How Community Action Partnerships support New Hampshire residents in need of assistance

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

The holidays can be a difficult time for those who are struggling. As we begin this holiday season, we’re highlighting some of the organizations that support New Hampshire residents now and all year-round for those who may need assistance. The Community Action Partnership of New Hampshire is one example — it continues to aid residents across the state. That organization has five action agencies that support New Hampshire residents with resources such as access to food, energy and housing. Here to discuss what is offered locally is Betsey Andrews Parker, chief executive officer of the Community Action Partnership of Strafford County. 

Melanie Plenda:

To start, what is the Community Action Partnership of Strafford County? What kinds of resources do they provide for residents?

Betsey Andrews Parker:

Community Action really is a bunch of coordinated programs that wrap around families or individuals to help get them over that tough time. Community Action Partnership of Strafford County is just one of five Community Action agencies in the state of New Hampshire. We cover the entire state. So anyone in New Hampshire that is looking for that support because of a job loss, an unexpected bill that's put them over the edge, for rental assistance, etc., Community Action is there.

Melanie Plenda:

How does your organization’s services compare to the services provided by other Community Action Partnership offices? Are there any differences between what Strafford County offers versus other counties?

Betsey Andrews Parker:

We’re one of 1,000 across the country — Community Action was started back with the War on Poverty in 1965. Across the board in New Hampshire, you know you can access Head Start, weatherization, fuel assistance, housing supports — that’s very consistent across Community Action.

But what makes Community Action really different and unique is that we're about community. So we look locally in our area at what needs to be done that we can help address. We do that by doing a needs assessment every three years and working with our community partners to say, “Is there something that we can do?” For example, some operate shelters. Three of our Community Actions operate the BRIC ((Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities) program. What makes us different is that we all offer programs to help people who are experiencing low to moderate income be able to make their ends meet. We do it either directly or we partner with another organization. 

Melanie Plenda:

Who qualifies for these services? How can people find out what they are eligible to receive?

Betsey Andrews Parker: 

I would first of all encourage people to look up the Community Action Partnership of New Hampshire. You can actually go on and put your zip code in to find out exactly where your local Community Action office is, because we do have offices all across the state. 

When I say low to moderate income, that could mean a lot of things. Typically, people who are experiencing low income would be what we call 100% of the federal poverty level, and we go up to 200% of the poverty level. Basically for a family of four, that’s around $55,000, $56,000. We are targeting the people in New Hampshire who are working, who are working and disabled, who are seniors, a lot of folks who are working in lower-wage jobs who are barely making ends meet with rent, child care payments, health insurance payments. Those are the folks that are really qualifying for our services right now.

Melanie Plenda:

What is the process for applying for these services?

Betsey Andrews Parker:

Every program tends to be a little different, and I think that's what makes Community Actions some of the best-kept secrets around. It's our job to worry about the red tape and the nuances of paperwork. So when you come in, for example, and you have a young child — you may have been referred by your provider to our agency — we do an intake with that client, the age of the child, how many kids, what the needs are, what the income is, and we sort of wrap around and find out what it is needed. It's really trying to figure out what the needs of the client are and how it fits in. 

Melanie Plenda: 

Do you have an idea of how many people in New Hampshire use these services across the state?

Betsey Andrews Parker:

Just in Strafford County alone, we have over 19,000, and if you look at the number of people for fuel assistance alone, it’s over 60,000 households. We’re really not talking about a couple of thousand, we’re talking close to 100,000 households that access a Community Action in some way shape or form.

Melanie Plenda:

Are there any services that residents are using more frequently than others? Over the past few years, rent has increased dramatically in New Hampshire. Are more people seeking housing assistance, for example?

Betsey Andrews Parker:

COVID really showed us what the housing instability was in the area, and that has remained. I know there's lots of conversations and different schools of thought about why it has remained, but the one thing that we saw is that when we stabilize families with the Rental Assistance Program, we saw other things stabilize. We saw people were able to feed their families. We saw people were able to pay for their child care. We saw that they were able to pay off some of their debts, and we saw that they were able to remain stably housed. They had better health care outcomes, and they just had better attendance in our programs. So that money went away — and that also included one-time things like moving expenses, security deposits, first-month rent — and since then we have seen that that has been one of the biggest requests right now.

 Melanie Plenda:

According to a recent study from the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly one in three individuals experiencing poverty in New Hampshire are disabled. What specific services does your organization provide for these residents?

Betsey Andrews Parker:

I think fuel assistance is the big one that comes to mind. I think that one of the best things that New Hampshire does is when our program is open for enrollment, we target the most vulnerable, the disabled, people 65 and older, and families with children under the age of 5 because we do know how hard it is to heat a home. That is one big service that people do come to rely on because that big nugget of filling your oil tank or having that reduction of your electrical rates — that's one way we do it, with fuel assistance. If you have heat included in your rent, you get a discount on your rent. 

It's a really big piece that people who have a disability have as one of their tools in their toolbox to help offset the other costs, such as healthcare, transportation and food. I mean, let's not forget that our food expenses have gone up, and that's one thing I forgot to mention — that Community Action agencies across the board have nutrition programs. Community Action also is a distributor of what’s called commodity food programs, and we coordinate the distribution of a lot of the government surplus food that comes through to all of our soup kitchens, food pantries and shelters in New Hampshire. I think nutrition for people who are disabled, WIC, SNAP, our senior programs, our food pantries, Meals on Wheels programs that are operated through Community Action. We also have a summer meals program too. So again, it captures a lot of things to help families.

Melanie Plenda:

In President Trump’s proposal for the 2026 budget, he aims to get rid of the Community Service Block Grant program, which funds Community Action Partnership programs — New Hampshire received $4 million from this grant in 2024. If this grant goes away, how will it affect your organization in the coming years?

