Healthcare coverage is taking a larger and larger toll on our businesses and our citizens. Small businesses especially find it difficult to keep up with rising premiums. Moreover, it is often the ability to provide this benefit that puts small businesses at a competitive disadvantage when trying to hire top talent. That is why Jackie was proud to support the Governor’s initiative, New Hampshire Health First. This program was specifically designed to allow small businesses to offer a low cost healthcare plan to their employees as well as to emphasize prevention.

Jackie also wants to ensure that every child in our state has adequate healthcare coverage. She believes that this is both a moral imperative and an economic issue. When a child’s quality of life is diminished from a preventable illness or, worse, a child is lost due to a preventable illness we should feel a collective sense of shame. From a purely economic perspective, children who lack healthcare coverage (just as adults who lack healthcare coverage) are often treated in emergency rooms and/or suffer longer term consequences of treatable illnesses, thereby increasing the costs of healthcare for everybody else. For those reasons Jackie enthusiastically supported expanding healthcare coverage to 10,000 more NH children through the highly respected Healthy Kids program.

Jackie has also co-sponsored legislation to provide for coverage of beriatric surgery for the morbidly obese. This proven treatment for those who suffer from morbid obesity has resulted in reduction or elimination of diabetes associated with obesity and reduces the likelihood of stroke, heart attack, high blood pressure, and certain types of cancers. Consequently, this surgery dramatically reduces the healthcare costs of patients who undergo the procedure and makes sound economic sense.

Our healthcare delivery system can be made more efficient, bringing costs down, by using modern tools such as e-prescribing that Jackie has supported. She also supports wellness programs that emphasize prevention of disease and illness rather than the current focus on treatment that is far costlier.

Just as every family in our district and our state must balance its budget, so too must the state. The NH Constitution requires the state to maintain a balanced budget. The budget Jackie supported in the last biennium ended with a $17 million surplus, preserved a $89 million rainy day fund, and provided the services businesses and citizens demand –- this at a time when fuel costs alone rose 28 percent and other costs escalated as well.

As we move into the next two years, we must make significant adjustments to combat the downturn in the national economy. We in New Hampshire will be tested just as those in every other state by the results of unbridled de-regulation and lack of oversight. The good news is that New Hampshire enters this economic storm in a better position than most other states.

The job of the next legislature, in cooperation with Governor Lynch, will be to carefully protect taxpayer monies while keeping necessary services for our citizens and businesses. We must make sure that our state remains well-positioned for the future while at the same time easing the burdens faced by our citizens and struggling small businesses.

Jackie Cilley’s commitment is to the over-burdened NH property-tax payer now facing perhaps one of the greatest financial challenges of our time given the loss of interest and dividends income resulting from the market implosion and growing job losses. Any proposal that continues the assault on property taxes will not get Jackie’s support.

Jackie believes that we can and must make government more efficient and effective. She also believes strongly that we must avoid cost-shifting that places greater burdens on our communities and, thus, directly onto the backs of local property-tax payers. For far too long, programs and services have been cut from state budgets that simply end up on the balance sheets of our local communities.

For example, decades ago, the state decided to send mentally ill patients from the NH State Hospital back to their communities where they could be treated locally and close to family and friends. The state assured communities it would cover the costs of this shift of services. Over the years less and less money has followed the mentally ill and that has lead to a “D” rating by the National Association of Mental Health on how we treat our mentally ill in NH. Moreover, frequently the mentally ill have ended up in our city and town jails at an annual cost of $55,000 per person as compared to the $14,000 required to provide treatment.

Jackie is firmly committed to balancing a budget that avoids pushing these types of costs down to local property taxpayers.

One of the most significant sources of revenue for the State of New Hampshire is our tourism business. Additionally, our state’s ability to attract great businesses and great jobs relies on our ability to provide a healthy, attractive environment. That is why Jackie has worked tirelessly over her two years in the NH House of Representatives and this past term in the NH Senate to balance the protections of our environment with sound economic development.

During this past session, Jackie supported legislation to fully fund the Land and Community Heritage Investment Program that preserves our historic properties and open spaces. She also supported the Comprehensive Shoreland Protection Act that ensures the protection of our shorelands and surface waters that draw so many tourists and provide for recreation for our citizens. As a member of the NH Senate Environment, Energy and Economic Development Committee, Jackie has also worked on as well as supported the regional greenhouse gas initiative the relies on market mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions thereby reducing pollutants into our air.

As Chair of the Large Groundwater Withdrawal Commission, Jackie has worked to ensure that stakeholders (our citizens, communities and business community) have access to the quantity and quality of water that is so vital to them, while balancing competing interests. She believes that communities should have a significantly enhanced voice in their natural resources such as the groundwater of their own community and has sponsored legislation that would give our communities greater standing in the decision-making process for large groundwater withdrawals. This is an area of considerable work for her commission at this time.

As a business professional, Jackie understands clearly that environmental protection must go hand-in-hand with sound economic policy. Her work on environmental issues at the NH Statehouse shows clearly that she understands the balance that must be struck in order to provide a welcoming environment for businesses while protecting our natural resources for the use and enjoyment of all of our citizens. Forward thinking business owners understand this as well. Profitable, progressive businesses know full well that there do not have to be trade-offs between economic progress and sound environmental policy. Jackie has been a staunch advocate for government policies that bring these often competing interests together to find responsible solutions to our environmental challenges.