Jonathan P. Baird

As a law student back in the mid-1980s, I worked on a class-action case on behalf of female state prisoners in New Hampshire. The case had an unusual purpose. It aimed to force the state to create a women’s prison inside New Hampshire. There was not one.
At that time, the state exiled female inmates and shipped them off to out-of-state correctional facilities. The small number of female inmates translated into an almost complete lack of consideration of their needs by the state.
A lawsuit, Fiandaca v. Cunningham, challenged this unfairness. With no women’s prison in New Hampshire, the state effectively denied female prisoners access to their children and lawyers. The lawsuit also took issue with the poor quality of programs available to female prisoners which were not comparable to the men’s programs.
As part of my work on the case, I traveled around and took affidavits from a number of women who were mostly confined in Massachusetts prisons. There were 23 female state prisoners when the Fiandaca case was filed in 1983. Probably the biggest change since then, beyond getting a women’s prison in the state, has been the remarkable increase in the number of women inmates.
According to the most recent available data, in 2007 there were 142 women in the state’s women’s prison in Goffstown or at the Shea Farm Halfway House in Concord. There were 291 in jail and another 1,450 under correctional supervision in the community.
Considering the extent of the increase, it is surprising how little public discussion and analysis has been forthcoming about the reasons for the climb.
A little-noticed 2008 report from the New Hampshire Women’s Policy Institute entitled “Women Behind Bars” did make a serious attempt to study underlying reasons.
The report found a complex of reasons to explain the increase in female arrests, including substance abuse, mental illness, a history of domestic violence, low education and poverty. Recidivism was a major factor driving the increase.
Two-thirds of female inmates have children and almost half are single mothers. The Women’s Policy Institute report estimates that 1,300 or more children are affected by their mothers’ incarceration each year. Research suggests that children of incarcerated parents are five times more likely to enter the criminal justice system than children whose parents have never been incarcerated. They are also more likely to leave school and have issues with depression, substance abuse and delinquency.
Nationally, 64 percent of mothers in state prison lived with their children immediately before their incarceration. The children of these inmates will often have emotional and psychological problems stemming from the trauma of separation. In effect, the children will do the prison time too.
From the perspective of societal self-interest, addressing the multiple needs of offenders is rational. It is about future crime prevention. It is not about being a bleeding heart or excusing the crimes of the women. Those crimes must not be excused.
Yet being tough or warehousing is not in and of itself a policy. It is certainly not a thoughtful policy. Many of the female prisoners are very young. The great majority will leave prison and re-enter society. Their children are in the background, but they are very much part of the equation.
A comprehensive treatment approach is needed that integrates substance abuse treatment, mental health, child care, children’s needs, housing assistance and job training. Long-term, successful rehabilitation should be the goal. Many of these women can turn their lives around.
We are far from having such an approach. We do not even gather adequate data to understand the unique profile of women offenders. Warehousing trumps rehabilitation.
Of course, there are many who will argue that such a rehabilitation approach is too expensive or not worth it. I would suggest that lack of investment and treatment is even more expensive. The cost will be more incarcerations and more lives ruined by largely treatable conditions like substance abuse, mental disorders and domestic violence victimization.
Too bad budget sheets do not typically capture the costs of lack of treatment.
Recently our Legal Aid softball team played two games against the inmates at the prison in Goffstown. Many of the prisoners who were not playing came out to watch. I was struck by how young the women were. They could have been high school or college students. Some looked like classic All American girls.
There is sometimes a thin line between being in prison and being on the outside. The path to criminality is not a given. Demonizing inmates and ignoring their needs is short-sighted. The upward trend in female incarceration could be combated if the political will was there.

To end our national paralysis about health care reform, the voices of the people must be heard. There is a reservoir of private anguish which could sway lawmakers if they bothered to listen to the untold number of horror stories which are accessible but ignored.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has performed a public service by collecting and publishing personal stories about the problems people are having with their health coverage or lack thereof. He solicited these stories by e-mail and received more than 4,000 responses. The personal stories are available on Sanders’s website and include the following:
• A combat-decorated veteran of the Vietnam war died three weeks after being diagnosed with colon cancer. He had been laid off his job and he could not afford COBRA coverage. He delayed going to the doctor until he was in extreme pain. By then, it was too late. The attending physician said that if he had only sought treatment earlier, he would still be alive. He left behind a wife and two teenage sons.