Betsey Andrews Parker:

Again, I come back to what makes Community Action Community Action. One of them is the Community Services Block Grant. If we were to lose that, the Community Action agencies in New Hampshire will not be able to respond as quickly and effectively to community needs as we are right now.

Melanie Plenda:

How can residents who may not need services support your organization? 

Betsey Andrews Parker:

First of all, we have an amazing federal delegation right now that advocates for us in Washington, D.C. Residents could also talk to our local state reps and town and city councils about how important Community Action is and the role that we fulfill in the communities. 

I think people who don't need Community Action services should talk to our local elected officials about what would happen to your local tax bill, to your welfare bill, to your other budgets and things. Who would pick up the slack if we were gone? There aren't enough public education slots here in the state of New Hampshire for public preschool for all of our Head Start kids. There are not enough dollars in local cities and towns to pick up the amount of money that is in fuel assistance. There certainly aren't enough child care slots. So I think that people here could talk about why Community Action is very, very important to our community. And, as always, you can give money, you can volunteer, and you can find ways to get involved. 

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you, Betsey, we really appreciate it. 

“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.

Health insurance in New Hampshire: What do recent changes mean for you?

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s going on with health insurance in the Granite State? If you’re following the local news, you might be confused with talk of subsidies, changes and open markets. Insurance regulations and carriers operating in New Hampshire have been constantly changing within the past couple months, creating confusion for many residents. Here to help us understand everything is D.J. Bettencourt, commissioner of the N.H. Insurance Department.

Melanie Plenda:

Can you tell our audience a bit about the Insurance Department? What does it do? And what is your role as commissioner?

D.J. Bettencourt:

The Insurance Department is the referee of the insurance marketplace. We are tasked with enforcing the insurance laws of the state to make sure companies are playing by the rules, are treating customers fairly, and are financially sound, while at the same time not micromanaging or stifling innovation within our health insurance marketplace. My role as commissioner is to strike that balance. We set clear guidelines and guardrails and let competition do what it does best, which is to increase quality and drive affordability. 

Melanie Plenda:

What's new with the insurance marketplace? What changes will people see this year?

D.J. Bettencourt:

There are going to be a number of changes, but I think the highlight for this year is stability in a period of uncertainty. We still are seeing very strong carrier participation here in New Hampshire. There are new plan designs for consumers to choose from, and there is continued rate stability. We feel this is the result of fostering a level playing field in a competitive environment that has multiple insurers competing for consumers. 

So while consumers I know are hearing a lot about changes and challenges to affordability, we here in New Hampshire are in a fairly advantageous position, certainly as compared to the rest of the country. Some states use heavy regulation, and the result of that is volatility. What we do here in New Hampshire is take a different approach. We have fair rules, we have transparency, we have robust oversight where it's necessary, and the result is a marketplace where consumers are going to have choices, and insurers are going to have to earn their business by making their plans affordable and offering high-quality coverage.

Melanie Plenda:

What about people on Medicare? In October, the Insurance Department sent out a press release advising New Hampshire residents to be ready for Medicare Advantage market changes in 2026. What are some of these changes Granite Staters should be aware of?

D.J. Bettencourt:

The Medicare Advantage market here in New Hampshire is in a very, very challenging time. There is a lot of disruption in that market. Here in New Hampshire, we are seeing carriers withdraw from that market entirely, and we are seeing the carriers that remain in that market significantly narrowing their plan offerings. 

We have found that the more rural counties in our state are being more impacted. By that I mean fewer carriers in the market, fewer plans that are available for those seniors to choose from. It is a very frustrating situation.

The reason this has come about is complicated, but the federal government, in my opinion, has done a poor job over many, many years in terms of creating a stable market. There have been a lot of shifting regulations that have been damaging to the market. In addition, the insurance carriers have made some poor business decisions over the years that have contributed to the unfortunate condition of things at the present time.

It is my hope that Washington will bring the states to the table to offer our perspective as to what reforms are needed to make Medicare Advantage more widely available to make that market more healthy. Until that time, we're going to do our part here at the department to provide those impacted seniors with as much information as we can and to make them aware of the opportunities that they now must consider.

Melanie Plenda:

How have you seen the marketplace evolve during your time with the Insurance Department? What have you learned about navigating it and advising others?

D.J. Bettencourt:

When I arrived at the department, the marketplace was still recovering from years of federal policy swings, tax credits and changing rules that were shifting. There was a lot of uncertainty, and we focused on stability. We designed a state-designed reinsurance waiver that brought premiums down by approximately 25% to 30%. We focused on streamlining regulations and strong consumer protections that did not turn into burdensome red tape.

Now I'm not claiming that the government creates value. I think the competition in the market does that, but what the department can do, and what we have done, is to do our very best to foster an environment where companies want to participate, and as a result of that, consumers benefit from those companies fighting for their business.

Melanie Plenda:

What's going on with the Affordable Care Act subsidies? What are you advising people about them? 

D.J. Bettencourt:

I know there's a lot of confusion about the subsidies right now. So the first thing I really want to be clear is that the non-American Rescue Plan tax credits remain in place. All of the tax credits and financial support that were in place prior to the American Rescue Plan — which I believe came online sometime in either 2021-2022 somewhere in that time period — all of those financial supports are still in place.

The current debate that Granite Staters are hearing about are, again, those American Rescue Plan enhanced tax credits. In New Hampshire, our preliminary review of the actuarial work and the carrier filings indicate that, on a statewide average basis, the loss of those enhanced tax credits would translate into roughly a 3% to 4% impact on premiums. That's going to vary, potentially significantly, based on the type of plan that you're looking at. That 3% to 4% is an average. 

