Gubernatorial candidate Maggie Hassan recently put forth a proposal related to reforming the state budgeting process. Her approach brought to mind the old proverb about the fox guarding the hen house.

She proposes creating a commission to provide revenue estimates from which the Legislature can build its budgets, arguing that the process is broken because those estimates can become politicized.

In one sense, she is right — there are clear cases where estimates were blatantly inflated. But a careful review of the history indicates that Hassan and her party are the ones guilty of manipulating the estimates for political gain. Proven unworthy of guarding our hens, Hassan would now like to point the finger somewhere — anywhere — else.

In 2007, the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy published an analysis of the historical reliability of state revenue estimates, concluding that the estimating process had “a good track record.” The center calculated an overall error rate between 1 and 2 percent. In fact, over the 10 budget years leading up to that report (1998-2007), the average error was about a 2.7 percent underestimation. In other words, the average projection was 3 percent lower than the actual, leaving the Legislature with a surplus.

These estimates were crafted by Republican Legislatures, which took care to provide appropriate budgetary cushions. They knew the consequences of erroneous estimates could be significant.

When estimates are too low, the result is a contentious debate about how to use the surplus. But when estimates are too high, the money has already been spent, and the state must scramble to make up the difference.

Unfortunately, when Hassan's Democratic Party took power after the 2006 elections, they seemed to ignore this basic dynamic. Fueled by an apparent desire to expand the size and scope of government, they set spending goals first, and then inflated revenue estimates to match their spending appetite. At the time, one of Hassan's fellow Seacoast legislators, Marjorie Smith of Durham, exhorted those preparing revenue estimates to “look to the sky, because we need the money.”

And look to the sky they did. Whereas most previous revenue estimates had projected growth in the low single digits, the first budget produced by Hassan's party concluded that revenues would rise by nearly 10 percent! Any thoughtful manager knows that it takes something extraordinary for revenues to grow that quickly, and a thoughtful observer could have predicted the result: revenues came in well below those rosy predictions. In fact, over the four budgets produced by Democrats — including those while Hassan served as majority leader in the Senate — revenues were overestimated by an average of 4.65 percent.

The result, unsurprisingly, was that state had to scramble to balance the ledger, resulting in a series of desperate proposals, including issuing bonds and selling surplus state properties. When an organization is consuming capital through issuance of debt or sales of assets in order to fund operating expenses, it is a sign of failure.

Hassan presided over these budgets and these revenue estimates. She cannot blame others for those failures, so instead she chooses to shift the blame to a process she deems broken and propose an unnecessary reform to provide her with political cover.

In 2010, New Hampshire voters rejected Hassan and her party, returning Republican budgeteers to power. And in case you might question whether the process is broken, the Republican Legislature in the 2012 estimated revenues that missed their target by only .4 percent, less than one-tenth of Hassan's average error.

When politicians are faced with unpopular choices, they often resort to naming a commission to “study the problem.” We should not settle for leaders who pass the buck, but rather, we should seek those who address problems head on, take responsibility for solutions, and treat the budget process — and by extension the voters of New Hampshire — with respect.

Hassan's party was given the keys to the hen house, and they chose to pillage it, with rampant spending and irresponsible budgeting. No commission, no matter how expert or bipartisan, can change the attitude of a majority leader who is willing to ignore reality for political gain.

Hassan's attitude seems to cry out for help: “Stop me before I budget again!” The good news is that we can provide her with that help. If she does not want the responsibility of creating or approving reliable, fact-based, responsible revenue estimates, let's elect someone who does.

Peter Angerhofer is a Stratham businessman with 20 years of experience in public policy, primarily working with hospitals and other large healthcare institutions. He currently serves as a member of the board at the Josiah Bartlett Center, a Concord based free-market think tank.