• A 42-year-old single mother was diagnosed with breast cancer which had spread to her brain. She was insured, but her co-pays and deductibles were so high that the expenses forced her to file bankruptcy. What kind of system adds financial pressure to an already scary medical prognosis?
• A low-income Washington state woman had lengthy wait to see a physician. She was uninsured, diabetic and lacked money to pay for medications and checkups. Because she could not afford her medication, she went without and died. She had two young children who will grow up without a mother.
• A 23-year-old volunteer firefighter, part-time EMT and paramedic developed his own medical problems and had to go to a hospital a year ago. He was uninsured and did not have the financial resources to pay his medical bills. He would pay what he could when he could. How is it possible that a young man who risks his life to save others would not be covered?
• The owner of a natural foods supermarket with 50 employees provided health care to all full-time employees at 100 percent paid by the company. Because of increasing cost, the owner had to start including deductibles and then he had to have employees pay for their insurance. The owner ended up spending so much money on health care, more than he ever made in profit, that he had to close the business in 2008.
• The wife of a Missouri man died of cancer in 1989. Her medical bills were more than $100,000. The insurance company refused to pay the bills, stating that the chemotherapy she received was experimental. The man appealed the insurance company’s denial and spent five years unsuccessfully litigating the claim. Although his lawyer recommended bankruptcy, he refused that route. For years after, he paid off the medical bills.
These types of stories are all too common. They are testimonials to the failure of the private insurance model. As Sanders argues, how is it acceptable to leave 46 million Americans completely uninsured and millions more underinsured?
There is a window of opportunity now to fix national health care. It would be a tragedy if this chance slipped away. Who knows when in the future there will be a similar opportunity.
If we cannot have a single payer system, then there at least must be a robust public health insurance option. Such a public health option would be cheaper and more efficient, and it would spend a smaller percentage of dollars on non-health items.
It is ironic that opponents of a public health option are afraid of competition. Adding a public health option would give the public more choice. The old arguments about how such an option is socialism or socialized medicine are stale.
We remain alone among the advanced capitalist countries in not having some form of national health insurance. It is so past time for us to address health care.

There has been insufficient public outrage over the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.
Early this month an anti-abortion fanatic was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Tiller, who was killed as he and his wife attended Sunday church services in Wichita, Kan. The murder was an unprovoked attack.
However much anti-abortion zealots may have disliked abortion providers like Tiller, his practice was constitutionally protected activity. Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land. Because the movement cannot legally prohibit women from exercising their rights, it has targeted physicians – to kill them or make it impossible for them to provide abortion services.
Political murder is a slippery slope. If such murders become commonplace, how long before the fabric of society starts to unravel and civil society begins to resemble a Mad Max movie? The rule of law hangs in the balance. Somalia, anyone?
Tiller’s murder is reminiscent of the 1998 murder of another physician, Dr. Barnett Slepian. Hiding in Slepian’s yard, another anti-abortion extremist shot the doctor in the back through a kitchen window. Slepian and his family had just returned from Friday night services at his synagogue.
You do not have to be religious to think premeditated murder at or near a church or synagogue is ghoulish. Nevertheless, it would not surprise me if the shooter believed he had a hotline to God. I expect he will argue justifiable homicide.
The late comedian George Carlin used to do a routine about the anti-abortion movement. As I recall, he mocked the label “pro-life.” Carlin said the movement killed doctors. Tiller is, in fact, the eighth abortion provider to be murdered in the United States since 1977. The victims include four doctors and four clinic workers. The National Abortion Federation says 17 other abortion providers have been targeted for murder.
Prior to his murder, Tiller and his medical clinic were subject to more than two decades of violent threats, incidents of violence and vandalism. In 1986, his medical clinic was bombed. Later, his clinic and patients faced years of picketing and harassment.
