CONCORD – New Hampshire is somewhat inconsistent on which top officials drive government cars. Following a year long review on Non-Business Use of state vehicles, some Commissioners were allowed to keep taking their state vehicles home at night while other were asked to turn in their keys. Now lawmakers are looking at ways to improve management of the state’s motor vehicle fleet, and could ask state employees to reimburse taxpayers for every mile they drive off the clock.

FLEET WEEK
Monday- NH state workers drive 1.5 million personal miles a year
Tuesday- NH takes the keys from Liquor Commissioners
Wednesday- DRED Commissioner defends giving Cannon GM “Company Car”
Thursday- NH DOT claims employees save money by taking home state cars

According to a report presented to the Legislative Fiscal Committee this month by the Department of Administrative Services, 233 state vehicles accumulated more than 15% of their miles for Non-Business Use last year, totaling more than 1.5 million miles. Most of those miles were from employees in the Department of Transportation driving directly to and from job sites in the field. DOT persuaded state officials reviewing the use of state cars that letting these employees commute in state cars improved efficiency and was worth the cost in higher gas bills and automotive maintenance.

But not all those miles were from civil engineers and bridge inspectors. Several top bureaucrats also commute on the taxpayers’ dime, according to the DAS report. As we reported earlier this week, all three of New Hampshire’s Liquor Commissioners were asked to return their state vehicles after racking up significant miles outside of official business. But DRED Commissioner George Bald was allowed to keep his state car, which he drives to and from the office.

Read more….

CONCORD — Commissioner George Bald is satisfied that no one in his department is abusing the privilege of driving state-owned vehicles, even if he was a little sloppy in keeping track of his own mileage. The head of the Department of Resources and Economic Development defends his decision to let the General Manager of Cannon Mountain take home a “company car” every night, putting more than 18,000 personal miles on the vehicle in Fiscal Year 2011.

FLEET WEEK
Monday- NH state workers drive 1.5 million personal miles a year
Tuesday- NH takes the keys from Liquor Commissioners

“There are a lot of requirements that people have to meet with different companies and travel the district. I don’t feel there is any waste going on with people in DRED using state vehicles,” Bald tells New Hampshire Watchdog. “And if they take them home, it is because it was going to be less expensive than for them to be driving to Concord to pick up the vehicle.”

DRED had eleven of its 168 state vehicles show up on a recent report detailing cars and trucks with more than 15% of their miles for Non-Business Use last year. A new state law, SB 402, requires that agencies track that mileage more carefully and redistribute vehicles above that threshold unless a they receive a waiver to let employees keep their state cars. Ten of those eleven vehicles received waivers, including Bald’s own car.

Bald drives a 2006 Chevrolet Impala LS, and last year drove it 25,980 miles, according to a report submitted by Administrative Services Commissioner Linda Hodgdon to the Legislative Fiscal Committee earlier this month. Bald says he drives the car to and from work.

“I live in Somersworth, but I generally work out of the Concord office. I do take it home every night. Sometimes I’m going up to Colebrook or Berlin from here,” Bald explains. “I could have a meeting in Portsmouth in the morning, and Keene in the afternoon.”

State rules, and federal tax guidelines, treat a public employee’s commute as Non-Business Use. The distance between home and the office does not count as official travel. And while Bald submitted details mileage reports for ten of his department’s vehicles, he could not precisely account for his own mileage.

“I didn’t keep the records as well as other people have,” Bald readily admits. “Whenever I gas up, I note the mileage, but I wasn’t as good at keeping the mileage between various trips.”

Read more…

The 233 vehicles reported to the Legislature were driven 1,504,034 miles for non-business use in FY11, and a total of 4,150,092 miles including official business. That’s enough miles to circle the Earth six times, or make three round trips to the moon. DAS calculates the state’s cost for allowing a state employee to use its vehicles at $.33 per mile, meaning that state employees cost the state $496,331 last year by using their government cars.

However, DAS also calculates how much it would have cost taxpayers to reimburse state employees if they had used their own cars for official business. The state reimburses official travel at $.55 per mile. So in some cases, it is cheaper to let a workers take home a state car than to reimburse them for their official travel. The 233 vehicles that tripped the 15% threshold represent 12% of the state’s fleet of passenger cars and light trucks under 10,000 pounds. The report does not include heavy construction equipment, which can be assigned to state employees but not used to commute to and from the job site. 61 of the vehicles were actually driven more for personal use that on official state business.

Last year, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 402, which in addition to directing departments to reduce their overall in-state travel, requires that reassignment of cars that exceed 15% personal use.

For every vehicle that logs more than 15% Non-Business Use (NBU), a panel of state officials led by DAS Commissioner Linda Hodgden decides whether the car should be repurposed within the fleet or retained by its current employee or department. Of the 233 vehicles that tripped the 15% threshold last year, 14 were repurposed while 218 were retained. The NBU report Hodgden presented earlier this month to the Legislative Fiscal Committee states that one vehicle assigned to the Board of Pharmacy was “erroneously logged NBU”. According to the report, there are 1,884 passenger automobiles and light trucks in the state fleet.

Read more…

CONCORD — Plummeting demand for carbon allowances has left New Hampshire officials $600,000 short of the grants they’ve made with the state’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative revenues. The quarterly RGGI auctions are the sole source of revenues for the state’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Fund (GHGERF), which has pledged more in its first two years than the RGGI program generated for the Granite State in its first three years.

When the Legislature signed New Hampshire up for RGGI in 2008 it set aside $1.2 million from the future auctions to boost the state’s existing Weatherization Program. The Legislature also diverted $3.1 million from the GHGERF in June 2010 as part of a budget balancing package put forward by Governor John Lynch to close the state’s $300 million deficit. In 2009, the Public Utilities Commission handed out $17.66 million from the GHGERF. In 2010, the PUC issued $13.4 million in grants.

With demand in the RGGI auction falling since 2009, New Hampshire and its nine partner states began to see less revenue from each quarterly auction. The PUC did not make any awards from the GHGERF in 2011. You can see how all of RGGI’s New Hampshire revenues were spent in the Josiah Bartlett Center’s February 2010 report, RGGI in New Hampshire: The First Two Years.

RGGI Inc. began offering carbon allowances for sale in September 2008. New Hampshire began its participation in the second auction, held in December 2008. The first three auctions each generated more than $4 million for the state. But RGGI revenues have not reached that level since, topping $3 million just twice since September 2009, and bottoming out at less than half a million dollars in September 2011.

In the five auctions held between December 2008 and December 2009, New Hampshire realized more than $18.2 million. That was slightly more than the Weatherization set-aside and the 2009 round of GHGERF grants. As RGGI prices dropped to the preset reserve price in 2010, New Hampshire revenues fell to a little more than $10 million. The PUC and the Legislature spent $16.5 million that year. RGGI revenues dropped again in 2011, as millions of carbon allowances went unsold, even at the floor price of $1.89 per ton. New Hampshire took in just $6.5 million, not quite enough to cover its commitments from the year before.

Read more…

New Hampshire is on the verge of becoming the 23rd right-to-work state, after House Bill 474 there cleared the House by a solid 225-140 margin.  The bill, which would ensure that individual workers have the right to join or refuse to join a union and have the final say on union dues, had already passed the state Senate.

Democratic Governor John Lynch is expected to veto the bill, but a veto override is possible.  The main challenge will be to find 14 more yeas in the House, and the bill’s sponsors hope to find those votes among 31 elected representatives who missed last week’s vote.

Read more…