New Hampshire startups: How Launch 603 has connected small businesses

 By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, about 97% of New Hampshire's businesses are small businesses that together employ nearly half of the state's private-sector workforce. A relatively new annual event, Launch 603, brings key startup resources into one space for a half-day of learning and connecting, while also recognizing some of the leading startups in the state. To talk about Launch 603 is Matt Mowry, co-publisher and executive editor of Business NH Magazine.

Melanie Plenda:

The 2025 Launch 603, which took place on Oct. 28, was the second time that you have brought together startups and key service providers. What inspired you to go from writing about startups to creating this event? 

Matt Mowry:

We saw an explosion of startups during the pandemic. It was “The Great Reassessment.” People were stuck at home, and they were wondering, “Is this really what I want from my life?” For some, that meant changing jobs, some for changing careers, and for others, it was taking control of their own destiny and finally starting that new business. 

One of the things that I was commonly hearing from these startups as they moved along is that they didn't realize the resources that we had here in New Hampshire that were either free or low-cost, that could provide them with everything from funding to coaching. So we started producing a guide for startups in our July issue, which is our Business Resource Directory. It's chock full of great information and statistics about the state for businesses. We thought that was a perfect place to put our startup guide, and it received such a phenomenal response, we thought, “Let's take this rich learning we're providing out of the magazine and put it into the real world, where people can interact with these experts and ask questions and have just a full day learning experience that they can emerge from to move their startups to the next level.”

Melanie Plenda:

You had as one of your featured speakers, Brian Gottlob, director of the Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau. When startups are often at the mom-and-pop stage, how important is it to understand the labor market? 

Matt Mowry:

Well, it's one aspect of the economy, and even if you don't have employees, it's good to understand what your customers are going through and what those indicators mean for the economy. Brian's a well -known economist in our state, and he offers an overall look at the economy of New Hampshire to really give some context to our startups about what they're going to be facing in the coming year.

We're entering a stage of economic uncertainty that's going to be a challenge for any business, but particularly for startups who are vulnerable, who don't have the history, the capital and the customer base built quite yet. So we want to give them all the arsenal that they can have at their disposal and Brian's helped set the table for our discussion for the day.

Melanie Plenda:

What about New Hampshire’s business climate makes it a good place to launch a startup?

Matt Mowry:

One is access to people. You have access to things like the Small Business Administration and the Small Business Development Center, SCORE. There's a lot of organizations, and some of them are national, but here in New Hampshire it's very easy to get in touch with them, to get access to experts. We're a state where you can have access to our leaders. If you're having a problem, it's easy to reach out and find someone that can help you solve it. So I think that's one of the really key advantages that we have here in New Hampshire. 

That isn't to say we aren't without challenges but we do have a rich startup culture. We;re ranked 13th overall, according to U.S. News and World Report, for business creation. So we have a lot of entrepreneurial spirit here in the state. But Wallet Hub ranked New Hampshire 45th for conditions that support startups, due to our business environment, business costs and our access to resources, such as funding. So there are challenges of being in a small state and doing a startup, but because of the access that we have to folks to help a startup succeed, I think that makes us a really great place to be.

Melanie Plenda:

We hear often about the “New Hampshire Advantage,” mainly touting lower business taxes, being a draw. Does this really make a difference for small shops?

Matt Mowry:

When you are starting up, you are resource-poor and expense-rich. You're spending a lot of money and at the same time you're not bringing in probably as much as you would like. So any savings is a help, especially when it comes to tax situations. But it's not the only advantage here in New Hampshire. It's the access to people being able to make those connections that can get you to whatever it is that you need.

Melanie Plenda:

It seems as though new banks are entering the New Hampshire market every week. Are they all after the big fish or does this translate to capital startup? 

Matt Mowry:

New Hampshire has been a rich market for banks. We have attracted a lot of out-of-state banks. We've seen a lot of mergers and acquisitions. There's a reason they're attracted to what would appear to be a small marketplace, but we have a lot of businesses here. There's a lot of opportunity. We have a lot of wealth here in our state. So banks are attracted to that.

But different banks are attracted for different reasons. Some of them are going after those big fish, but big fish are a small part of the New Hampshire economy. Small- and medium-sized businesses are an important part of the marketplace in who they want to attract. Startups, depending on the bank, may not be on their radar yet. Startups come with a lot of risk, and especially with the economic uncertainty that we are entering, banks are not going to be willing to take as many risks without some backups. So that's where it's important, where startups can make those connections to things like the Small Business Administration that can provide loan guarantees that make it more attractive for banks to want to do that.

But startups are having to bootstrap more. They're having to go to friends and family. There's crowdsourcing. There's a lot of different options that startups have to look at before maybe they get to the stage where banks are going to take a closer look at them,

Melanie Plenda:

From cybersecurity to the potential for violence in the workplace, how are these challenges different for a small business?

Matt Mowry:

For small businesses, cybersecurity is actually a huge issue. Most people think that it's the big guns out there that really have to worry about it, and while they are targets, they also are more savvy. They have better protection against cyber threats. That's why we're seeing an increase in cyber attacks on small- and medium-sized businesses that don't have as many resources to protect themselves against such attacks. So as a startup, it's something that they really have to consider and look at what they can do to protect themselves. 

Violence in the workplace is an issue for any business. That may not be as much of an issue for a small business because they just don't have employees as a startup, or have a small number of them. But, those attacks are coming from all over. Any concern that a larger or medium-sized business may have, startups are going to have those same concerns. It's just more compounded because they are just getting off the ground, and they just don't have the resources, perhaps, to address all those issues yet.

Melanie Plenda:

What do businesses need to know about AI?

Matt Mowry:

For startups, it's a real opportunity here, and for small businesses, AI can become that extra employee that fills in some of the talent gaps you may not have or expedite some of the things that you're doing as a startup, as an entrepreneur. It can be a real advantage, but there's a lot of pitfalls to AI that people need to know about. There's legalities involved with it too. So there's a lot of catching up to do in a market that's changing very quickly due to AI.

Melanie Plenda:

Can you talk about some of the startups honored at your event? 

Matt Mowry:

So in our July issue, we did in addition to providing information, we wanted to be aspirational, and so we selected some startup stars from those who applied to us for it, as well as working with our partners, the SBA, the SBDC and the New Hampshire Tech Alliance, to identify great startups that are here in the state.

There is a real range of them. Everything from Big Dog Sauce Company, which makes a variety of barbecue sauces and hot sauces and we have New England Sports Hub, which is a large sports dome in Somersworth. That came out from an idea of someone seeing a hole in the marketplace where such a facility might be needed. 

We also have The Printing Press in Dover, started by a woman who used to work for more corporate ‘big box’ printing and copying providers. She wanted to do better for her customers, and decided that she could do so and started her own little, small, independent business.

We had a lot of great companies that we honored as examples of the type of startup and entrepreneurial spirit we have in New Hampshire.

Melanie Plenda:

Matt Mowry, co-publisher and executive editor of Business NH Magazine, thank you for joining us today.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Radically Rural: What the summit’s 2025 edition looks like

The Radically Rural summit is back. The annual event brings together those who love rural life, but also want to solve small-town challenges. Radically Rural is a grassroots movement founded in 2018 in Keene that connects people who are passionate about small-town life with those who are pioneering innovative solutions to common problems. It’s back for 2025 with new ideas and new solutions. To preview the summit are Executive Director Julianna Dodson and Lillian Chase, program and development coordinator, both from the Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship and part of the planning team for the summit.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Melanie Plenda:

Julianna, can you tell us a bit about the background of Radically Rural and its connection to the Hannah Grimes Center? 

 Julianna Dodson:

The Hannah Grimes Center started as the marketplace on Main Street about 28 years ago, and has continually evolved to kind of meet the moment that we're in as a region and to meet needs that we have through innovation, collaboration and gathering together.

 About 18 years ago, they started an annual event called Connect and met annually, and it worked really well for our region to kind of come together and shape and share ideas and increase connections, share solutions and making sure folks weren't duplicating efforts, things like that. 

 When The Keene Sentinel got involved in that effort in 2016, the event just continued to grow. At one of the events, someone stood up during an idea jam, and said, “Rural places shouldn't be kept out of being able to host large gatherings just because we don't have large convention centers. We should be able to use our whole downtown as a convention center.” And everyone was like, “We should do that.” So a group got together and really did some brainstorming around what that could look like. 

 Melanie Plenda:

How has it evolved over the years?

 Julianna Dodson:

We had two years before the pandemic of hosting in downtown Keene, and it was hugely successful. Then when the pandemic hit, we moved everything online. Then they received a Northern Border Regional Commission grant to hire a Radically Rural director, and that's where I came on the scene. 

 When I started, we had our first hybrid year, and from that point forward, having someone who is dedicated to this work, we were able to actually expand to year-round programming through virtual roundtables. Over time, we have also evolved to include small town trips every year where we visit one small town and learn all about them and what they're doing and make what makes them unique, what models they have to offer, what challenges they're grappling with. We've also started last year with an annual correspondence to Congress to help communicate some of the needs that we're hearing about from the grassroots community that we steward. 

 I would say also, I think what has evolved the most, in my view, is the relationships in the community, which gets stronger and stronger every year, and that has really allowed us to individually and in groups, kind of customize our support relationally and with connections to resources.

Melanie Plenda:

Lillian, tell us about the theme this year, which is “resonance,” and how that will play out. 

 Lillian Chase:

After last year's summit, based on some feedback from our advisory group, we knew we wanted to do some radical imagination exercises and just look at the stories we're telling about rural communities — and if we could have a perfect rural community, what it would look like and how we could get there. So we started by finding a partner for that work, and we started working with the Resonance Network. They're going to be speaking at several of our sessions

 They explained to us kind of what their name means, and this idea that it's a single force that makes a single vibration something greater. We loved that because it resonated with us. We thought that's what we do at Radically Rural. We take a single idea or thought or model, and we bounce it off everyone else in the room to create a solution, to create ideas that can spark rural innovation across the country. 

 This year, we're diving into that with more cross-sector collaboration than ever. We really want people in public health to be able to bounce ideas off of people in the arts and see what creative solutions can come from.

 Melanie Plenda:

Lillian, what’s new this year at the summit?

 Lillian Chase:

More cross-sector collaboration than ever. Our Wednesday and Thursday sessions are all going to touch on more than one track. So it might be the arts, it might be clean energy, it might be land, but it's going to be multiple of those every single time.

 The other new thing that we're doing is adding a day, so Tuesday, the first day of the summit, is going to be focused on staying in your track, collaborating, making connections with people who are doing similar work to you, so that you can have those bonds and a place to start before you dive into more cross sector collaboration. 

 We're having field trips. We're having track specific sessions. One of the really cool things we're going to do is our Land and Community track is going to Yellowbud Farm in Massachusetts. They're going to talk with the folks that are farming there and just have a chance to really kind of be immersed in the agriculture and the ideas behind the things that are going to be on panels that we're going to talk about in the next few days. 

Melanie Plenda:

Julianna, what kind of an impact do you think the summit has had over the years? 

 Lillian Chase:

This is a fun one, because I am 100% certain that I have not even remotely been able to keep track of all of the impacts and all the mycelium under the soil that has just spread like wildfire. But there are a couple of really tangible things that I can point to. We've had other people start conferences, replicating Radically Rural, and that's been really fun, because we just like to share. So we’re like, “Take everything.” For our programs, we share them freely with anyone who wants to use them and replicate them and change them. 


My favorite part, honestly, is that people have become really good friends through this, and they connect during the year. They support each other during the year. I personally have at least three of my best voice memo friends through Radically Rural, and it's just been delightful to see how it's grown and strengthened over the years.

 Melanie Plenda:

Lillian, who comes to Radically Rural? How do they find out about it?

 Lillian Chase:

We like to say that anybody who hears a problem and wants to solve it comes to Radical Rural — people with that spark of “I could contribute.” Those are the kind of people that come, and then obviously people who love their rural communities. That's why we get together — to celebrate rural, to solve problems for rural areas. So if you live, work or recreate in rural areas, Radically Rural is really the place for you to come meet your people, and people find out about it at this point from previous attendance. 

 Melanie Plenda:

Julianna, what do you hope people take away from attending the summit?

 Julianna Dodson: 

I would say two things. The first one is something else that we haven't done and that we're doing this year is an Education track, and so I'm really hoping that folks can kind of come together from different perspectives as educators and really kind of like work on issues together.

 Then the second thing I would say is we've always been known as very solutions-based, upbeat, positive. As one of our founders, Mary Ann  Kristiansen, would say, “No wringing of the hands, let's actually move forward.” That hasn't changed. However, I would say as we've matured as programming and as we've grown over time, we are more interested, not in what could be considered like low-hanging fruit, we're more interested in really grasping at the roots. 

 Every year we've gotten more and more kind of intentional in addressing how entangled everything really is, ecologically, economically, socially. And that's one of the reasons that we have more sessions that are cross-pollinating this year, and why we're kind of bringing up topics that we really haven't before.

 Melanie Plenda:

And Lillian, where do people go if they want more information about this? 

Lillian Chase:

Go to Radicallyrural.org and you can check out our agenda there. You can sort by track. You can get your tickets there. Definitely go to our website.

Melanie Plenda:

So interesting. Julianna and Lillian, thank you for joining us today.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

State House update: Upcoming issues, possible legislation, and how that could affect you

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

A new session of the Legislature won’t begin until next January, but lawmakers are already filing new legislation. What issues and bills might come up? How will they affect you? To discuss this is Anna Brown, executive director of Citizens Count, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating voters about the political process. Brown is also executive director of the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership, and Public Service at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law.

 Melanie Plenda:

Anna, ‘tis the season for lawmakers to file new bills that may eventually become laws here in New Hampshire. 

 Anna Brown:

We're entering the second year of the legislative session, which usually means we dig into some thornier policy debates that were put off during the first-year budget process, and that's still true. But we also saw House and Senate leaders explicitly say, please put in fewer bills this year, because there's a lot of logistical challenges — parking challenges and some renovations at the Legislative Office Building. So far, it does look like there are significantly fewer bills, but still lots to talk about.

 We're definitely going to see continued debate over housing-related legislation and zoning issues as well as social issues, particularly related to gender and free speech. I've got my eyes on bills related to school funding, because there were those recent New Hampshire Supreme Court rulings which told the Legislature it needs to act.

 Melanie Plenda:

Let’s dig a little deeper. What’s going on in the perpetual struggle between local and state control over zoning? What’s going on in that realm? 

 Anna Brown:

Just this past year, the Legislature passed several laws related to state limits on zoning. For example, expanding accessory dwelling units by right, limiting parking requirements, and so on. There's definitely a group of Republican legislators who are not happy with these changes. I've been watching the fights play out on social media over the summer, so I'm not surprised to see some bill proposals that basically want to repeal what was done last year.

 Melanie Plenda:

When it comes to spending priorities, local towns have been trying to get the state more involved in education — by sending more money — for years. In fact, there have been three, I believe, successful lawsuits that point out the state isn’t meeting its obligations for education funding, yet little seems to change. Will this come up again? What do you expect? 

 Anna Brown:

The debate is already happening. We've seen legislators meeting in committees and talking about what solutions might be brought forward, and they haven't really made much progress. The most recent New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling said the state has to spend more on that base per-pupil amount. It didn't say how. It didn't say when. There's also a group of Republicans who argue the Supreme Court overstepped its bounds. It's a major separation of powers power struggle. 

 I'm curious to see how it's going to play out in the Legislature, and realistically, there will be a lot of debate. But this is another one of those issues where I wouldn't be surprised if any changes are pushed off until the next legislative session, after the following election, because if they do increase base funding, they're going to have to come up with new revenue. Right now, the budget is looking very tight. 

 Melanie Plenda:

What about funding for child care? Is that another issue we might see tackled this session? If so, how?

 Anna Brown:

It's interesting to me, because whenever I go to chambers of commerce or other business groups, they bring up child care as a workforce issue. It's no secret there's a major shortage of child care in New Hampshire, and the speaker of the House even made a special committee on child care not too long ago, but we haven't seen the policy momentum around this issue that we saw around housing. 

 Now, more funding for child care — that's tough because, as I alluded to, we're on a very tight budget right now. There's not that free -flowing money from huge business tax revenue or Covid money from the federal government. That being said, Rep. Katelyn Kuttab from Windham has put in a bill that would create a child care tax credit program. We don't know what that looks like yet — we’ll have to wait for the bill text. I've seen similar ideas get floated before, so maybe momentum is building.

 Melanie Plenda:

As you mentioned, state revenues are already down this year, for a variety of reasons. Is this something the Legislature will have to address this term? Why? 

 Anna Brown:

Realistically, we're operating on a two-year budget. It would have to be a really huge crisis for the Legislature to reopen the budget and make changes like that until 2027, the next usual budget cycle.

 That being said, the first two months of the fiscal year, July and August, business tax revenue came in below projections. If that continues, we might enter the election year with a budget deficit, and it would be up to the governor and legislators to sort of speak to that during their election campaigns. So we already have a really lean state budget and there were some major cuts in this previous budget. For example, positions in the office of the child advocate were getting cut. Republicans also did vote to raise various fees, such as car registration, to help cover the budget. So it's too early to speculate what legislators might do two years from now, but certainly, like the economy, our budget is in a bit of an uncertain pocket.

 Melanie Plenda:

What happens if there is a major deficit? What does that mean?

 Anna Brown:

When we last saw something like that happen, it was during the Great Recession, and that ultimately resulted in some really huge cuts to the university system, for example. Now what's interesting here is we actually saw a big cut to the university system this most recent budget cycle. How deep can you cut? 

 At that point, do you have a conversation about maybe bringing back the interest in dividends tax, which was phased out. I'm sure Republicans don't want to do that? Then again, if we do enter a budget crisis going into that election year, maybe that would give the Democrats something to argue for.

 Melanie Plenda:

Will we see anything related to the assassination of Charlie Kirk?

 Anna Brown:

We're already seeing one big piece of legislation from House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, and he's sponsoring a bill named the CHARLIE Act, which is an acronym for countering hate and revolutionary leftist indoctrination in education. We haven't seen the text of this bill, but you can tell from its name, it's looking to add penalties for teachers who are teaching certain subjects, certain ways of thinking.

 We don't really know how that would be defined. It could result in fines. It could potentially revoke teacher licenses. I will say if it did pass, it would almost certainly face a court challenge, because we've seen court challenges on bills that looked to restrict teaching related to diversity, equity and inclusion, critical race theory, and so on. And if it's not really clearly defined, and how that would be determined, that's when you start to run into trouble with the courts. Also Governor Ayotte has not come out in support of this. Her line so far in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination is that “We need to lower the temperature. We need more civil dialogue. Free speech is important.”