Certainly, that 3% to 4% is meaningful for families living close to the margin, but it is a very different picture than the idea that everyone’s premiums are going to double and some of the catastrophic stories we’re hearing from other states. I always tell people to choose a plan that meets their long-term needs, with or without the subsidies, because federal policy can change quickly, and at the end of the day, the subsidies can help, but they're not a strategy. The real long-term protection for consumers is a market where insurers are competing on value and price, and that's what we have built here in New Hampshire, and what largely is preserved as we look to 2026.

Melanie Plenda:

As you mentioned, federal policies can change quickly. If Congress changes its mind in December or January about these subsidies, how will that affect people? 

D.J. Bettencourt:

We are going to be ready to implement whatever opportunities Washington makes available to the states, and we're going to leverage those opportunities to the maximum benefit of Granite Staters.

New Hampshire utilizes the federal exchange, the healthcare.gov platform, so how quickly we can leverage those opportunities will be dependent on how quickly the federal government opens up the systems that we're going to need to bring those supports online. We're going to be ready to educate Granite Staters about the potential benefit that will be available to them. We're going to make sure there's a lot of information out there. But here's the key point: While some states could face major volatility and major premium increases, New Hampshire is again better positioned than most, because we already have the lowest benchmark premiums, the lowest average premiums in the nation, and so we're going to certainly take advantage of those opportunities to create an even more competitive and affordable marketplace.

But whatever Washington does, again, it is absolutely still worth the while of the consumer to get onto the exchange and see what opportunities are out there.

Melanie Plenda:

Will these changes to insurance have any impact on the state budget or the average taxpayer? 

D.J. Bettencourt:

I think what you’re speaking to there is enrollment. We have seen significant increases in enrollment over the course of the past several years — we’re very happy about that. We like to see that people are getting more coverage. Our enrollment in the individual market is approximately 77,000, which is by far the most we have seen in terms of enrollment here in New Hampshire.

In terms of budget impact, obviously if we start to see a significant drop-off of people getting coverage, that could have an impact on uncompensated care, which are people who don't have coverage going into hospitals where the hospitals are obviously legally required to provide them with care, but the hospitals are not going to be paid for that care. The bill largely becomes the responsibility of the state, and so if we start to see a significant amount of people not getting coverage, driving up that uncompensated care cost, it could very well have an impact on future state budgets.

Melanie Plenda:

As someone who knows so much about the ins and outs of health insurance, in your opinion, are there ways to fix our insurance system as it relates to health care? What would you advise lawmakers, if asked?

D.J. Bettencourt:

If Congress were to ask my advice, I always recommend focusing on competition, innovation and consumer empowerment. I don't believe in heavy price controls — I do believe that sound consumer protections are always the way to go. Those heavy regulations — they sound good, but we find that often they rarely produce the results that you want to see. We find that prices fall naturally when the system rewards efficiency, preventative care and new innovations.

I certainly believe the government should intervene and get involved when there are true market failures. But I think the big gains in affordability come from letting companies compete and letting consumers vote with their feet, while again assuring appropriate consumer protection. 

We've got a good model here, and I think there are a lot of planks of our philosophy and model that the federal government could very seriously take a look at to improve the overall system.

Melanie Plenda:

What else should people know about getting insurance in New Hampshire? What do you hope our audience takes away from our conversation here?

D.J. Bettencourt:

It is so important to me that people know that they don't have to navigate this system alone. Again, New Hampshire has some of the most affordable coverage options in the United States, but it is still a very complex system, and we understand that. So, we as a department here at the Insurance Department, offer free, unbiased help to consumers. We get no commissions. There are no sales pitches. We are solely focused on making sure that people understand their choices and pick the plan that fits best for them, given their needs and given their budgets. 

I think that's the real story of insurance in New Hampshire. When you combine transparency, real consumer support and true competition, a lot of affordability follows from that. That's exactly what has made our state one of the most affordable places in the country for coverage — not only in 2026 but in previous years — and that is obviously something we're very proud of while fully appreciating that there is more work to do. There's going to have to be a lot of dialogue and communication between the states and the federal government to find reforms that are going to strike that appropriate balance between bringing innovation and market-driven solutions to bear to increase affordability while not compromising on consumer protection.

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you, D.J., we really appreciate it.

“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.

Tourism in New Hampshire: Where does it stand in wake of the falloff in number of Canadian visitors?

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Despite the state’s efforts to encourage tourism, New Hampshire saw a decrease in visitors this summer, especially when it comes to visitors from Canada. Tourism is one of New Hampshire’s main industries, and when there are fewer visitors to the state, its revenue suffers. What is going on, and what’s the state doing about it? Here to discuss that is Michelle Cruz, director of the N.H. Division of Travel and Tourism Development. 

Melanie Plenda:

Michelle, what can you tell us about how tourism has gone this past year here in New Hampshire? Let’s start with the summer season, but also talk about fall and look a little bit ahead to winter and ski season.

Michelle Cruz:

Right now we don't have research, so I won't be able to provide some real-time, up-to-date data for summer and fall, but I'll be able to provide what I'm hearing from the businesses and our partners. The way our contracts work is that we do need to have approval from the Executive Council. So right now, the Division of Travel and Tourism doesn't currently have an active research partner because we haven't received approval for that contract.

But what I do know from talking with our partners, around the state and in the White Mountains, there are 17 major attractions collectively welcoming visitors. This past season, what we've heard is that they welcomed about 1.3 million guests from May through October, and most reported being slightly up. There were some reported being flat or that they were a few percentage points lower compared to the previous year. What they shared with us is that food and beverage and retail performed well. Most attractions noted that there was an increase in spending in both areas. While we know that the beginning of the summer was a little bit of a challenge, just because of the consistent weekends of rain — it was a hard start and a slow start to the summer. But as that weather dried out, there were some upticks with visitors being here. They took advantage of the weather that was more in their favor, which helped to work out for vacations that were being planned. 

So while there were some moments where visitation may have been down, I think what happened is the season and the weather shift was in our favor for visitation.

