Greetings!

A lot of our public policy debates are about money, and this week was not an exception.

Item 1: Seniors are hard hit by the property tax, but giving them relief means higher property taxes for everyone else.

Item 2: Opponents of the so-called 'view tax' are all over Concord. They never address this question: if we have a tax based on the value of property, and a view enhances the value of a property, shouldn't that extra value be taxed?

Item 3: The legislature is considering a number of small tax changes and fees, but such actions always make someone unhappy.

Everyone complains about taxes in NH, but most dance around the real issue: we have a tax structure that is unfair and does not serve the state well. According to the NH Center for Public Policy Studies, the percentage of the state's economic output that is paid in state taxes has declined continually over the past 20 years because state taxes do not grow at the same rate as the economy. Some might say 'good,' but the state's perpetual structural deficit means that the legislature has been unable to fund LCHIP, unable to provide promised school funding (either Aubenblick or adequacy), unable to deal with the waiting list for the disabled, etc. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, taxes are the price of civilization. We can cut taxes and starve the beast, but we may end up starving ourselves.

Item 4: The Attorney General testifies against repealing the death penalty, and it seems like 1999 all over again. Then, as now, the legislature is seriously considering a repeal. Then, as now, the governor has promised to veto any repeal.

Item 5: The State Senate has approved increasing the dropout age to 18. The bill includes $4 million to provide alternatives for students who are at risk of dropping out. Since this would be a new program, the legislature will eventually have to face the question of what tax to raise, or what existing program to cut.

Item 6: The House has approved a bill that would make individual policies more affordable by allowing companies to offer reductions in premiums if a policy holder takes a rider that excludes coverage for a pre-existing condition. It seems cruel to ask people to make such a decision--no coverage for the health problem that is most likely--but until we have universal health insurance, these are the sort of decisions people have to make.

Item 7: The legislature contemplates 'payday lenders,' who lend money at rates that sometimes exceed 500%. Our repeal of usury laws a few years ago (which I may have voted for) has proven to be a mistake, as predatory lenders have moved in.

Item 8: The legislature wants to encourage defibrillators in every school. Half of all deaths due to sudden cardiac arrest occur in public places. Defibrillators have been proven to save lives.

Mark

1. Editorial

Senior tax breaks make buying homes harder

Monitor staff

March 12. 2007 8:00AM

The depth of homeowner anger over property tax bills that increase far faster than incomes can be measured by the number of bills lawmakers have filed to protect veterans, the old, the disabled and the poor from the effects of the tax. This year there must be a score of them.

There's a bill to raise money for education by increasing the statewide property tax to $7.50 per $1,000 while exempting the first $200,000 of the value of primary residences.

Another bill would establish an income tax and scrap all other taxes. Yet another would freeze the assessed value of residential property when its owner turns 65. Several would allow the elderly to have more assets and still qualify for a tax break. And a bill sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Ted Gatsas would grant statewide elderly exemptions of $200 for a 65-year-old homeowner with limited

assets and $800 for residents 80 or older.

But now for our favorite. A bipartisan 41-page bill crafted by a group of people with experience and credentials calls for - ready for this?

" Taxing nonresidential property at twice the rate of primary homes. That would shift much of the property tax burden from residents to commercial property and the owners of second homes.

" Creating a luxury tax on motor vehicles costing $30,000 or more and other items that sell for more than $10,000.

" Taxing gambling winnings and entertainment.

" Basing the beer tax on price, not volume, and subjecting cigars, pipe tobacco and snuff to the cigarette tax.

As a kicker, the bill would create a 1 percent business payroll tax to raise $184 million per year. Money from all taxes contained in the bill would go to the state's education trust fund, further lowering local property taxes.

If that list doesn't suggest a growing loathing for the property tax as the mainstay of state and local finance, Goffstown Republican Rep. Rip Holden is calling for the creation of a commission to study the imposition of a "bedroom tax." The bill doesn't say whether big bedrooms would be taxed more than small ones.

Not all the added exemptions would drive up property taxes for people who don't receive them. Gatsas, for example, wants to use state revenue to replace the money cities and towns would lose by granting his exemption.

But many of the bills would simply shift more of the tax burden from the old to the young. Enacting more or bigger tax breaks for the elderly will make housing for workers even less affordable. It will make hiring employees harder and more costly, harm the economy and help drive away young people and their families.