 Melanie Plenda:

What about gender issues? Will we see anything like that come out of the Legislature this term?

 Anna Brown:

This is another one that I think is teeing up tension between Republicans in the Legislature and Governor Ayotte, who is also a Republican. This past summer, she vetoed a bill that would allow some discrimination based on biological sex — locker rooms, bathrooms, and so on. Republicans, it appears, are putting forward pretty similar limit legislation again. Once again, we don't have the bill texts, so we don't know how much movement there is. 

Then there's a couple of bills that are looking at other ways gender is in state law. For example, a bill to eliminate or restrict the ability to change the gender on your driver's license, and then also maybe removing references to gender identity in state law. Will those have enough momentum? Will they move forward? I mean, prior to the Charlie Kirk assassination, this looked like it was going to be the most passionate social issue debate that was going to be happening in the Legislature, so I still expect that to be a very intense topic that legislators are grappling with.

Melanie Plenda:

Fascinating as always. Anna, thank you for joining us today. 

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org. “The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communications. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members.

How beech leaf disease affects New Hampshire’s forest ecology

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Beech leaf disease is the latest threat to the state’s beech trees. It’s quickly spread across the state and could have several environmental and human impacts. Here to discuss what’s happening is Lindsay Watkins, a field specialist in forest resources for Strafford County at the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension.

Melanie Plenda:

Lindsay, what is beech leaf disease? Where does it come from? What does it look like? 

Lindsay Watkins:

Beech leaf disease is the newest of our forest's health threats that we're seeing here in New Hampshire. It's caused by a foliar nematode. Nematodes are microscopic, worm-like creatures, so we can't see them unless we're looking at them with a microscope. But they're tiny, little worm-like deals that get into the buds of beech trees and do quite a bit of damage.

Beech leaf disease, as far as we know, came from Asia, and likely came on nursery plants or in soil that came in plants from overseas. It was first detected in Ohio in 2012, made its way east pretty quickly and spread up the Atlantic coast. It was first found in New Hampshire in 2022 in Deerfield, Nottingham, Durham and Madbury. Since then, it has spread pretty quickly throughout New Hampshire. 

Melanie Plenda:

How prevalent is this? Are many trees in the areas you mentioned affected?

Lindsay Watkins:

It's extremely prevalent. Last year it was kind of one of those things most of the towns that I would visit in Stratford County, if I looked for it, I could find it in some places. It was very readily apparent. This year, it's everywhere. You can't miss it. The trees look almost what I would describe as kind of crispy this year. The leaves are just leathery, thick, crinkled, and just look really unhealthy.

Melanie Plenda:

Why is this a concern here in New Hampshire?

Lindsay Watkins:

One of the big concerns is that we're seeing beech leaf disease cause pretty rapid mortality in beech trees. In some of the smaller trees, we're seeing those trees die off in about three to six years. It might take a little bit longer for some of our larger, more mature beech trees, but one of the things that we have in New Hampshire as a result of our past forest management, as well as beech bark disease — which is another disease that affects beech trees- is that we have a lot of .smaller, understory, midstory beech tree, and so when you look out into a forest, most of what you're seeing in that lower layer of the forest canopy, in many cases is beech. That's going to change a lot about how our forest ecosystems look and how they function.

So you're changing the amount of light that reaches the forest floor, you're changing the humidity and moisture levels in that understory layer, you are potentially opening up space for other species to come in. Those may be native species, those may be invasive species in some cases. So there's just a lot of things about the dynamics of how our forest ecosystems work that are going to change as a result of beech leaf disease.

Melanie Plenda:

Tell us more about beech bark disease. What is it and when did that become a concern?  

Lindsay Watkins:

Beech bark disease started to appear in New Hampshire around the 1950s, 1960s, and it became really prevalent. It's a more complex disease. It's caused by a combination of a scale insect that is feeding on beach bark and in the process spreading fungal pathogens.

There are actually a couple of fungal pathogens that are believed to be involved. They're native to New England and North America. The scale insect came from Europe. I believe it arrived in Nova Scotia in the early 1900s and then kind of spread south and west.

Beech bark disease is more complex in the way it works. It doesn't outright kill beech trees the way that beech leaf disease might, but it did take out a lot of our older, more mature beech trees and our forests and part of beeches’ ecology is that when a tree is stressed, or when it's killed, it puts out root sprouts. So if you kill a very large beech tree, or you stress out a very large beech tree, part of the way it's going to react is it's going to send out all of these root sprouts, and that's part of why we have so many of these smaller, sapling-size beech trees in our forest.

Melanie Plenda:

What happens if we lose the state’s beech trees? What does that look like? What impact will that have? 

Lindsay Watkins:

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about losing beech trees is just how valuable they are as a tree for wildlife. Beeches produce beech nuts, which are an extremely valuable food source. They're high in fat and protein. They're particularly valuable for bears, but there's a lot of other species that rely on beech nuts as a food source as well. That's a pretty big impact when you think about removing a species that is so important to so many different species. 

On the flip side of that, because of some of the challenges that I mentioned before with beech bark disease, a lot of foresters have spent many years trying to figure out how to manage beech so that there's less of it, so that we can encourage other species that might be more desirable from an economic standpoint, or even just to have greater biodiversity to grow, because in a lot of cases, you'll have so much beech in your forest that it's shading out other species, like sugar maple or red oak or other species that we want to grow. So there's a certain degree to which some folks maybe aren't heartbroken that we're losing some of our beach, but I don't think this is the way we would want this to go.We don't want to lose all of it. It's a really important species for a lot of reasons. 

Melanie Plenda:

How will wildlife be affected? How will people be affected?

Lindsay Watkins:

Sometimes it can be harder to see the direct impacts to us on losing a species or many trees of a species, but beeches are really important characters, like the characteristic tree of our forest.

Think about the northern hardwood forest: You think maple, beech and birch. Those are the species that really make up that forest assemblage. So there's going to be a visual impact. People are going to notice it. It has not been detected in the White Mountains, but I'm pretty sure that by next year, we're going to start to see it throughout the White Mountains. So people out hiking are going to notice it. It's going to change, really, the look of our forests, and I think it's going to change the function of our forest ecosystems, maybe in ways that we don't even quite recognize yet.

Melanie Plenda:

Overall, how healthy are New Hampshire forests? What concerns do you have? 

Lindsay Watkins:

That's a really tricky question — forest health is complex. When I think about what a healthy forest is, I think about a forest that is functioning in a way that it's providing ecosystem services for all of the species that live there — a variety of different tree species, a variety of different tree age classes and sizes, you have different wildlife that are making use of our forests for food and for habitat and getting their needs met. 

I think one of the challenges that we're seeing is that we have these different pests and diseases that, in many cases, are detrimental to an entire species. So we've lost chestnut, largely lost elm, seeing our ash trees die off on a wide scale, and now it's beech. So every time we lose a species like that, it takes away some of the complexity. It takes away some of the ecosystem's ability to respond to further stress and additional disturbances. If you eliminate all the beech, you start to get to a point where your forests are made of one or two or three species, and then what's next? It becomes a little bit of a domino effect. 

Melanie Plenda:

What can the average person do, if anything, about this? 

Lindsay Watkins:

I wish I had some better answers. I think just being aware of what's going on and paying attention. Extension and the New Hampshire Division of Forests and Lands maintain nhbugs.org — it’s a website that has a lot of information about forest pests and diseases. You can go on there and get more information about what to look for.

If you are in the southern half of the state, we probably don't need you to report beech leaf disease. We're pretty sure we know where it is and we've got it. But if you are in the more northern half of the state and you're seeing beech leaf disease in a place that it hasn't been reported yet, please do submit a report to nhbugs or reach out to your county forester and just let them know that it's there. It's just helpful to keep track of where it is, how it's spreading, how quickly it's spreading, as we continue to learn more about it and figure out what we might be able to do from a practical, hands-on perspective. 

If you're a landowner who's managing forest land, I don't think there's anything that you necessarily need to change as a result of beech leaf disease. If you're working with a forester, if you have a forest management plan, it's definitely something to consider going forward how you're going to continue to manage that forest land. If you were going to cut the beech anyway, it's great firewood. By all means, cut beech trees for firewood. If you weren't going to cut beech trees down, there's not really a reason to go out and do that just because this disease is here. It's not a situation where if we cut our beech trees down, we're going to help prevent it from spreading further.

Melanie Plenda:

So interesting! Lindsay, thank you for joining us today. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Know Your News: A New England-wide effort to promote media literacy and the role local news outlets play in civic life

This article is edited for length and clarity.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitliin Agnew

Your right to know — it’s an almost sacred concept here in the United States, enshrined in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. What do you know about that right, and the news organizations that keep you informed? Today, we’re talking about something we hope you’re about to hear a lot more of, the Know Your News campaign. 

This New England–wide effort, coordinated by the Granite State News Collaborative and the New England Newspaper & Press Association’s First Amendment Committee, is designed to raise awareness about the First Amendment and the essential role of local news in civic life.

News organizations across New Hampshire and New England will be participating in this endeavor, and to discuss it we have Jeff Feingold, Granite State News Collaborative editor on the project, and Linda Conway, executive director of the New England Newspaper & Press Association. 

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s start with Linda. Can you tell us more about the campaign and the idea behind it? 

Linda Conway:

The annual New England Newspaper and Press Association convention is an annual convention where we have dozens of training sessions for journalists. So this year we had a town hall-style meeting with journalists, editors, publishers, First Amendment advocates and attorneys to discuss the importance of a free press and some of the challenges that the news organizations are facing on the local and regional level.

This was our most popular session this year. The room was packed, and the engagement level was off the charts. It was really energizing. So based on this session, we developed a First Amendment committee to look at ways that our organization can help newsrooms. We came out with a whole list of things to do. One was to develop ways to share stories, editorials and information on First Amendment issues, and the second was to develop a public information campaign to tell the story of how our efforts to dig out public information helps our community.

Melanie, the director of the Granite State News Collaborative and a member of our board of directors, and was elected chair of the committee. The collaborative had already developed a platform that they use in New Hampshire, and being generous enough to allow us to use in our efforts to help connect the entire New England news community.

Melanie Plenda:

Linda, how many organizations do you expect are participating across New England? What was the reaction to it? 

Linda Conway:

I've gotten emails from several people that are really excited about it. We're anticipating a couple of dozen news organizations to begin with. We're still registering news organizations this week, and I anticipate that a few more will probably join the effort after the kickoff, Sept. 17, on Constitution Day. I think that a couple of newsrooms, after they see other newspapers running the stories, will join as well. Ideally, we'd love every newsroom to join.

Melanie Plenda:

Here in New Hampshire, the Granite State News Collaborative produced a lot of stories for the series. Jeff, can you tell us more about that and what it entailed? 

Jeff Feingold:

What we've done is come up with over 30 articles on all kinds of topics, ranging from what local news is, about the role of the press — particularly the role of the local press. That's something that we're really focusing on, local news — because all of the newspapers taking part of this are community papers — and how important the local press is to a strong community. We have articles explaining the First Amendment, media literacy, right-to-know laws and things like that.

What we did was we gathered a group of really good journalists, really strong journalists, who were immediately interested in writing these articles for us. And it was really heartening, because people who have been journalists know how important journalism is, how important understanding what's going on in your community is. This campaign is kind of a way to push back at the unfortunate situation we have now where people aren't quite clear about what the role of the press is. They don’t necessarily turn to newspapers or other media outlets for information, so we're trying to educate people again.

Melanie Plenda:

Jeff can you give us some highlights from these articles?

Jeff Feingold:

We are trying to focus on explaining what local news is and why community reporting is so important. Local news is telling you what's going on in your community and helps you understand more about what it is to be a member of your community. It's telling you about what local businesses are talking about — sports teams and stuff — and it's also telling you about what's going on at the zoning board or the planning board, the selectboard of the city council. Knowing that is important for you as a citizen to understand what's going on because part of the problem we have now is that the lack of understanding about how important news is and turning to professional news organizations for your information means that people are becoming less engaged with their community — which is the whole point of our society. Our job is to be an informed electorate to really make this thing work. This is part of what this campaign is about. It’s kind of reminding people that this is how it works. You have to uphold your end of the bargain by being an informed, educated voter.

Melanie Plenda:

Local news organizations do a lot to inform and educate their communities. But trust in news is at an all-time low. In fact, stories in the series address this. Jeff, can you speak a little about how the media can address the "fake news" narrative?

Jeff Feingold:

I think part of it is getting people to understand what the role of the press is.

What a professional news organization does is collect information, gather information and then disseminate it. We know how to gather information professionally. We try our best to report it. We try our best to avoid bias, to avoid disinformation. 

Disinformation is so widespread now because of social media, because of AI, because of deepfakes and all that other stuff. It's a matter of us as professionals to share this information and to try to get people to understand there's a difference just reading something somewhere that might confirm your own biases, but that doesn’t mean it's true.

Our job is to try our best to not be biased, to be impartial and report it. Other sources are not doing that. They are biased. They are willfully spreading false information, disinformation, and it's important for people as readers or consumers of the news, to understand that there is a difference, and to turn to professional organizations, organizations whose job it is to understand what reality is, to speak.

Melanie Plenda:

Linda and Jeff, this is for both of you. Why is something like this needed now? Let’s go to Linda and then Jeff.

Linda Conway:

Well, as Jeff mentioned, so many people are skeptical of the media right now, especially in today's charged environment, and with the volume of information and misinformation that they find online and through social media it's tough to figure out what's real and what isn’t.

If the public understands how journalists verify their facts, vet their sources, uphold ethical standards, they'll be more likely to trust legitimate reporting and to distinguish it from misinformation, bias, and propaganda. We're hoping that by educating them on legitimate news, promoting transparency, we can empower more people to participate in that democracy. 

Jeff Feingold:

Because so many people are spending their time in the digital world, on social media and the like, the result is we don't have that social connectedness anymore in our communities. We're losing it. It's something that's been happening over quite a period of time, but it seems today even more people are disengaged from their neighbors, from the rest of their community. 

Having a source of information that everyone could turn to to understand what's going on in the community, can help bring back that kind of connectedness. I think it's something that's really important to think about — that's really what local news outlets are doing, is trying to bring the community together.

Melanie Plenda:

Here’s another one for the two of you: When you hear a phrase like Know Your News, what does that mean to you? Let’s start with Jeff and then to Linda.

Jeff Feingold:

I've been thinking a lot about what it means. It's been an unfortunate reality that fewer and fewer people are working to become well informed, or even trying to keep well informed. And I think Americans in general just are failing to grasp the idea of how our society works. The whole thing falls apart without an informed electorate. It's not just being informed about what's going on in Washington or in the state capitol, but at the local level, the county, the school board, all the things that make this system that we have work. Know Your News is basically a campaign by news outlets to say, “We’re here. We've always been here. We know you like your social media. But that's not the only way to stay informed and be engaged.”

Linda Conway:

The average person doesn't know the processes of a local newsroom. We know that local news is essential to a healthy, functioning democracy, and it still keeps communities connected. As Jeff mentioned, it keeps people updated on issues that directly affect them — school board decisions, city council policies, public safety, if your taxes are increased and how they're spent, local elections, crime and a whole host of things. Without local news, citizens may be uninformed about developments that impact their daily lives, so our goal is to make people aware of what's happening locally and the role that newspapers play in their communities, so that they're more likely to vote, attend community meetings, hold leaders accountable — essentially, to be engaged in their communities.

Melanie Plenda:

Linda and Jeff, what do you hope the outcome of all of this will be? Linda, let’s go to you first. Jeff?

Linda Conway:

There are so many news deserts that have come around the country, with corporate companies owning local news. I feel like many people don't understand what the consequences are of losing a local newsroom. The voter turnout drops and there's less transparency, there's more misinformation.

We're hoping that by educating people they will become more engaged in their local newspaper. Perhaps they'll start working at their local newspaper. Perhaps they become community reporters. They will get more involved in civic things, and they'll be empowered to participate in things. They'll go to community meetings. People don't understand that they can just go to meetings — the average person doesn’t. And then they realize that when they can't go, because everybody has busy lives, they're busy with their children and their jobs,and that local journalists are there to cover that information and give it to them.

Jeff Feingold:

I'm hoping that it makes people aware of how important it is to be media-literate, to understand what the media is, what your sources of information are, how legitimate they are, and how important it is to do your own homework on things. It sounds like a big job, but it's not really. Just learn to take a minute to say, “Is this true? Maybe I could find some other place to find out, to see if this information is true.” 

There's also just the idea to be aware of what your source of information is, how valid it is, and how important it is on your part as a consumer of news and as a citizen to understand you have a responsibility. I think a lot of us forget how important that responsibility is.

Melanie Plenda:

That was a great discussion. Linda and Jeff, thank you for joining us.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. This story is part of the Know Your News campaign — a Granite State News Collaborative and NENPA Press Freedom Committee initiative on why the First Amendment, press freedom and local news matter. Don’t just read this. Share it with one person who doesn’t usually follow local news — that’s how we make an impact. Find out more at collaborativenh.org.

The effects of lower spending on higher education in New Hampshire

According to a new study from the nonpartisan, independent research nonprofit, the N.H. Fiscal Policy Institute, New Hampshire spends the least on higher education — and this could have far-reaching consequences for students, colleges and the state’s future workforce. On this episode of “The State We’re In,” Dr. Nicole Heller, a senior policy analyst with the N.H. Fiscal Policy Institute, who is studying the issue.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

Melanie Plenda:

Tell us about your research on higher education. What did you look at? 

Nicole Heller:

We summarized data from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, which allowed us to compare New Hampshire's spending for public higher education to other states in a standardized fashion.

We report on New Hampshire state funding for public higher education from state fiscal year 2006 to 2027 — what we have budgeted for that fiscal year. We also examined tuition rates at the three university system institutions, which include Keene State, Plymouth State and the University of New Hampshire, as well as the community college system of seven colleges.

Melanie Plenda:

What were some of your findings?

Nicole Heller:

Our finding that New Hampshire is the lowest funder of public higher education in the country is consistent with our 2019 and 2023 reports on this topic. In this report, we found that the state of New Hampshire spends approximately $4,600 of funding per full-time student enrolled in public higher education institutions, while the national average is about $11,700. These figures are derived from the amount of funding allocated to USNH (the University System of New Hampshire) and CCSNH (the Community College System of New Hampshire) in the state budget, not the amount these systems spend on each full-time equivalent student attending their institutions.

What's different about this most recent report is that it's written in the context of a small 1% increase for the community college system’s budget and a considerable 17.6% decrease in the University System of New Hampshire's budget for state fiscal year 2026 and 2027 compared to the prior state budget.

Melanie Plenda: 

Were any of these findings a surprise to you, and if so why?