Protesters blocked access to the clinic. Eventually, federal marshals arrived because patients could not get in. In 1993, a gunman shot Tiller in both arms in an earlier assassination attempt.
More recently, the anti-abortion movement in Kansas ran a smear campaign against him. Activists created “most-wanted” posters resembling the posters used by the FBI to track down most-wanted criminals. Some of the posters offered a $1,000 reward for stopping physicians from performing abortions. Protesters called him “Dr. Satan.”
Pitiful reaction
Since Tiller’s murder, the quality of self-criticism I have seen from the anti-abortion movement has been nothing short of pitiful. Beyond pro forma apologies and denials of responsibility, much of the commentary seems to be of the “he had it coming” variety. Apparently there is no need for the allegedly “pro-life” movement to look into its responsibility for violence. Condemn the violence, ignore your role, and move on. It is back to business as usual.
In his classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote that political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. The political language of the anti-abortion movement created the context for Tiller’s murder. If the message you persistently drill is that Tiller is a monster, it is hard to be surprised when one of your crazies acts on the demonization.
On Fox News, Bill O’Reilly routinely referred to Tiller as “Tiller the Baby Killer,” as did much of the right-wing media. In June 2007, O’Reilly stated that Tiller killed thousands of late-term fetuses without explanation. He said Tiller performed such abortions when there was no danger to the mother’s life and when the fetus was viable outside the womb.
A big fantasy of the anti-abortion movement is the notion that there are not severely troubled pregnancies. In this fairy tale, all babies are born healthy and women are simply electing to abort fetuses for the sake of convenience.
In reality, the biggest reason for late-term abortions is the discovery of fetal anomalies incompatible with life. Sometimes these anomalies are not apparent until late in the pregnancy. The mother finds out the heartbreaking news that her baby has no brain. Such anencephalic babies are doomed. They will either die in childbirth or shortly after. Tiller’s clinic was one of only three in the country that assisted women who encountered this horrendous situation.
Blaming a physician who had the courage to help women in such difficulty reflects a profound misunderstanding of the underlying medical issues.
By all accounts, late-term abortions are exceedingly rare. They are also restricted by law. The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed states to restrict access to abortion in the third trimester except when necessary to preserve the life and health of the mother. Tiller always operated inside these lawful constraints.
Hate and ignorance propelled the portrayal of Tiller as a mass murderer. What is bizarre is the denial of women’s experience. Tiller described himself as a women-educated physician. He became the doctor he was because he listened to women and addressed their medical needs so compassionately.

Here is a new context for the use of the phrase “ticking time bomb.” The context is retirement and the utter lack of preparation we have devised as a society for a fast-approaching demographic explosion.
The basics of the retirement crisis are easy to grasp. As the boomer wave starts aging into retirement, the senior population is on the verge of big-time expansion. We will have more people living longer with lower income and fewer savings. These same people will face high housing costs and, living longer, will often experience higher health care costs whether they are insured or not.
Leaving aside the current recession and its consequences, it is entirely fair to say that the safety net, particularly Medicaid, is not prepared for this sizable demographic shift.
At particular risk are women because they live longer and are more likely to be single. They represent the majority of those who will be financially insecure during their retirement years. A significant percentage will run out of money during retirement.
New Hampshire is fortunate that an in-depth study of the retirement crisis titled “Retirement Insecurity” has just been released by the New Hampshire Women’s Policy Institute. The authors are Peter Antal, Katie Merrow and Peter Francese. The report, supported by the nonprofit Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER), is the first comprehensive look at the financial status of
women age 65 and over in our state.
The findings of the report are sobering.
Sixty two percent of older women living alone have income below what is needed to cover the basic cost of living. As of 2007, the report found 28,000 New Hampshire women age 65 and over who had income below what is minimally needed to survive. The report predicts that by 2020, if income distribution remains the same, that number will rise to 49,000.
The report identifies four main reasons why women are particularly challenged in preparing for retirement.
First, women have lower lifetime earnings than men. There are multiple factors behind this finding including differences in wages, occupational concentrations, labor force participation in full-time and part-time work and women’s primary role in family care-giving. The report estimated the lifetime cost of care-giving is $659,139.