Melanie Plenda:

I know that, especially at the beginning of the summer, there was a lot of concern that tourism was going to take a hit because of the issues between the U.S. and Canada. Did they play out this season? Were you hearing that from local businesses?

Michelle Cruz:

We did. We were hearing it from the Seacoast that they were about 30% down. We heard it from other areas too. I think what we were all trying to do was pivot. We were working with them to see what else could be done. We looked at our marketing initiatives and went beyond our core markets, which are the New England states, New York and eastern Pennsylvania. We were actually targeting about 60 million people east of the Mississippi, and this was based on why people are interested in visiting New England — so we went beyond to reach those visitors to entice them to come here.

Melanie Plenda:

What are your hearing and what are you seeing so far for the winter and skiing season?

Michelle Cruz:

Again, typically during this time, we would be releasing our winter seasonal forecast, and that includes project visitation numbers and estimated visitor spending. We don’t have that information right now because that would come with working with a research partner. But what we do know is that winter is an incredibly important season for New Hampshire's tourism economy. It consistently is the third busiest season, right behind summer and fall. It’s essential for businesses,  from ski areas to snowmobile operators to restaurants, lodging properties and retail. Winter brings a significant influx of visitors who support thousands of jobs, especially in our rural and northern communities

So we are looking for a positive winter, and I’m staying optimistic that we’re going to see snow.

Melanie Plenda:

Were there sectors or areas that were hit harder than others?

Michelle Cruz:

So there's always a challenge with weather. When we saw the rain hitting, there were attractions that might have been hit hard just because it was focused on outdoor recreation. When that happens, I hear from retail that they're doing well because people are staying inside. Same thing with dining, and vice versa.

When the weather changes to be more favorable for sunny, cooperative weather days, people are staying outside more. They're enjoying nature and the beauty and the reason why they come to New Hampshire. We're very weather-dependent, but we are a four-season vacation destination, so it's always looking at what's ahead, and how to be able to work with the weather that we're provided.

Melanie Plenda:

Why is tourism so important here in the state? Can you explain that to our audience? 

Michelle Cruz:

Tourism is the second largest revenue-generating industry. It plays a central role in driving the state's economy and quality of life. We hear that a lot about people being here because of the work-life balance. Every year, millions of people visit the state of New Hampshire from all over the country and around the world. They come for our natural beauty, outdoor experiences. They're looking for the rich history and that small-town charm is what they love, and it's what we can provide. And we have unique attractions that make this state so special.

So in our fiscal year 2024, what we were able to see is that we had about 14.6 million visitors who generated $7.5 billion in spending. So that's money spent at restaurants, hotels, shops, attractions, ski areas, our campgrounds, arts and culture venues and businesses all throughout the state. We're talking about our large and small businesses.

Another thing about tourism is that tourism supports 70,000 jobs in the state of New Hampshire, so that includes our seasonal and year-round hospitality jobs — restaurant employees, guide services, retail staff, lodging operators. Again, it impacts all of those small and large businesses, and it helps to keep the communities vibrant.

But what's really important for us to all keep in mind is that tourism doesn't just benefit visitors. It's going to benefit us — everybody who lives here in the state, because with the visitor spending, it helps keep the local businesses open, supports towns and the cities, and also strengthens our rural communities. So it helps to reduce that tax burden for our New Hampshire residents in many communities.

Tourism dollars make the difference between a business keeping their doors open or not. So tourism is definitely very important to the state of New Hampshire

Melanie Plenda:

You mentioned that research piece, and it sounds like maybe that might be in flux. What do you do if you don't have that research? How do you kind of make that plan going forward, and do you have a sense of what that plan is going to be going forward, even without the research?

Michelle Cruz:

We're looking at how to manage that and stay connected with our businesses and our tourism partners and leaders throughout the state. It is challenging — research is a key component when you're marketing. You're looking at effectiveness, but you're also looking at where people are traveling from, where they're going to, where they're staying, how long they're staying for, how much money they're spending, what that economic impact is. So it's a really key component in understanding visitation to any area in New Hampshire.

Melanie Plenda:

You’re kind of flying blind without a research partner, but going forward, what is your plan into 2026?

Michelle Cruz:

It would be great to be able to have a solid plan for research, so looking at having a research partner is going to be really key in being able to know if our marketing plan is working. It supports the state to stay front and center. We have momentum right now, and it helps to keep us moving forward, supporting our industry, supporting the business community and the residents of the state. It's something that's really crucial in making sure that we're staying ahead.

You know, there are reports of states who have had contracts like this pulled or are unable to market their state as need be, and it was a tremendous impact of not being in the markets they needed to be in and being able to promote their state. and the recovery from it would be years. We want New Hampshire to be front and center. We want to be able to support the tourism that helps to support our economy and then provides the quality of life for residents.

Again, this is something that’s not just bringing visitors here, but it's looking at when visitors come here, they're making their memories, they make their traditions, and then they come here year after year. Eventually, some relocate here, some may take the opportunity to move their business here, and that's through marketing the right way. It's through being able to have research and making sure that we're hitting on all those components to be a strong, competitive state, to be an innovative state, and that's what's really important.

Melanie Plenda:

Is there anything else that can be done, or any other help that's needed?

Michelle Cruz:

It's definitely getting the research, because this maximizes the impact of the strategy that we need to have reliable and up-to-date data. It's the research that tells us about traveling and where people are coming from. It's something that helps to look at the spending — where money is being spent, and the amount of money that's being spent that’s coming into the state.

That's really important, and we're doing the best we can with the tools that we have right now. We're dedicated, but having a dedicated research partner would really allow the work to be next-level. It helps to ensure every decision that we make is grounded in data and helps to keep New Hampshire continuing as a strong tourism destination. It's really important to be able to keep that message and move forward with that. 

Melanie Plenda:

What happens if New Hampshire can’t generate that interest, and bring people back?