Nicole Heller:

In 2024, the public institutions relied heavily on student tuition payments for revenue. So 68% of all revenue was from student tuition. And this is compared to a national average of contributions of 39%. New Hampshire’s public institutions are tuition-dependent, meaning that they’re highly reliant on student tuition to cover their operating budgets. When any revenue of a tuition-dependent institution’s budget is reduced, additional revenue is needed. So this often means tuition increases for students and families so the institution can balance its operating budget.

New Hampshire has seen this in both the community college system and the university system this academic year, with 7% increases in the community college tuition and a range of between 2.5% and 4.9% at the university system institutions.

Melanie Plenda:

Let's talk about some of your key findings. Why is New Hampshire’s spending on higher education a cause for concern? 

Nicole Heller:

This is cause for concern because when we think about New Hampshire, our workforce and population are aging. We need young people to remain in or come to New Hampshire in order to fill positions that are opening as a result of individuals’ retirements.

Additionally, about half of the occupations projected to have the most growth through 2032 require a college degree, and this includes software developers, registered nurses and nurse practitioners. So high tuition rates may make it difficult for individuals to afford degrees required for these occupations and contribute to workforce shortages.

Melanie Plenda:

How is this spending, or lack thereof, expected to affect New Hampshire’s workforce?

Nicole Heller:

High tuition rates for public institutions might result in more students leaving a state to pursue their higher education, and these students may not return to the state after they've completed their degree.

Right now, we have a really tight housing market, even among rental units, it's expensive to live in the state, and additionally, high non-resident tuition rates or out-of-state tuition rates may also deter young people from coming to New Hampshire to pursue their education. They may be able to afford another college within the Northeast that costs less, and that might attract them there. Since we do have a reduced number of students, high school graduates, in the Northeast, and this is a trend that's been predicted over time, and so the institutions, particularly in the Northeast, are competing for fewer and fewer students to attend their institutions.

Melanie Plenda:

You also compared funding at four-year and two-year institutions. What did you find there? And what implications does that have?

Nicole Heller:

New Hampshire invests more funding in students attending two-year institutions than four-year institutions on a per-enrollee basis. The education appropriation for full-time equivalent students was about $9,800 at our two-year institutions and approximately $4,000 at our four-year institutions in state fiscal year 2024. I want to point out that these figures include both in-state and out-of-state enrollees. 

So while there's more investment in the community college system — and that may make accessing education more affordable for individuals pursuing occupations that require two-year degrees — individuals who are pursuing careers that require four-year degrees may find the pathway to their chosen careers inaccessible due to high tuition costs.

Melanie Plenda:

Is there a connection between students who study in New Hampshire and young people who stay in New Hampshire? 

Nicole Heller:

According to a 2023 report from the University System of New Hampshire, students are twice as likely to stay and join the New Hampshire workforce if they attend a four-year public college or university and complete an internship program within the state university system. The university system also reports that about 2,000 USNH graduates join the Granite State workforce every year.

Melanie Plenda:

What other causes of concern did your research find? 

Nicole Heller:

New Hampshire college graduates are experiencing more and higher rates of student loan debt than graduates from other states. The most recent number from 2022 suggests graduates from New Hampshire's colleges and universities who have debt carry the highest average debt at nearly $40,000 compared to all other graduates in the country. New Hampshire also has the second highest percentage of graduates with student loan debt, at 70%.

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s say you are a Granite Stater with no connection to higher ed — not a student, not a university worker, not a parent of a current or future student. Would you still be concerned? Why?

Nicole Heller:

High college tuition rates can have long-term effects that impact the overall Granite State economy. As I mentioned earlier, those high tuition rates can deter individuals from pursuing degrees and careers and high demand occupations, which will adversely affect our workforce, particularly in certain industries.

Additionally, students and families may take on more of that student loan debt that we discussed, which can impact their financial stability and wealth-building over time — for example, saving for retirement, buying a house or having funds for emergencies.

Another option for individuals may be to forgo a postsecondary education or training entirely if they're not able to afford and access that education, which can hinder their long-term earning potential — again lowering the amount of money that they have to save for their retirement, for buying a home, for emergency savings.

In both scenarios, the Granite State economy is impacted when residents don't have enough resources available to spend on goods and services that help build our local and state economies.

Melanie Plenda:

What’s the solution here? What can the average person concerned about this do? 

Nicole Heller:

Additional funding for public higher education may help slow those tuition rate increases and help ensure students can access and afford degrees necessary for in-demand occupations. When our legislators were crafting the current state budget, revenues were considerably smaller than in the last budget cycle, for a variety of reasons. Federal pandemic aid has mostly ended. New Hampshire repealed its interest and dividends tax, so that funding — though it's still trickling in as various portfolios are wrapped up — has drastically decreased and will eventually go away entirely. Then we have reduced combined business taxes related to reductions in those tax rates. 

So while those tax rates were initially reduced and we did see differences, because spending went up — particularly in the pandemic era, as we weren't able to travel, consumer spending went up, particularly with stimulus income that came in from the federal government — that spending has slowed over time, and so now those business tax reductions are starting to be seen in the amount of revenues that are coming in. So as a result of relatively reduced revenues, the Legislature had a lot of difficult decisions to make, and one of them included drastically reducing public support for the USNH budget.

Melanie Plenda:

So interesting. Dr. Nicole Heller, thank you for joining us. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

‘It’s Your Money’: Learning about the forces that affect your own economy

From the cost of everyday items at the grocery store to the ins and outs of financial scams, Maureen Milliken has written about all that — and much more. What can she tell us about where our hard-earned dollars go, and how to hang on to them a bit longer? Milliken, a freelance journalist, writes the award-winning “It’s Your Money” column for the Ink Link Group and has years of experience writing about consumer issues.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

Melanie Plenda:

First, let’s talk about your column. What was the inspiration for it, and what sorts of things have you been writing about? 

Maureen Milliken:

I left the full-time journalism world that I'd been in for 35 years several years ago and was doing some freelance work. One of them, which I still do, is for a nonprofit credit counseling agency, writing web content. So I have become this expert on consumer economics from the consumer end, not the economist. I had all this knowledge and had nowhere to put it.

And a friend of mine, maybe four years ago, said, “I was having all these savings and great things,” and her credit score is 740 but she couldn't get it any higher. I told her your credit score doesn't have anything to do with your savings — it's about your credit and how you use it. And I think, “She’s a smart person with money, but doesn't know these things. And I bet a lot of other people don't know either, but I do.” So I asked Carol Robidoux, the publisher of InkLink — who I'd started doing some work for — if I can write this monthly column where I just explain this stuff to people that they should know about, hear about all the time, but really don’t understand?

Melanie Plenda:

One column you wrote that seemed to resonate with readers was about a financial scam. Can you tell us more about that?

Maureen Milliken:

One of the things I've realized is that most people — and I think it's human nature — think that they’re not going to get scammed. 

A close relative of mine — she lives in Manchester, she has a Ph.D., she runs a three-generation household, she’s smart and did get scammed. It actually began with her Facebook page being hacked and her calling a help desk that looked like a real one that turned out to be a part of the scam. So in this column, I go through how it happened, what her reactions were, what happened, what the fallout was, and of course how to try to avoid this happening to you. 

I tried to put it in a personal way that people would identify with because one of the biggest issues is the ways you can get scammed are just so devious and multiple. I felt that it resonated with people. I still get emails about it – it was a personal story about someone people could identify with. 

Melanie Plenda:

Over the last few months, you’ve also been tracking the cost of items at the grocery store and writing about those changes. Can you tell us more about that?  

Maureen Milliken:

I'm not really a good person with math, but I love making charts and tracking things. One of the big things I preach in my column is budgeting, and I think people are adverse to it for a lot of reasons, but it doesn't have to be some big, complicated, involved thing, and mine certainly wasn't. I have a certain amount I budget for groceries every month. I'm lucky, I live by myself, I don't have to worry about feeding aging parents or kids.

In the beginning last year, people would talk about the economy, and how grocery prices are going up. The more I thought about it — because I didn't really pay attention to the price of things because I would just as I went on through the month, and if I was running out of money, that's one less pizza that I'm going to order. Or go to my reserve coffee in the freezer instead of buying another pound of coffee. 

So I thought it'd be kind of neat to just track my grocery items, or some of them — a variety of them — over the months, especially with the tariffs coming, and see what happens. It's not a big scientific study, and I say that in the study. It’s just a snapshot to look at one person’s grocery bill and see how it’s affected or how it changes.

It's just a snapshot to look at one person's grocery bill and see how it's affected or how it changes. I don't necessarily think my grocery bill is typical, but I don't think any person is typical. It depends on your household — what you like to eat. I thought, “I’m going to track a variety of grocery items over at least the next year every month and see how they change.” And maybe this will make you look at your grocery items with a little more awareness too — or maybe you just like looking at charts, and we'll like to see how things change.

Melanie Plenda:

What items are you tracking? And why did you choose these items?  

Maureen Milliken:

I chose several produce items that I thought might be affected by the tariffs, or ones that people were talking about. So there's bananas, tomatoes, avocado, grapefruit and oranges. Then other things - eggs, milk, rotisserie chicken, coffee. cat food — because I have cats, and I figured a lot of people have pets, and they're buying pet food. Then things like dishwasher detergent, maple syrup, because of the Canada tariffs. So I tried to make it a variety that would give a picture where I'm not just looking at one item that might be affected by one type of tariff.

Melanie Plenda:

What do you hope people take away from all this? 

Maureen Milliken:

I guess my hope is the same thing that I've hoped through my entire journalism career with anything I wrote — is that people coming away from reading something I've done will be better informed and have things to think about that will have an impact on their lives. 

My dream would be that we stop hearing people on TV say, “My grocery bill has gone up, and I blame so and so for it”  and start figuring out what they can do. And in all my consumer columns, I try to stress, “You're the one in control of your money. You're the one in control of your finances.”

When you talk about the economy, you're talking about your economy for the most part, and no matter how little or how much money you have, you're in control of your own economy. You may have to do things you don't like or hard things, and things may not work out, but there's not these amorphous forces that you have no control over. There are some, but you can control what you do and what you buy and how you spend your money. And budget — that's my thing. Everybody needs to budget.

Melanie Plenda:

What do you have planned for future columns? 

Maureen Milliken:

I've started delving into the effects of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, because I think people really don't understand. My last column on it was what they really mean by no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, because it's not those things at all, what was going on with SNAP and what was going on with the Affordable Care Act. My next one is going to be about Medicaid — how it's affecting you personally as a consumer. I think people are kind of overwhelmed with what they're hearing and seeing and have no clue about the impact it has on them. Also I will continue to write about general things, like financial literacy because I don’t think people are really sure what that is or how it affects them. 

Melanie Plenda:

Maureen Milliken, freelance journalist and author of the “It’s Your Money” column with the Ink Link Group — thank you for joining us. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Defending democracy: How can it be done in a time of polarization?

In recent months, Granite Staters have gotten louder about preserving democracy. With a former president back in office, activist groups across the state have taken action in the streets, and at the State House, demanding democratic preservation. But what does that mean? To discuss this we have Dr. Christina Cliff, associate professor of political science at Franklin Pierce University. Welcome, Dr. Cliff. 

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitin Agnew

Melanie Plenda:

To start us off, several activist groups in the state say “we need to preserve democracy.” What do they mean by that?

Christina Cliff:

Different people have different meanings at different times. Democracy, by definition, is government for the people, by the people. What they're protesting is what they see as an erosion of things like checks and balances, particularly with executive orders essentially bypassing Congress. That seems to be the democracy that they're concerned about, because those executive orders and those executive decision-making processes seem to cut out the people requirements of U.S. democracy.

Melanie Plenda:

Why do people think our democracy is at stake? What rights are being jeopardized, and who is concerned?

Christina Cliff:

I think there's a variety of different groups and individuals concerned for different reasons. You know, particularly LGBTQ+ organizations are going to be worried about transgender bans that we've seen in the military and in athletics. There's going to be immigrants, both lawful and undocumented, that are concerned, particularly with the recent ICE raids and potentially changes to birthright citizenship. There's a variety of different people concerned. 

There's other decisions that more broadly affect people, like changes to environmental protection policy and changes to tariffs. All of those have the potential to impact various groups of people, and that's really where their concern is coming from — that, individually or collectively, they feel that things are changing, and they don't have what they consider their usual say in those changes.

Melanie Plenda:

Some people say democracy in the U.S. has always been flawed. Are protestors trying to preserve something broken, or trying to reinvent it?

Christina Cliff:

I think there's a variety of groups in the United States that would tell you exactly how flawed U.S. democracy has been, particularly people of color and women, for instance. 

Democracy is fundamentally flawed. It is going to be, because you have people who are fundamentally flawed. Winston Churchill said that democracy was the worst form of government in the world, except for all the others that have been tried. It's going to be messy. It's going to be problematic. Are the protesters trying to preserve a broken system? A little bit, because we don't like change, but are they also potentially trying to fix the broken system? 

I think some people felt like they had made some strides in fixing some of the things that they thought were flawed in our democracy,and now those changes are being rolled back. And I think, really that's where a lot of the concern and the anger comes from that.

Melanie Plenda:

There's been several protests this year, including a nationwide “No Kings” protest on June 14th. What was the purpose, and who is involved?

Christina Cliff:

It was individuals. It was groups. The whole purpose was to sort of collectively let the Trump administration know that they didn't believe he should have or should be taking as much power into himself as he has been, again, primarily with executive orders. It was intended to be semi-reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution, demanding rights. 

Melanie Plenda:

A number of people believe we are in a time of crisis. What might they be referring to? And how do we navigate what truly is a crisis?

Christina Cliff:

Crisis gets defined differently by different people. Like the Trump administration has argued repeatedly that the reason they're making executive decisions are because there are current, immediate crises. They said this with the immigration enforcement, and just in the last several days, sending the National Guard into Washington, D.C., saying that crime was a crisis there. The Trump administration is arguing that those are immediate, current crises for other folks. 

I think some of the perception of crises outside of the presidential administration is a broader issue of our politics and our society.

One of my bigger concerns is that what we're creating in terms of damaging democracy and damaging the political environment is polarization — not of our elected officials, but of our average citizens. We've been making people pick sides. And if they pick a side that isn't ours, we reject the person — not the idea, not the beliefs. We reject the whole person, and what essentially the average person is starting to see is an extremist approach to politics, where it's not just you have to be on my side, but if you're not on my side you're a bad person and you're a threat.

That's becoming normalized, and that's what has the potential, as much as anything else, to damage our democracy. If you cannot have the people work together towards a common solution, you can't have democracy. You won't have democracy.

Melanie Plenda:

While we are on the topic of protests, when have we seen protests similar to the ones we are seeing today in the U.S.? Was democracy at stake then? And what were they fighting for? 

Christina Cliff:

The United States has a long history of protest and protest movements. Obviously, there have been some incredibly successful protest movements.

The Civil Rights movement, for instance, the protests against the Vietnam War had an effect, and more recently, the Black Lives Matter movements and protests started conversations. These protests have to start conversations, because conversations then lead to discussions. Discussions then lead to decisions, and then you fundamentally get change. But you have to keep in mind, too, the Civil Rights movement was decades long, right? The Vietnam protest took years. 

That's one of the things with the current protest. You had the big nationwide No Kings protest, but if you go to any town in New Hampshire, on the weekend, you might see eight to 10 people in town square with their signs and stuff. You have to appreciate their dedication, but that's not necessarily the kind of protest movement that is going to demand or make change.

Melanie Plenda:

Is there any significant difference between those protests and today's?

Christina Cliff:

I think part of it is that not everybody sees the current environment as a crisis. The number of people that see this as a crisis is significantly different. When you had the Civil Rights era movement, it wasn't just people of color that were protesting — they had allies. When you had the anti-Vietnam War protest, it wasn't just the hippies, it was everyday people coming together and making a statement.

I wonder about whether or not this particular movement can get allies outside of the dedicated protesters. Can they pull people in? I think that's a fairly significant question for the protesters that want change.

Melanie Plenda:

You held an event at Franklin Pierce University called “You Might be an Extremist if …”. You briefly mentioned the polarization of picking a side. Tell me more about that. And how could that contribute to a failing democracy? 

Christina Cliff:

Extremist ideology is basically the idea that there is an “out” group that is a threat to your “in” group, and extremists define those “out” groups however it fits their narrative. But one of the reasons I gave that talk on campus was that one of the questions I wanted people to ask is, “Do you tend towards thinking about politics in particular, in an extremist fashion? Do you base someone on what you find out about somebody's voting habits, judge them and judge their entire character based on that?”

Now, everybody has potentially had these thoughts at one point. That doesn't make you an extremist, but it's something that we need to be paying attention to — are you separating yourself out? Part of the problem is, once you start doing that, you reject any possibility that the other people have valid points. You have convinced yourself that your group, that your ideas are right and necessary and that everybody else's ideas are wrong and dangerous. That’s not a functional place to be if you want to have a democracy.

That's very much what I worry about. It has become normalized to think that way. We have politicians, we have pundits, we have average people on the street thinking that way and talking that way. We need to be aware that we're doing it. 

Melanie Plenda:

Recently, there was a violent scuffle involving a neo-Nazi group and peaceful protestors at the State House. How does freedom of speech fit into a democratic society?

Christina Cliff:

You have to have freedom of speech. Do you have to have the American version? Not necessarily. Freedom of speech is one thing. Fistfighting is another. That's not freedom of speech anymore. That's a physical altercation.

We give hate groups space because we can't come together and condemn the hate speech. Does anybody think that their giant flag and their masks and what should be embarrassing rental truck getaway — did anyone think that was cool? No, they don’t.

But there's a lot of people across this political spectrum that aren't willing to say, “You’ve got freedom of speech all day, but we're not going to tolerate and support and acknowledge that.”

We have a number of organizations in this state that do this kind of thing on a semi-regular basis. We've seen protests at drag story hours. We've seen protests on the street. We've seen banners hung from highway overpasses. It's to get attention.

There was a moment a few years ago dealing particularly with school shootings, called the “No Notoriety Movement” — don’t name them, don’t give them the air time, don’t give them attention. I feel like we’re missing that boat.


It's a polarization. Again, it's people literally feeling like they are right and everybody else is wrong. And not only are they right, but they need to defend and demand change that fits their narrative.

Melanie Plenda:

Dr. Cliff, Can a democracy survive without a shared sense of truth?

Christina Cliff:

Maybe. It’s not going to be a democracy that the vast majority of people want. It's more of an oligarchy, where whoever shouts the loudest and demands that their truth be right would be in charge, and then everybody that follows them would be — but you'd also see that rotate over time. You'd see that fluctuate. I

I do think this goes a little bit along with the polarization. We do have to come back to the realization that there are objective facts in the world. You may not like them, but they exist. I think misinformation and disinformation, accidentally or deliberately, spreading inaccuracies has become so prevalent that we don't take the time to pay attention to whether it exists. It’s helping fuel that there is no truth. 