The raft of property tax relief bills floated this year is no surprise, given that many lawmakers are near or in their golden years. For those who haven't noticed, the retirement of the baby boom generation has already begun.

New Hampshire is an old state, and it's aging faster than most. If young people can't afford to live in New Hampshire, who will take care of the old folks?

As Gatsas points out, it is much cheaper in the long run to keep the elderly out of nursing homes and in their own homes. Elderly property tax exemptions help to do that. But they are tools that can break one thing to fix another. Ultimately, they make the problem worse.

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2. Critics warn "view tax" will fragment N.H.

By Norma Love, Associated Press Writer | March 12, 2007

CONCORD, N.H. --Critics warned Monday that continuing to include the " view tax" component in property assessments will fragment the state and destroy its rural character.

Orford tree farmer Tom Thomson said the tax will force farmers to sell off their land in small parcels.

"If you push us landowners off the edge, it's going to be fragmented," he told the House Municipal and County Government Committee. "That's not a threat. That's a promise."

Thomson urged the committee to back legislation barring officials from including the value of a property's view in its appraisal. Thomson and others told the committee putting a value on a view is too subjective. The state has no definition of how to assess a view, he said.

"You're paying a tax on something you don't own and have no control over," said Rick Samson of Stewartstown. "We're being taxed on something that's arbitrary."

Samson said a home with a view of Lake Francis out one window was assigned an assessment for the lake view, but not given a discount for the view of a dump out another window.

But Judy Silva of the New Hampshire Municipal Association said views have been included in assessments for a long time.

She said if lawmakers forbid assessors from including the view, owners of properties with views will pay less than market value while those without views will pay 100 percent of market value. She said that would shift the tax burden onto those without views.

"You don't need a definition of view," she said. "You don't have a definition of waterfront."

State officials and assessors say beautiful views, like prime locations, have always been part of a home's intrinsic value. The only change is that many rural views are now worth more, as land values skyrocket and more people from wealthier communities are retiring in New Hampshire.

But controversy erupted in 2005 after assessing firms doing townwide property revaluations began assigning a separate value to beautiful views, either as a dollar amount or a multiplier applied to the basic value of the land and property. The practice is similar to a long-standing approach of breaking out the value of waterfront location.

Silva said assigning a dollar amount was intended to provide property owners with more information, not reflect a change in practice.

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3. Not all are sold on budget-balancing ideas

By KEVIN LANDRIGAN, Telegraph Staff

klandrigan@nashuatelegraph.com

Published: Thursday, Mar. 15, 2007

CONCORD  An assortment of higher fees and extracting more profit from existing state-regulated gambling drew a mixed reaction Wednesday.

Gov. John Lynch proposed five of the six ideas under review to help pay for his proposed two-year state budget plan including a new $30 scratch ticket and hiking the annual cost to register a car by $6, or 19 percent.

Lynch also proposed to increase fees for those who have a state laboratory test their water, seek permits to fill in wetlands or plan a development that could alter terrain, in his budget companion or trailer bill (HB 2).

The House Ways and Means Committee took public comment on these ideas Wednesday at the urging of Rep. Susan Almy, D-Lebanon, the committee chairman.

Its a different approach to how the executive branch comes to the legislative branch with a budget proposal, Almy told her committee.

I would have preferred that all of these things come in as individual bills.

Environmental Services Assistant Commissioner Michael Walls said Lynch agreed general taxes were subsidizing regulatory oversight because fee rates had not changed in several years and did not cover the cost to administer services.

We thought it was time to take a look at this, Walls said.

We have been talking about this for a couple of years.

But Stephen Del Deo who heads the New Hampshire Water Works Association, said the fees went up more than 20 percent in some cases and his group would support a commission to study the issue.

We had no idea this was coming up and feel blind-sided by it, Del Deo said.

Likewise, Gary Abbott, vice president of Associated General Contractors, wasnt pleased by Lynchs plan to double the cost of applications to fill in wetlands, or for a development big enough to require state evaluation of the terrain.

This is going to hit a lot of people very hard. Changing from 10 cents to 20 cents per square foot may not sound like much, but you take a good-sized project and that fee gets large in a hurry. I had no idea this was coming out, Abbott said.