Michelle Cruz:

Like I mentioned, I think the amount of the $7.5 billion in spending, which was such a support and it's a revenue generator, and if we don't see that, we take a hit as a state, and we're hoping that that doesn't happen.That's not what we want to see — we want to work towards being able to market and generate the revenue, but also keep New Hampshire front and center. It's not just tourism for visitors, but it's for our residents too.

Melanie Plenda:

Michelle, 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.

The ‘invisible’ hunger: The burden of food insecurity on Granite Staters

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Food insecurity. According to the 2025 Feeding America Report, one in nine New Hampshire residents face hunger. What does that mean? And how did those who rely on government assistance find help in the midst of the government shutdown? Here to discuss this and more is Elsy Cipriani, executive director of the New Hampshire Food Bank.

Melanie Plenda:

Can you explain what the New Hampshire Food Bank is and how it functions?

Elsy Cipriani:

The New Hampshire Food Bank is the only food bank in the state. The simplest way to think about us is that we are the center of a network to relieve hunger. We are a program of Catholic Charities New Hampshire, and at the same time, we are one of more than 200 food banks across the United States that partner with Feeding America.

Something that probably people don't know about the New Hampshire Food Bank is that we don't do a lot of direct service because we are part of a big network of partner agencies, and these partner agencies are soup kitchens, emergency shelters and food pantries. Most of the food distribution takes place through our partner agencies, and we are making sure that they have enough food to feed their communities.

Melanie Plenda:

How did the Food Bank operate during the government shutdown? Did things change? Did you have to pivot in some way? 

Elsy Cipriani:

It was an incredible, challenging few weeks for us. When the federal shutdown occurred, the state's SNAP benefits, which is the food stamp program, were in jeopardy for the month of November. Thousands of families who relied on SNAP were in a state of confusion. One of the things that the state of New Hampshire did, specifically the Department of Health and Human Services, was put together a contingency plan, and they asked the New Hampshire Food Bank to execute this plan.

Then we rallied all our partner agencies across the state. We put together SNAP distribution points, either through mobile food pantries or through specific pantries and different communities, making sure that we cover different corners of the state. We did this for two weeks. 

This crisis showed just how many of our neighbors are just one emergency away from suffering from hunger, and from suffering from poverty or entering into poverty. We continued these efforts for another week, just to make sure that we provide extra relief for families and individuals in New Hampshire. But again, this is something that happens all year-round. Hunger is something that people in New Hampshire are experiencing.

As you mentioned in the beginning of the show, one in every nine people in New Hampshire are facing food insecurity, and the number is even worse for children. We are talking about one in every seven children in the state facing food insecurity. When we look at the North Country, we are talking about more than 20% of children are facing food insecurity.

Melanie Plenda:

What can you tell us about food insecurity in New Hampshire? How have things changed at all in recent months? 

Elsy Cipriani:

Food insecurity means that someone doesn't have consistent access to enough food to live a healthy lifestyle. What has changed is the pressure on families. Families and individuals across the state are faced with impossible challenges. They have to choose between heating, food, clothing for their children, and more. One of the things that we have seen, particularly this past year, is that all these challenges, federal cuts, cuts to the SNAP program and the government shutdown are just creating an incredible amount of stress and confusion for our most vulnerable populations. The people that are most affected by all these changes and all these events are our children, senior citizens and people living with disabilities. 

Melanie Plenda:

What does food insecurity look like, and who does it affect?

Elsy Cipriani:

One of the things about food insecurity is that it can be very invisible for people. Let's think about our family budget when we are going through financial hardship, the first thing that we cut from our budget is food, because it's the most flexible thing that we can play around with. We have to pay rent or mortgage, we have to pay utilities, but food is something that we can play around with. So a lot of people go to the stress of eating less, sacrificing themselves —- especially for parents, sacrificing themselves by not eating so their children have some food. We don't see that — they can be our friends, our neighbors, people in our community — but just because we don’t see it, it doesn't mean that they are not suffering from food insecurity. 

Melanie Plenda:

Can you tell us more about the programs of the Food Bank? Let’s start with the New Hampshire Feeding New Hampshire Program, which purchases food from local farms. What does this process look like across the state?

Elsy Cipriani:

New Hampshire Feeding New Hampshire is one of our favorite programs. It's definitely a win-win situation. We use funds to help our partner agencies buy fresh and nutritious food, like produce, protein and dairy directly from local New Hampshire farms.

One of the things that we do besides buying nutritious food and supporting local farmers in New Hampshire, is that we also provide small grants to our partner agencies so they can do their own purchasing because we know that many of these local food pantries and soup kitchens already have their own partnerships and they all work in relationships with people in their community and the farmers in their community. So besides us purchasing all these nutritious food for local farmers, we also give small grants to our partner agencies so they can decide what to buy, how to buy it, and support the local communities.

Melanie Plenda:

What about the Cooking Matters program?

Elsy Cipriani:

This is a hands-on program that really empowers families and individuals to learn how to cook or to improve their cooking skills, and is mostly targeted to SNAP recipients. One of the great things about this is that we try to use, during our cooking demonstrations and our classes, anything that families will buy with their benefits. We try to show people that even if they are on a budget, on a limited budget, they can still cook healthy, affordable and nutritious meals. 

Melanie Plenda:

In September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it was cutting the annual food insecurity survey across the nation. Since this data usually assists in predicting hunger demand and securing funding, how will the New Hampshire Food Bank pivot in the future without it?

Elsy Cipriani:

That was a significant loss — not just for us, for all food banks across the United States and for Feeding America, because the data that they produce every year relies a lot on the survey.