There are objective truths. We're so bombarded with content that is either misconstrued or just false that we're having a hard time deciphering where that truth exists. That's really about people working on their information literacy, taking the time to take a look and research stuff. Again, we’re all very busy. We don't necessarily have all the time in the world, but if something's really important to you, take the time to make sure you know what it's about.

Melanie Plenda:

Lastly, what can Granite Staters do to help our democracy move forward?

Christina Cliff:

If you want to protest, protest. It's a public effort to draw attention to an issue that is important to you. Get out and try to rally support for your cause. But I do think, on a secondary level, think about how angry you want to be about politics. Do you want to be mad? Do you want to be furious? Do you want to push your kids, their friends away from politics so that we have a whole generation of people who are like, “Oh no, I saw how bad that gets,” and opt out? We already have a low young voter turnout rate.

Think about how you want to engage in politics and do you want to be angry. And the second part of that is — don’t take the easy way out and opt out. Pay attention, because otherwise you may end up in a system that you really, really don't like and isn't healthy for you. So you have to work at it. You have to be engaged, and you have to figure out if you really need to be angry.

Melanie Plenda:

Thank Dr. Christina Cliff for joining us today.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

‘Critical Condition’: How has consolidation affected N.H. hospitals and patients?

The Granite State News Collaborative and its partners have undertaken a new series that explores who owns the hospital in your area, how that impacts your health and what kind of care hospitals offer. In addition to hosting “The State We’re In,” Melanie Plenda also serves as executive director of the Granite State News Collaborative, a group of more than 20 news organizations covering every corner of New Hampshire that tells stories that matter. The collaborative and its partners have been working on a new series, called “Critical Condition,” and it looks at the state’s hospitals, exploring how financial conditions impact the care we receive. Here to talk about the series is collaborative editor Jeff Feingold. 

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

Melanie Plenda:

Jeff, tell our audience about the series and what it will take a look at. 

Jeff Feingold:

It started with what's been going on in New Hampshire and all around the country actually — consolidation. In New Hampshire, larger hospital systems have been buying up hospitals over the last 20 years, but even more recently it's been more concentrated.

There used to be 26 independently owned acute care hospitals in New Hampshire, and now there are only five that are not affiliated. The rest are owned by Dartmouth Hitchcock, which has five other hospitals besides Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center,  and HCA Healthcare, which is a giant for-profit corporation that owns hundreds and hundreds of hospitals and other health facilities around the country. They own four hospitals in New Hampshire. Other hospitals are owned by Beth Israel in Beth Israel Leahy and Mass General as well as Concord Hospital, which owns Laconia, which previously bought Franklin Hospital. So we're in that situation now where there's just more and more concentration of ownership of hospitals.

Melanie Plenda:

Why does it matter who owns a hospital? Or how many hospitals are owned by the same parent company? 

Jeff Feingold:

There's a reason that these hospitals are merging. There have been financial problems in healthcare, as I'm sure all the viewers out there understand. The costs involved in health care have gone through the roof, and many hospitals can't really make it on their own anymore. So they find buyers, or buyers find them, and that's why there's consolidation. The consolidation allows them to streamline their services and look for more efficiencies with the goal of lowering costs and things like that. The issue in some cases, the owners are also making decisions to eliminate services at the hospital that they've acquired. 

A perfect example is what happened in Rochester with Frisbie Hospital, which was being acquired by HCA. What they did was, after two years, eliminate labor and delivery services. That means that all those patients in need of labor and delivery services or another service that was eliminated have to travel to Portsmouth, which also happens to be an HCA hospital, or another hospital and find a new doctor. They also might have transportation issues, cost issues, because the hospital that they were used to is no longer offering the same services or the services that they require. That can make a big difference in a patient's life.

Melanie Plenda:

How has New Hampshire been affected by these hospital consolidations already? 

Jeff Feingold: 

That is what the project is about. There was a piece in The Boston Globe not too long ago about how EMTs and other first responders are being trained in labor and delivery techniques up in the North Country, because there's no obstetric care there. As we know, New Hampshire is infamous for having an inadequate transportation system, so it's really difficult for someone who has a lower income, who doesn't have a car, is elderly or is a disabled person to obtain services when a hospital no longer provides those services that they used.

Melanie Plenda:

What does this mean for those seeking health care in the state?

Jeff Feingold:

It's making it more difficult. It also is making it more expensive, because what happens is that when a service is more concentrated in an area, the prices will go up. That's one of the major concerns of people who watch hospital consolidation trends — the cost of health care — and it is continuing to rise even with these supposed synergies, as they say in the business world, the streamlining of these efficiencies. 

Another concern is that insurance rates might also rise, because as these hospitals gain more power with the hospital systems they can negotiate rates differently than other hospitals with the insurance companies, and that means it's very hard to just keep track of that kind of stuff.

Melanie Plenda:

What role does the state government play in all this? 

Jeff Feingold:

That is a major piece in our series. The initial story was written by Meera Mahadevan on how this whole consolidation thing works. It is an excellent piece — I recommend everybody to read it. 

What she found is that one of the things we just don't know enough about is this hospital consolidation phenomenon because the state basically doesn't track this stuff. We used to have a process called a certificate of need process, and we had a Certificate of Need Board, which would approve all major acquisitions of technology, the big-high priced items, expansions and additions to hospitals. But back in 2016, the state eliminated it saying there were issues with the certificate of need process. 

But what happened is the state no longer has an entity that keeps track of all that’s going on. What that has left us with is basically all the oversight of health care systems is provided by the attorney general, John Formella. 

Melanie Plenda:

How is recent news impacting the series — or is it? For example, the recent cuts to Medicaid.

Jeff Feingold:

Unfortunately, New Hampshire hospitals rely on Medicaid funding because that's a steady flow of income. It's not as much money as they would get from a patient that has commercial insurance or can pay out of pocket, but it's still a steady flow of money. 

With Medicaid cuts, that flow of money will be lower, and that'll affect hospital finances once again. What would happen is it may risk putting another hospital in the kind of position where it has to be acquired — or the worst case would be if it has to close — because they don’t have an adequate stream of income. I'd say it's another pitfall for hospital financial people to get through. It's not a good thing. It's a stream of income that is going to be lower, and that's not what the hospitals need right now, especially hospitals on shaky ground.

Melanie Plenda:

What stories have been done so far? What’s coming next? 

Jeff Feingold:

The stories that have been done so far are the piece by Meera, and a second piece on the Health Care Consumer Protection Advisory Commission. She did a really thorough look at that, and that actually inspired us to do future stories, such as what's the deal with primary care in New Hampshire? Because a lot of primary care practices have shut down or there's just not enough primary care physicians in New Hampshire to provide for people to make appointments. She's  also looking at the state of primary care in New Hampshire and what is basically happening with labor and delivery and other services as they are being cut. 

Another piece that's coming up is an article by Paul Cuno Booth, formerly of New Hampshire Public Radio. We're lucky to have him working with us now. He's writing about the demise of that Certificate of Need Board, and, more specifically, what's going on with oversight. How is New Hampshire going to be able to get this information?

Another piece that we're working on is on the role of urgent care facilities, which is really interesting because it turns out because of this shortage of primary care physicians, people are going to urgent care, or they're even encouraged to go to urgent care, for what they used to go to for primary care support. That's a really interesting topic all by itself.

Melanie Plenda:

How can people follow these stories?

Well, they can certainly go to our website and check out our Critical Conditions page. But many of our partners are picking these stories up. I would encourage them to look there because I know that several of them pick up everything we've been writing on this, and just judging by the interest in these they're really eager to publish our work. 

It's a story that affects a lot of people. A lot of people are interested and I think that we're coming up with some great information that people will be happy to find out about.

Melanie Plenda:

Interesting! Jeff Feingold, editor with the Granite State News Collaborative, thank you for joining us. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

The state of mental health care amid an effort to end ER boarding

In 2023, the N.H, Department of Health and Human Services launched Mission Zero, promising to eliminate emergency department boarding — the practice of holding admitted patients in the ER while they wait for an inpatient bed to become available — by March of this year. Because of those practices, patients requiring care for mental illness often go to hospitals, with their experience resulting in hours, days and even weeks awaiting an inpatient bed. Have New Hampshire hospitals been able to fulfill this tall order of eliminating boarding? To discuss that are Lisa Madden, president and CEO of Riverbend Community Mental Health and vice president of behavioral health for Concord Hospital, and Susan Stearns, executive director of NAMI New Hampshire, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

Melanie Plenda:

Lisa, to start us off, could you please tell us who is affected by emergency department boarding?

Lisa Madden:

What we have historically encountered is folks that are in the midst of a psychiatric crisis who come to the emergency department looking for some acute level of help. There haven’t been sufficient resources in the community to serve them, so they've been waiting in the ED for extended periods of time.

This had to do with not having sufficient number of beds to be able to meet the demand, but it also had to do with making sure we had the right community support programs to try to have places where people could go after they received the acute level of care they needed in the hospital and could be supported in the community. These are folks that are really dealing with an acute crisis and need a higher level of care, as would anyone else going to an emergency room for a medical condition that needed that level.

Melanie Plenda:

Susan, one of the reasons people go to NAMI NH is to get support, including support for ED boarding. As someone who has heard personal stories related to boarding, what are people going through in these situations?

Susan Stearns:

There are 26 critical access hospitals across the state, so I will give you a sense, but it isn't specific to any one hospital, and it's going to vary slightly from hospital to hospital.

The really common themes we hear are individuals who are considered to be at some risk to themselves or others, are there involuntarily so they're not able to leave, unlike you or I. They report having their personal belongings for safety removed from them. The very lucky ones have a television in the room where they're waiting, usually behind Plexiglass, but that isn't standard. I've heard from folks who tell stories of how a security guard actually proved to be their lifeline during an extended stay in the emergency department, because that security guard talked to them about movies that they liked in common. So we hear a lot of these real challenging stories. 

Another really common theme is the inability to choose, like when you might take a shower and practice your own basic hygiene — things that most of us don't think about when we think about someone who may be spending an excessive time waiting in an emergency department. These are folks who have really very limited things to pay attention to. We do hear from parents of kiddos who report restraints being used sometimes, and we certainly hear about that from adults as well. So these are experiences no one would want to go through. And I would say that our hospitals would agree — these are not experiences anyone wants to go through or watch your loved one go through, and that's why we’ve had so many folks being willing to try and make New Hampshire a real leader in reducing and eliminating this problem.

Melanie Plenda:

Lisa, as president and CEO of Riverbend Community Mental Health, can you please tell us more about what community mental health centers and certified community behavioral health clinics offer in New Hampshire?

Lisa Madden:

Community mental health centers are designated centers within regions of the state, and the catchment areas are designed by the state. I can speak to Concord, which is Region 4. We have nine other designated areas throughout New Hampshire. We provide the state-supported services for people who are acutely ill, for young people or adults — and that means people who are living with severe and persistent mental illness or severe emotional disturbance.

Our system of care is comprehensive. So not only are we able to do therapy, be it individual, group, family, couples, work, but we are also able to provide extensive case management and community support services, often referred to as functional support services. That's where folks can actually go into the community with the folks we work with and help them achieve the goals they need to be able to stay living in the community.

For young people, it means we're heavily involved in schools. We also have services for adults in which we help them get some employment through our supported employment program, and we have lots of different group activities to try and help people learn how to successfully manage their symptoms and stay in the community. 

We have everything from education and teaching people about mental illness all the way up to residential programming, where we, in fact, are part of the network of support for people who need to live in structured housing, and all the treatment in between. 

Melanie Plenda:

If people don't need as much help as what is offered at a hospital, a community mental health center or a certified community behavioral health clinic, what is available to them, Susan?

Susan Stearns:

Our community mental health centers offer a broad array of services, but if someone's in a crisis, there’s the 988 crisis system and our Rapid Response System. That is a resource that is available for everyone and can provide you with access. So it's a critical resource. 

We have crisis stabilization units in our state. Those are also available for folks who might need to not be alone but haven't reached that point where they really need to be under the supervision that you might see in an emergency department. We also have some places in our state where we have peer respite available that are run by peer support agencies. There are a number of alternatives for folks if they aren't meeting that level of acuity that they absolutely need to be in an emergency department. 

We don't think it should be a one-size-fits-all model. There should be multiple ways to access the care you need. NAMI New Hampshire offers various support groups. Our peer support agencies are wonderful resources in the community. We want to make sure, again, that folks are able to access support they need, but absolutely get that clinical care that our community mental health centers and now certified community behavioral health clinics are truly the experts in providing. 

Melanie Plenda:

Lisa, behavioral health doesn’t receive as much funding as other departments. Why, in your opinion, is that?

Lisa Madden:

I've been doing this for a really long time, and I wish I could answer that question. I mean, my passion is to give people access to health care that takes care of the whole person. My particular area of expertise tends to be within the behavioral health world, but I just think it's part of who you are. Why we don't get the same support, I think, still falls under people not understanding the full scope of the illnesses. There's certainly still some stigma. We're trying to work to educate people to understand medical conditions that require appropriate medical care. But you know, it's taken us a long time to be able to be seen and heard in a way that says this is an important element of whole person health, and we need to fund it appropriately and unfortunately.

Behavioral health is often one of the elements of treatment that's not adequately funded and is cut early in the process of cuts. I will say our state is very committed to our care and is very committed to the treatment of people with mental illness and addictions. Our work with the department has been very, very collaborative to try to find ways to keep people served, but I honestly don't know the answer why people won't fund us appropriately.

Melanie Plenda:

So, Susan, if someone is struggling, what should they do? What should their steps be?

Susan Stearns:

The best life skill is to be able to ask for help. Absolutely, there's not one of us who gets through this life without having been at a point in our lives where we have to ask for help. So I often tell parents, if your child is struggling, helping them reach out and access care is a really good life skill to have. So yes, absolutely, tell someone that you're struggling. Maybe you might pick the wrong person who doesn't know what to do with that, but try not to be shut down by that.

Also, if you have someone that you know, that you're concerned about — maybe it's a co-worker or a neighbor — ask them how they're doing. That communication is so critical. It doesn't mean you have to have a solution. I can tell you, if you're really concerned, anyone can call 988 so you can access assistance, so there's no reason to hesitate to engage in that conversation. 

I would tell anyone who is even thinking about calling 988 to do it. As soon as you question if you're at a place where you should call 988 the answer is yes. You can also chat with them online, and you can text 988, so it's a really critical resource. But remember that you're not alone, that there are folks who are there to help, and that there are many folks who are walking this walk as well, and that treatment is available for most people. 

Lisa Madden:

What Susan said is just so spot on, that nobody is alone, there are multiple avenues for support, and people exist in order to be able to offer guidance to recovery. That is why they’re there.

I’ll reflect a little bit on even my role as a parent. What I used to say to my son, and still say to my adult son anywhere along the line, is that when you feel like you don't have any choices or if there's any reasons to believe that, ask somebody who can help you see your choices. But never feel like you do not have choices, because you do, and you just might not see them that day, and someone else may be able to help you see them. 

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you to Lisa Madden, president and CEO of Riverbend Community Mental Health and vice president of behavioral health for Concord Hospital, and Susan Stearns, executive director of NAMI New Hampshire. If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available 24/7. Call, text, or chat 988, the national suicide and crisis lifeline.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

The impact of massive federal Medicaid cuts on New Hampshire hospitals and patients

President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill — recently enacted by Congress and signed into law — made sweeping changes to Medicaid, the government program that provides health insurance to low-income adults and children. These changes will affect not only the estimated 184,000 people on Medicaid in New Hampshire, but also every resident who accesses health care in the state. What are those changes and what will they mean for you? Here to discuss that is Matthew S. Houde, system vice president of government relations at Dartmouth Health. 

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Judi Currie:

First, let’s talk about what Medicaid is. Who’s on it and why?

Matthew S. Houde:

Medicaid is a health insurance program that is essentially a partnership between the federal government and state governments, and it's administered by the states. It covers approximately 72 million Americans, as you said, about 185,000 in New Hampshire. It does cover categories of people — so children, pregnant women, those with disabilities, as well as people based on income level, pursuant to the Affordable Care Act expansion provision which New Hampshire adopted as well. I'd also say, though, that it serves, or has served, as a vehicle to ensure coverage for most of the vulnerable population. So it's a really important health insurance program.

Judi Currie:

The new law charges premiums for those making more than 100% of the federal poverty line, and families making 225% of the federal poverty line. Those monthly premiums for an individual vary from $60 to $100, and $190 to $270 for families. It also raises prescription drug prices. What do you feel the impact will be?

Michael S. Houde:

I'm going to step back just a little bit. It's a major tax bill that has sweeping implications for health care, right? So I'd put the continuation of those tax cuts, plus increases in defense spending and increases in border security, cost a lot. In order to find the savings to implement the continuation of the tax cuts from the first Trump administration, Congress had to find significant dollars in terms of savings. So the place that they looked at was the Medicaid program. They're actually estimating up to a trillion dollars in savings from the Medicaid program over the next 10 years, which would be roughly a 10% cut. 

In terms of what it does, I'd put the implications into two buckets. It has beneficiary implications. You talked about the premium contribution or co-pay requirements. It also has new eligibility sequencing, so someone would have to prove their eligibility twice a year now, instead of once a year, if you're in the expansion population. It also has work-in-community-engagement requirements. So those are some of the beneficiary implications or changes in terms of financing. 

The financing bucket — I'd say there are pretty significant implications there as well. One is that it limits the amount that states can charge provider taxes in order to generate revenue for the Medicaid program. New Hampshire has a Medicaid enhancement tax to help fund its Medicaid program, and that tax is a 5.4% charge tax on net patient service revenue assessed on all hospitals. The state then takes that money, shows it to the federal government, and the federal government then matches those dollars, which helps further fund the Medicaid program. So there's that front-end limitation that's going to take the provider tax down to 3.5% over time. 

On the back end, it also limits the amount of the federal contribution in a way that I won't get into, other than saying state directed payments are going to be reduced, as well from what's an average commercial rate to an average Medicare rate. So there will be less dollars coming from the federal government to support the state's Medicaid program.

I guess the final piece that I put in that payment bucket would be the limitation on the amount of time that you can look back after someone qualifies for Medicaid. It's 90 days today, and in the future, it'll be either 30 days for some populations and 60 days for other populations. So that you will have potentially been providing care for people who have been sick — they get eligible, qualified for Medicaid, but you can't get reimbursed for the cost of that care. So those are kind of the big buckets that I put it in.

Judi Currie:

Let's focus on that 90-day look-back — that just means that the service that you've rendered is not eligible for reimbursement or they have sort of a lag till they can resume care?

