As lawmakers make their annual trek back to Augusta in January, they will consider options for addressing Maine’s multimillion budget deficit. At $300 million and growing, the deficit will force serious decisions to be made at the state level. These decisions will affect each and every single one of us locally, as well as our schools, businesses, hospitals, public safety, and the list goes on.
Perhaps lawmakers could learn something from a small but vibrant school in western Maine, Cascade Brook School. Its annual pie and bread benefit sale just before Thanksgiving is a volunteer effort to create resources for various school activities and programs. Using true Yankee ingenuity, the school’s PTO worked together to develop a simple, fun and effective strategy to help address school needs. Students, teachers, parents and other volunteers organize a wonderful bake sale to help fund educational field trips, duty monitors and science programs. The idea to address needs in a simple, down-to-earth way actually came from a children’s story.
I’m not suggesting we can or should solve our state budget problems with a bake sale. Like the bumper sticker many of us have seen, I’m waiting for the day our schools don’t have to hold bake sales in order to provide our youths with the education they need to thrive and compete in the local and global economy.
What is clear from the school fundraiser is that people need to be willing to work strategically together to address needs. Clearly, we need to recognize what is important and we need a plan. It’s not enough for anyone to sit back and only say we can fix our problems by cutting state government, since state government includes our schools, our hospitals, our ambulances, our parks, our consumer protection and our infrastructure. Lawmakers must be willing to overcome political and perceived obstacles and think realistically and creatively. Most important, they must be willing to act like a team and give something, incorporating teamwork, education and innovation into the mix as they work to address needs. Cascade Brook School is working to do just that, and they are doing it well!
Ann Woloson
Belgrade Lakes
Ms. Woloson, the Democrat candidate for the Maine Senate in our district from Belgrade, in the 2008 election, has some interesting advice. Unfortunately the difference between the bake sale at the Cascade Brook School and the chronic behavior of the state is a profound one. The customers at the bake sale have come there voluntarily and will freely buy what they buy. These customers agree to purchase what they will and they have a good idea of what they will receive in return for the property they freely surrender for the goods they leave with. In addition, those who run the bake sale are volunteers.
On the other hand, the legislators take money from citizens using the police power of the state. There is nothing , in the last analysis, voluntary about taxes. Try not paying your income taxes or the sales tax when you go into Rite-aid , Shaws or Wal-Mart. There is no accounting of the benefits given by the state for the property they seize. No one knows if they get their money’s worth, and they certainly cannot say for certain that someone who pays 5,000 in taxes gets that much benefit in return. A very sound case can be made for taxes being spoliation.
Ms. Woloson writes “It’s not enough for anyone to sit back and only say we can fix our problems by cutting state government…”, but that is what we have to do when we, in our own lives, are faced with insolvency. It is common sense. Cutting our expenses is most of what we do when we are faced with that situation. Unfortunately, Ms. Woloson does not seem to see a way out of this problem “since state government includes our schools, our hospitals, our ambulances, our parks, our consumer protection and our infrastructure. Lawmakers must be willing to overcome political and perceived obstacles and think realistically and creatively.” If by this she means that there is nothing we can do to cut the size of these government functions, we are then in real trouble. If it is impossible to cut these, then every new program the Legislature dreams up we will have in perpetuity, unable to get rid of it unless we substitute some new and expanded version of it. In the last analysis we have to cut the size of government. Ms. Woloson tells us to “work strategically together.” She advises our politicians to “be willing to overcome political and perceived obstacles and think realistically and creatively. What exactly could she mean? Her last paragraph is larded with feel good Obama-words, abstract, a bit vague, rather empty, and yet inspirational.
Ms. Woloson belongs to a party that has ruled Maine for thirty five years. What have we gotten for the domination of our state by the Democrat Party all these time? Extremely high taxes, huge jungles of ever changing regulations, exceedingly non-transparent state government, a very very business unfriendly environment, the most liberal welfare in the country, bumblings and fumblings in the form of, for examples, the expensive Dirigo Health mess, the 50 million dollar loss of the DHHS software, failure to pay the hospitals in a timely way, and the missing 20 million the government cannot account for, and on and on. We even saw the Democrat Legislature raid the gasoline tax fund, which was dedicated to highway building. It pulled an accounting trick and put our gas taxes into the general fund!
So, we must ask how Ms. Woloson, if she should be elected in 2010, would solve this financial crisis the Democrats have delivered on us by their actions over the years? Would you raise taxes, cut government or what?
There are “political and perceived” obstacles and then there are real obstacles. The latter should not be entirely ignored and Ms Woloson should be grateful that Dr. Reid helps fill the gap by pointing out that the most important real obstacle is the limit on how much revenue can be coerced from the tax payer.
Being a team player is a matter of voluntary choice and some of our wealthiest tax payers have volunteered to leave the state, e.g., Steven King, George Mitchell, for more tax-payer friendly locales. Who knows how many find ways and means of concealing parts ot their incomes.
In fact, there are very few public or private enterprises that cannot be made more efficient and economical. The Brookings Report of a few years ago proposed creation of a Government Efficiency Commission. This was not done. Does anyone really believe that Maine’s government has achieved perfect efficiency?