As a network, we have had some discussions this past September with Feeding America and many food banks across the United States about how we can overcome this challenge. One of the unique things about food banks is that we are in a position where we already gather a lot of data from the people we serve. We have the technology and we have the capacity to gather day-to-day data of how many people our partner agencies are serving and where the need is. So one of the things that we need to get better in New Hampshire is using that data now that we are not going to have resources from the USDA. But that's going to take time, so definitely, there is going to be a gap in information, and there is going to be a challenge until we can reach the point that we can make better use of our own data.

Melanie Plenda:

Is it true that in November and December that the Food Bank receives the most support and donations, due to the holidays? Is it enough? And what about the rest of the year?

Elsy Cipriani:

Yes, that’s true. We receive the most donations, volunteer requests and food drives during November and December. But the truth is, hunger is a 365-day-a-year problem. The need for food relief and hunger relief doesn't end on Jan. 1. In fact, our donations often drop significantly in the beginning of the year.

I also want to highlight the summer, because the summer is a very tricky and challenging time for us when we talk about food insecurity and the different causes for food insecurity. One of the main causes of food insecurity is disruption of some systems, and the school system is a great example. Many children rely on going to school to eat, and when the summer months come they don't have that access, and they may face food insecurity. So we do see donations usually drop during the summer, so we’d really welcome the community to take a look at that and think about that during the summer we do run a good number of summer programs across the state. We partner with the school districts to make sure that even during the summer, children still have access to nutritious meals.

Melanie Plenda:

What can New Hampshire residents do to support the New Hampshire Food Bank and their neighbors facing hunger, now and in the future?

Elsy Cipriani:

There are three specific ways in which people can help the New Hampshire Food Bank or their local food programs. Donate funds — go to our website or to the local food pantries. Volunteer — you can look at our website. We have many volunteer opportunities every week, and you can also host a food drive, and that food drive can benefit the New Hampshire Food Bank. You can contact us and you can drop the food drive items at our location, and you can also support your local food programs.

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you Elsy, 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.

New report gauges how New Hampshire women are faring amid the barriers they face

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

The N.H. Women’s Foundation has released the fourth edition of its biannual report, “The Status of Women in New Hampshire 2025.” This report provides data on barriers women face in the Granite State and highlights several programs that aim to support New Hampshire’s women. How are New Hampshire women faring, according to the report? Here to discuss some of their findings is Devan Quinn, director of policy at the N.H. Hampshire Women’s Foundation. 

Judi Currie:

Why does the N.H. Women’s Foundation feel it’s important to release this biannual report? 

Devan Quinn:

The Women's Foundation invests in opportunity and equality for the women and girls of the Granite State through research, education, advocacy and grantmaking. We know that when communities, individuals, leaders and our legislature have adequate data broken down by gender, race, ethnicity, age, geography, income and parenting status, people can make better decisions about how to support women and girls in our community. We are focused on being a trusted source of data that people can rely on — not just our community members and our leaders, but also the organizations that are directly serving women and girls that we also provide grants to as well.

Judi Currie:

Why should all residents care about the status of women in New Hampshire?

Devan Quinn:

Half of New Hampshire is women. Women are vital to our economy, to our care economy, and to the thriving communities all across our state. Investing in women is investing in our state, and we know that there is an under-investment in women and girls. A very small percentage of philanthropic grantmaking goes to women and girls. So when we can uplift what's going on just below the surface of some headlines, we can see where those needs are and opportunities for investment.

Judi Currie:

Last year, we discussed the “Status of Girls in New Hampshire” report, and this year we’re discussing the status of women. What are some of the main differences in what women in New Hampshire face versus what girls face? 

Devan Quinn:

What we are seeing actually is, unfortunately, a parallel between what women and girls are facing. We reported last year that we were facing a mental health crisis, and particularly for girls. This year, in the release of the “Status of Women,” we're also seeing that women are much more likely than men to experience poor mental health, specifically depression and anxiety. The factors that go into poor mental health for girls are uniquely gendered, and the factors that go into that for women are also uniquely gendered. And so in fact, we want to highlight the opportunity to focus on the issues that we see with a gender lens.

Some of the differences in the report, of course, is that the “Status of Girls” also talks about education and how girls are doing in K through 12 and in college, and the “Status of Women” covers leadership in our elected representation of women.

Judi Currie:

Some things are still the same. The gender wage gap is still present, abortion laws are in flux, and child care remains expensive. What are some of the biggest differences in this report from the last “Status of Women” report, in 2023?

Devan Quinn:

It's important to notice the trends that have not changed. Things that have changed, I would say, are the outside impacts on these inequities on women.

We've heard the high cost of living impacts people across the Granite State, but it has a disproportionate burden on women. So what we know, from a headline type of standpoint, is that New Hampshire has a very low poverty rate. The poverty rate for adults in the nation is low, but when you look at the cost of living, that actually indexes New Hampshire much lower, to 11th, so that high cost of living is having a disproportionate burden on New Hampshire women because the costs of things are much higher, including child care, and it's more likely that women are paying those high child care costs, particularly among single moms. 

Also, it's a cost to women and their careers, because women are much more likely to leave the workforce entirely if they can't access or afford child care at all. We also know that access to programs that support families, and particularly women, are not being taken advantage of as much as we would like to see. There's an under-enrollment — the number of women who qualify for programs like WIC or SNAP, we don't have all those who qualify actually enrolled, which could really help them.

And then, of course, women are doing that all along the gender wage gap. So whatever men are earning, women who are in the same type of job and role and responsibility are earning less than men. So when all these things are combined, the new thing this year that we're talking about, is the high cost of living, that burden particularly being on women.

Judi Currie:

Why are these statistics important to highlight, especially during the government shutdown?

Devan Quinn:

It's so important to focus on the precarious position we are in when our systems are not working in a federal government shutdown. Certainly, we're feeling the impact of not having access to SNAP or the potential instability of WIC, or the lack of income from all furloughed workers. 

