Budget Committee

A town or district may establish a municipal budget committee to assist its voters in the prudent appropriation of public funds. The budget committee, in those municipalities which establish one, is intended to have budgetary authority analogous to that of a legislative appropriations committee. It is the legislature's further purpose to establish uniformity in the manner of appropriating and spending public funds in all municipal subdivisions to which this chapter applies, including those towns, school districts and village districts which do not operate with budget committees, and have not before had much statutory guidance.

Definitions:

1. Appropriate: means to set apart from the public revenue of a municipality a certain sum for a specified purpose and to authorize the expenditure of that sum for that purpose.
2. Appropriation: means an amount of money appropriated for a specified purpose by the legislative body.
3. Budget: means a statement of recommended appropriations and anticipated revenues submitted to the legislative body by the budget committee, or the governing body if there is no budget committee, as an attachment to, and as part of the warrant for, an annual or special meeting.
4. District: includes a school district, cooperative school district, village district, or district created pursuant to RSA 53-A or 53-B.
5. Purpose: means a goal or aim to be accomplished through the expenditure of public funds. In addition, as used in RSA 32:8 and RSA 32:10, I(e), concerning the limitation on expenditures, a line on the budget form posted with the warrant, or form submitted to the department of revenue administration, or an appropriation contained in a special warrant article, shall be considered a single "purpose".
6. Special warrant article: means any article in the warrant for an annual or special meeting which proposes an appropriation by the meeting and which:
   1. Is submitted by petition; or
   2. Calls for an appropriation of an amount to be raised by the issuance of bonds or notes pursuant to RSA 33; or
   3. Calls for an appropriation to a separate fund created pursuant to statute, including but not limited to a capital reserve fund under RSA 35, or trust fund under RSA 31:19-a; or
   4. Is designated in the warrant, by the governing body, as a special warrant article, or as a nonlapsing or nontransferable appropriation.