Property Tax Cap Could Pass New Hampshire House Thursday, Over United Democrat Opposition

By Michael Graham, NH Journal

Granite State legislators in both parties agree that lowering property taxes is a top priority for voters. Where they disagree is on the solution.

“We heard loud and clear from the voters. Their top three issues are ‘property taxes, property taxes and property taxes,’” said Sen. Tim Lang (R-Sanbornton). He supports a GOP proposal to put a local property tax cap on the ballot in the next two general elections.

Opponents, like Deb Howes, president of AFT-NH, don’t agree. They accuse the GOP-controlled legislature of “downshifting” costs.

“Tax caps are blunt tools that don’t allow districts to respond to the learning needs of all their students,” Howes said in an alert to union members last week. “There is one choice to provide property tax relief, and that’s for the state to fund our schools.”

On Thursday, legislators will take up a bill that lands solidly on the first solution. HB 1300 made it through a committee of conference. Now the House and Senate will have to approve the compromise. It would put school tax caps on local ballots in November 2026 and again in 2028. The measure would allow voters to limit how much school districts can raise through local property taxes, with future increases limited to inflation and new taxable property growth.

It would also let voters cap school administrative unit central office budgets at 6 percent of the combined appropriations of the districts in the SAU.

Every Democrat voted against the original legislation and is expected to do the same this week. Despite that, “I expect it to sail through,” Lang told NHJournal on Tuesday. Sources close to Gov. Kelly Ayotte say they expect the first-term Republican to sign the legislation if it reaches her desk.

While New Hampshire has the lowest per capita tax burden in the U.S., it also has some of the highest property taxes. Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Perkins Kwoka (D-Portsmouth) claim the high local taxes are the result of the GOP-controlled state government “downshifting” costs onto local property taxpayers.

Nonsense, says Lang.

“We’ve given more money for the past five years—a 104 percent increase in the rooms and meals tax revenue alone. The per-pupil spending from the state has gone up every year, and we have given the towns more money for roads and bridges. That’s the actual record. Anything else is a lie,” Lang said.

That hasn’t stopped Democrats from making the “downshifting” argument a centerpiece of their 2026 campaign messaging. On Monday, likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee Cinde Warmington accused Ayotte of “raising taxes on families with her school voucher scheme.”

In fact, the total cost of Education Freedom Accounts—the “school voucher scheme” Warmington alluded to—is about $54 million. That’s about 1.2 percent of the $4.2 billion New Hampshire spends on K-12 education each year. And it doesn’t include savings for local schools when students use state-funded vouchers to attend private or home schools, reducing the number of students the school must serve.

Teachers’ unions are urging lawmakers to kill the bill. Howes called tax caps “blunt tools” that would prevent school districts from responding to student needs.

“This bill is badly written, contains contradictory language, will be nearly impossible to implement, and will hurt student outcomes,” Howes said. “New Hampshire has a proud tradition of town meetings and local control, and this undermines it.”

The NEA-New Hampshire has also blasted the proposal as an “arbitrary” school budget cap and part of what it calls an “anti-public education” agenda.

“This bill is badly written, contains contradictory language, will be nearly impossible to implement, and will hurt student outcomes,” Howes said. “New Hampshire has a proud tradition of town meetings and local control, and this undermines it. There is one choice to provide property tax relief, and that’s for the state to fund our schools.”

NEA-New Hampshire has also blasted the proposal as an “arbitrary” school budget cap and part of what it calls an “anti-public education” agenda.

Republicans counter that the bill does not impose a tax cap from Concord. It puts the question before local voters in a high-turnout November election, rather than leaving the decision to the far smaller electorate that typically shows up at March school meetings.

The bill requires a three-fifths majority for a local tax cap to pass.

Under the conference committee deal, voters would be asked whether they want to limit future school property tax increases to the prior year’s amount, adjusted for inflation and new taxable property growth. Bonded capital projects would be excluded. Voters would also decide whether to cap SAU central office administrative spending.

“This lets the voters take control of spending,” Lang said.

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.