So one thing that we also want to highlight is that SNAP, WIC or Medicaid — none of these programs cover the cost of menstrual products. So when families have additional burdens of not having their SNAP benefits and having to pay out of pocket for things that SNAP would normally cover, that exacerbates the tightness on their budget and they already can't access menstrual products through SNAP, WIC and Medicaid. Now it's an additional thing in their budget. These are the things that particularly impact women when we talk about menstrual product insecurity or “period poverty.”

What we also want to highlight is that these are not luxury items. These are absolute requirements to live. We would never have this conversation about toilet paper or paper towels in public bathrooms and having access, but we do have to advocate for access to menstrual products, which are health and a dignity issue.

Judi Currie:

Another focus of the report is women in leadership positions. The report states that “39% percent of towns have zero women on their select board.” This percentage has decreased from the 2023 report by 3%, but it still is a prevalent issue. Why is there such a significant gender gap in women being elected for local-level municipal representation?

Devan Quinn:

So what we know, and what we're very proud of, is the women's representation we have at the federal level. At the top of our leadership is a lot of women — our two senators, one of two of our congresspeople and our women governor. We are so proud of that in New Hampshire. But, unfortunately, what we see is that as we look at the more local levels — at the state level and then the municipal level — that drops off. The trend actually reverses, and that is very important for our pipeline of women serving in office. 

One of the reasons we see that is because women need to be encouraged to run for office. It is more likely that women don't see themselves as potential elected leaders, and they are more likely to run when people encourage them to run. So that's something that we all can do right now. To take action is to think about the women in your life and encourage them to run for office.

This is especially important for all these issues we just talked about — from child care to SNAP benefits to mental health — because we know that when women are elected to office, regardless of what party they're in, they are more likely to support policies that benefit women and girls. They're more likely to support policies in health care, in education, in support of the things that we're talking about. We also know that women are more likely to reach across the aisle and be bipartisan and get things done. So it's not just about seeing women in office, which is very important for girls, to see women leading, but it's also important because women can fix these issues.

Judi Currie:

The report also highlights programs that are doing important work to support women in New Hampshire. What were some of the programs highlighted, and how are they helping women?

Devan Quinn:

Because of this opportunity to increase women's leadership we run the Women Run! program, which is the Granite State's only nonpartisan program that encourages and trains women to run for office at the local and state level. We actually had 15 alums this year run for municipal or citywide office, and we're so proud of all the positions they are in and have earned to be in and all of the people who are more likely to run in the future after attending our program.

This is something that we can all be part of. We can encourage women to run for office. Think about the women in your life — ask them to run. Oftentimes, the women who are looking for people to run for office and saying, “You should run for office” actually need a mirror to look at themselves and say that they should run for office.

Judi Currie:

What else can be done to help support women in New Hampshire? 

Devan Quinn:

We need to first be aware, and part of this report is an education effort. It is for people making decisions about investments in the programs that support women and girls. We will give this report to every single legislator. We'll send it around to many partner organizations, state agencies and our grantees. We provide grants to support women and girls, and they use this data as well to apply for grants, and that's how we can encourage more philanthropic giving to organizations that support women and girls. 

If you want to take action right now, give to the organizations in your community that are serving women and girls. Not enough money goes to organizations supporting women and girls. Reach out to your legislators and tell them about the issues that you care about. We have a volunteer legislature who wants to hear from you and really values your thoughts and is accessible to you via call or an email. They usually absolutely respond and think about what you have to say and consider running for office. 

We need more representation, more diverse representation, because we know that when a diversity of perspectives are in a room — whether it’s a hearing room or a community organization — the group is going to come up with better solutions when there is diversity of perspectives. So jump in and get involved and run for office.

Judi Currie:

Thank you Devan, 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.

How will changes to federal health and welfare programs affect Granite Staters?

[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 are the impacts of federal policy changes on health and welfare benefits and what changes we expect to see in New Hampshire? The N.H. Fiscal Policy Institute has issued briefs on health care cuts and other changes that affect New Hampshire residents, and here to discuss that is Phil Sletten, research director at the Fiscal Policy Institute. 

Melanie Plenda:

On Oct. 24, the N.H. Fiscal Policy Institute hosted an all day event that focused on the high cost of living in New Hampshire, titled “Working Hard and Falling Behind.” What is it that makes New Hampshire so expensive?

Phil Sletten:

What we really wanted to examine both at the event and in research that was led by my colleague Nicole Heller, was what has happened to the cost of living in New Hampshire over a 20-year period. So we looked at data from 2005-2015 and 2024. We looked at some key living costs, particularly housing, child care, health care, food and gasoline.  We also looked at what a median price single-family house would cost, including interest rates and property taxes, etc.

So those data allowed us to have insight into what these core living costs mean for Granite Staters, and how they have changed for Granite Staters over time. We see that, particularly in the last 10 years, it has become substantially less affordable to live in New Hampshire, especially for a household with median household income, than it was 10 years ago. 

Melanie Plenda:

There were four areas of concern presented at the conference. What is the connection between health care, housing, caregiving and a new term, “rurality”?

Phil Sletten:

We examined these four areas, because these are all cost areas that affect people in ways that, I would say, are difficult to avoid. All of us get sick at some point, so health care is going to be an expense that many of us face. Having health insurance is something that, because of the high cost of basic care and specific expenses, health insurance is something that people — either in conjunction with their employer, through individual means, or through public support — try to maintain. 

Caregiving is a cost that households with children often face or they take the tradeoff of, if you’re not active in child care of some form, then you’re maybe not in the labor force as much but we’re all going to need care at some point or provide care at some point, whether it’s to someone younger or someone older or whether we need care when we’re older ourselves, for example.

Housing is another one. Everyone needs a place to live, whether it’s owning a home or renting.

