December 17, 2009

New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration

Yesterday I spent five hours at a public hearing in Concord, NH at the State Office Park on Pleasant Street. It was anything but pleasant listening to the shenanigans of what happened in the middle of the night back in June, 2009.

Mind you, I've not yet verified what I'm about to tell you as fact, but I have every reason to believe it because at the public hearing several New Hampshire legislators testified. What I'm still trying to figure out is if Commissioner Kevin Clougherty was a pawn in a plan to conceal from the public and press a tax that was passed in the middle of the night as an earmark to another bill. It's all very cloak and dagger.

Here's a little history, once again unconfirmed but spoken by other citizens at the hearing, about the New Hampshire state constitution. Evidently there is an article in the document that says the legislature can't pass a tax unless they first conduct a public hearing. The intent of that is really good, as it allows citizens to speak up before the vote. It's very possible that citizen outcry could sway votes. I've seen that happen firsthand sitting behind the dais as a Councilman in Amberley Village, OH.

But that didn't happen with this Bill. There was no public hearing before it was passed. There was no discussion. The public hearing I attended yesterday was about the rules that would be used to administer the law. What? You mean all of that wasn't worked out before the law was enacted? Are you kidding me? This is exactly what's happening at the Federal level with the Health Care Bill and several others that the out-of-control Congress has enacted.

Back to the New Hampshire Bill. What it did, in a nutshell, is make a change to the long-standing Interest and Dividends law. This new law affects distributions from LLCs here in the state. The bottom line is that money not distributed in the form of a "reasonable salary" would be taxed. Even loan money flowing into the entity would be taxed. As many CPAs stated who testified, it's clearly an income tax.

The longer I sat in the hearing, the angrier I became. It affected the rest of my day. I was reminded of the day 21 years ago when I heard that the council in my village was trying to change our zoning to allow condominiums to be built. Amberley Village was very unique, in that it had absolutely no multi-family housing. That's one of the main reasons I decided to build there.

I wasn't interested in politics at the time and had just built my new home adjacent to some park land that was zoned the same as the land that was being considered for condominiums. I knew that if one piece of ground in the village had its zoning changed, then all similar ground was at risk. Zoning change is like the proverbial camel's nose in the tent.

What does zoning have to do with income taxes you ask? It's not that. It's all about politicians doing things while most in the general public are tuned out. What I discovered back all those years ago is that had I attended council meetings, and more importantly committee meetings, this condominium zoning issue was being discussed months before it bubbled to the surface at the mandatory public hearing. The politicians in my village were not at all transparent. Hells bells, we're a small village. They could have easily sent out a mailing getting feedback to help guide them in the committee meetings.

I could have rallied other citizens in the village months before and squashed the proposal long before any public hearing was scheduled. But because I was not interested, just living my life hoping they would do the right thing, I had no clue what was going on. Another woman and I did rally the citizens and the two of us defeated the zoning change by going door to door in the village collecting nearly 1,000 signatures that were against the zoning. All of that could have been done with one mailing.

I've now decided that the same thing has to be done here at the State level. I'm not alone. Over 200 angry New Hampshire citizens were at the public hearing yesterday. In fact, there was such an outpouring of interest, they had to change the venue of the hearing at the last minute to accommodate the large crowd that attended.

This is also the reason we have so many troubles at the national level. We've allowed our politicians to run the show while we go about our daily lives. The out-of-control spending will bankrupt our nation. Don't listen to what the mainstream media is telling you. Actually, they are ignoring the real facts.

Because of what happened yesterday, I've decided to run for state office as our local representative. I've had it, just like I did 21 years ago. To give you perspective on how angry I was, I'm even going back on a promise I made to myself never to run for office again. I was an elected Councilman for two terms and had to deal with politicians each week. It made me sick and raised my blood pressure. But this time, I feel it will be different. Something tells me that other like-minded ordinary citizens are going to run so that we can turn this great state of New Hampshire around. Film at 11.

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Posted December 17, 2009