Almy offered the sixth proposal on her own, a proposed 3 percent tax on anyone who gambles at charity-sponsored games such as poker tournaments or so-called Monte Carlo Nights.

Were getting a reputation as a state that is letting this poker gambling get out of hand, Almy said.

The state Pari-Mutuel Commission estimates it would raise $2.4 million a year as Executive Director Paul Kelley. Wagering at these games could reach $80 million by 2008.

We see it trending upward, Kelley said.

Richard Bouley, a lobbyist for Universal Gaming of Manchester, said applying the tax to those who wager will hurt those charities that rely on these fund-raisers.

I believe there is a way to have a 3 percent tax but I have to tell you this isnt the way to do it. Its quite clear to me the people proposing it dont understand games of chance, Bouley said.

Ken Donahue of Universal said it would be better to apply the tax to the profit made by charities or the payments to vendors than the wagering of players.

You cant steal from the players. Foxwoods Casino is only an hour and a half away, they know what you are giving them, Donohue said.

Rick Wisler, the executive director of the New Hampshire Lottery Commission, said the state should generate $4.5 million in profit over the next two years from a new $30 scratch ticket.

Connecticut and Texas are the only state lotteries that sell one that expensive.

Currently, 40 percent of ticket sales come from those who buy either the $10 or $20 version. The state only introduced the $20 ticket last year.

What we are doing is maturing our product line, Wisler said.

There was no debate over raising the auto registration fee from $31.50 to $37.50 a year.

The increase would raise $9 million a year that Lynch has said would help financially bail out the states highway fund that still has a cloudy accounting picture.

Kevin Landrigan can be reached at 224-8804 or klandrigan@nashuatelegraph.com.

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4. AG: Death penalty repeal would be insult to police

By NORMA LOVE

The Associated Press

CONCORD  Attorney Kelly Ayotte told state lawmakers yesterday that repealing the death penalty so soon after the murder of a police officer would be an insult to law enforcement.

"I think repealing the death penalty sends the wrong public safety message in our state," Ayotte told the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee.

Ayotte testified against a bill to make the limited number of capital crimes subject to life without parole instead of death - effectively repealing the state's death penalty.

Law enforcement officers do a dangerous job and, as society's defenders, deserve whatever deterrent the death penalty carries in the criminal community, she said.

"I think the timing of this bill would be something of an insult to law enforcement officers," she said. "They and their families don't know if a routine stop is suddenly going to turn bad."

Ayotte's office is preparing a capital murder case against Michael Addison, who is accused of shooting Manchester police Officer Michael Briggs when Briggs responded to a domestic call last October.

However, a parade of witnesses testified that repealing the death penalty is a moral issue. They said justice should not be about revenge, and capital punishment is nothing more than the government taking revenge.

Portsmouth Democrat Jim Splaine, the bill's prime sponsor, said he realizes Briggs' death makes considering the repeal difficult, but society must decide if government-sanctioned death is civilized.

"I know this may be a difficult time to talk about this, but the dialogue needs to continue," he said.

Ron Keine, a former death row inmate, said living in prison with no chance of parole is a far worse fate than death.

Keine said he was framed for a murder he didn't commit in New Mexico. Ten days before his scheduled execution, the real murderer stepped forward and confessed, said Keine, now a businessman living in Michigan.

"There's too much chance of a mistake," said Keine, speaking for the Philadelphia-based group Witness to Innocence, From Death Row to Freedom. "Mistakes happen."

"I've been on death row," he added. "There are monsters down there. I don't want them on the streets, but to kill them is wrong."

Even if lawmakers pass the bill, Gov. John Lynch supports the death penalty and has said he would veto an effort to repeal it.

New Hampshire appears to be a state divided over capital punishment. The statute is narrow and has been applied only once in the last decade. No one has been executed in the state since 1939, no one is on death row and there is no death chamber in which to administer the prescribed lethal injection - or hanging, if injection is not possible.

The Legislature voted to repeal the death penalty in 2000, but then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen vetoed the bill. Lawmakers tried again in 2001, but failed to pass the repeal bill. Another attempt was rejected last year.

Repeal supporters argue the risk of executing the innocent is too great to leave the law on the books. But Ayotte and Chief Robert Wharem, speaking for the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police, said the issue isn't vengeance or revenge, but holding criminals accountable for their actions.

