Illegal Opposition?  Who are spending-cap foes?

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Manchester's spending cap movement is and always has been a local, grass-roots initiative by city taxpayers fed up with ever-increasing city spending and taxes. But the primary organization working to oppose the cap is far from the local, grass-roots organization it claims to be.

Keep Manchester Moving, formed solely to oppose the cap, is a coalition of public employee unions and left-wing activist groups. Its official Web site is a page on the Web site of another coalition of left-wing activist groups, Granite State Progress. Its chairman, Josiette White, is a full-time political activist employed by America Votes, a community organizing group based in Washington, D.C., that lists as its primary goal, "coordinate independent electoral activity."

White, as an employee of America Votes, has actively opposed tax and spending caps in New Hampshire for more than a year. Last year she wrote to Concord City Council member William Stetson urging "more time" before the city allowed a vote on its cap. "A municipal election is the best place for it to be decided," she wrote.

In Manchester, however, White and her group have taken the opposite stance. In August, Keep Manchester Moving filed a legal challenge to keep the city's proposed cap off this year's municipal ballot.

Why the discrepancy? Both moves were designed to keep the caps off the next election ballot. When White wrote her letter last September, the deadline for getting the cap on the 2008 ballot had passed. She was urging Stetson to delay the vote on the cap for another year instead of holding a special election. Likewise, the point of her group's legal challenge was to prevent a vote on Manchester's cap.

Want to know exactly who Keep Manchester Moving is? Good luck. The group's filings with the City Clerk's Office list no contributors or expenses. And the organization is not registered with the secretary of state, as required by law. All businesses and nonprofits that conduct business under an assumed name must register with the secretary of state's Corporation Division.

In an interview, White insisted that her group is a grass-roots collection of Manchester residents. And many of its most active participants, including White, reside in the city. But who funds and organizes the group's activism?

Last month, Keep Manchester Moving released a study that assessed Franklin's tax cap. However, Keep Manchester Moving's two expense reports filed with the City Clerk's Office list no expenses. So who paid for the study?

Economist Brian Gottlob, the study's author, told us on Friday that he was paid by Granite State Progress, America Votes and a labor union. Keep Manchester Moving may have avoided listing its campaign expenses by getting other groups to pay them.

At a city public meeting on the spending cap, Zandra Rice Hawkins, director of Granite State Progress, an affiliate of Keep Manchester Moving, criticized the New Hampshire Advantage Coalition for spending a lot of money to promote the spending cap. Having affiliate groups pay its expenses allows Keep Manchester Moving to claim to be a low-budget volunteer group when in reality its activities are financed by well-funded activist organizations.

White's employer, America Votes, last filed a campaign report with the secretary of state in August 2008. That report lists 19 donations totaling $4,300. Every one of the donors was from out of state. Six were from California; five were from New York.

Opposition to Manchester's spending cap is being underwritten by left-wing donors from Berkeley, Calif., and New York City, in the name of an organization that appears to be operating illegally. If Manchester's constant tax increases were not enough to anger city voters, that should do the trick. The state Attorney General's Office needs to investigate this group to see if it is, as it seems, operating in violation of state law, and whether its city campaign finance reports are proper.

- Printed in the New Hampshire Sunday News on Sunday October 18, 2009