Open your property tax bill and look at the number at the bottom. Then ask yourself a simple question: who decided that number, and were you in the room when they did? For most people, the honest answer is no. You were at work, getting your kids to practice, or simply living your life. While you were doing that, a handful of people quietly decided how much of your money the government gets.
Here is what should make you angry: the tool to stop this has existed for 15 years, and you were never allowed to use it. In 2011, New Hampshire passed a law letting any town, city, or school district adopt a local tax cap. The idea is simple: a cap limits how much your local tax burden can grow from year to year. If local officials want to blow past that limit, they must ask your permission through a supermajority vote. It is not a revolution, just a leash on runaway spending.
The law has been on the books for 15 years. Nobody marched on Concord over it, nobody called it radical, and nobody batted an eye. There is a reason for that: the tax cap has been mostly toothless, and the people who like it that way have worked hard to keep it that way.
Here is how the game works. Most of these decisions are made at town meetings and on local ballots in March, when turnout is nearly non-existent. A few hundred votes decide the budget for thousands of families. The people who show up are the ones with a direct financial stake in the spending: unions, activists, and folks who treat your tax bill like a personal piggy bank. In a low-turnout election, fringe special interests do not need a majority of the town. They only need to out-organize a town that isn’t paying attention.
So in most places, a cap never gets proposed at all. In towns where someone does put one forward, watch what happens next. The proposal goes to a deliberative session where five people show up on a Tuesday night in February. They amend it, jacking the cap limit so high that the number on the ballot becomes a joke — a cap no sane person would vote to lock in. The whole thing dies at the polls. A handful of people in that room killed it, and most of the town never knew there was anything to kill.
That is the trick. Do not argue against the cap in public, where you might lose. Instead, rig it in an empty room, set it up to fail, and count on the fact that no one will see how it happened.
Well, we noticed, and we are done playing along. This November, tax caps go on the general election ballot. Not the sleepy March ballot with less than 10% turnout, and not the deliberative session where five people decide for five thousand, but the November ballot, when the whole town shows up.
The reaction from the other side of the aisle has been something to behold. They are not debating the policy; they are panicking about the venue. They do not want this question asked in November, so they will tell you it belongs in March, or in committee, or in the deliberative session—anywhere except the one election where regular people actually vote.
You should ask yourself why. The answer is simple. Fringe special interests can run a March election, but they cannot run a November election. They can out-organize an empty room, but they cannot out-organize an entire town. In November, the activists do not control the outcome.
That is what this fight is really about. It was never about whether tax caps are too extreme; they have been legal since 2011 and the sky never fell. It is about a single question: does the decision get made by the few who profit from your taxes, or by the many who pay them?
Property taxes in New Hampshire are crushing people. Seniors on fixed incomes are being taxed out of homes they paid off decades ago, and young families are watching the dream of homeownership drift further away every year. These are the people who do not have a lobbyist at town meetings. They pay the bill and never get a vote that counts. And they show up in November.
For generations, the powerful have had the room to themselves. This fall, we have cracked the door open for you to walk in. This is your opportunity to start taking back control of your local government.
House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, R-Auburn, represents Rockingham District 2, which consists of Auburn, Candia, and Deerfield.