Then living in rural areas presents particular challenges as well. Some of those costs, particularly transportation costs and also the access to goods and services — not just moving them, but also what happens to them in the process of getting there, or do even often make it to where you live in a rural area. Those are all costs that are difficult to avoid, and all ones that we consider relatively core. There are some costs that you can sort of find inventive and creative ways around, and people do. But we wanted to focus on those areas, because we think there was a lot to unpack there in terms of both cost drivers and some of the potential solutions that our panelists brought forward in the conference.

Melanie Plenda:

Is there a connection between housing accessibility and health? 

Phil Sletten:

Absolutely. If we think about the social determinants of health — which is a fancy way of saying all the things that are sort of upstream of getting sick that may happen to you before you might consider yourself sick, having an illness or some form of disability. All those things are what researchers would call the social determinants of health, and that includes your built environment. Does your housing have all of the things that it needs? Something as simple as having the plumbing fixtures or kitchen fixtures available. Is there mold in the home? Is it difficult to keep your home at temperature when it's very cold outside, because it may not be as well-insulated? Those are all built environment characteristics that could interact with health and social determinants of health, which can also include access to food and other services such as education.

Melanie Plenda:

The “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which became law in July, makes significant changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program known as SNAP. Who is most affected by these changes?  

Phil Sletten:

The changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the federal reconciliation law that passed back in July are ones that are direct, but some of them we're going to have to see how they shake out at the state level. That's because SNAP is a program in which all the benefits are federally funded, but there is a split in administrative costs and administrative responsibility between the federal government and the state governments, and that cost split is actually going to change. Both those administrative costs and states are more likely going to have to carry most of the cost of paying for those benefits. 

Melanie Plenda:

What is the state of New Hampshire doing to fill the gap in funding?

Phil Sletten:

Right now, the SNAP program is facing a gap in funding that's associated with the federal government shutdown. So there's two components here. One is the long-term reduction in funding associated with the federal reconciliation law. The other is what's happening immediately and has been happening since Oct. 1, which is that the federal government isn't technically open, or at least not all of it is technically open and funded. 

So the federal government pays for SNAP benefits in monthly installments, and the state will not be receiving its monthly installment for November. That means that the roughly 76,000 people in New Hampshire, including about 26,000 children, who are enrolled in the SNAP program in the state won't receive assistance to afford food from the federal government in November, at least until the federal government reopens. So what the state is doing is finding ways of additional resources and contracting with the New Hampshire Food Bank. 

[Editor’s note: Since this interview took place, the Trump administration agreed to partially fund SNAP, providing 50% of the normal amount.]

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s turn now to Medicaid. More than 180,000 New Hampshire residents are on Medicaid. Who is at greatest risk of losing their benefits with changes to Medicaid enrollment eligibility?

Phil Sletten:

There are both federal and state changes here. The state passed its state budget on June 27, and the federal government passed the federal reconciliation law on July 4. The two pieces of legislation didn't really have a clear vision of what each other was doing as they were being changed. Indeed, the federal changes were happening relatively late in the process, and they weren't watching all the state budget changes. 

So there's a couple of different layers of changes here. The largest one is work requirements. Medicaid, unlike SNAP — which has work requirements currently to maintain enrollment — doesn't have work requirements. Arkansas, New Hampshire and Georgia have all conducted experiments with work requirements in the past, over the last seven years or so, but those have been stopped because of federal law or have been maintained as just a small pilot component because of federal law.

Now that federal law has changed, there are work requirements that are part of the Medicaid program and they affect particularly Medicaid expansion enrollees, who are adults with poverty-level or near poverty-level incomes who are enrolled in what we call in New Hampshire, the Granite Advantage program. The state version of those requirements would have about 100 hours a month of work or community engagement requirements that fit the approved list. The federal government has a somewhat different approved list and identifies 80 hours per month as the threshold for maintaining coverage. It's not clear exactly which of these versions is going to be the dominant one in New Hampshire. 

But that's not the only change for enrollees. There are also going to be co-payments for Medicaid enrollees, and the state passed a version of premiums — payments that people make to the state to remain enrolled in Medicaid, when previously they didn't have to make payments, or at least not payments of this scale. The state implemented premiums, and the federal government implements co-pays in its new law, and those will probably override at least some of the premiums for some populations. 

There are also some certain lawfully present immigrants in the United States who are currently eligible for Medicaid as well as Medicare, SNAP and health care premium assistance tax credits that will no longer be eligible for those services. This includes refugees, asylees, victims of domestic and sexual violence and human trafficking who are lawfully present in the U.S., currently eligible, who will no longer be eligible starting next year.

There are also limits on what are called provider taxes, in this case taxes on hospitals. It's very complex, but the basic upshot of it is that the state raised about $280 million in the state fiscal year 2024 through these provider taxes and federal matching funds to fund the Medicaid program. When the federal limits that are new are fully put into place, that $280 million wouldn't have been able to be raised that way, so it would have to be raised through some other fashion. So that will likely change the Medicaid program in New Hampshire, but we don't know how.

Melanie Plenda:

Do we have a sense or there data that might show, with all of these changes, what might happen as a result in our state?

Phil Sletten:

There are two categories of what might happen. One is disenrollment, and the estimates that I’ve seen from KFF projected that with, all the changes in the federal reconciliation law — just what happened federally, not counting what we might see with the federal-state policy interactions that are a little harder to predict at this point — that was about 27,000 fewer people would have health coverage in New Hampshire in 2024 than would have otherwise if the federal reconciliation law had not passed. That number changes if you include the premium tax credits that are up for discussion at the federal level currently. That would boost it to about 32,000 people.

There’s also a set of unknowns related to fiscal pressures on the state that may prompt state policy decisions because of changes at the federal level.. We don’t know how those are going to shake out in the coming years because those will be a series of state policy decisions that will be implemented at the time those provisions are implemented.

Melanie Plenda:

Phil Sletten, research director at the N.H. Fiscal Policy Institute, 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.

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.