Second, women are less likely than men to have retirement plans. Women living alone rely more heavily on Social Security benefits. Yet the average Social Security benefit for a woman over age 65 is only about $800 a month, according to WISER.
Third, women tend to live longer than men. National data put women’s average life expectancy at 80.1 years, men’s at 74.8 years. Just the fact of living longer means that there is a need for more savings to last through later years.
That does not even consider the additional health care costs of older age. Approximately one-quarter of women over 65 rate their health as fair or poor.
Finally, women tend to have lower financial literacy than men. The report mentions that even women with substantial assets may not be secure if they lack the financial education to manage their resources. Lack of financial literacy particularly matters because women are increasingly likely to live alone as they age.
Some might say the simple answer is for women to work longer. But WISER points out several reasons why this isn’t a workable solution for many women: a lack of jobs, poor health, or providing care for a spouse, a mother, or mother-in-law. The grim economy could stay this way for months or even years. Jobs will likely be harder to come by for older workers.
The Women’s Policy Institute report does not stop at identifying the problem. It suggests practical programs at the state level that could increase retirement savings.
New Hampshire could set up a state-sponsored voluntary retirement savings plan. Such plans do not entail state funding of contributions. They would simply provide a vehicle for individual savings similar to the “529” education plans. They could be targeted to low- and moderate-income workers.
The report also proposes targeted educational seminars on retirement savings, the development of local ordinances that would allow more older women to live with family and education for adult learners to increase opportunity for higher wages.
Retirement is an issue that cuts deep. It is a public service to raise the profile of retirement planning as a critical policy issue. In a bad economy, temptation exists to think about only the immediate future. Doing that would wrongly indulge our societal blind spot. Retirement is an issue for everyone.

‘Have we got a deal for you.” These are not words you typically expect to hear from state government. However, when it comes to unemployment benefits, the words ring absolutely true.
New Hampshire’s unemployment trust fund stands to gain almost $21 million if a bill sponsored by Sen. Maggie Hassan, SB 144, becomes law. The money comes from incentive funding under the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act, which was part of President Obama’s stimulus package.
How this works is quite ingenious. New Hampshire and other states will get money if they take certain qualifying steps to modernize their unemployment systems. Over the years, many states passively watched as the percentage of unemployed workers becoming eligible for unemployment benefits precipitously dipped. Women, low-wage and part-time workers were the most adversely affected.
The Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act offered states financial incentives for doing the right thing: changing eligibility rules so that a more inclusive group of unemployed workers can qualify. Money becomes available to a state if it completes three reforms off a smorgasbord list of positive changes.
New Hampshire already has a jump start on qualifying for the modernization money. Two of the three necessary reforms have been accomplished.
More than 10 years ago, the Legislature passed the alternative base period, which allows more recent earnings to count toward financial eligibility. The fact that the alternative base period is law entitles New Hampshire to an immediate $10.4 million trust fund infusion under the stimulus.
Last year, the Legislature allowed part-time workers to collect. This reform was a second qualifying legislative enactment. New Hampshire needs one more progressive reform to access the over $20 million incentive funding.
This is where Hassan’s legisla
tion comes in. Originally designed to address a narrow circumstance around job terminations due to a non-work-related injury, Hassan’s bill has been amended to allow New Hampshire a chance to get the $20 million.
The amended bill makes two adjustments to the rules around quitting a job due to a compelling family reason. First, a worker could be eligible for benefits if the reason for the quit was illness or disability of an immediate family member. Second, a worker who accompanies a spouse to a new location from which it is impractical to commute could also qualify. Both scenarios have historically been considered voluntary quits and disqualifying.
These family-friendly adjustments have merit standing alone. Both changes are consistent with the bedrock principle of unemployment law that all workers who become unemployed through no fault of their own should be able to collect. Rather than individual employers being charged for benefits paid under these provisions, the trust fund will cover the cost.
Hassan’s bill would fully qualify the state for the additional modernization money. The compelling family reason provision also requires coverage for victims of domestic violence who had to leave their jobs due to abuse. New Hampshire law has provided for that for over a decade.