Matthew S. Houde: 

When I refer to that, I refer to the time period from which a provider will receive reimbursement. So you can look back to say, today again — 90 days you've been providing care, or you provided care 90 days ago. Then someone gets eligible for Medicaid, and you get reimbursed. You could submit for reimbursement for that coverage, so that will change to a shorter window of time once someone becomes eligible.

Judi Currie:

You mentioned the expanded Medicaid pool. My understanding is that a lot of the benefit was going to be helping people dealing with substance use disorders. That kind of ties into the two questions of whether you know whether they'll be able to afford the premiums or meet the work requirement. Can you look at that expanded pool? Does it feel like this? This new bill is just going to sort of decimate that or wipe it out?

Matthew S. Houde:

Well, I'm really concerned about the implications for coverage for beneficiaries. We know that Medicaid, including Medicaid expansion, provides really lifesaving care for people — substance use disorder treatment, mental health treatment, primary preventative care, in addition to emergency care. So the implications of individuals — up to a third of New Hampshire’s expansion population that would be affected. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation's estimates on looking at the state's prior attempt to do work requirements, those people wouldn't have access to those coverages. 

Judi Currie:

What does that mean — not just reimbursement for the providers who would be providing that care, but for those people who need that care and would try to seek that care? Do they then delay? Do they then decide that they're not going to seek the care because they know they don't have insurance anymore or they can't afford it? And what are the implications of that? 

Matthew S. Houde:

I think it exacerbates problems, health problems, for people I trust. We're going to talk about this shortly, but there are also significant implications in terms of when people delay care, the condition can become significantly more acute. People still need care, and they will come to the emergency department or be brought to the emergency department to seek care. And what happens is that's probably the worst place to seek care because it's the most expensive and it's also considerably backlogged. There are access issues with respect to that care. So I hope that answers your question. 

Judi Currie:

We also often hear about people not being able to find care because organizations don't want to take on new Medicaid patients, and I think from the perspective of the hospital, they often don't have a choice in that. Are there differences between how the large southern New Hampshire hospital chains or connected affiliates are going to be impacted versus the rural hospitals up north?

Matthew S. Houde: 

I think there are significant concerns for rural providers. For Dartmouth Health, the proportion of patients that we serve that are Medicaid beneficiaries, is roughly 15% of the patients that we serve — that's a combination of New Hampshire and Vermont. Obviously, the medical center is located on the border of New Hampshire and Vermont, but I think about some of the further geographically located member hospitals and health care providers. Do they have a mix? What's their mix of patient population? 

I talked about the stressors with respect to access. I'll just elaborate a little bit on that. Today, hospitals are roughly at 90% capacity. Dartmouth Health, or Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center here in Lebanon — we’re over capacity. What does that mean? It means that we have patients who are waiting in hospital beds. They no longer need the acute care that we provide, but there's not an available post-discharge facility, long-term care unit that either has the capacity to take them, or if they're not Medicaid-eligible upon discharge, the willingness to take them take them because they can't survive based upon no reimbursement. So those people who no longer need to be in our beds really are taking up a considerable number of beds so when that accident happens on I-91 or I-89, do we have the ability to take that patient or do we have to send to a much further place — Albany, Austin, wherever?

So yes, I have genuine concern for what's going to happen in rural facilities. I think about the contraction of service lines. We know that there are maternity care deserts in the northern parts of New Hampshire and certainly parts of the northern New England region. That's only going to be exacerbated by the implications and the rollout of the bill, in my opinion.

Judi Currie:

There’s another part of this — the Rural Health Transformation Program. Can you tell us how that will affect New Hampshire?

Matthew S. Houde: 

As part of the act, there was $50 billion allocated to help anticipate the challenges to the rural health care system. They wanted the Congress to allocate some dollars to alleviate those concerns. Let's compare, however, $1 trillion over 10 years to $50 billion over five — just doing the math, the numbers available for those dollars aren't going to cover the holes that are created.

I'll use the New Hampshire example. The way that I understand that that provision works is 50% of those dollars go to the states equally. So say New Hampshire gets, per year, 1/50 of $5 billion because the second component of the relief is determined at the discretion of the administrator of CMS with a rural lens. So it's not a full $10 billion per year. It's $5 billion per year divided by 50. It's like $100 million per year. If the spend for New Hampshire Medicaid is over 10 years — call it $30 billion, so $3 billion a year. The two don't meet — the size of the bucket of the rural relief program just won't be able to plug the holes that are created by the shortfall that the underlying act creates. Do I think it will sustain some of the rural programs that we just talked about being in jeopardy? I hope so. Do I think it will do so completely? I'm skeptical.

Judi Currie:

What can you tell us about how you're preparing to have to take on this additional role or responsibility?

Matthew S. Houde:

You had suggested this earlier about hospitals not having a choice in terms of their federal laws that require, for example, when people show up in emergency departments — that you provide care regardless of care regardless of coverage. But we also are a nonprofit health care system whose mission is to provide, among other things, health care to people. We're not going to stop providing that health care, and we're going to help our communities and our region figure out how to navigate that space. It's going to be challenging, and more challenging to do so with fewer resources. 

When I think about this, I think of New Hampshire Medicaid. The state didn't reduce Medicaid reimbursement by 3% right? That proposal in the state House was rejected by the Senate and was accepted at the end of the day as flat rates — but it's flat rates. So it's not like costs aren’t increasing. Reimbursement is flat on the state level, and it's going to be shrinking and reducing on the federal level. So that just creates huge tensions and challenges to continue to meet the needs of the communities that we serve, including serving as a resource for the northern part of the state, and we have clinics in the southern part of the state, so to maintain the services that we do will be challenging. You're not going to expand them to meet rising access, because you're just not going to have that ability.

I think about programs that our obstetrics unit has implemented, for example, with federal grant support to equip EMT providers to know what what they need to know in order to deliver babies in the North Country, if they show up in an emergency department. It's going to be more and more important for us to work with the state and any of the federal resources that we might get through this rural fund as part of the bill to make sure that we just continue to provide resources for people, so that if people have to travel, at least they're stable locally before they travel. Can keep care local by using telehealth to connect with providers in the North Country and elsewhere? All of those are going to be really important things for us to consider as we pivot to addressing the new reality under the Medicaid program that this bill has instituted.

Judi Currie:

Matthew S. Houde, system vice president of government relations at Dartmouth Health — thank you for joining us.

As deadline gets ever closer, lawmakers try to agree on a new state budget

-By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Every two years, lawmakers approve a state budget. These laws do more than decide where your money goes. They also set policy ideas and objectives. What is in this year’s budget bills? Judi Currie discusses that with Phil Sletten, research director for the N.H. Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, independent research nonprofit that looks into the financial well-being of the state and its residents, and Anna Brown, executive director of Citizens Count, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating voters about the political process. Brown is also executive director of the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership, and Public Service at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law.

Judi Currie:

Anna, can you talk about the recent history of state budgets? What sorts of things have been in them and what have they accomplished? 

Anna Brown:

The first thing to keep in mind is that New Hampshire is pretty different from the federal government in that we have to pass a balanced budget, so we have to keep our spending limited. In the past few budget cycles, there was a lot of federal money coming in, and business tax revenue was coming in strong. So we saw a lot of state spending and also some tax cuts, some business tax cuts. They also repealed the interest and dividends tax in New Hampshire, we're losing out on a lot of that federal funding that has been drawn down, clawed back, cut, and we're seeing some slowing on some of that business tax revenue. So that's a challenge that is different from previous years.

It's also worth noting, though, that a lot of what happens in the budget happens in a trailer bill, House Bill 2. There's policy changes in there that can be pretty significant. So, for example, we've seen a restriction on abortion after 24 weeks. We've seen a ban on e-cigarettes for people under a certain age, and so on. So that policy part of the bill has become more important in recent years. Ten years ago, it was maybe around 30,000 words, and this year we're looking at close to 100,000 words.

Judi Currie:

Phil, where are we at in the process with the current budget?

Phil Sletten:

We’re  in the last planned stage in the state budget process. That process actually formally began last year. New Hampshire, as you noted, Judi, has a two-year state budget. The majority of states actually have single-year state budgets, but New Hampshire is one of about 20 states that has a different timeline. 

The state agencies actually put together their budget requests last summer. This process has been going on for about half of the duration of the current state budget, which is in effect from July 1, 2023, through June 30 of 2025 — so the end of this month is when the current state budget expires. The governor looked at those state agency requests and then put together her version of the state budget that she introduced back in February. The House considered the governor's version, made the changes that it wanted to see and then passed its version in early April. 

The Senate was the next part of the process. The Senate looked at the House budget, made the changes that it wanted to see, and passed a different version, its own version, earlier this month. Now the House and the Senate have these two different versions of the state budget, and they have to reach agreement on them, because there can't be two state budgets that pass. There can only be one version. So the House didn't agree to the Senate's changes, and as a result they asked for a committee of conference. What that is a group of seven legislators, four from the House and three from the Senate, and they negotiate a final version of the state budget — or at least in the usual process what is a final version of the state budget. And that version is being negotiated right now in the committee of conference, and is going to go then for a vote ahead of both for both chambers. 

Both the House and the Senate have to agree on that one version and pass it, because it is a state law like other state laws. Then the governor would have to approve it before it became state law. Now we're towards the end of the process, because we're running out of time on the clock. The current state budget is only in effect through the rest of this month, so we are in the final stages of what you might consider the regular state budget process.

Judi Currie:

Anna, what have budget talks been like? Republicans hold the governor’s office, as well as majorities in the House and Senate. Did the Democrats get any proposals in? 

Anna Brown:

As you mentioned, there is party unity, technically, but there were divisions between Republicans in the House and Republicans in the Senate, as Phil noted.

For example, the House was interested in adding some policy changes — ending annual car inspections, limiting vaccine requirements, and so on. So it's not this perfectly unified vision under Republicans of what it should look like in the budget going forward. That being said, there are priorities in the budget that Democrats do support. I know that, for example, the Senate version of the budget restored Medicaid reimbursement rates, and that looks to be something that there's agreement on going forward. 

In New Hampshire, the budget is such a big piece of legislation — there usually are wins and losses for everyone. But the question is going to be: Can Republicans all get on the same page right at the end? It's interesting to note, Governor Ayotte has actually criticized some in the Legislature for their low revenue estimates and saying that that's not enough to cover what we need to pay for in state government and that it’s basically playing into the Democrats' hands by setting us up for tax increases in the future. So that was kind of an argument that I didn't expect to hear come forward, and it can show that it's not always party lines where things break down.

Judi Currie:

Where do things stand with reconciling those differences in the committee of conference?

Anna Brown:

As I said, the House has moved up on their revenue estimates. They're willing to meet the Senate — not quite at the fully high level that the governor was proposing, or even the Senate was proposing — but still much higher than they were.

A lot of tension, though, is over this Group 2 retirement benefits for police and fire. There's tension among the Senate, and I think that we will also see potentially in the House — is there enough money in the budget to do this? Is it the time to do it? Of course, if we can't come to an agreement on the budget in our state legislature, that's a real problem, because the fiscal year is ending, so then we'd have to be looking at some sort of continuing resolution or temporary holdover, which is pretty rare in New Hampshire.

Judi Currie:

What kind of impact will these proposals have on the state? 

Anna Brown:

One thing that I think we should talk a little bit about here, because it's been in the House version, the governor's version, the Senate version in some form, is expanded gambling and legalizing slot machines for New Hampshire. That is going to be a good source of revenue for the state going forward, and also a large cut of that revenue goes to nonprofits as part of the existing charitable gaming system.

But it's interesting to reflect. I remember less than a decade ago, there was huge resistance to expanded gambling in New Hampshire, and now we've sort of arrived there, and it doesn't even seem to be a central part of the debate. So people might be noticing, is that slot machine a real difference in New Hampshire's landscape or not? I don't know. So that's just something I think is worth highlighting.

On the immediate level, I think people might also notice tax and fee changes. You might notice a higher fee when you're registering a vehicle, but a lot of these changes are more long term when you're looking at changes to Medicaid or what's going on with university system funding, that has long term changes in terms of how our economy is moving, how much debt people are carrying, and so it wouldn't be an immediate impact.

Phil Sletten:

One of the places where there hasn't been a resolution yet in the committee of conference is around developmental services funding. That's a place where the Department of Health and Human Services identified — if developmental services were to be funded in the House version of the state budget — 278 people who are expected to need services over the next two years of the biennium who would then be on a waitlist for those services because there wouldn't be funding available. Now, the proposed versions of the state budget do allow, if there's revenue available, DHHS to seek additional funding during the biennium. However, we haven't seen a significant waitlist for developmental services in the state for most of the last decade because those services have been funded at levels needed to fund those budgets. That's not to say there aren't people waiting for those services, but those tend to be workforce challenges, as opposed to the nominal state funding challenge.

The university system component is, I think, important as well, because most of the funding that goes from the state budget to the university system is used to offset tuition for in-state students. So if that were to be reduced, that could have an impact on what tuition for in-state students does look like. 

There's a couple other areas of the budget that are specific to particular services, particularly those that the House is proposing cutting and the Senate is proposing folding back in some way that may be difficult to either duplicate or replicate in other parts of the economy. I’m thinking about things like the Office of the Child Advocate, which provides oversight over the Division of Children, Youth and Families, and the Human Rights Commission. These are organizations that the state funds that could have those operations shifted to other services within the array of services that the state provides or to other entities in the state that aren't funded by the state or aren't as directly funded by the state, but those could have particular impacts on specific populations that are served.

Judi Currie:

What else are you two following at the State House in the next few weeks? Let’s start with Anna, then to Phil. 

Anna Brown:

There's absolutely a lot of final bill negotiations happening in other conference committees, and those bills — whether they reach agreement or not in the Conference Committee —still would need to go before the full House and Senate again to agree with the committee recommendation.

A couple of issues that I'm watching allow evictions at the end of a lease. Right now, you have to have some sort of cause — you can't just say, “Hey, it's been nice knowing you. Goodbye.” That's been a major priority of Rep. Bob Lynn, the former chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. It's been a long brewing debate.

 And other bills — for example, outlawing puberty blockers or hormone treatments for minors. That's been another sticking point in how it might be implemented between the House and the Senate. 

Phil Sletten:

I'll be watching to see if the legislative chambers do also pass a House joint resolution that's a clear sign that they think that the budget may not be resolved by July 1, and to see in these last stages of committee of conference which separate policy bills as well as funding proposals are included or not included within the state budget, and how that might affect the committees of conference for other bills that are being wrapped up, in terms of developing their final proposals

But I’m really watching what happens in the budget and what the full Legislature considers, or what considerations the full Legislature has with regard to the committee of conference version of the state budget. Because, remember, it's a small group of legislators who are on a committee of conference, and then they have to convince their fellow legislators in both the House and the Senate that the committee of conference budget is something that they could support. That's a key variable, I think, going forward, but it'll all be wrapped up, or at least we'll know a little bit more by July 1.

Judi Currie: 

Interesting as always. Phil Sletten, research director for the N.H Fiscal Policy Institute, and Anna Brown, executive director of both Citizens Count and the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership, and Public Service at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law, thank you both for joining us today. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

What does celebrating Juneteenth look like in today’s political climate?

New Hampshire is observing Juneteenth, a holiday that has evolved to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States after the Civil War. At the center of that commemoration is the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire. The organization promotes awareness and appreciation of African American history and life in order to build more inclusive communities. That’s a tall order in today’s society, when programs that discuss that history and appreciation are under fire. Here to discuss Juneteenth and more is JerriAnne Boggis, the executive director of the Black Heritage Trail.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s start with Juneteenth at the Black Heritage Trail. Can you tell us more about what Juneteenth is and what events you have coming up this weekend and beyond?

JerriAnne Boggis:

One of the things I do want to say about Juneteenth is just to make a correction. Juneteenth, the celebration of June 19, which is the derivative of Juneteenth, really doesn't celebrate the end of slavery across America. It does celebrate the end of slavery in Galveston, Texas. But we know that there were pockets of enslavement across the country long after that — long after two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was made. Juneteenth was just when the enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, heard that they were free, when an army came in to enforce proclamation. And so it's traditionally a Texas celebration, but it spread across the country and became what it is today, celebrating emancipation, but slavery really didn't end then. 

This year our focus is “The Reckoning: Reclaiming the Past, Remembering Black Voices, Reshaping the Future.” And this is a look at the stories that we tell about our founding fathers and really try to add the other side to that story — that the founding fathers were not exactly paragons of virtue. They did some amazing things, but America’s story is so complex and so one-sided, so we thought we’d look at the narratives of some of the black descendants of some of these founding fathers — the people they enslaved.  

Melanie Plenda:

Can you tell me about Ona Judge and her story? 

JerriAnne Boggis:

Ona Judge was born into enslavement with Martha Washington. She was what they call a “dowager slave” — she came into the marriage and was added to the enslaved people that George Washington had.

On her 18th birthday, she was told that she was to be given as a wedding present to Martha's niece. And I think before that, she might have thought that she was part of the family, but then she realized that she was this property, this tool for commerce, and so she decided to be responsible for her own life and her own well-being, to do what our founding documents say — to pursue her own happiness. So she escapes the presidential mansion with the aid of the black community in Philadelphia. She gets on a little ship that brought her to Portsmouth to the underground railroad.

We know she lives here for a while, and she ends her life in Greenland, New Hampshire. Her story is one of courage, fortitude, creativity, and defiance. She defied the most powerful man in the country.

Melanie Plenda:

What was it like putting this event together this year? I’d imagine there were more obstacles than usual. 

JerriAnne Boggis:

So when we started this early January, it was a different world than where we ended up now and where we ended up a few months after deciding on this theme.

We thought this was a brilliant theme, because we like to bring these thought-provoking themes to our population so we can have some critical thoughts about our history. Where we began, where we are now, and where we can go by really looking honestly at what our history is. It didn't prove to be that way, as we had hoped, because our political environment, our cultural environment, totally shifted. Last year, when we were bringing the Amistad [a 19th century slave ship that was the site of a historic slave revolt], we had about 500 students registered for the tours to come and see the Amistad.  This year, when we put out the information on this reckoning around the Founding Father —  to date, we have zero students signed up.

We were wondering what was going on. What is the story behind this? Historically, we bring a lot of students through our tours. After speaking with some of the teachers, what we found out is that, because of the environment — the assault on DEI programs, the assault on black history, the divisive concepts legislation — the teachers were very reluctant to send this information home with students, because all it would take is one angry parent or one person not believing that children need to know these stories, or that we're changing the notion of what the founding fathers were to open an investigation on the school and their whole curriculum. 

This whole thing had a very chilling effect on what teachers felt that they could do or wanted to do, the chances they wanted to take, the fear surrounding their livelihood, and so we ran smack dab up against this whole notion that we were telling a story that didn't put the founding fathers in the positive light that they needed to be in.

