Back in 2006 the liberal Brookings Institution published Charting Maine’s Future with a portfolio of economic development recommendations. Governor Baldacci welcomed it as a “blueprint for Maine’s future” and all the legislators received copies. The loud “buzz” it set off at the time, seems to have subsided at present to a low hum inaudible to my aging ears.
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Yet the report’s effect lingers on. It pointed out that our state deserves the name “Administrationland” as much as “Vacationland,” proposing energetic efforts to reduce our overgrown governmental structure. While the hordes of officials in Augusta remain undiminished, the school consolidation and jail centralization legislation appear to be inspired by its analysis. Few people believe there will be savings any time soon from the first. The effects of the second remain uncertain.
The Democratic majority appears to have embodied the Brookings proposal to reduce the state’s income tax rates in the new “tax reform,” LD 1495. We should be pleased to see them agreeing with the Maine Heritage Policy Center, after years of denial, that our tax rates are a drag on economic development. Yet this legislation ignores a crucial part of the Charting Maine’s Future.
While it’s true that the “blueprint” advocated a reduction in the top income tax rate, it proposed that this tax cut be funded through savings identified by a Government Efficiency Commission composed of 12 independent minded citizens. No such commission was ever established. No such savings were ever identified. Worse, the Democrats toyed for a while with saving money by abolishing the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability (OPEGA) even though the report proposed that this organization could help the commission identify waste and misappropriation.
LD 1495, instead of reducing excess expenditure, aims to fund tax cuts on the highest earners by extracting revenue from the lowest. This is to be done by “broadening” the sales tax to include all kinds of services. Of course, we are assured that most of this burden will fall on tourists, transients, extraterrestrials, interlopers and flatlanders. Taxation without representation, a perennial favorite of politicians down through the ages. When it works, it works really well.
Mind you, I have no principled objections to soaking flatlanders. Not since I escaped from my New Jersey exile and re-rooted myself in the sacred soil of my native state. But is this claim really true? We must wonder about the Maine Revenue Service’s (MRS) calculations when we read that LD 1495 proposes to tax… ventriloquists. Does it really know how many ventriloquists there are in the state of Maine? Do you? Does anyone? I’m consumed with curiosity about its revenue projections from ventiriloquy – $5,000, $240, $25, 75 cents – but the figures are nowhere to be found.
The claim that the increase in the meals and lodgings tax from 7 percent to 8.5 percent shifts the burden from Mainers to rusticators from away is more intelligible, but very questionable. Mainers pay 80 percent of this tax. Notice, Burger King and MacDonald’s are year-round businesses. No burden on the citizens of Fryeburg, of course. They can readily slip across the border into New Hampshire for a little R&R and a Double-Lalapalooza with fries. Good for them. Not so good for the people in Bangor or Benedicta.
It all comes down to this. Faced with a proposal to reduce taxes by reducing spending, the Democrats turn to tax increases as a compass needle turns to the north, and a heliotropic flower turns to the sun.
Paraphrasing the banditos in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” they snarl “Efficiencies, we don’t need no stinkin’ efficiencies” and turn their fertile minds to devising new ways to soak Maine’s taxpayers. So it has been for over 30 years, and so it will continue until the sun cools.
No point in protesting that the Legislature just cut the budget by $500 million. It was forced to do that by the state constitution and the recession. The huge infusion of federal stimulus funds made it possible and that source will not available for the next biennial deficit, estimated by optimists as $500 million, by pessimists as $1.5 billion. Either way, we can be sure that the majority party’s solution will be furth er “broadening” of the sales taxes. They don’t know any other way.
The Republican party is now circulating People’s Veto petitions to annul LD 1485, squelch the new sales taxes, head off further increases and force a serious program of budget restraint. Sign or suffer. The choice in your hands.
Very nice piece of work! Hope is forever eternal…
Lots of arcane words as I’ve come to expect from John Frary’s commentary, but no constructive suggestions other than slash and burn.
