Live Free -Tax Free - 603

New Hampshire is a small, proud, fiercely independent state. Our motto is “Live Free or Die,” a phrase attributed to New Hampshire Revolutionary War General John Stark when rallying his troops before defeating the British at the Battle of Bennington, a major turning point in the war. The motto is stamped into every state automobile license plate and is taken seriously here. A state resident, who objected to its aggressive tone and covered it with a piece of black electrical tape, was once arrested and faced jail time for doing so.

With a population of 1.3 million, and still only one telephone area code (603), we have a 400-member House of Representatives and a 24-member State Senate, making ours the largest state legislature in the country, and the fourth largest in the English-speaking world behind only the British Parliament, the United States Congress, and the Parliament of Canada respectively.

This is not by accident. As one of the 13 original colonies, the framers of our state constitution had a healthy skepticism for a concentration of power being invested in any one person or branch of government and wanted government to be responsive to its citizens. Even the Governor of the state is checked and balanced by an elected 5-member Executive Council who must approve any state expenditure over $10,000 and any appointment he or she wants to make to the judiciary and state agencies.

Our elected state legislators are volunteer policy makers, paid the princely sum of $100 annually for their service. For the most part they have no paid professional staff, and come from all walks of life (retired professionals, business owners, teachers, farmers, auto mechanics, nurses, students) and political philosophies.

This populist view extends to our first-in-the-nation presidential primary, which dates from 1920. New Hampshire was the first state to pass a law allowing citizens to vote directly for presidential candidates rather than for delegates to the party conventions.

With no state sales or personal income tax, New Hampshire has one of the leanest budgets in the country, but does rely heavily on business taxes and on little-noticed fees on business services, and creative accounting practices to bring in revenue for its matching share of federal funds for several of the state’s major entitlement programs.

Our state government’s healthy skepticism for authority extends to lobbyists. Not only are they required to register with and report expenditures to the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office, they are also required by law to wear a hunter orange name badge with the tag line, Lobbyist, while in the State House or the Legislative Office Building. “We want to be able to see them coming,” said one State Senator during debate on the bill in the 1970s.

Experience, reputation and having built relationships that earn trust are important in any legislative arena, but they are especially important here.