he state Senate will return to Concord Tuesday to face up to the $100 million gap the Legislature left behind last spring in the state budget, which included an education funding plan based on a new statewide property tax. It's a chance for some senators to resurrect the revenue solution they still think is best - the income tax.
Governor Jeanne Shaheen, who has vowed to veto an income tax bill, wants a decision one way or another from the Senate, according to her legal counsel, Judy Reardon, so the process of resolving the budget can move on.
''It cannot continue to be just dangling out there and paralyzing the effort to fill the $100 million gap,'' Reardon said about the pending bill. ''It needs to be brought to a vote.''
Then again, as things go in the unpredictable and sometimes messy world of making laws, nothing may happen at all this week. There are other items on the docket, said Senator Carl Johnson, aMeredith Republican, and the ''real meaty stuff'' may have to wait for another day. ''It isn't as if the roof is going to fall in after the 19th,'' he said.
There were doubts inside the State House last week that a bipartisan consensus on an issue as fundamentally divisive as the income tax - particularly among volunteer lawmakers paid $100 a year and exhausted by the legislative ordeal over education financing.
Other ideas were all in flux as well on both sides of the political aisle. There may be a move to come back again on Dec. 1 or simply to take $50 million out of the already approved $825 million funding package to close the gap - a move Republicans say would avoid budget cuts at vulnerable agencies, like Health and Human Services. The ''drop dead'' deadline for plugging the revenue hole is Jan. 1, according to Shaheen. In legislative time, that means no rush. A capital gains tax, backed by Shaheen, is also in the mix. Meanwhile, hovering over every move in the State House was uncertainty over how the state Supreme Court would rule about a pending challenge to the entire funding plan.
Senator Fred King,a Colebrook Republican, says the income tax, which he has voted for, should be the top issue come January, when the formal legislative session begins. He and others say it's too much to take on now. King says lawmakers should cut the education funding now to stay the course, and buy the time to relook at the whole package. King and other Republicans says localities are using new money meant for education to pay for other long-delayed projects, not schools.
''We have created a monetary addition,'' King said. If it isn't changed, says King, the state ''is headed for a monumental train wreck.''
Below takes look at other strategies
Some recap: The Senate does have an income tax bill in its lap, and the House had approved one as well in a vote ballyhooed as an earth-shattering advance in New Hampshire's attitude toward broad-based taxes. But the income tax remained in limbo through months of angst and final passage of the statewide property tax, because, even if there were votes to pass them, each would have faced certain death from Shaheen's promised veto. So their supporters held back.
Last week, Senator Clifton Below, a Democrat from Lebanon, first-term lawmaker and coauthor of the income tax bill, was scrambling to find a way to retool the Senate bill to avoid the governor's desk. How? Tie it to a constitutional amendment that would commit all the income tax money to education and in one version repeal the entire statewide property tax. For that amendment to pass - and trigger the income tax - it would take two-thirds voter approval, a sort of backhanded way to get public approval of an income tax. Below was meeting with Senator Mary Brown, a Chichester Republican and conservative, trying to carve out an acceptable deal, but even a seemingly tireless Below said there weren't enough hours in the day.
Reform Party sports new voting rules
Officials of the New Hampshire Reform Party - which canceled its September convention plans because of concern about an onslaught of Pat Buchanan supporters - have made some changes in the rules and rescheduled their convention for Oct. 30 at the Manchester Public Library.
According to state party chairman Daron Libby, the state committee has agreed to amend party bylaws so that the only people who can vote at the convention for candidates for state committee posts are those registered with the Reform Party at least 30 days beforehand. Translation: Busloads of Buchananites who might show up at the door won't get to vote. That goes, too, for supporters of Jesse Ventura, Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey and anybody else whose name has cropped up on the list of potential Reform Party nominees for the 2000 presidential election.
What's important here for Buchanan, and any other hopeful, is that the state committee next spring gets to choose three delegates to the party's national convention, where it will choose its nominee for president next summer. Two other New Hampshire delegates will be chosen in an open election, also subject to the 30-day registration rule, according to Libby.
''We did this, not to exclude Buchanan people, but to preserve fairness,'' Libby said last week. He says the Reform Party wants to encourage Buchanan supporters ''to work with us and earn our trust and support.''
''We're also standing on fairness and integrity and want to maintain that here,'' Libby said. He says about 100 people will be eligible to vote on Oct. 30.
Meanwhile, at Buchanan headquarters in Manchester, state campaign chairman Shelly Uscinski said she had no comment about the situation with the New Hampshire Reform Party. She said she and her crew are busy checking out Reform Party convention and meeting schedules around the country. Uscinski says if Buchanan bolts from the Republican Party, she would definitely think about going with him.
''I didn't take a vow to the Republican Party,'' said Uscinski, who has backed Buchanan since 1992. ''That doesn't define who I am or what I stand for.''
GOP has to cancel its `Family Day'
First the state Republican party canceled the presidential straw poll planned for its ''Family Day'' this coming Saturday because party officials didn't like the way it looked (and Texas Governor George W. Bush said he wasn't coming). Last week, the entire event - which was billed as an oportunity to show off for the GOP candidates and their organizations - was sent down the tubes.
In a statement announcing the cancellation, the state GOP chairman, Steve Duprey, said he had spoken to ''many'' campaigns who said the event was becoming ''a strain rather than an opportunity'' because so many other appearances were set for the same time period.
So now the party is going to concentrate on its Jan. 9, 2000, dinner, Duprey said.
McCain camp lists its backers in state
You got towns covered? We got towns covered. So it goes on the Republican side of the presidential primary race as US Senator John McCain 's campaign team unveiled a list of supporters covering 200 cities and towns - which is 26 more than Bush had on his list, unfurled with fanfare when Bush made his debut appearance in Newcastle. But, hey, who's counting?
Among newly announced McCain supporters was former governor Walter Peterson, his son, state Representative Andy Peterson of Peterborough, and lawyer Robert Bass, whose nephew, US Representative Charles Bass of Peterborough, is supporting Bush. Also on board is ormer gubernatorial candidate Fred Bramante of Durham, the founder of Daddy's Junky Music stores. ''In the words of Buffalo Springfield,'' Bramante said, referring to the '60s rock music group, ''something's happening here.'' Former Libertarian candidate for governor Steve Winter, who says he's now a registered Republican, is also supporting McCain.
At a press conference last week, McCain also got an endorsement from Susan Rubens, the wife of former gubernatorial candidate Jim Rubens. She cited McCain's record pushing campaign finance reform and said anyone who doesn't see the influence of big money on campaigns is ''absolutely naive.'' Jim Rubens, a former state senator, faced a bruising primary campaign with wealthy businessman and political unknown Jay Lucas of New London, who won the nomination and was then trounced in the general election by Shaheen.
Susan Rubens, a former nurse who strongly backs abortion rights, said McCain's antiabortion stance was not a big issue for her. She dismissed as ''ludicrous'' the argument made by abortion rights advocates that the Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal could be at stake because the next president may get to appoint as many as three members to the US Supreme Court. She insisted nobody could predict how a judge would vote.
McCain's military record also influenced her support, Rubens said. ''In many ways, he makes John Wayne look like a wimp,'' Rubens said.
Ex-mayor makes switch to Forbes
Short takes: Former Manchester mayor Emile Beaulieu, who was Hillsborough County cochairman for former vice president Dan Quayle 's campaign, has signed on with the Steve Forbes team ... And the American Association of Retired Persons will hold a ''meet the candidates'' event with Vice President Al Gore Friday in Nashua.
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