Both noted that New Hampshire rarely charges anyone with capital murder.

The last person charged with capital murder in New Hampshire was Gordon Perry, who avoided the possibility by pleading guilty to first-degree murder in Epsom police Officer Jeremy Charron's death. Charron was gunned down while checking a parked car in August 1997.

Former state Rep. Renny Cushing, whose father was murdered, said death penalty supporters should not assume all victims' families want the person who murdered their loved one to die.

"The reality is (that) you don't get better from an execution," he said.

New Hampshire's death penalty law includes a short list of crimes, including murder of a law enforcement officer and murder during rape or attempted rape. Additionally, the law requires two jury verdicts: one finding guilt, and another imposing the penalty. The jury must unanimously find two aggravating circumstances, including intent, for a death sentence. The state Supreme Court automatically reviews death sentences.

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5. Senate OKs Lynch school dropout bill

By KEVIN LANDRIGAN, Telegraph Staff

klandrigan@nashuatelegraph.com

Published: Friday, Mar. 16, 2007

CONCORD  Gov. John Lynchs political crusade to increase the mandatory school attendance age to 18 cleared the shorter of two legislative hurdles needed to become law Thursday.

The state Senate, now under Democratic control, approved, by a 17-7 margin, a bill similar to one it passed two years ago when Republicans were in charge.

Right now, 20 percent of our students are dropping out of high school. That is unacceptable. Without a high school diploma, those young people are not going to have the opportunities they deserve, and our state will not have the educated workforce it needs to thrive, Lynch said in a statement after the vote.

Lynch has reason to believe Democratic control in the House of Representatives will lead to a reversal of fortune as that legislative chamber a year ago this month sent his proposal off to oblivion.

The big difference with the 2007 Senate bill (SB 18) is it does not include seed money for pilot programs in Manchester and Nashua to craft alternative learning options for troubled students who cant thrive in the classroom setting.

This time, Lynch is proposing, separately, in his two-year state budget, $4 million more for one-on-one tutoring, apprenticeships and slots in technical high school programs for students that need another option.

The only thing we are forcing them to do is have a plan for success and we are forcing ourselves to meet their needs, said Sen. Iris Estabrook, D-Durham, the bills prime author.

Instead of throwing up our hands and saying we cant meet their needs, we finally acknowledge not only we can do it, but we must do it.

Sen. Peter Bragdon, R-Milford, claimed studies show high-school completion rates have gone down in states that increase the age students must stay in school.

In many ways this is feel-good legislation. We can leave here having had this pass and feel we have done something and I am very suspicious that we havent, Bragdon began.

Sen. David Gottesman, D-Nashua, noted the existing attendance law passed in 1903.

What are we telling these kids when they are 11, 12 or 13 years old and they start thinking about when they can drop out of school? Gottesman asked rhetorically. Yes we have to provide additional alternatives, but we have to set the standards and the goal for how long we want those kids under our wing.

Manchester Republican Sen. Ted Gatsas supported Lynchs bill last year when he was Senate president, but said this one leaves students without options in school districts that lack alternative programs.

Sen. Robert Clegg, R-Hudson, had a similar change of heart from a year ago.

To say you have to go to school or go to an alternative program says you have to stay. If you dont have an alternative program, what does the student have to do? He has to stay, Clegg said.

Sen. Lou DAllesandro, D-Manchester, said state educators under Lynchs directive put together a comprehensive plan to create programs where none now exist.

Dont look at it as confining people to a classroom. The classroom is the whole world, DAllesandro said.

Supporters note the mandatory attendance age does not change until July 1, 2009, and this gives the state time to help communities set up alternative learning options.

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http://www.nh.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070314/BUSINESSREVIEW30/70313021

6. House panel OKs health insurance riders

Published: Wednesday, Mar. 14, 2007

A bill that would allow individuals to buy health insurance that wont necessarily cover what ails them, got an initial nod from a House Commerce subcommittee Tuesday.

House Bill 264 would allow insurance companies to attach riders on a policy excluding coverage for a single pre-existing condition.

New Hampshire is one of the few states that dont allow such riders, which are becoming increasing standard practice for those insurers that still underwrite individual policies.