Melanie Plenda:

Were you surprised when the funding cuts and the anti-DEI fervor started happening?

JerriAnne Boggis:

I was totally shocked. I thought America had moved much further along this line than we actually did. It just made me see and believe that this was all window dressing. For what purpose? I'm not sure. I should probably say that it really depends on our leadership, the narrative, the way people fall around. We had an air, an aura around civility, the kind of values that we say we stand for. It was this thought that we all stood for those things, right? But within an instant, that changed. 

I don't want to talk about the people who believe this, because there is a pocket of us that totally believe in these values and principles. But right now, what I'm grappling with is the loud voice — are those the actions of the majority or just a loud group? Is it the one-third that believes this or the two-thirds that really are working towards equality, a just society, a country where those who want to thrive are allowed to thrive?

Melanie Plenda:

How would you sum up the overall impact on the Black Heritage Trail over the last few months? 

JerriAnne Boggis:

What we're seeing is this trickle-down effect of these orders, and we've had to rethink some of our strategic plans as an organization. I still think it's a little too early to say just what this is. I think a lot of us were shell-shocked, so we're still trying to figure out the environment that we're in. We're kind of in a bubble. We're kind of singing to the choir, so the people who support us are our choir, so we’re able to continue to go on. 

But what we're seeing is the damage that a long-term effect could do. We're not in the classrooms talking about this, engaging our students in critical thinking, where we can then be bridge-makers, break stereotypes — create these places for real intellectual dialogue and thought, then there's the danger of losing this generation.

One of our strategic plans was to bring our stories to New Hampshire seventh and eighth graders, when they study New Hampshire history. That's when we would bring the stories to them — the local stories, the stories that are right there in their backyards. They don't get that again after they leave, so then we lose that ability to tell them. Our community dialogues are in libraries or spaces where people gather, our community gathers. If we don't have our libraries anymore, then how do we gather? How do we communicate? 

We have to think about what we value, and our organization is committed to be truth-tellers, to telling these stories, because we can see what happens when we know these stories, how they break down barriers, how they break stereotypes. They distort the stereotypes and they give us a better understanding of how we got to where we are, and where we are going now. 

Melanie Plenda:

Despite all this, you’re still here, and your organization is still putting on events. Can you talk about the dedication it takes — from you and your volunteers — and what that means to you?

JerriAnne Boggis:

So I think for us as an organization, it’s what we value. Because you have made a commitment to these values, you're seeing it through. It's not just creating a program, it's not just writing something up — it's creating this sense of belonging. It's going beyond that narrative. It's going to the human story. 

We rely on our volunteers, we rely on our boards to keep us going. We rely on each other to keep optimistic about the environment that we are in, and we rely on the value and the impact that we can see. When we started this work eight years ago — and before, with Valerie Cunningham who started in 30 years ago — I can look back at our first conversations. They were very superficial — it was an early part of learning. Now, our tea talks are like a place for deep, meaningful dialogue on issues that are so complex that you get deeper into a subject. That’s what it takes — this building up of community, over and over.

Melanie Plenda:

For our audience, what would you like to tell them about celebrating Juneteenth this year? 

JerriAnne Boggis:

This year, we're going to be at the Portsmouth African Burying Ground on June 19 —  it is the 10th anniversary of the African Burying Ground Memorial Park. So we’re going to be celebrating this 10th anniversary.

Because of this really complex time that we're in, this troubled time, we thought we would also do a fun activity with our communities. There's a dance that's viral on Tik Tok called “The Boots on the Ground,” and we will end our celebrations with that, asking the community to come together in this dance. Dance and song and that joy have always been part of Black communities from African times — during times of hardship, during times of joy and sharing, the community came together and expressed that joy in being together. 

We can look at the civil rights movement. We can look at the enslaved people doing the stomp dance. It is protest, showing that we can get through this. You can't stop us. We will get through this. You can't erase us. We are here. You can't silence us. We're visible. We may not be able to say certain things, but our feet can. So we're asking our community to join in this dance, because we need all our boots on the ground now in understanding this environment that we are in and doing what we can towards justice and equality, equity and inclusion.

Melanie Plenda:

After Juneteenth, what’s next for you and the Black Heritage Trail?

JerriAnne Boggis:

We've got our tours throughout the season, people can come and join us — not only here in Portsmouth, but across the state. We're in four other towns across the state. We've got our marker projects going up.

And, for the Black New England Conference, which I'm really excited about — that is one of the programs that we really had kept as we head towards the 250th anniversary [of the United States]. So we're bringing together a group of young social media creators to discuss the state of African Americans over the last 250 years. Have we improved? Have we moved? What have they seen? We wanted to hear from the youth and their perspective. What has this march to 250 years brought and meant for African American history, African American culture, equity, enterprise, the media, how we're portrayed? What are they seeing and what are they thinking? 

Melanie Plenda:

Great talking to you, as always. Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire Executive Director JerriAnne Boggis — thank you so much for joining us. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Tackling the increase in New Hampshire’s motor vehicle crashes and fatalities (Copy)

Just a few months into 2025, the Granite State is experiencing a deadly surge on our state highways and roads. As of May 2025, there was a 9.68% increase in motor vehicle crashes from this time last year, along with a disturbing projection of possible fatalities to come. Rosemary Ford talks about the increase in motor vehicle crashes and fatalities in New Hampshire with Lt. Chris Storm, N.H. State Police commander of special services, and Tyler Dumont, the N.H. Department of Safety’s strategic communications administrator and public information officer.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitoin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Rosemary Ford:

Lieutenant Storm, you’ve been with the N.H. State Police for over 20 years. What have you seen that explains the reasons behind the increase in crashes? What are the leading causes?

Chris Storm:

​​First and foremost, our impairment. Second, our speeding. And third, distracted driving. These three continue to be the leading factors in our fatalities out here on our highways in New Hampshire.

Rosemary Ford:

From 2020 to 2024, studies have shown a 233% increase in fatalities among 16-to-21-year-old vehicle operators. Lieutenant Storm, that’s a steep statistic. During the pandemic in 2020, fewer people were driving. As things opened up, that obviously changed. Did that play a role in forming these statistics? 

Chris Storm:

We don't actually have any statistics that tell us that it was the absolute factor, but if you look at it holistically, it obviously contributed to some of that. I can't give you a specific number or tell you that, yes, that was the reason, but we have seen an increase in those youth and younger drivers that are seen to be crashing and dying on our highways.

Rosemary Ford:

What about other changes? During the pandemic, some 15-to-16-year-olds experienced driver’s ed over Zoom. Could there be a connection with some of this? 

Chris Storm:

I don't know if there was a difference between having it in a classroom or not having it in a classroom — the students still had to get out there and get all their driving hours. So it wasn't that they were just driving virtually. They were actually out on the roads, practicing and driving. They still had to do the required hours with that individual that's 25 years or older, so I don't have a good statistic on that and whether that was a factor or not.

Rosemary Ford:

What role has technology played in these increases?

Chris Storm:

Technology, even though it has some unbelievably great benefits, also can be very detrimental if you're taking and dividing their attention or being distracted while you're operating a motor vehicle anytime. A moment of inattention can easily lead to something that could be catastrophic.

Rosemary Ford:

Tyler, you are the New Hampshire Department of Safety’s strategic communication administrator, and public information officer, can you tell us about your role? 

Tyler Dumont:

My position here is really focused on trying to educate and inform people about issues that are going on in our state when it comes to highway safety issues. Really obviously, our target is drivers, pedestrians, cyclists — all different people who use the roads. We’re trying to get the message out about the risks of dangerous behaviors on the road and encourage safer behaviors.

Rosemary Ford:

So what’s the plan? How can the state prevent crashes and deaths? 

Tyler Dumont:

Our plan has really developed over the past year. I'd say we have started to integrate a lot of the work that we're doing with an external organization. In fact, we've hired a media vendor to work with us on creating New Hampshire-centric, homegrown campaigns to ultimately reduce crashes and save lives on our roads. We do that kind of in two different ways. It's really a data-driven approach that targets those two areas, which are deterrence and prevention.

Rosemary Ford:

Is there anything that the state Legislature can do that hasn’t been done already? Any new laws for seat belts, helmets or driver’s ed curriculum?

Chris Storm:

Currently, the Legislature actually has several bills before them to help increase traffic safety. First and foremost, there's a bill to increase the penalties for refusing to take a post-arrest chemical test if you've been arrested for DWI. There is a bill on the table right now to increase the penalties for individuals that are traveling over 100 miles an hour. There's also another bill on the table right now that will add penalties to aggravated driving while intoxicated if you were driving on a controlled access highway in the wrong direction, because we've also seen a spike in wrong way driving. 

And then we have another bill, right now, that would increase the license loss for youth operators for every time that they get a traffic summons and not only lose their license, but they would also have some educational mandates, and they would have to attend certain classes to help better their driving abilities.

Tyler Dumont:

My role is to really analyze the current crash data that we have, and not so much to really focus on the possible laws or ways that we could change. It's really focused on what we do have and trying to identify some of those issues and the ways that we can address them, as to what's currently in the books.

Rosemary Ford:

As we continue into the summer, when there are more drivers of all ages, and New Hampshire gears up for Bike Week on the 14th, are there some things that we can do as drivers to keep everyone safe on the roads? 

Tyler Dumont:

I think trying to get ahead of some of these issues. The lieutenant mentioned earlier that motorcycle crashes often trend up in the summertime — just in 2023, unfortunately, we had a near 20-year high in motorcycle deaths. Again, it's about monitoring the data and tracking the data. With Motorcycle Week arriving, along with warm weather, we've rolled out some motorcycle safety messaging for riders and drivers. We started that early, before the season even started, back in April, and we've tried to get that messaging to those who will be using the road.

Chris Storm:

We can encourage everybody to share the road. We want to make sure that people understand that — that motorcycles are everywhere, that we want people to be able to see them. It's not necessarily that the motorcyclists are always doing something that is wrong. Oftentimes they're not doing anything wrong, and it's because someone didn't see them, or they pull out in front of them. We want people to share those roadways with everybody. We also want our motorcyclists to remember to also drive safe as well and ride safe so that everybody gets home safely.

Rosemary Ford:

Lt. Chris Storm, N.H State Police commander of special services, and the N.H. Department of Safety’s strategic communications administrator and public information officer, Tyler Dumont — thank you so much for joining us today. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Will Canadians boycott New Hampshire this summer?

By all accounts, Canadians are not happy with us. Could it be the talk of making them the 51st state? Or perhaps the 25% tariffs? Maybe it’s both. And because of that, they might not visit us here in New Hampshire this summer. In New Hampshire, fewer visits could mean millions in lost revenue and taxes. Here to discuss what’s going on and why is writer Granite State News Collaborative reporter Jonathan Decker. 

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This story had been edited for length and clarity.

Melanie Plenda:

You recently wrote a story for the Granite State News Collaborative looking into how a Canadian boycott of the U.S. could affect the New Hampshire tourism industry. What inspired that? 

Jonathan Decker:

I was actually just having breakfast with my fiance, and we were both just kind of talking about tariffs and the economy. She actually asked me, “I wonder if it's gonna affect visitors from Canada,” and I thought “That’s a really good idea for a story.” Then I started looking into it and then I pitched it to the Collaborative. I thought there's really something here. It turns out there was.

Melanie Plenda:

What did the Canadians you talked to say about visiting the States this year. What are they thinking? Why aren’t they coming? 

Jonathan Decker:

The primary Canadian I talked to was a dual citizen, and because she travels back and forth from the U.S. and Canada all the time, I asked her about what people are saying. A lot of people are kind of boycotting travel, and even just spending in general, that is associated with the United States over the 51st state comments and the tariffs. 

I think it depends on which person you're talking to, but this source told me people were much more upset with the 51st state comment than the tariffs. The 25% tariffs were baffling — that’s the word she used — because Trump did come up with and sign the trade agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico in 2017-18, and now he's kind of reneging on that.

A lot of Canadians also expressed confusion, but it really seemed to be more of a personal thing that's really what's keeping people from visiting. It’s almost like a betrayal from a friend. I think a lot of Canadians think that things soured really quickly. It’s like having a friendship with somebody and then they say, “I don’t want to see you anymore” — that type of thing.

However, it does look like it's going to be more older people who are boycotting and younger people who still might come down, especially for hiking, outdoor recreation — that type of thing. 

Melanie Plenda:

There are even marketing campaigns in Canada advising citizens not to visit the States and buy Canadian goods. What’s going on there?

Jonathan Decker:

Yes, so that seems to be happening in various different businesses. It seems to be pretty grassroots. I first heard about this, actually, from my editor, Jeff Feingold, when he was traveling in Canada, when I was working on this piece. He actually wrote to me and said, “Hey, there's actually all these signs in the grocery store that say, ‘Buy Canadian,’ that products are labeled so you know if you're going to buy the U.S. product or the Canadian product, to encourage local consumption and production.”

Another one of my sources was Charlie St Clair. He's a state representative, but he's also the man behind Bike Week, and every year he goes on a big odyssey across the country to promote Bike Week in Laconia, sending out mailers and magazines. And he told me that when he was driving, he was listening to an AM radio station in Canada, and he heard an ad telling people to stay home, don't travel to the United States this summer, and spend your money in Canada. So it just seems to be a grassroots and populist movement to counter President Trump's rhetoric.

Melanie Plenda:

What will that mean for New Hampshire’s economy? What sort of an impact will that have? 

Jonathan Decker:

It's a little difficult to get exact numbers, because even the Division of Tourism here doesn't track specifically how many Canadians are coming in. Many of them come through Vermont. But we do know that the state raises a significant amount of tax revenue from the rooms and meals tax — I think in 2023, $450 million was raised. So if you just saw a 5% dip, that could be $22 million of lost revenue from Canadians not spending on those hotel rooms and those meals and restaurants. But again, we can't really know the exact big number of the year until it happens.

Melanie Plenda:

What about the local tourism industry? Do they see a way to adapt to this change? 

Jonathan Decker:

I think it depends on what region you're in. One of my sources mentioned that they might be able to adapt due to lower gas prices. So we might just get more American visitors willing to travel and drive into New Hampshire. That was probably the biggest adaptation I saw. But as far as replacing Canadians specifically, I didn't hear anything about that. But again, you might be able to make up for this with domestic travel.

Melanie Plenda:

What about repairing our relationship with Canada? What will it take? 

Jonathan Decker:

I think that's going to vary from individual to individual, but one theme that I noticed was that there seems to be just more blame at the higher levels. As far as Canadian and American citizen interaction goes, there doesn't seem to be that much bad blood. But when it comes to the top of the pile, the political class, I honestly think a change in American leadership would be a strong first step to that. 

One of my sources thinks it could take a generation to get over this. It depends from person to person, but a lot of Canadians do feel very hurt by this sudden turn on them as a trading partner and as an ally, especially with the rhetoric surrounding being the 51st state. 

I'm not sure what Trump is trying to achieve with that rhetoric. I don't know if the United States would actually like to manage Canada and add an additional 35 million citizens. His motivations surrounding the trade war are a bit difficult to splice as well, because if it's not a dissatisfaction with the initial trade deal — he said it's been to pressure them to do more about fentanyl trafficking. But according to the DEA, Canada is not a major supplier of fentanyl to the United States, it is Mexico, China and India. Canada already has its own huge fentanyl problem as well. They're much more of a consumer than an exporter of the drug and the components needed to make it. 

So I'm not sure what his strategy is in that sense. I understand pressuring Mexico — that makes a lot more sense to pressure Mexico and China, because that's where it's coming from, but we will see.

Melanie Plenda:

That was interesting. Granite State News Collaborative reporter Jonathan Decker — thank you so much for joining us today. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

What the first American pope means for Catholics and the world

The world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics now have a new leader, Pope Leo XIV. What does that mean for the future? The Very Rev. Jason Jalbert, one of the vicars general for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester — which encompasses all of New Hampshire — and the rector of St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Manchester, discusses what the papacy is, former Pope Francis’ legacy and what lies ahead for his successor.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Melanie Plenda:

For those who may be unfamiliar, can you briefly explain the role of the pope in the Roman Catholic Church?

Father Jalbert:

The pope is the head of the church, the Vicar of Christ. He has many different titles, but most importantly, he's the successor of the apostle Peter. So we call him the successor of St. Peter because Peter received that role from Jesus himself, and we read about it in scriptures. Jesus said, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” And so the church was built on him.

So each pope after Peter has been the successor of Peter. We respect him very highly because of who he is, the person that's chosen to be the pope then represents Christ on earth for us and for all the Catholics.

Melanie Plenda:

Popes usually pick new names upon their election. Can you explain this tradition and what it means?

Father Jalbert:

It goes back to St. Peter again. Peter, son of Simon, son of John, became Peter, the name that Jesus gave him. And so over the history of the church, those who have been elected as pope have taken on a name, and many of the names have been repeated over and over and over, just like Pope Benedict was the 16th, and now we have Leo, the 14th. Pope Francis was just Pope Francis, because no other Pope ever had the name Francis, and no other pope has ever taken the name Peter. So there will probably never be a Peter the second. They'll only just be one Peter.

The pope's name says a lot about who they are and how they look to the future. So it means a lot to choose that name, and it gives them a whole new identity, when you think about it.  It's very life-changing.

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s turn to Pope Francis, who, before becoming pope, was a cardinal in Argentina. He served as pope for 12 years. What impact did he have on the world and the church? What will his legacy be?

Father Jalbert:
Like all other popes, they have an impact with the role they have. Everything they say and do has an impact. Going back to the day that Pope Francis was elected — he came out on the front of St. Peter's Basilica in the square, in the white cassock, having just been elected, and he looked pretty serious, because it's a very serious role. There's a great weight to the role of being pope. He came out and he asked people to pray for him.

I think people remember that quite clearly. Then, at the end of his pontificate, after being sick, he went out on that same balcony in St. Peter's Square, asked people to pray for him again, but gave his final blessing — which we didn't think would be his final blessing — to Rome and the world, but then so many different things in between showed his desire to make Christ known. He was an evangelist, he preached, he taught Jesus Christ, and he traveled to many different places throughout his pontificate. He really cared for the poor, the elderly, the sick, the unborn. He had a great desire to lift up the dignity of human life.

During the COVID pandemic, when everybody was just in their homes and not traveling, there he was in the middle of St Peter's Square, praying for the world, praying for each and every one of us. He held the monstrance, which is a gold-looking object that looks like the sun, but in it is the host that we believe is truly Jesus Christ. He blessed the world that evening with Christ in his hands. There are so many different things.

Melanie Plenda:

Turning back to the current pope — what were your first thoughts when you learned about the election of Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV?

