Lynch speaks to business group

While visiting the Lakes Region on Friday, Gov. John Lynch told people gathered at a noon meeting of the Lakes Business Group how a group of New Hampshire 4th-graders learned a good lesson in government and politics.

Prior to a meeting with the governor, the youngsters had spent their afternoon in Concord learning about the Legislature. They were then of one voice telling him how terrible it was that House members only get paid $100 per year for their service.

When Lynch asked them how many would support a good raise in pay for our lawmakers, every hand went up. "Oh, but wait a minute!" the governor reported he said. "What if part the money we need to pay them had to come out of your allowance?"

All the hands came down.

Having survived his first session working with the Republican controlled Legislature, Lynch - a Democrat — told his audience at the Taylor Community's Congregate Living Center that he considers himself to hold the "best job in the country". He said he has tried very hard to conduct himself in a non-partisan manner because he believes that is what the voters want.

Much of Lynch's short speech was directed at the value of education, which is "all about opportunity," he said. "Every child deserves an equal opportunity for a quality education that will qualify them for good jobs."

"Education drives jobs," Lynch added, "and brings companies to New Hampshire."

In response to a question from Alan Robichaud about the lack of resources to deal with societal problems, the governor focused on the need to reduce the public school drop-out rate, which, he said, runs from a low of 3-percent to a high of 20-percent right here in our own state. He pointed to the correlation between the lack of a high school diploma and the increased likelihood of anti-social behavior, saying, in the long-run, it costs us $30,000 a year to incarcerate someone.

Lynch went on to touch on the controversial federal No Child Left Behind Act, saying he supported "accountability" but saw no point in labeling schools as "failing", and calling into question a system that compares test scores of students moving through a given grade level. He recommended a Portsmouth School District program that instead follows the individual child as he or she progresses through the grades.

Perhaps the toughest question asked of Lynch came from LRGHealthcare CEO Tom Clairmont, who called the defunct Franklin Career Academy a "huge success" that "the system ate up". With the governor calling for resources to be put toward lowering the drop-out rate, Clairmont wondered why a charter school that was focused on doing just that was allowed to fail for lack of promised money.

(State law dictates that some lcoal public tax money "follow" students to approved charter schools but Franklin officials recently refused to release the required $77,000 to support the Franklin Career Academy that had just completed its first year of operation.)

Clairmont said people involved in education are "just paranoid about change" and a "terrible injustice was done." "It was pure politics," he said.

Lynch avoided any mention of Franklin in his response to Clairmont, but seemed to suggest a belief the school failed because it did not enjoy public support. "It can't be forced on a community," he said. "You need to bring people along."

The governor did say that the concept of charter schools had grown on him and he now believed that "in some cases" they could play a role in guaranteeing equal educational opportunity for every child.

Off the subject of eduction, Lynch touted the passage of SB-125, which repealed the "most onerous" provisions of a health insurance law (SB-110) that allowed insurance companies to discriminate against people based on their health history and where they live.

He also boasted of a bipartisan effort to eliminate a $400-million budget shortfall over the next biennium without raising taxes. He said people who insisted his revenue projections were too optimistic might have learned something when income for the fiscal year just ended came with three-tenths of one-percent of matching his administration's prediction.

Lynch was escorted to the meeting by Belknap County Economic Development Council Chairman Tony Ferruolo and that organization's executive director, Eliza Leadbeater.