Indeed  unbeknownst to the state Insurance Department -- insurers have been offering these policies in the state ever since the practice was legalized for four months in 2003. Lawmakers had inadvertently outlawed the practice again in January 2004, and the department sent out a bulletin to the industry in November 2006 after discovering the practice, advising that that it was against state law.

Insurers said that riders give consumers a more affordable choice than trying to buy insurance in the assigned risk pool.

My clients would lose their health insurance if they lost the option of a rider, said Russell Monbleau, an independent agent from Nashua.

The insurance industry and business groups strongly testified in favor of riders, arguing that they are for relatively minor conditions, like allergies, and wont put the insured at financial and medical risk.

When one representative, JP Wiesel  representing the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, an industry lobbying group  was asked about chronic conditions like diabetes, he said that it didnt make sense for insurers to exclude such a wide-ranging chronic condition because so many related diseases would not be covered under the rider.

But Leslie Ludtke, a health policy analyst with the Insurance Department, said there was a filing for diabetes riding back in 2003, though she was not sure about subsequent riders, because insurers have not been filing them with the department, as they should be.

While not enamored by riders, the subcommittees chair, Stephen P. Spratt, D-Greenville, recommended that the panel support the bill, reasoning that some insurance is better than none at all. The rest of the subcommittee -- including House Commerce Committee Chair Tara Reardon -- also backed the bill, except for Rep. Susi Nord, D-Candia, who called riders the ultimate form of cherry-picking and that they were inviting people to bankrupt themselves. --- BOB SANDERS

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7. N.H. bill would force payday lenders to close shop

By Norma Love, Associated Press Writer | March 13, 2007

CONCORD, N.H. --New Hampshire would join four other New England states in closing the doors on payday and title loan shops if legislation to cap interest rates is approved.

Currently, New Hampshire and Rhode Island are the only New England states

whose laws make payday loans profitable, said Jamie Fulmer, director of investor relations of South Carolina-based Advance America Cash Advance.

If New Hampshire joins its neighbors in capping interest rates, payday and title loan companies will close in the state, Fulmer and New Hampshire Banking Commissioner Peter Hildreth said Tuesday.

"People have to understand that means there won't be any (payday lenders)," said Hildreth, who supports a cap.

The House scheduled hearings Wednesday on three bills to cap interest rates on the loans. Most of the attention is on a bill that would cap the annual rate at 36 percent and only allow people to take out the loans once every 60 days.

Hildreth said that is intended to stop people from rolling over the loans, effectively prolonging their debt.

Payday lenders offer quick cash advances for a fee, often secured by a postdated personal check from the borrower. Title lenders offer cash loans based on the value of the borrower's car. Customers are drawn to the lenders because, unlike banks, they don't run credit checks.

Borrowers who don't repay title lenders lose their cars. Payday lenders may work out a longer payment plan to attempt to get their money back. Critics say some borrow increasing amounts, winding up deeper in debt.

Fulmer insists 95 percent of Advance America's customers repay the loans.

"What happens in states where the product doesn't exist, consumers are forced to turn to more expensive options," said Fulmer.

"Some are able to turn to a friend or family member," he added. "The majority have very few options."

Fulmer argued the loans fill an important gap, mostly for working middle-income families with an average income of $41,000. Without payday loans, they may choose instead to pay a bill or rent late, or to bounce a check regardless of the impact on their credit rating or the fees they incur, he said.

Advance America charges consumers $20 per $100 in cash advanced, up to a maximum $500 loan in New Hampshire. A $100 loan plus the $20 finance charge borrowed for two weeks works out to a 521 percent annual interest rate.

Under Rhode Island's law, the same $100 loan by the company carries $15 in interest over two weeks -- working out to a 391 percent annual interest rate.

Sarah Mattson, an attorney with New Hampshire Legal Assistance, says New Hampshire has plenty of more affordable alternatives to payday and title loans -- including churches, town welfare offices, zero-interest advances from employers and working with creditors on payment plans.

"There really are places people can go in our state when they have a gap in income that needs to be bridged," she said. "That's what people are doing in other states."

In 1999, New Hampshire repealed an interest cap on small loans after lenders complained to lawmakers that the credit card industry had moved into their market.

State Sen. Lou D'Allesandro, the repeal bill's sponsor, said Tuesday the law was changed to ensure people who had problems getting credit could get a loan. The law may need to be fixed, but not so drastically that the group with poor credit are shut out of the market, he said.

