LEBANON — When Susan Almy launched her first write-in campaign for the New Hampshire House of Representatives, she was so convinced she would lose the race that she agreed to take a job outside the country starting in November.
This year, Almy wrapped up her 30th and final year representing Lebanon in Concord.
Many things have changed over the veteran representative’s tenure. When she was elected in 1996, Almy was the first Democrat to hold the seat in over a decade.
“Good God. Well, it’s about time we started heading towards a mixture,” Almy told the Valley News upon her election in 1996. “I don’t believe in one-party government.”
Almy, then 49, had just been forced into early retirement from working in agricultural development across Africa and Latin America because of illness.
She knew she couldn’t return overseas, but didn’t know what was next.
Almy, now 80, got involved with political campaigning, joined the newly re-formed Lebanon Democrats, and found herself running a write-in campaign to flesh out the Democratic ticket.
After her 1996 election, Almy served 15 consecutive terms. She decided not to run for reelection this year the day before candidate filing opened in June.
The decision not to run was a tough one, Almy said in an interview, but there were “a number of indications that I wasn’t going to be able to continue.”
Almy noticed both her technology skills and her mental state were beginning to “degenerate.” She realized that she would “run out of steam on sentences sometimes, which is extremely dangerous when you’re in the Legislature.”
Over three decades, Almy remained remarkably committed to her 1996 campaign promises to focus on state taxes and finance.
Her early victories focused on drug and alcohol safety, including sponsoring the 2000 bill that introduced ignition interlock devices for people found guilty of driving under the influence and raised penalties for reckless driving.
The legislator lost her own sister to a long battle with alcohol and tobacco addiction, inspiring her work on the topic.
Over the next several years, Almy sponsored an array of bills focused on addiction, justice, impaired driving and tobacco.
A 2012 Almy-sponsored bill updated New Hampshire’s impaired driving penalties and response programs, including requirements for alcohol and drug abuse screenings and impaired driver education.
In addition, Almy, who has been president of her homeowners association for over 20 years, has focused on condominium rights and regulations.
But most consistently, she spent all but her first term quietly working away at state finances on the House Ways and Means Committee.
“It’s something (…) that it turns out I’m very good at,” Almy said in a recent interview.
She worked through municipal budgets during the recession years of the late 2000s, the COVID-19 pandemic and every year in between.
As chairwoman of House Ways and Means, Almy recalls that the main goal during the 2008 recession was “to give the same money that we’d given to the towns” the prior year.
“They needed more than that, because everyone had been unstable and the country needed more than that, but they got what they had the year before,” she said.
And even business-as-usual was a feat.
As chairwoman, Almy ran marathon work sessions where rotating groups of committee members brainstormed any possible solutions. Ultimately, the committee opted to cut the state’s biggest department, Health and Human Services, by 25%.
“We took out the people who didn’t have an effect directly on the care” the department was delivering, Almy recalled.
Though not the inflation-adjusted budget the state might have needed, Almy days making it through that year was a great accomplishment.
But the following years were no easier.
One major change was the hard swing from an array of legislators across the political spectrum to a state government that was “more and more concentratedly deep red plus free staters.” In time, Democrats like Almy found their every idea shut down.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought new challenges and the Legislature was able to do “a lot of good work in that time” that was not noticed, Almy said.
She focused on supporting Lebanon businesses, such as the J.C. Penney store on Route 12A that closed in 2020, along with 153 other Penney stores. Dozens of employees found themselves without jobs and unable to qualify for unemployment because the company had continued to offer medical insurance.
Ultimately, Almy worked with the head of Business and Economic Affairs at the time to hold a meeting at City Hall with J.C. Penney employees and “found a way to pay them.”
Coming out of COVID, the state government turned its attention to recovery and business as usual, as well as trying to cut taxes. Republican-backed legislation has led to repeal of the Interest and Dividends Tax and cuts in the Business Enterprise Tax; Almy and other critics say those decisions created holes in the state budget.
Almy fought against cutting the business enterprise tax, telling the New Hampshire Bulletin that the state government is so short of cash, “we can’t afford to give anything up anymore.”
Now, Almy says, the state’s fiscal situation is undoubtedly worse now than in the past, and she expects the state to face “real revenue problems” in the coming years.
Despite stepping away from the Legislature, Almy hopes to continue her push for financial changes in New Hampshire. She is particularly interested in how taxes and exemptions are levied on small businesses.