Father Jalbert:

I think it came quite quickly after the fourth vote on that Thursday afternoon. I was with a priest friend, and we had the television on, watching live coverage, just like so many people were — all eyes on the chimney and the seagull family that hung out by the chimney, just waiting for the smoke. And all of a sudden the smoke started, and it was white smoke, and we had a pope.

Then the cardinal announced his name in Latin. When I heard that name, Prevost, I wasn't exactly sure who it was, except for the friend I was with who said, “Oh my. That's Cardinal Prevost from the United States.” You wait to hear the name and he took the name Leo, the fourteenth. What is that going to mean?

Then he comes out onto the balcony and says his first few words, hearing him speak in Italian for that first greeting, and it kind of made me feel a little better, because it's just hard to think about an American pope as a typical American speaking English. I spent most of the day learning more about him as more news came out about who he was in interviews — people that know him, from priests to his own siblings, which was another interesting thing to hear from the relatives of the new pope, which we haven't really had that before.

Melanie Plenda:

Did you ever think you would see an American pope? And what do you think the impact of his papacy will be in the United States?

Father Jalbert:

I think, first, like so many other people, I never thought there would be a pope who was born here in the United States, or a pope from the United States. So that idea was something that I think most of us just sort of put in the back of our minds. I'm not even sure if many people hoped it would happen, but it has happened.

They say that out of all the American-born cardinals he's probably the most un-American, in the sense that he was born here, grew up here, and had his formative years here in the United States, but then served outside of the United States for so many years as the head of the Augustinian order, then as a bishop in Peru, then as a archbishop and cardinal working in Rome. So he's had a great experience, and it's not like he was just plucked from here to become pope.

As far as the impact in the United States — I think he will, and I think he already has had an impact. They say the number of searches online about the Catholic Church in the United States has skyrocketed. People are interested. The more that we get to know him, I think the more people are getting to love him, and if they love him and they see that he's a genuine, authentic man who has been elected to lead the church, people might be interested in learning more about the church and about how to become Catholic. We'll have to wait and see. But I think he’s really making a great impression already in the short amount of time that he has been the pope.

Melanie Plenda:

How have local Catholics reacted to the news of a new pope?

Father Jalbert:

From what I've heard in my own parish, people are excited. They're happy. It's very unusual to have a pope who can speak perfect English. So to hear him speak English is a little strange at first, but then to be able to hear the pope speak our own language very clearly feels like we should be proud. He's from here, he's one of us, just like the Polish people were so proud when Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II, and they still are so proud.
Melanie Plenda:

As you mentioned, Pope Leo XIV comes from the Augustinian order. Can you explain what that means?

Father Jalbert:

It's an order that follows a rule that comes out of the teachings of St. Augustine. St. Augustine is an early saint. His mother prayed for his conversion for many years, and he became Christian, then became a priest and a bishop and wrote extensively, and his writings are very well known, especially the confessions. There’s an order that’s based on St. Augustine. They're best known for being teachers and educators in high schools and colleges — Villanova being one of them, and closer to us is Merrimack College.

Melanie Plenda:

Can you touch a little bit more on what you think his priorities will be?

Father Jalbert:

I don’t think the secular media wouldn’t fully understand his role and what his mission is as the pope. It's not to be political, but it is to be Christ here the world, the visible presence of Christ. He’s looking out for the people, from the unborn to the elderly and everyone in between. That’s not being political — that’s just being Catholic, being Christian, what we believe the human person to be.

He's already had quite a few opportunities to give homilies and give talks, and he really is focused on unity. He wants to be a bridge-builder, and that's also one of the roles of the pope. “Pontifex Maximus: is the great bridge, and so popes have been given that title. So unity, communion and just the love of Christ and the peace that Christ has come to offer — made that known right from the beginning as he offered Christ's peace to the people on the day of his election, as he came out for the first time as Pope Leo XIV.

Melanie Plenda:

That was so interesting. The Very Rev. Jason Jalbert, thank you for joining us today.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

The impact on New Hampshire of potential massive cuts in public funding for the humanities

Art, culture, literature, thought — collectively, these disciplines and others make up what’s known as the humanities. Recently, the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, cut 80% of the National Endowment for the Humanities’s staff, also cutting almost all grant programs and rescinding grants and program contracts that have already been awarded. Why are the humanities important, and how does public funding help society — and you? Here to explain that, we have two guests — Michael Haley Goldman, executive director of New Hampshire Humanities, and Joe Marshall, president of the Jefferson Historical Society. 

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Melanie Plenda:

Michael, can you give us some background on the cuts? What happened and when? How did you find out?

Michael Haley Goldman:

This has all taken place in just the last few weeks, really. April was when we got notice of the changes in policy. 

It's probably important to take a step back and think about how this federal funding has been coming. New Hampshire Humanities is an independent nonprofit, so we're a little bit different from some of the other groups that have been seeing changes to the federal funding coming in the state, like the State Library or the State Council for the 

We aren't part of the state government, but we do have an affiliation with the National Endowment for the Humanities, meaning that, even though we're a nonprofit, we receive federal funding that is matched by private funding here in the state of New Hampshire. That federal funding is something that we usually get in about a five-year contract, and we received notice late on April 2nd that an email came out from the National Endowment for the Humanities indicating that our existing grants in contract had been fully canceled. 

So that means all funding before April 1st was stopped, which is about $500,000 of funding for New Hampshire Humanities to support the cultural sector of New Hampshire that was pretty much unavailable in the middle of our year.

Melanie Plenda:

What impact has this had so far on New Hampshire Humanities and New Hampshire?

Michael Haley Goldman:

I’ve been proud to say that we've been able to head off a lot of the worst possible impacts. But that doesn't mean there's not been a lot of damage here in New Hampshire from this change. We've been as careful and clever as we can be in using the funding that we have available. All of the grants that we give out — we usually give out more than $100,000 in direct grants each year — that we had already scheduled are going out, but there's about $40,000 that we were planning to, with the second half of the year, that's just not going out to New Hampshire. 

We had to reduce it by a little less than 100 programs this year. That's usually hundreds of programs that we do around the state that we basically fund in what you could call mini-grants.

Melanie Plenda:

Joe, please tell us about the Jefferson Historical Society and its work with New Hampshire Humanities. 

Joe Marshall:

The Jefferson Historical Society is also an independent nonprofit, and we are staffed entirely by volunteers. Our mission is to preserve and promote the town of Jefferson's history.

In regards to Michael and his staff and our deepening relationship with them over the past couple years, we applied for us to be able to present an exhibition, “Crossroad Changes in Rural America.” We worked with Michael and his team through that application process. 

Through the process as we were ultimately chosen to be one of the venues to host the exhibit,our relationship with the humanities has deepened, and it is become extremely obvious to us as to how important it is for organizations like ourselves, to be able to bring what is really quite a large event to our community, and it's all been through the help of the New Hampshire Humanities.

There's been a tremendous, tremendous amount of training in personal work and site visits and just overall support and encouragement through the humanities to essentially help all of us bring our communities together up here.

Melanie Plenda:

And Joe, that exhibit is going on now. What impact has the society or Jefferson seen from it?

Joe Marshall:

In regards to Jefferson, we have been through quite a little bit, as with everybody else, during the tail end of COVID. We lost our town hall to a fire in February of 2021, and with that, we had to find a new home for the town to do its work. We are now situated in what's known as the Jefferson Community Center, and it's a very large building, a former elementary school, and is being repurposed to house the community. 

That is when we applied for the exhibit. It was kind of a crossroads moment for us as a community, with this type of venue becoming available to us. As far as I'm concerned, and I know there are many others that feel the same way, it has enhanced our ability to function as a community and brought people together in a way that we have not been able to do previously. So we're pretty excited about that and what it opens up to us for the future. 

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s talk more about the benefits of the humanities. What are the tangible, or perhaps in tangible, benefits for having the humanities and these public programs? 

Michael Haley Goldman:

People get hung up on this idea of “what is the humanities?” and you can go through this laundry list of academic subjects, but what I think is really important, what's often maybe intangible, is what the humanities does, and at the heart of that is how it brings people together in community. Just like what's happening in Jefferson, just like what's going to be happening around the project at the Museum of the White Mountains at Plymouth State University.

It's really about the way that we come together to talk about who we are as individuals, talk about who we are as communities, and talk about where we're going. The humanities is the fabric within which all of that happens. When we go into communities, we are trying to help those communities do what they want to do as a group. We are about how they come together to talk about the problems they have, about what's important to them, about how they see their challenges and their solutions — all of those things come naturally out in the kind of humanities program that we do. We've been learning over the last 50 years as an organization, how to create the environment for that to happen. 

Joe Marshall:

We've had this fantastic run of togetherness within our community. This has been something that has built a great deal of anticipation over the past two years, brought the community together, and that has been a wonderful thing to see. I believe it's helped us as an organization, and it will help us in the future. We cannot thank the humanities enough for what they've done to help us move forward. 

Michael and his group have promoted and made available to us some of those “New Hampshire Humanities To Go” programs. We've had four of them here, and it has brought in incredible audiences and tremendous speakers, and it is really bringing that community aspect, and I can’t say this enough. I can just see this after all this happening just moving forward exponentially.

Melanie Plenda:

Michael, you mentioned investing in the humanities. Can you talk about the economic impact of that?  

Michael Haley Goldman:

There's a lot of different numbers, and I will talk about the economic impact, because that  knowledge is really important and a really big part of why it's necessary to have cultural investment within the state. But I also want to remember that economic value is only one value, as we are investing in New Hampshire.

But economically, we know that we have a pretty much a 2-1 investment. So for every dollar of investment from the federal government, there's $2 invested privately to respond to that. And if you look at the creative economy, which we’re a part of and is an affiliated, but not identical, part of what we do, that's more of an average of 5-1.

Even for what we're talking about with Jefferson — this is a small Smithsonian exhibit that my organization and organizations like mine bring to the entire country, and they talk about even larger investments around the idea that this little exhibit is really having something like a 7-1 impact in terms of what it brings to a community, because people come to see an exhibit, and then they spend their time in town spending money that they wouldn't otherwise spend.

So this is really not something that we should see as a free meal that is being given to New Hampshire. It is an investment that brings back far more local investment than what it actually costs us to do in the state.

Melanie Plenda:

Michael, what happens next for New Hampshire Humanities? How will it deal with these cuts going forward?

Michael Haley Goldman:

I think the most important thing for me to say is that we are not going away. We have been in the state for 50 years, and we intend to be here for the next 50 years. But I also can't say that that is going to be as easy as it would have been under other conditions, and that we really need the community to show its support for New Hampshire Humanities and show its support for the cultural sector at large. 

This is a really difficult time for all of the cultural organizations within the state as we look at the possibility that the State Council for the Arts might be dropped from the state budget. I realize that is not final yet, but the fact that we're even talking about that as a real concern. The fact that the Institute for Museum and Library Services, which is one of the least-known federal groups but is a huge underpinning of libraries across New Hampshire through the State Library, is talking about having that funding lost to the state. This is an incredibly important time for groups like mine to be present and to be supporting amazing groups like Joe's and other groups in every city and community. All these places in New Hampshire that need their support to keep these cultural touchstones, these incredible organizations that underpin our communities alive and well and active within New Hampshire, and we intend to do that. But we are going to need culture, we are going to need the support, and we aren't going to do the work at the level that we've been doing if we have half the budget that we had last year. We won’t be in 172 communities next year. We will still be there, but it will be on a much lower level. It’s going to be felt town by town in New Hampshire.

Melanie Plenda:

Well, good luck to you both. Michael Haley Goldman, executive director of New Hampshire Humanities, and Joe Marshall, president of the Jefferson Historical Society. Thank you for joining us. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visitcollaborativenh.org.

Breaking down the potential fate of key bills in the Legislature after crossover

The current legislative session at the State House is winding down. What have our legislators been up to? And what’s next in the current session? To discuss that is Anna Brown, executive director of Citizens Count, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating voters about the political process, as well executive director of the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Service at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This folder is edited for length and clarity.

Melanie Plenda:

You’ve been following the work at the State House. The Legislature recently had something called crossover. Can you explain to our audience what that is and why it’s important? 

Anna Brown:

Crossover is the last chance to vote on bills before they cross over to the other chamber. You can sort of think of it as halftime in the Legislature. In New Hampshire, they vote from January to June, and at this halfway point, we really see what bills really have a chance to become laws, and which bills just don't stand a chance.

Melanie Plenda:

Which bills made the cut at crossover? 

Anna Brown: 

The state budget passed to the House, and that kind of is its own story. We could do an entire interview all about that budget, but certainly there were other big bills that moved forward. 

We have both the House and Senate passing bills to expand eligibility for the Education Freedom Account program, which lets students take the per–pupil share of state education funding and spend it on private or homeschool expenses. The House and Senate have also passed parental Bill of Rights, which vary a little bit, but among other things, they would require teachers to respond to parent inquiries within five to 10 days. And both the House and Senate have passed versions of a ban on sanctuary cities. So what that means is towns and cities would have to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. They couldn't adopt policies that are intended to block immigration officials.

Melanie Plenda:

Were there any surprises? 

Anna Brown: 

I was surprised that the state Senate passed a lot of bills that are pushing back on restrictive zoning at the local level. Historically, in recent years, the Senate has really been hesitant to say what local cities and towns can and can't do when it comes to minimum lot sizes or parking requirements, and so on. A lot of those bills moved forward. 

Also, one thing that surprised me a little bit is there is a bill that passed the Senate that would increase eligibility for free meals for students at up to 200% of the federal poverty level, with some reimbursement from the state. But this would allow schools to do it. It would sort of be an opt-in. That's not the full-blown expansion that Democrats have been advocating for in the past, but it was still movement forward on an issue that I wasn't sure was going to change this year.

Melanie Plenda:

Which bills have a chance of passing both houses and head to the governor for approval or veto? 

Anna Brown:

I mentioned the Parents’ Bill of Rights, the expanded eligibility for the Education Freedom Account, the bills that are related to immigration enforcement. Those are moving simultaneously, with slightly different versions in both the House and the Senate, and we've seen Governor Ayotte indicate she's in favor of these sorts of things.

Also, I think that it's likely we're going to see a bill that would move the state primary from September to June. This was another issue that the House and Senate wrangled with in the past, but now we have some new legislators, and it looks like it's going to happen — not for the next election, but the one after that. Lastly, we actually already saw the House and Senate fast-track a bill to roll back some bail reform measures, and that has been signed by Governor Ayotte already. It was a big priority for her, and so we're seeing some additional restrictions on bail.

Melanie Plenda:

Which ones are unlikely to pass, and thus stall at the State House?

Anna Brown:

When I'm looking at bills that were popular in the House of Representatives and really have no chance in the Senate, the first thing that comes to mind is bills to expand legal marijuana. Expanding legal use — whether it's medical or saying you can use it for private consumption — all of those bills, I think, are pretty much dead on arrival in the Senate. 

I think the Senate is also going to be hesitant on some bills related to harm reduction. So in particular, HB226 would allow drug-checking equipment, which is currently illegal, to be used for some harm-reduction purposes. So think a fentanyl test strip, right? So people using drugs, ideally, are not going to use something that is highly lethal or contaminated, but the Senate has been pretty unsure about that. 

There's also a bill that would limit the ability of the Department of Health and Human Services to require vaccinations beyond what is in state law. The bill specifically notes requirements for chicken pox, hepatitis B vaccinations will expire, and it would just limit that ability going forward, unless the Legislature specifically puts it in law and says, ‘This specific vaccine can be required.’ So I'm not sure how that's going to fare in the Senate, and definitely I'm going to keep an eye on it more if that.

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s talk more about housing. We already discussed zoning. What else about housing made it to crossover and what might make it to the governor’s desk?

Anna Brown:

We are seeing simultaneous bills moving forward in the House and the Senate that block local regulations that are stricter than state building codes, cap minimum lot sizes, allow residential development in commercial zones most of the time, and limit parking requirements to no more than one space per unit. So, as I said, it's moving in the House. It's moving in the Senate. Those seem likely to move forward to the governor. 

A couple other bills: In the House, we have HB577, which would expand the right to build a detached ADU, which stands for accessory dwelling unit. The size of those would go up under this bill. So that one passed the House. We're waiting to see what will happen in the Senate. Then the House also had a big priority, which would allow eviction at the end of a lease without cause, HB60. This has come up a couple times in the House of Representatives over the years, and so that's another one that we'll wait to see what happens in the State Senate.

Melanie Plenda:

What about education bills? What did and didn’t make the cut? 

Anna Brown: 

Education was probably one of the biggest topics this year. So much legislation has moved forward on this issue. We've already touched on Education Freedom Account eligibility. We've talked about the Parents’ Bill of Rights. Governor Ayotte has also prioritized adding restrictions on cellphones in classrooms. We are seeing that move forward. But then there's sort of social issue policies that are moving forward that we're seeing, particularly coming out of the House. 

HB446 would require parental consent to administer the annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and that's from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It asks questions about potentially harmful behavior, such as drug use or violence in your home. I remember when I took it in high school, there were also questions about how much milk you drink a day. It's a public health piece, and there's always been, or not always, but there is a state law that requires opting in for parents for other general surveys. But there was an exception for this, so parents can opt out, but there's this assumption that students are going to participate. This would reverse that, and it could potentially decrease our ability to get data on some of these public health concerns, and potentially could reduce funding. 

Another one, HB324, prohibits K through 12 schools from making, “any material that is harmful to minors available to students.” That's a pretty subjective phrase. The bill defines the material to include various content related to sex and violence, so it requires school boards to adopt policies that would address complaints regarding harmful material and so on. This is definitely one of those trickier social issues. Is this a book ban? Is this about protecting children from groomers? You'll hear a lot of really heated language. So watch for that in the Senate as well.

Melanie Plenda:

Related to that, let’s explore bills connected to trans rights. What has gone through the Legislature so far? 

Anna Brown:

There is an intersection with school policy here, for sure. For example, SB211, would limit school sports teams based on the biological sex of each student's birth certificate issued at the time of birth. Male sports would be open to all sexes. It would apply to grades 6 through 12, as well as public colleges and universities. So that's definitely been a big priority for a lot of Republicans. I think that it probably has a pretty good chance of passing in the Senate.

The House and Senate have also passed their own versions of a bill that would create an exception to the state anti-discrimination law related to gender so that you could segregate biological sex for locker rooms, sports, hospitals, and so on. Sununu vetoed a very similar bill last year because he said it conflicted with current state law against discrimination based on gender. But it looks like the House and Senate are eager to see if Governor Ayotte has a different position.

There are two other bills that would prohibit medical treatment or interventions related to gender. So HB377 would make it a felony to provide hormone treatments and puberty blockers to a minor unless there is a “medically verifiable disorder of sex development,” and then HB712 would prohibit breast surgery on persons under age 18. Once again, exceptions in the bill are malignancy, injury, infection or malformation.