The stimulus funding was an opportunity. An opportunity at using money wisely to support initiatives that will help us in the future. Generally speaking, our local reps have thumbed their collective noses at the stimulus funds rather than try to be creative.
Being creative is more than just using stimulus money to pay down your credit card like LD 1244 (sponsored by Rep. Harvell) that required the State Budget Officer to transfer funds from the Federal Relief Funds Reserve account to the Medical Care – Payments to Providers program to pay MaineCare settlements for hospital fiscal year 2007 and hospital fiscal year 2008. Yes, good to pay the hospitals, but not forward thinking.
It took a Democrat from Monmouth (Representative Nancy Smith) to sponsor, and get passed, a bill basically creating a statewide Pine Tree Zone. The bill, LD 1473, is “An Act to Reaffirm Maine’s commitment to business by amending the Pine Tree Development Zone Laws”.
We need more creativity to bolster business activity to get us out of this mess, not the same old cut, cut, cut mantra. Perhaps it’s lost on Mr. Frary, but nothing in life is free.
The referendum to annul LD 1485 is shortsighted.
–Dennis Haszko
Farmington
I wonder if you’re also going to give the democrats credit with the following spending of the stimulus bill.
RECOVERY.GOV AWARDED: $2,531,600 FOR ‘HAM, WATER ADDED, COOKED, FROZEN, SLICED, 2-LB
RECOVERY.GOV AWARDED: $1,191,200 FOR ‘2 POUND FROZEN HAM SLICED
RECOVERY.GOV AWARDED: $351,807 FOR ‘REPLACE AND UPGRADE THE DUMBWAITER
RECOVERY.GOV AWARDED: $1,562,568 FOR ‘MOZZARELLA CHEESE
RECOVERY.GOV AWARDED: $5,708,260 FOR ‘PROCESS CHEESE
RECOVERY.GOV AWARDED: $16,784,272 FOR ‘CANNED PORK
RECOVERY.GOV AWARDED: $1,444,100 FOR ‘REPAIR DOOR BLDG 5112
RECOVERY.GOV AWARDED: $541,119 FOR ‘INSTALL TRAFFIC SIGNAL
Agriculture Sec. Vilsack tried to defend these purchases saying they ‘Purchased 760,000 Lbs of ham at cost of approximately $1.50 per pound’…
Yesterdays price at a FOOD LION store in Washington DC: $.79 Lb
The amount of waste in government is unacceptable and using tax payer dollars to pay off voting block is just disgusting!
Dennis, every time you post a comment reinforces how happy I am that you are not a member of the Maine legislature. You repeatedly have failed to accept that the people of the Farmington area did not appreciate your liberal agenda and failure to connect to them personally. I highly suggest you take a different approach if you are trying to make a name for yourself in this region.
Hutch,
Glad to give you something to read. Perhaps you’d enjoy a conversation over coffee at Java Joes? Name the time, my treat. I’m sure even you would be surprised to find I have no liberal agenda.
–Dennis
Sorry Dennis, if you have a D in front of your name you will be associated with the liberal agenda, I suggest that changing to an I or and R. This is not just my opinion, you can blame it on the current administration.
For example, last night after about three years of my wife saying “honey why do you get so work up about this stuff!” She watched the evening news which finally put the numbers the government is spending in terms people can understand rather then a 1 with a lot of zeros, they said we could have put everyone born since 1965 through Harvard. She said “oh! That’s a lot!”
I am not saying my wife is bad at math, but when people get so use to hearing the numbers in the back ground, it goes in one ear and out another.
Since the phrase “yes we can” is now commonly followed by “bankrupt America”, I highly suggest if you consider yourself a fiscal conservative that you disassociate yourself from the Democratic party.
This political advice is free, any additional advice, my rates start at 200/hr.
Hutch,
Sorry to hear you’re not willing to chat over a coffee. If you’re willing to trek it out to the Ugly Moose, I’ll even throw in a free breakfast. They make a really tempting breakfast sandwich there (not to mention having the absolute best pizza).
