In his 1955 essay titled “The Role of Government in Education,” libertarian economist Milton Friedman proposed that public schools be funded by tax-funded scholarships or vouchers parents could use to enroll their children in the schools of their choice.
Under Friedman’s plan, parents would supplement the vouchers if they enrolled their children in a more costly school and pocket the difference if they chose a less costly option. In such a market-based system, Friedman reasoned, public schools would compete in the marketplace for students the same way grocery stores compete in the marketplace for customers. In so doing, schools would have an incentive to operate more efficiently and ultimately offer a high quality education at a lower cost to taxpayers.
Initially viewed as an impractical and politically implausible idea, Friedman’s voucher concept began to take root in conservative circles in the 1960s and by the late 1980s, rebranded as “school choice”, was embraced by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Indeed, Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama incorporated school choice into their “education reform” packages, touting its empowerment of parents and how the competition between public and charter schools-of-choice would satisfy voters seeking better schools for lower costs.
In 2026, New Hampshire’s GOP introduced legislation that took “school choice” to an even higher level, expanding open enrollments and Education Freedom Accounts, both of which are grounded in Friedman’s voucher concept. From the GOP’s perspective, passage of these two bills would eliminate the legal wrangling over “adequate funding” and allow the legislature to set the State per pupil aid based on their anticipated revenue stream. This, in turn, would eliminate the need for ever-increasing State revenue, make it feasible to pass a constitutional amendment forbidding any broad-based tax, and enshrine “The Pledge” into the law.
There are two daunting downsides to the GOP’s de facto state-wide voucher plan. First, it would perpetuate the gulf between haves-and-have-not school districts in the State as wealthier parents migrate to communities with well-funded schools with a wide range of opportunities. This would result in a vicious cycle, driving up the value of homes in communities with well-funded schools and diminishing the value of homes in communities with under-funded schools making it impossible for less affluent parents residing in those communities to have an equal opportunity for success.
Secondly, the Federal government’s downshifting of costs to the States will necessitate an increase in New Hampshire’s revenues. This pressure will become particularly evident soon given the timeline for the Federal budget cuts to kick in. In 2026 alone New Hampshire stands to lose $14 million in SNAP funding, $4.6 million to address homelessness, and see no increase in Special education funding. And, in the coming decade New Hampshire stands to lose $2.3 billion in Medicaid funding. New Hampshire cannot absorb these cuts with its current revenue stream, it’s backlog of infrastructure needs, the demand for an expansion of childcare for working parents, and current court cases citing its inadequate funding levels for schools.
Property taxes are already stretched to the limit, making it impossible for the State to downshift the costs for needs-based programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and homelessness to towns. Given these facts, now would be a good time to seriously consider ways to increase State revenue, ones like the “3-3 Tax Savings Plan” put forth this March by Andru Volinsky, whose proposal calls for a 3% income tax for all residents and a $3 tax per $1,000 of equalized property value for all homeowners. As Volinsky noted in his recent blog post arguing against the proposed Constitutional amendment to forbid a broad-base tax: “…it’s not how much we pay in taxes as a state, it’s a matter of who pays how much. If you earn more than $329,300 a year, 4.2 percent of your income or less is devoted to property taxes. The top 1 percent (income over $720,000/year) pay only 2.8 percent. If you earn less than $35,000 a year, 20 percent goes to pay your property taxes.”
Unsurprisingly, the GOP legislators who want to eliminate any possibility for a broad-based tax panned Volinsky’s plan, with the Libertarian party going so far as to post on X that based on their “ethical theory”, it was “perfectly permissible to kill him”.
Distressingly, as local Canaan legislator Tom Oppel wrote in a recent Substack posting, his Democratic Party is unwilling to advocate a plan like Volinsky’s. Oppel notes that the Democratic Party’s failure to do so undercuts their priorities to fully fund public schools, to expand health care, housing, and childcare because absent any additional revenue the Party has no answer to the question “How are you going to pay for that?” He contends that the Democrats’ “silence on the revenue question, as the saying goes, essentially serves as consent to the GOP framework”, and that framework relies solely on property tax, “sin taxes”, and fees.
The time is ripe for looking at an idea like Volinsky’s that shifts the burden of taxation away from property owners toward those with high earnings and accumulated wealth. Before reflexively opposing ANY change to New Hampshire’s system of taxation, voters should use Volinsky’s website to calculate the impact of his proposed tax plan (nhtaxsavingclculator.com) on them so they could determine how his “3-3 plan” would affect their pocketbook. Plug your data into the 3-3 formula before rejecting Volinsky’s ideas, and, if you don’t find them to your liking, offer a better way to generate the $2,000,000,000+ New Hampshire will need to meet its current needs, to offset the forthcoming federal cuts, and to provide the schools and child care needed to attract young families and the benefits needed by thousands of Medicare and SNAP recipients in the State. Democrats, Republicans, and Valley News readers will be interested in hearing your ideas.