Melanie Plenda:

What about immigration? How will the bills that made it to crossover fare? 

Anna Brown:

This is definitely something Governor Ayotte has been very vocal about. I definitely expect those bills to become law.

There are a couple of bills that we're still sort of waiting to see what happens. SB13 prohibits undocumented or illegal immigrants that were issued a license in another state from driving in New Hampshire. This has come up in the past. It hasn't gone through because there are some concerns about, “aren't we supposed to have reciprocity with other states and driver's licenses?” What would this look like? It would be a violation, similar to a speeding ticket at this point. So that bill passed the Senate and is going to the House.

The Senate passed another bill that prohibits state and local government from blocking law enforcement participation in a federal program that allows law enforcement to perform some immigration enforcement duties. I think that will go forward because it's very similar and sort of in tandem with that anti-sanctuary city stance that a lot of Republicans are talking about. Of note, though, the House and the Senate both rejected bills that would require employers to use E-verify. That's a system from the federal government that checks the identity of someone who's authorized to work in the United States. But there was a lot of opposition from businesses in particular, because they say there are errors in the system. It slows things down. It's a burden. So that's definitely not an immigration policy that we will see come to.

Melanie Plenda:

What about bills concerning abortion? What’s going on with those?

Anna Brown:

We all know this was a big topic of conversation during the 2024 elections, but we're not seeing a ton of big movements on that issue right now. In New Hampshire, the Legislature has not passed any direct restrictions, and in fact, they voted down a 15-week ban. There are bills on the margins, however.

HB191 passed the House, and now it's on to the Senate. It was originally focused on making it a misdemeanor to help a pregnant minor obtain an abortion without parental consent. The House amended the bill to more generally prohibit transporting a minor to a surgical procedure without parental consent. Also, the Senate passed SB36, which requires healthcare providers to report non-personally identifiable data about abortions to the state and then provide an annual report on this aggregate data. This has come up more than once in the past, and the argument is, “How can we make really good policy around this issue if we don't have data on how often it's happening, where it's happening, what else might this be related to? Are there other underlying health issues or public health concerns we should know about?” It’s worth noting that New Hampshire is definitely a minority here. Most other states are collecting this data and publishing it in some form, but there's a lot of privacy concerns in New Hampshire. So we'll see how that bill fares in the House.

Melanie Plenda:

As always, very interesting. Thank you for breaking that down Anna Brown, executive director of Citizens Count and executive director of the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Service at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visitcollaborativenh.org.

Breaking down the economic effects of tariffs and market fluctuations

[Click here to watch the full conversation on The State We’re In]

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s going on with the economy? It seems a lot like typical New England weather lately — wait awhile, and it might change. But how do changes like tariffs, inflation and stock market fluctuations — and the ones coming down the pike — affect your wallet? Here to discuss that is Dr. Marie Duggan, professor of business management at Keene State College.

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s start with tariffs. What are they exactly, and why do they matter? 

Marie Duggan:

Tariffs are a tax on an import. Recently, my students and I were looking at Apple and the iPhone 16. The Wall Street Journal had a little article about it — it was selling in the United States for $1,100 and it cost $550 to make, mostly in Asia.

On the day we were looking, the tariffs were 54% and that was going to raise the selling cost of making the product to $850, so you would have the original $550 that was the cost of making the iPhone in China before the tariffs, then you have an extra $300, which is this tax that importers have to pay. So Apple, importing the phone to the United States, would pay the $300 to the U.S. government. The question comes up: Would Apple accept a lower profit margin,or would they pass the increase on to customers by raising the selling price from $1,100 to $1,400? So that's kind of how a tariff works. 

One of the reasons the United States wanted to put tariffs in place is because we've really had a skyrocketing situation with our national debt in the past, really the past 15 years, and we either have to raise taxes, especially on the rich, who are the people that have most of the money. We can't really cut spending more than we already have. It seemed to some people like a good loophole to create this tax on imports, and that would be a way for the government to amass more money, and it would also tend to make companies such as Apple reconsider their decision to make the product overseas and to consider making more parts of it in the United States. It seemed like a win-win in that situation. 

Melanie Plenda:

What do they have to do with the trade deficit? And what exactly is a trade deficit?

Marie Duggan:

A trade deficit is exports minus imports. Exports are things we build in the United States and sell to other countries. Here in Cheshire County, we build a machine called the diamond turning machine, and it is used to make touchscreens. We don't make touchscreens here, but we make the machine that makes touchscreens. The touchscreens are often made in Asia, so we make these machines here, and we export them around the world. We sell them to people in other countries. 

When we look at the amount we export minus the amount we import, we get to the trade deficit. It's basically like you earn foreign exchange when you sell exports and you spend foreign exchange when you buy imports. Of course, I personally don't have to spend Chinese yuan when I go to buy an iPhone, but Apple does. Apple has to pay and they ask us to pay people in China through some point in their supply chain.

So what happens if there's a gap? Well, if there's a gap, you have to borrow from the rest of the world. In the same way, if I have my income and I have repairs to my house that exceed my income, I'm going to have to go borrow a loan to solve the problem. If we export less than we import, we're going to run a trade deficit, and we're going to have to borrow from the rest of the world to plug the hole. We borrow tremendous amounts from the rest of the world. You might not be really aware of that, because the borrowing comes in kind of funny forms. Yes, sometimes foreigners buy U.S. Treasuries or they buy stocks and bonds. But even when I go to get a loan from the bank, say, for a new car, a lot of the money that's in the banking system may be coming from Japan or China or Saudi Arabia. It's just a giant swimming pool full of money in our banking system that we're lending out to people, and a good bit of the money comes from other countries.

Melanie Plenda:

Before President Trump, how would you describe the United States’ approach to tariffs? 

Marie Duggan:
Well, I would say that our approach to tariffs actually started to shift in 2016 with the first Trump election, but Joe Biden also had a different approach to tariffs than other Democratic presidents had.

Prior to the Obama era, the Clinton era, the George Bush era, going back many decades, the United States believed in having no tariffs. The argument was that it was a wonderful position to have if you're the world's leading exporter. So this was a position the United States came up with between 1945 and 1973, when we were the world's leading exporter. We wanted nobody to put any barriers to anybody in the world buying American items. 

So we always said, “Don't put tariffs in place. Remove as many tariffs as you possibly can.” But that did change.

Melanie Plenda:

If these tariffs go into effect, what will that mean for the average consumer here in New Hampshire? What will that mean for the state economy?

Marie Duggan:
I'm someone who firmly believes that we can do more manufacturing in the United States. However, tariffs have to be used judiciously.

For example, a 5% tariff would be a significant tariff, and right now, as it stands today, Donald Trump has put a 145% tariff, an additional tariff, on Chinese goods. I think some goods already had tariffs. For example, Joe Biden had put a 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars. So that is now 245%, and, as you said, they change day to day. First of all, they're too drastic, and they're too changeable. 

If you're going to suddenly say, “There's a 145% tariff,” then the companies in Keene that have worked for 20 years to develop customer relationships with people are going to see orders for their million-dollar machines suddenly canceled. That could really kill what has been a bright spot. It could cause firms to go belly-up.

So putting dramatic tariffs suddenly does not have the effect of protecting U.S. industry. It has the effect of causing immediate loss of customers. So that really creates instability, and I'm afraid we might see that. I really hope that none of the diamond turning machines or optics companies in Cheshire County fail. I hope they all make it. 

There are some benefits to tariffs. We have had this problem of companies going offshore for about 20 years now, of moving manufacturing offshore. So some American companies will begin to consider, for example, buying a machine here in Cheshire County, instead of buying a machine in Germany. 

Melanie Plenda:

As you mentioned, President Trump is doing all this in an effort to bring back manufacturing to the United States. What do you think of that idea? What will that look like? How long will that take? 

Marie Duggan:
I think I want to make it very clear, I don't think that President Trump is putting tariffs in place primarily to bring back manufacturing. I think that the national debt situation in the United States is critical at the moment, and he has to raise taxes. He has to raise taxes on rich people, unless he can find a way out, and it’s very difficult for any politician of either political party to raise taxes on the top earners in the system where we have a political system financed by donations.

So Trump thought he had found a way out. He could tax imports, and that would be a really different way to raise money that could be used to pay down the national debt. So I think that was the desire to find a way to pay down the national debt without raising income taxes at the high end. It was a really important part of his decision process. 

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s move to another related topic — the stock market fluctuations. What role has tariff news played in that? 

Marie Duggan:
I think it played a major role. If you just think of Apple where the $1,100 selling price for the iPhone 16 Pro — if the cost is $550 to produce it in China and there's a 54% tariff, well, then Apple's profits are going to fall from like $550 per phone to like $150 per phone. So that is immediately going to make Apple stock price fall. Then, if you remove the tariffs — boom, Apple’s stock price rises. 

Every company would like to pass the cost of a tariff on to its consumers. So we are all going to have to pay more too, but companies are going to have to absorb some of the cost too, and that's going to push their profits down. That's why the stock market reacts — if expected future profits are falling, then your stock price will drop like a stone.

Melanie Plenda:

Some people, especially Democrats, have asked for an investigation into stock market manipulation. Why is that? And what does that mean? 

Marie Duggan:
When we heard 54% tariffs on China, Apple’s stock did drop quite a bit because everybody knows that Apple's supply chain comes from the production in China and other parts of Asia. Now, if eventually Donald Trump removed the tariff on Apple, so if you or a staffer was at a meeting who heard that Donald Trump was planning to remove the tariff on Apple, you could have run out and purchased Apple stock at a low price, and then once the tariff is removed on Apple, it's going to rise immediately. Depending on how much money you put into that you could make quite a bit in one day.

Melanie Plenda:

Many people are invested in the stock market in a variety of ways — through personal accounts, or something like a 401(k) or IRA. What should people be asking their investment or financial advisers when they see this kind of volatility? 

Marie Duggan:
I'm not a financial advisor. I see what businesses do, like Elon Musk with Tesla — they have investments in different countries. Tesla isn't like

Apple. Tesla makes the entire car in China to sell it mainly to Chinese people. It makes the car in Germany to sell to Europeans, and makes the car in the United States to sell to Americans. But what they've done is they kind of insulated themselves from dramatic changes in any one country by being tied to three different parts of the global economy.

So it seems that when we talk about diversification with investments, people are always talking about whether you should have stocks or you should have bonds, and that's probably a good idea. But it also seems to me that right now, diversifying in terms of investments in different parts of the globe, because we don't really know how it's all going to shake out. 

Melanie Plenda:

Given this volatile economy, what will the future financial situation look like in the next year, or the next five years? What should consumers or businesses do to navigate this environment?

 Marie Duggan:
Well, things are going to freeze up because businesses don't know what's going to come next. They don't really know right now what kind of technology or partnerships around the globe they should invest in. What's going to happen to their old relationships? Are their Chinese customers even going to talk to them now? Is this going to be something where it's kind of like the Cold War, where you have a total break?

Also, people think reducing government spending is going to solve everything. Actually, the businesses in Cheshire County have long relied on producing under government contracts. So that's been kind of a quiet backbone to a lot of industry in this area.  I think businesses had planned to make products that would be sold to the government, and now there's a lot of uncertainty as to whether those government contracts will be solid as they were in the past. So there's a lot of uncertainty, and when businesses have uncertainty, they kind of freeze.They don't spend, and that's what could cause us to have a recession. 

Melanie Plenda:

Fascinating. Dr, Marie Duggan, Keene State College professor of business management, thank you for joining us and discussing these issues. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

‘Trying to find a life’: telling the stories of the immigrants among us

Who are the immigrants among us? Where do they live? And what do they do?Thanks to Nashua Ink Link and the Granite State News Collaborative, we have some answers to these questions — and many more. Ink Link publisher, editor and founder Carol Robidoux and writer/photographer Dan Splaine join us to talk about the news outlet’s special report, “Immigrants Among Us.” This project was made possible through support from the Eppes-Jefferson Foundation. The Granite State News Collaborative and Ink Link maintained editorial control over the contents.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Melanie Plenda:

Carol, how did this series come about? 

Carol Robidoux:

Just like everything else, it came from conversations around what we're seeing and hearing in the news and trying to kind of figure out how to relate that to our coverage area. So in this case, it's Nashua and the greater Nashua area. Dan felt strongly compelled to tell a story that might actually balance out some of the negativity that we were hearing. Now, remember, this kind of all took shape well before the election last year, so it was really an idea of what role the idea of immigration was going to play in the election and what was going to happen in the aftermath, depending on the outcome. 

So there were a lot of unknown factors in all of that. Dan, who's primarily a photographer with a strong photographic sensibility in terms of storytelling — I think he just felt that seeing, hearing, connecting tangibly, one-on-one with people in our community who are new immigrants or who are long-established immigrants would really tell a more authentic story, especially for our readers

Melanie Plenda:

Dan, what got you interested in this subject? Why did you want to tell this story?

Dan Splaine:

Let's go back to last spring and summer. There was an onslaught of just this use of the words “immigrant” and “immigration.” It was almost an amorphous thing, and I found it dehumanizing, because we were just using this big, broad term to describe people. For me, I thought the best thing I could do with my camera was kind of humanize, put a human face on the people, and in the naive belief maybe that it's hard to hate someone, have much contempt or malice if maybe people actually knew. 

I pitched the idea as a photo story to Carol, and then we went into a much more elaborate process that took a few months of thinking and putting it together, but I'm glad we did. 

Melanie Plenda:

Dan, talk about reporting these stories. How long did it take and what was involved? 

Dan Splaine:

It took about six months. Carol had good wisdom on this — to talk to first-generation immigrants on the complete spectrum of status, from undocumented to permanent green card and naturalized citizen. I also had the objective to try to talk to as many people from as many distinct countries of origin, just because one thing is that we really do have a wide range of people in New Hampshire. But also, just the stories of them, where they're from, their journey to get here, and then what their experience has been here — they’re all very individual, and yet it's very universal to the moment. I just thought a wider range would be better.

Melanie Plenda:

Dan, how did you find the people you spoke to for these stories? Were any of your sources reluctant to talk, given the current climate? 

Dan Splaine:

A lot of time was spent making connections, particularly with refugee agencies and some of the service groups in the state that work with refugee communities in particular, and then kind of building trust. It really took a lot more legwork up front than I actually anticipated, because people are reluctant. As we progressed through the summer, that climate of fear was gaining momentum, but people did speak up, and I found some really great stories.

Melanie Plenda:

Dan, what were some of the key takeaways from your reporting? Were there any surprises? 

Dan Splaine:

One thing I thought is that — and it may be just because of my sample and how I was directed to it — but I found a lot of individuals that really are engaged in their communities, in lots of civic organizations, in their faith groups, in their ethnic communities, some are politically active. I saw the embrace of democracy by some of these people, and it reminds me of my grandfather. My grandparents are Irish, and for him to be able to vote, and the importance of voting — I saw that kind of embrace of our institution and values. That’s the secret sauce for America.

Melanie Plenda:

Carol, what about you? What were some of your takeaways from these stories?

Carol Ribidoux:

There's a phrase I've heard, “immigrants are like astronauts,” and I've thought about that with my own family as well. My grandparents came here from Germany sometime between World War I and World War II. My dad was born here — the only one in his family who was born here — but for his family to leave their country, centuries of established history, family history and familiarity to come to this strange new world with hope, obviously, for their children and their children's children. It's a humbling idea. I think that's another part of the humanity that we miss when we talk about immigrants, refugees, people seeking asylum. We clump them into a group that doesn't have any faces or names or ideas about why.

As a journalist, it's troubling to me. I have deep thoughts and deep feelings about things like this, but I don't know how to translate that to people, or how to get people to think bigger and deeper about the world. Why do we accept things as they are without even questioning them? Or why do we operate from a place of fear instead of understanding? Everything we do, we try to do something that allows people to have a deeper understanding of themselves in the context of the world. 

Melanie Plenda:

Carol, what has the reaction been from readers? 

Carol Robidoux:

One reader commented, “I'm not against immigration. It's illegal immigration.That's a criminal thing, and that's what we're against”.

Again, the narrative that we get a lot of is there's this swarm of dangerous people, like killer bees moving up from South America, and when they get here with their knives and guns and ill intent and cross over our borders illegally and sneakily, they're bringing backpacks full of dangerous drugs, and they want to do everybody harm, so we must build a fence and stop them at all costs. That's probably true that there are some people with bad intentions who want to come to the United States to capitalize on some of our problems here. There's guns going in the other direction to fuel some of that violence and gang activity and illegal drug activity. But I don't think it's a genuine picture of what happens at the entry points, whether it's north or south, and the media has to help to tell the truth. 

Melanie Plenda:

Dan, what about the people featured? Have you heard anything from them?

Dan Splaine:

What I'm hearing is that people appreciate the insights. I suspect that people who are anti-immigrant are not going to, but I think it is important we put the marker down, particularly now in the last eight to weeks, when all of the administration's immigration policies are in hyper drive, and they're much more excessive. 

People appreciate hearing the story. Also maybe it will help motivate people to act, to maybe say, “Hey, we have something that's at risk here, something that we're going to lose if we keep on this path.”

Melanie Plenda:

So what happens now? What’s the next step in this story? Let’s start with Dan and then to Carol.

 Dan Splaine:

I think I've made connections with people, and I'm going to stay in touch. I think there's a nascent reaction, mostly grassroots. It's starting to happen, particularly around ICE enforcement, and I think that's a story that should be tracked. 

Carol Robidoux:

One thing I learned in some of this process was that the vetting process for people to come into the United States is something we don't hear a lot about unless you've gone through it yourself. So it's like understanding that you're not just opening the floodgates and welcoming people into the United States without really knowing who they are or what there is to know about them. 

Another is that people just don't really have a great understanding of it — myself included, prior to that. Also, the idea of weighing out whether it is more important to be angry at people for coming here if they came illegally, or saying, “Why are you here? Let's find a pathway to citizenship if that's possible.” Same with anybody who tries to apply to get here as a student, or as a green card holder, or any of those things.

Again, humanity is absent from the equation. They’re criminals, not good guys, or need to be locked up forever with no hope of anything. Some of the people who came here didn't have a choice. They were just on a list of places they could go that wasn't their home country with war, turmoil, or violence. They didn’t come here to take our jobs and make our lives miserable. They’re just trying to find a life and as good people we owe it to them to try to do better, to come up with some better processes, to use our elected officials to help us figure that out. What can we do differently? Maybe it's time to rethink all of this. How do we shake that up a little bit?

Melanie Plenda:

Great work you two. Ink Link publisher, editor and founder Carol Robidoux and writer/photographer Dan Splaine — thank you for joining us today.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.