As for having a “D” in front of my name, I guess I’ll never quite be able to change that mostly because people would look at me funny if I said my name was “ennis” …and they already look at me funny when I have to spell my last name with a “z” in it!
All joking aside, there are clear flaws in our system of government. Moreover, no single party has all the answers. I can find all the wonderful statistics on republican pork projects as much as you can find facts to support your position. (and yes Hutch, I do check my facts) Indeed, we are all too aware of the bottomless pit of an expensive boondoggle that our last president got us into in Iraq. Was I sad to see Saddam toppled? No. Was I disappointed at the misinformation and tactics and cost of getting it done? Yes. Perhaps diplomacy would have never worked, but clearly we’ll never know…and clearly we’ll be paying for this mess for a long time to come. How many Harvard tuitions would that pay for? And for the record, it was our last president that began the bailouts. The current administration was merely handed the mess.
I suspect you’ll come back with some pithy remark or perhaps even send me a bill at your $200/hr rate.
I’m sure you’re not too busy for breakfast though as I notice that you manage to post so many remarks during working hours. So much for the “working people vote republican” as it applies to you eh? (sorry, couldn’t help myself with that one!)
Seriously, the breakfast at the Ugly Moose is yours. What say you? Interested in diplomacy at the local level? Indeed, isn’t that what a true democracy is all about?
–Dennis
Sorry for my late response i have been out of town for a few days.
Dennis, this is why we can never talk, you have simply reverted to the same old Bush derangement syndrome that you and most Dems do, its sad really, as i watch the president start pulling this same old stunt again as his poll numbers start to plummet. i realize more and more we are in big trouble with this administration.
If you really want to go back and forth on Pork projects, Political Scandals, Oral History, the war in Iraq where 550 metric tons of yellow cake uranium was found, the fact that dems in the House and the majority in the Senate also voted for the war, the cost of the war vs. the cost of the latest stimulus package that has only stimulated government and more waste, and the Community Reinvestment Act which started this whole mess which the Bush Administration tried to add more regulation too, but was stopped by the Dems. Well i can do it all day and in fact you my need backup.
So seriously if you want to play blame game go ahead i am ready.
Hutch,
I’m sorry to hear you’d rather hide behind your keyboard and sling anonymous rhetoric. It’s regrettable that you’re resigned to the fact you can “never talk” to someone with perceived differing political opinions.
In my NJ grade school (St. Joseph’s Elementary), I remember befriending a kid from Puerto Rico. My predominantly white, Catholic classmates made fun of him for racial reasons. I recall vividly that he was so stigmatized by his experience that I felt like he never really trusted me.
In later years, I found myself moved from a Catholic school and blue collar neighborhood to a my grandparent’s old farm that was landlocked between two upscale housing developments in a predominantly Jewish, upper-middle class area. Going from an area where everyone was the same as me to being the new classmate that lived in the old run down farmhouse was a bit eye-opening.
Even later in my first year of college (before I switched schools and majors from business administration to engineering and happily escaped from NJ), I spent a semester at the Newark campus of Rutgers University. It didn’t much matter there what religion I was so much as it was apparent my skin color did not match. It was incredibly humbling for me as a 17 year old college freshman to be walking down Broadway in downtown Newark in the middle of the day among a sea of pedestrians only to realize I was the minority.
In the 25 years since I left NJ, this pattern of eye-opening experiences has been a constant theme for me. I suspect that’s why I have the perspective that allows me to talk to someone with perceived differing political opinions. It’s really too bad you you don’t have a perspective that allows you the same.
It’s been interesting to exchange these emails with you, but I don’t have enough hours in my day to continue your blame game as you suggest.
–Dennis
Wow Dennis,
i really don’t know what that was about, but my personal belief is that we will never be a color blind society until people stop inserting their race into their personal narrative.