Portsmouth, n.h.
Even at 31 years old, the work was routine for a man of Marchand’s background, including years of experience auditing municipal budgets, but he said it was far from the norm of city budget discussions.
Marchand, now 42 and running for governor as a Democrat, requested data from 2003 and 2004 that showed how much time patrolmen spent answering calls for service, as opposed to self-initiated activity and paperwork. He compared the results with what he said was a benchmark figure that officers should spend 30 percent of their time responding to calls from the public.
His conclusion: During the busiest shift of the week, the Tuesday daytime block, there were eight officers scheduled when it would only take four to achieve that 30 percent benchmark. The slowest shifts, weekday overnights, would require fewer than one patrolman, when six were scheduled.
Meanwhile, he said, the department was requesting a 7 percent increase in its budget for the following year to hire more patrolmen.
“I would tell folks, you can disagree with the analysis, you can disagree with the conclusion, you can look at my math — but no one else was doing the math,” he said.
Marchand said the police department didn’t get any new patrolmen in the fiscal year 2006 budget and, in fact, reduced staffing through attrition over the next few years.
A fellow city councilor at the time, Ned Raynolds, said in an interview that this episode got under the police department’s skin, because Marchand “went and dug up data and then made a policy argument based on that — and it’s hard to argue against numbers.”
“It takes the discussion out of the ideology or whatever that you’re ‘for the police’ or ‘against the police.’ Nobody’s against the police, but people are for economical government. That’s the way the debate goes in the absence of data,” said Raynolds, a registered Democrat who’s supporting Marchand’s campaign for governor.
Another contemporary city councilor, Republican Harold Whitehouse, said he doesn’t agree with all of Marchand’s positions, but he’ll vote for him in the general election because he trusts Marchand to control the state’s pocketbook.
Marchand said he’ll employ a data-driven strategy as governor, because that’s what’s needed at a time when public trust in government is at an all-time low.
“One of my missions is for folks to see that if I show my homework and do my homework, that we can build confidence from the public in local and, in this case, state government’s ability to provide important services efficiently,” Marchand said.
After that 2005 report on the Portsmouth Police Department, Marchand went on to become mayor. Then he worked as a campaign consultant and became the University of New Hampshire’s director of corporate relations, a role he said taught him what businesses in the state need to succeed.
In those meetings, he said, he gleaned four common objectives for the state. They were: to deliver the best public education outcomes; to invest in infrastructure; to foster a culture of entrepreneurship; and to reverse the opiate and heroin crisis.
Marchand acknowledges that those things will cost money and has publicly challenged his Democratic primary opponents to prove how they’ll pay for the things they plan to achieve.
He tallies his proposed new spending as follows: $13 million to help towns set up full-day kindergarten; $10 million for targeted special education assistance and classes to help students learning English as a second language; $8 million a year to combat the toll of opioid addiction; as well as the loss of $10 million in revenues for targeted tax cuts for the business enterprise tax and the research and development tax credit.
In addition, he said, he’d like to restore the state’s school building aid program and start catching up on infrastructure improvements in unspecified dollar amounts that will depend on available revenue.
To pay for those efforts, Marchand said he has three plans: raise the gas tax a few cents and specifically target the $5 million to $8 million in revenue to infrastructure; increase the business profits tax to where it was before it was reduced in the past budget, which would raise roughly $30 million a year; and legalize and tax marijuana, which he said would raise another $30 million.
“A proposal without money is just an idea,” he said. “If we’re serious about knocking down the red-list bridges and keeping up with road maintenance … then we have to talk about how to pay for it.”
With less than two weeks to the primary, the UNH survey center released a poll showing that the most well-known Democratic candidate for governor remained unknown to 70 percent of voters. Marchand was perceived positively by 14 percent of likely voters, negatively by 5 percent and unknown by 73 percent, which netted him the highest favorability rating.
He said his late entry to the race hurt his recognition, but he contends he’s rising faster than his primary opponents.
After a debate on Tuesday in Manchester, he said: “I would much rather be me with a week to go than either of the two of them.”
Marchand sought to portray himself on the debate stage as the most progressive candidate in the race, noting that he was the only one to support Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president, as well as a policy for paid family leave and unequivocal opposition to the death penalty.
“You can be the most fiscally responsible as an executive and have the most progressive values,” he said.