News
HB 1300 Does Not Address Property Taxes – Instead Seeks to Downshift Blame to Local Communities
May 1, 2026
The New Hampshire School Funding Fairness Project released the following statement following the public hearing on HB 1300
April 28, 2026, the Senate Election Law and Municipal Affairs Committee heard HB 1300, a bill that would mandate local communities add a tax cap question to the November ballot. While the sponsors are trying to frame this as the “Property Tax Protection Act,” the New Hampshire School Funding Fairness Project (NHSFFP) is urging the committee to reject the proposal, warning that it does not address the root causes of rising property taxes and instead shifts responsibility onto local communities while limiting their ability to respond.
“Property taxes are high, and people are feeling that pressure more and more,” said Zack Sheehan, Executive Director of NHSFFP. “But this bill is built on a very specific narrative that blames local school boards and local budgets, while ignoring the role the state plays in creating that pressure in the first place.”
Supporters of HB 1300 argue that rising property taxes are primarily driven by local spending decisions and that the state has little ability to intervene. NHSFFP points to recent legislative activity as evidence that this framing does not reflect the full picture.
“In just the past few months, there were multiple opportunities for the legislature to seriously engage with property tax relief, but they were not pursued,” Sheehan said.
Those proposals included HB 491, which would have studied ways for the state to increase its contribution with the explicit goal of reducing local property taxes; HB 1636, which would have directed the Department of Revenue Administration to identify options to restructure the state’s tax system to reduce burdens on low- and moderate-income households; and HB 1708, which proposed a small increase in the business profits taxes which would have directly offset property taxes. Each of those efforts failed to move forward.
At the same time, lawmakers have already rejected more sweeping approaches to limiting local spending, including HB 675, which would have imposed a statewide mandated spending cap on school districts. Locally, communities already have the ability to adopt tax or spending caps through the warrant article process, and many have chosen not to.
“HB 1300 is less about actually helping with property tax relief and more of an attempt to change the conversation,” Sheehan said. “It takes decisions that currently happen through local deliberation and replaces them with a state-mandated process, while reinforcing the false claim that the problem exists entirely at the local level.”
New Hampshire relies more heavily on local property taxes to fund public education than any other state. At the same time, the state has not kept pace with the actual cost of providing an adequate education, and has continued to shift responsibility onto local communities through both funding decisions and unfunded mandates.
Combining those pressures with a tax cap does not reduce costs, but instead will forces tradeoffs at the local community level.
“When costs keep rising but budgets are capped, something has to give,” Sheehan said. “In school districts, those tradeoffs land on what’s not required by law such as course offerings, extracurriculars, arts, athletics, and other enrichment opportunities.”
“These aren’t irresponsible decisions,” Sheehan added. “They’re the result of trying to manage a system where costs are rising and the tools available to respond are increasingly limited by the state legislature.”
NHSFFP emphasizes that HB 1300 does not guarantee property tax relief and does not address the underlying drivers of rising costs.
“This bill doesn’t lower costs, and it doesn’t fix the system that’s driving property taxes,” Sheehan said. “What it does is constrain how communities respond to pressures that are already there, while shifting attention away from the role the state plays in creating those pressures.”
“At the end of the day, if we’re serious about addressing property taxes, we have to be willing to look at the full system,” Sheehan said. “This proposal moves us in the opposite direction.”
NHSFFP is urging the committee to recommend HB 1300 as inexpedient to legislate.