municipal finance, where communities plan years in advance for roads and schools. That experience teaches a basic discipline: look beyond promises and ask how they’ll be paid for.
Apply that test to Rep. Mary Murphy’s “New Hampshire Advantage 2.0.” It promises property tax relief by making existing businesses more profitable, recruiting new ones, and creating a business court. But beyond that court, it names no specific cost or regulation it would cut. It aims to offset the $363 million statewide education property tax with business tax revenue but never estimates how much its strategy would raise. Profits taxes are often the first revenues to fall in a recession, the risk Murphy warns about. It also says the housing, energy, workforce, and childcare challenges are mostly “being worked on” without explaining the work or how it would deliver relief.
The Delaware comparison needs scrutiny. Murphy says New Hampshire should compete with Delaware and that business departures have cost Delaware about $33 billion. Yet Delaware’s own revenue reports show it collects about $2 billion annually from registered businesses. Her figure would equal roughly 16 years of that revenue. Roughly seven in 10 companies going public incorporate there because of more than a century of corporate case law, an advantage New Hampshire will not quickly replicate.
In the private sector, a proposal this vague would not survive review. Voters should demand equal rigor from candidates. Let’s get back to good government basics: a realistic look at what we need and how we’ll pay for it. Tim Coffin’s career financing long-term public projects gives him the expertise and perspective Concord needs.