House lawmakers approved changes to the next state budget that would subtract an additional $271 million from Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s proposal, cut more than 320 state jobs and abolish several services.

Legislative budget writers approved the $16.3 billion two-year spending plan with a 14-11 vote along party lines. Concord Rep. Mary Jane Wallner said Democrats couldn’t support what she called “radical” cuts to services, while the committee chair, Kingston Rep. Kenneth Weyler, said the Republican majority did what it had to do to balance the budget.

Lawmakers on both sides said they could agree on one thing: It’s been a tough budget season.

New Hampshire faces a state revenue shortfall, in part due to lower-than-expected gains from business taxes. Weyler said the federal government hasn’t helped.

“The economy that has happened in the last few years has been terrible,” Weyler said. “There have been many mismanagement caused by the decisions in Washington, D.C., that have affected us all, and it has lowered the amount of revenue we expected … The revenue just isn’t there.”

The House Finance Committee will present its version of the budget to the full House of Representatives on Tuesday ahead of a vote on Thursday. Once it’s passed, the Senate will begin its refinements.

The House’s proposal relies on job cuts mostly to the Department of Corrections which, like many state agencies, is already struggling with a staffing shortage. It’d cut about 20% of the department’s workforce – 191 positions, about half of which are currently filled.

“The fact that they’ve been functioning for a year or more at that level of vacancies, that allowed us to take away those positions,” Weyler said. “I’m sorry that they were undermanned, but they coped … for more than a year, as all of us have, on this reduction in revenue.”

The state’s liquor commission and the Department of Education would also lose dozens of roles, and the University System of New Hampshire could stand to see tens of millions less in financial support from the state.

Wallner said the budget also includes “devastating” decreases for developmental disabilities and community mental health services, to the tune of a combined $67 million.

“These reductions in these two areas are a major setback in the progress New Hampshire has made to provide services to those very neediest citizens,” Wallner said.

The House’s version of the budget funds the pensions and benefits for firefighters, nurses and police, corrections and parole officers who say the rules were changed after they were hired – something Ayotte and both parties supported.

Despite Democratic opposition, the committee voted to dissolve several smaller agencies that Ayotte had included in her proposed budget, including the Office of the Child Advocate, the Commission on Aging, the Housing Appeals Board, the Council on the Arts and the Human Rights Commission.

“A lot of those things that we put there for the convenience of the public, we can no longer afford,” Weyler said. Instead, they voted to shift some issues back to the courts and increase filing fees. “It may be a little more expensive for the individual than it was on those previous small boards, but it will be fairer to … the taxpaying public that those processes are paid for by the individuals that are profiting from them.”

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.