Say NO to an anti-civil liberties budget in NH

The message:

Right now, New Hampshire lawmakers are crafting a state budget that contradicts our state’s values of freedom, equality, and community and instead would strip away the civil rights and liberties of Granite Staters.

New budgets are passed every two years and are supposed to be centered on state finances, but instead lawmakers have taken this opportunity to push a host of non-financial, exceptionally harmful, and unpopular policies into the budget – such as a vague and broad state ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion and a devastating rollback of anti-discrimination protections for transgender people which would allow policies like bathroom bans to become the law in our state.

Many of the finance-related proposals are similarly destructive, such as:

• Increasing the number of evictions by making evicting tenants easier and cutting the Housing Appeals Board, all while New Hampshire endures a severe housing crisis.
• Eliminating the New Hampshire Family Planning Program, which supports essential reproductive and sexual health care services like no-cost and low-cost birth control, cancer screenings, STD testing and treatment, pregnancy testing and counseling, and more.
• Undermining funding for drug misuse treatment and harm reduction programs.
• Completely eliminating the Office of the Child Advocate, the Human Rights Commission, and the Commission on the Aging.
• Cuts related to Medicaid while funding an expensive universal vouchers program despite the track record of these vouchers fueling disparities for low income students and students with disabilities.
• Catastrophically cutting staff positions at the state Department of Corrections, meaning that Granite Staters incarcerated in the state prison would be severely limited or no longer have access to critical, positive rehabilitation programs, like education and vocational programs, mental health services, family visitation programs, and much more – people’s basic safety, dignity, and constitutional rights would be jeopardized.