"Are we going to force those people to illegal, illicit loan sharks?" he said.

Last year, New Hampshire issued licenses to three title loan companies and eight payday loan companies, according to the Banking Department.

Payday loan companies issued 149,836 loans worth nearly $56 million. The average loan was $374. Title loan companies issued 10,254 loans worth $7.6 million. The average loan was $738.

The numbers for both have roughly tripled since 2003.

Fulmer said Advance America couldn't cover its overhead at the proposed cap and would close its 20 stores in New Hampshire.

"When you talk about a 36 percent interest rate on a two week loan, that equates to $1.38," said Fulmer.

Last year, Congress imposed a 36 percent annual percentage rate cap on payday loans to military service members after reports showed thousands of troops in debt to payday lenders, many of which are clustered outside bases.

Fulmer said Advance America stopped lending to military families before the law passed.

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8. Legislators hear pleas to support defibrillators in schools

By David Tirrell-Wysocki, Associated Press Writer | March 15, 2007

CONCORD, N.H. --It's called House Bill 911 for a reason. It can save lives.

The proposal would put the state on record as encouraging schools to obtain portable defibrillators -- which can be the difference between life and death for people who suffer sudden cardiac arrest. It also would set up a state commission to accept donations and help schools buy the devices.

No one spoke against the plan at a House committee hearing Thursday. Supporters included a woman who lost her son to sudden cardiac arrest and another woman who got a second chance at life because of one of the machines.

Judy Sidileau of Peterborough told how she collapsed while watching a swim meet near Rochester, N.Y., in 2003 and was revived by lifeguards and coaches performing CPR and using an automated external defibrillator, or AED.

A New York law mandating the devices in public places had gone into effect only one month earlier, and the people who saved her had been trained how to use the device just two weeks before she collapsed.

"Don't think for a moment that any of you or any of your loved ones is safe," Sidileau said. "I never, ever had any symptoms of heart disease."

She said the proposal was too important to pass up.

"You can save so many lives," Silideau said.

In New Hampshire, a portable defibrillator saved a high school athlete who collapsed at Kimball Union Academy in Plainfield last fall. Matthew Keene, 17, of Berlin, wasn't breathing and had no pulse when coaches and trainers performed CPR and shocked his heart into beating with a portable defibrillator.

Keene could not attend the hearing Thursday, but he is taking advantage of his second chance to endorse the legislation, to raise awareness about sudden cardiac arrest and raise money to buy defibrillators for schools. In January, Keene and his family donated 14 AEDs to schools in Berlin and Gorham after raising $20,000.

Khristin Carroll of Hopkinton tearfully told the committee of a life that was lost.

Her son, Timothy, 22, ran up the stairs at his apartment in Pittsburgh, Pa., seven years ago, sat down and died of sudden cardiac arrest.

With a photograph of her son on the table, Carroll said an AED would have saved him.

"I want to challenge all of you," she said. "How safe do you feel that your children are in a school without an AED? Do you want to be Matthew's mother, Mrs. Keene, whose child is perfectly healthy, or do you want to be me?"

The bill's main sponsor, Hopkinton Democrat Christine Hamm said her bill is aptly numbered 911 because it can save lives.

"I believe it is important for the state of New Hampshire to do what it can to breathe life into this effort ... so that we have no more Timothys and many more Matts," she said.

Her original plan called for the state to spend $100,000 to set up a fund to buy defibrillators, but at Thursday's hearing, she said she has dropped that section so her bill more closely matches a similar plan moving through the Senate.

The machines are about the size of a laptop computer and cost $700-$1,200. They deliver electrical impulses to shock a victim's heart into normal beating when irregular heartbeat stops the body's steady flow of blood.

Time is critical. The American Heart Association says for every minute without defibrillation, the odds of survival drop 7 percent to 10 percent. A victim who isn't defibrillated within 8 to 10 minutes has virtually no chance.

That means that even if the rescue squad, paramedics or police have defibrillators with them, help might arrive too late.

"In as short a time as 10 minutes, the game can be lost," Concord cardiologist, Dr. Richard Boss told the committee. And he said half of sudden cardiac deaths happen in public places, including schools.

"Defibrillation is the key," he said.

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