The state Department of Employment Security supports Hassan’s bill and has carefully priced out the cost of the reform. Officials estimate the cost of the trailing spouse provision as almost $175,000 a year. The ill family member provision cost estimate is $160,00 a year.
If the unemployment trust fund received $20 million, Employment Security estimates the annual interest earned on that money would be $900,000. The interest alone would more than cover the cost of these reforms.
With a worsening recession, the state needs adequate money in its unemployment trust fund to be sure it can meet its obligation to the working people of our state. The modernization money shores up the fund at a critical time of expanded need.
Opponents of taking federal stimulus money like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour have argued that modernizing their unemployment systems will raise taxes on employers. The opposite is actually true. More stimulus money in the fund decreases the likelihood of an employer tax increase. In many states, the modernization funds will avert mandatory tax increases that happen when their unemployment funds drop below specified levels.
We are living with the marvelous results of the Bush-era free market and its do-nothing approach to unemployment insurance. Ignore workers for eight years, promise trickle-down benefits that never materialize and never speak about the unemployed. Out of sight, out of mind.
Unemployment modernization is a win-win proposition. The state gets federal money for carrying out reforms that help especially needy working families. Now there is a novel concept perfectly suited to these times.

Driving around New Hampshire, it appears that the only job out there is roof shoveling. February is a cold, dark slog at best, but this year has been a particular hell of bad news. Practically every day has featured stories of layoffs, foreclosures and evictions in staggering, mind-numbing numbers.
While most media focus has been on the much-needed stimulus package in Congress, the rising human cost of the economic tragedy at the grassroots deserves more attention. Nationally, suicides, acts of desperation, bank robberies and resistance to eviction have increased.
The emotional distress caused by this economy cannot be overstated. Coping with loss of a job or a home is, by any standard, major. Suicide hotlines have reported a surge in calls from Americans who are experiencing intense fear and despair over their finances. Those suffering isolation or acute loneliness are at particular risk.
There is no shortage of economic disaster stories in local papers all over. Here is a small compilation:
A Los Angeles man shot and killed himself, his wife and his five children after he and his wife lost their jobs. The police reported financial and job-related issues led to the slayings.
Last July a Taunton, Mass., woman faxed a letter to her mortgage company advising that by the time they foreclosed on her home, she would be dead. She wrote, “I hope you’re more compassionate with my husband and son than you were with me.” According to the Boston Globe, she shot herself with a high-powered rifle. She had been handling the family finances and had intercepted letters from the mortgage company for months. Her husband had no idea what was going on. In her suicide note, she said the stress was too overwhelming for her.
Last September a Pennsylvania woman robbed a bank to pay her rent, according to journalist Nick Turse of the tomdispatch.com website. Two months behind and facing eviction, the woman took the cash
she obtained from the robbery and went to another bank where she purchased a cashier’s check to pay her landlord.
A Chicago area woman recently robbed a bank there to pay off her payday loans. Caught in a debt trap, she saw bank robbery as her only way out.
In December, a West Palm Beach, Fla., man barricaded himself in his mobile home, set the place on fire and shot himself in the head with a shotgun, Turse reported. He was about to be evicted.
A 93-year-old Michigan man froze to death in his home after the municipal power company limited electricity, leaving him with no heat in January. The elderly man had not paid his utility bill although he apparently had the money to pay. Tragically, this information was not communicated to the company, and no one from the company bothered to contact the man personally. His autopsy showed that he suffered an extremely painful, prolonged death.
Not all have responded passively or self-destructively to bad economic news. Last September the Globe reported that four protesters tried to prevent the eviction of a Roxbury woman by chaining themselves to the steps of her back porch. Organized by the Boston-based organization City Life, this effort was part of an activist strategy to block foreclosures and evictions. City Life claims to have stopped nine evictions and to have given homeowners additional time to negotiate alternatives to foreclosure.
The sheriff of Wayne County Mich., the Detroit area, has decided to refuse to carry out evictions. The sheriff, Warren Evans, has had to deal with more than 46,000 foreclosures in the past two years. His office has had the job of physically removing people and their possessions from their homes.
