How we pay for ambulance service, as with virtually everything else in health care, is messed up.  When you need a car ride, you can call a taxi or use a ride-sharing service. You know exactly what you’ll be charged, and other consumers’ ratings help you choose a quality service. When you need an ambulance, you call 911 and hope for the best. You have no idea who will show up or how much it will cost. The difference is that we have no competitive market in ambulance services. The service is usually contracted or provided by your local government.  As a consumer, you have zero control ..read more

A new fiscal analysis of the New Hampshire Education Freedom Account Program finds that EFAs have generated nearly $9 million in taxpayer savings in the 2023-24 school year and are projected to generate $23 million in savings annually from the current cohort of students. It also shows that the total $24.8 million ESA program cost for fiscal year 2024 represents just 0.7% of the $3.5 billion funding that New Hampshire public schools receive from local, state, and federal sources and 0.3% of the state’s total expenditures on public services in fiscal year 2023. The Education Freedom Account Prog ..read more

New Hampshire’s median home price hit an unprecedented half-million dollars in March, just two years after passing $400,000 for the first time, underscoring the urgency of making changes to local land-use regulations.  The change represents “a 16 percent drop in affordability from a year ago,” according to the New Hampshire Association of Realtors (NHAR) report. For context, the state housing affordability index was 59 in March. In other words, the median household income in New Hampshire ($90,845) is a mere 59% of what one needs to qualify for the median-priced home at current interest r ..read more

In the last decade, ridership on Manchester Transit Authority (MTA) buses fell by 38.6%, yet city taxpayer spending on the MTA increased by 38.2% above the rate of inflation, an analysis by the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy shows. As Mayor Jay Ruais and city aldermen search for savings in a stressed city budget, the MTA offers an agency that could be scrutinized for possible spending reductions. From 2013–2022, data from the MTA reported to the Federal Transit Administration show that city bus ridership peaked in 2015 at 500,575. Ridership fell each subsequent year, with the excepti ..read more

By Jason Sorens The New Hampshire House of Representatives recently passed a couple of bills to make certain types of housing easier to build: single-family conversions to duplexes on lots with adequate sewer capacity, and detached accessory dwelling units. A more ambitious Senate bill comes up for a vote of the full chamber this Thursday, but unlike the cleaner, smaller House bills, this one has both pro-housing and anti-housing elements.  As amended, this bill, dubbed the “HOMEnibus Act,” would do the following: Extend the existing Community Revitalization Tax Relief Incentive to cover ..read more

Editor’s note: To avoid social repercussions in a small community, the subject of this story requested that only her first name be used and that her son’s name not be used. We granted the request.  Christine M. spent three years trying to find the right learning environment for her son. When he started at Stevens High School in Claremont, the city’s public high school, it was a bad fit. “We really struggled with that kind of environment for him,” Christine recalled. “He was having a lot of issues going to school, wanting to go to school, getting in engaged in school, not getting in troubl ..read more

“This is not a world to live at random in as you do.… Everything in this world is matter of calculation.” — Thomas Jefferson, Oct. 12, 1786 Random chance is a constant feature of life on Earth, and for centuries it was a feature of human government. Kings and councils ruled with “arbitrary power,” as John Locke phrased it, subjecting the people to the whims of man just as they had previously been subject to the whims of nature.  Escaping the tyranny of randomness was, to Locke and the American Founders, a primary motivating factor of those who built republican governments.  “This fre ..read more

Child care in New Hampshire is often hard to find and, when you do, expensive. A bipartisan group of legislators has offered families some relief in a surprising way: zoning reform. Child care offered to small groups of children in a caregiver’s home was once a popular option for many families. But professionalization and regulation of the industry produced a shift toward large (and expensive) commercial day care centers. A lot of families looking for cheaper alternatives today wonder where the old-fashioned, home-based child care providers went. Many municipalities, it turns out, have passed ..read more

The second group of bills to saddle the Education Freedom Account program with onerous red tape will be considered this week by the state House and Senate. State lawmakers took up the first set of regulatory measures last week, voting down both House Bills 1512 and 1594.  This week, the House will vote on HB 1418, 1610 and 1654, while the Senate considers Senate Bill 525.  HB 1418, 1610 and 1654 seek to impose new controls on the EFA program, both its providers and participants.  HB 1418 prohibits the purchase of school uniforms with EFA funds.  In some academic settin ..read more

Despite being the main metropolitan area in the state, the City of Manchester’s zoning ordinances are surprisingly hostile to the construction of new multifamily housing. As a review of the city’s zoning ordinances championed by former Mayor Joyce Craig continues, aldermen are considering three relatively small changes unanimously approved by the Planning Board and brought forward by new Mayor Jay Ruais.  These proposed amendments to the city’s zoning ordinances would represent a small but important step in the long-term effort to make the city’s zoning rules more friendly to new housing ..read more