Labrie: HB 675 Is The Firewall For New Hampshire Taxpayers

By Brian Labrie, NH Journal

In the halls of the State House and the coffee shops of every New Hampshire town, there is a growing consensus: the current trajectory of school spending is completely unsustainable.

While inflation eats away at household savings, many school district budgets continue to expand as if the laws of economics don’t apply to them.

HB 675 is a long-overdue firewall for the Granite State taxpayer. When local districts are unwilling or unable to cap spending themselves, the state has a responsibility to step in and protect its citizens from runaway property taxes.

The most critical evolution of this bill is its focus on actual student populations. For too long, school budgets have been a “one-way ratchet”; they go up when enrollment increases, but they rarely, if ever, come down when enrollment declines.

By tying the spending cap to the previous year’s enrollment (ADMR) alongside the Consumer Price Index (CPI), HB 675 finally introduces honest math to the process. If a district has fewer students to serve, its base budget should reflect that reality. We are ending the era of the “ghost student” subsidy, where taxpayers are forced to fund empty desks and administrative bloat.

Critics of local control often claim that a state-mandated cap undermines “local control.” In reality, the current system is often a “tyranny of the few,” where a tiny fraction of voters at a school budget meeting can commit an entire town to millions in new debt.

HB 675 restores balance by:

• Requiring a two-thirds majority: To exceed the cap, a district must prove a genuine community consensus. If a project or a spending hike is truly necessary, it should be able to win more than a simple majority of a low-turnout crowd.
• Providing predictability: Families and seniors on fixed incomes deserve to know that their property tax bills won’t fluctuate wildly based on a single warrant article.
• Prioritizing the classroom: When you have a firm boundary on spending, it forces administrators to prioritize students and teachers over bureaucratic expansion.

Protecting the New Hampshire Advantage is mission-critical and has always been a top House priority.

The New Hampshire Advantage is built on the foundation of fiscal discipline. As we move into 2026, we cannot allow that foundation to be eroded by local spending that ignores the economic realities of vulnerable taxpayers.

HB 675, with its refined focus on enrollment-based budgeting and inflationary caps, is the most pro-taxpayer piece of legislation in a generation. Bill sponsors Joe Sweeney (R-Salem) and Jason Osborne (R-Auburn) introduced this bill to establish a fiscal firewall, ensuring that any significant spending increases are approved by broad community consensus rather than a small group of activists. It’s time to stop the excuses and start the fiscal accountability. Let’s pass HB 675 and ensure that New Hampshire remains a place where families can afford to live, work, and retire.

State Rep. Brian Labrie represents Bedford in the New Hampshire House. He owns multiple small businesses, which together employ more than 40 New Hampshire residents. He wrote this for NHJournal.com.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.