Evans has determined that carrying out home foreclosures conflicts with federal law, specifically the Troubled Asset Relief Program goal of reducing foreclosures. “I cannot in clear conscience allow one more family to be put out of their homes until I am satisfied they have been afforded every option they are entitled to under the law to avoid foreclosure,” he said in a written statement.
Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has suggested a radical anti-foreclosure strategy: squatting. Criticizing the congressional failure to protect homeowners facing foreclosure, Kaptur told reporter Amy Goodman, “Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Therefore, stay in your property. Get proper legal representation. . . . If Wall Street cannot produce the deed nor the mortgage audit trail . . . you should stay in your home.”
Because so many sub-prime mortgages were bundled into securities and then sold and sold again, mortgage holders may not be able to locate the actual loan note that binds the homeowner to the bad loan. Kaptur says homeowners should make the foreclosing entity produce the note.
Our society has proven to be remarkable for tracking record-breaking statistics. When it comes to registering RBIs, ERAs, passing yardage and sacks, nobody is better. However, when it comes to emotional distress caused by economic disaster, nobody is keeping score. If someone was keeping score, many points would have been put up on the board. We are talking a high-scoring game.

Back when I was in law school 25 years ago, my professor, the late Bruce Friedman, used to say things about the state’s Department of Employment Security that were unprintable in a family newspaper. Bruce was not exactly a fan. The department was harsh on workers, including many clients he represented.
In that era, New Hampshire typically had the lowest unemployment benefit recipiency rate of any state in the country. Only a small number of potentially eligible workers collected unemployment insurance benefits. New Hampshire workers also received among the lowest weekly benefits for the shortest duration of any state.
If I could use one word to sum up the unemployment system in New Hampshire back then, that word would be mean. The department did not make it easy for workers to collect. A head-in-the-sand mentality at the top promoted a program that was impervious to change. Protecting the unemployment trust fund translated into an agency with a culture of denial.
While there are still some vestiges of this culture alive and well, the good news is that Employment Security has come a long way from the bad old days. Under the leadership of Commissioner Richard Brothers and Deputy Commissioner Darrell Gates, the department broke the longstanding inertia and recognized the necessity for change. To his credit, Brothers supported long-overdue reforms that raised benefit levels and broadened coverage.
Instead of being dead last in the nation as far as generosity to workers, New Hampshire’s program is now more respectably in the middle of the pack compared with other states. These changes could not have come at a more fortuitous time.
According to the Labor Department, unemployment has hit a 26-year high nationally. Since January 2008, the nation’s employers have cut jobs every month, chopping 2.4 million positions this year. In New Hampshire, 5,680 workers filed initial unemployment claims in October. This is more than 2,000 more than filed in October 2007.
As a first line of defense for workers, the quality of the unemployment system matters tremendously. In a national poll conducted in November 2008 by Hart Research, 77 percent of workers who were receiving unemployment benefits reported that these benefits were very important to their ability to support their families with most
benefits spent on food and housing. Significant percentages of unemployed workers polled also had problems with economic issues like phone service cutoff, utility disconnects, interruption of education or training and payment for basic groceries.
Stepping back, it is a good time to reassess the adequacy of the unemployment system. We are facing the worst economy since the Great Depression. Unemployment has been neglected at the federal level by the Bush administration. Although little discussed or recognized, for eight years the needs of American workers were rendered invisible and disregarded as Bush and Cheney focused on their Iraq obsession. This neglect is another failure of conservatism.
Two types of reform
There are two immediate priorities for reform at the federal level. First, expanding the program of Extended Unemployment Compensation should be looked at. In light of the miserable economy, there is a need for further debate about how many weeks of unemployment benefits are appropriate. A feature of the current recession is increased long-term joblessness compared with other economic downturns.
Second, passage of the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act should be a No. 1 priority. This bipartisan, revenue-neutral federal legislation would provide $7 billion to states which close major gaps in their unemployment programs. The unemployment system has a long history of failing to serve women, low-wage and part-time workers.
Benefit to New Hampshire
In New Hampshire, we still have a very low unemployment benefit recipiency rate. Only 31 percent of potentially eligible claimants collect.
The great thing about the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act is that New Hampshire is perfectly positioned to reap the maximum benefit should it pass.
Because of reforms already passed in our Legislature, New Hampshire would be eligible for a $33 million infusion in our trust fund, plus an additional $2.3 million administrative allocation. This money would provide a timely boost to protect solvency since our unemployment trust fund has dipped below $200 million.
In considering any future economic stimulus plan, a good question to ask is how the proposal would affect the average working person. By that criteria, unemployment reform is worthy. It promptly puts money into the pockets of the unemployed, an act that will help to minimize some suffering in economically distressed households.

The idea that New Hampshire citizens will freeze in their homes this winter because of an inability to afford high energy prices is simply unacceptable: legally, morally and humanly.
Among the oldest New Hampshire traditions is community caring and concern for neighbors in need. It is inscribed in our state law which mandates a legal duty to relieve and maintain vulnerable individuals and families. These laws have been with us since the early days of the state.
The coming winter demands the equivalent of a full-court press to ensure against the possibility that citizens will be living like they were under siege in Sarajevo during the winter in the Balkan War.
There is no magic form of relief to address all the need. Rather there are numerous ideas that if implemented collectively could greatly reduce the risk to public health and safety.
Probably most important is a big increase in the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The state received about $25 million to help 33,000 low-income families last winter. The state would need $50 million just to serve a comparable number this winter.
With more people needing fuel assistance, maximizing LIHEAP is critical. LIHEAP will exclude many families though. The state must be prepared to assist more middle-income families who will not qualify for LIHEAP eligibility.
To supplement LIHEAP, we need an appropriation of state dollars. There is recent precedent for such action. In November 2005, the Legislature allocated $10 million in state funds because it was expected LIHEAP money would be inadequate.
Other New England states like Vermont and Maine have created such state appropriations. New Hampshire should do this. To do otherwise would be a Katrina-like non-reaction.
For those who are a little better off financially, there could be a revolving loan fund for customers and fuel dealers. The state could contract directly for fuel oil deliveries for energy assistance customers and could pay the dealers to assure cash flow. These customers would be responsible for repayment of fuel loans.
Improving weatherization is another excellent idea. Maine has increased its weatherization funding by $2 million so that it is now spending $8.5 million to weatherize 2000 homes for this coming winter. Last year, our state program weatherized 757 homes. Typical weatherization
improvements can reduce fuel use by 20 percent.
The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services could resurrect its Emergency Assistance Program specifically to address fuel assistance. Such a program could apply to all adult categories and be accessible to those facing no heat.
For those on the food stamp program, adjustment in the standard utility allowance so that it reflected actual cost of utilities would tangibly help families.
A higher food stamp benefit would mean families could free up a little more money to spend on utility costs To its credit, the state has pushed the federal government on this front.
Similarly, the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority could raise its standard utility allowance and it could raise fair market rent so that more rental units might become available for Section 8 housing.
The home heating crisis is a housing crisis. Homeowners will be choosing between making mortgage payments and paying the energy bill. Renters with utilities included in the cost of rent may face rent hikes. In cases where the renter is responsible for utilities, the renter will face a choice like the homeowner.
A likely result will be a spike in foreclosures and evictions. It is safe to predict major pressure on homeless shelters. The state should consider expanding shelter capacity.
At the local level, there is no substitute for community organizing and promoting awareness of at risk families. The new Hopkinton initiative, Wood for Warmth, sounds like a model other communities could emulate. Hopkinton is creating a Wood Bank for those in need.
Neighborhood watch organizations to check on the elderly could also be a lifesaver. Turning the thermostat way down may be an unhealthy option chosen by those on fixed incomes. The combination of despair and lack of income could easily lead to choices that might otherwise be perceived as irrational. Prolonged exposure to extreme cold interferes with clear thinking.
While there are undoubtedly New Hampshire people who would rather die than seek help, if the above options are implemented, much less harm will occur. People will still fall through the cracks, but these suggested alternatives are preferable to finding dead bodies in the spring.