Cumberland County Crossroads

With the release of the Strategic Plan, officials, including Sheriff Mark Dion, hope to move toward regionalism

By Noah Bruce

COUNTY MANAGER PETER CRICHTON: The county is fiscally responsible.

County government in Maine is kind of a strange thing. Sandwiched between formidable state and municipal governments, unable to collect its own taxes, and without a charter, government at the county level is in Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion’s words, something of “a bastard child.”

Yet Cumberland County is perhaps finding direction. In January, county manager (a position that has only exited for five years) Peter Crichton convened the Strategic Planning Committee, a 70-member

body comprised of leaders from the business community, state and local governments, nonprofits, and police and fire departments. The committee was charged with creating a strategic plan for the county which it presented to the county’s three commissioners, Esther Clenott, Richard Feeney, and Gary Plummer, on June 13.

The Committee’s major recommendations included alleviating the property tax burden through an increase in the meals and lodging tax, centralizing property tax collection, creating a charter, providing better treatment to corrections officers at the jail, and establishing a forum for discussion between state, local and county government officials. Of course, some of these proposals, like the tax, would require an act of state legislature, and others, like centralized tax collection, would require the cooperation of the towns and cities.

You could say the county is finding itself.

“The strategic plan is a roadmap to go forward in the future,” says Crichton, who adds that this is the first time Cumberland County has had a long-range plan.

Yet, according to Dion, the strategic plan could be even more significant. “The strategic plan cracks the door on the potential for regionalism,” he says. Dion is passionate about this, saying that this is “the first rifle shot towards a potential tax reformation,” and says the proposed charter is the “second rifle shot towards having a conversation about a regional approach.”

According to Dion, county government could be the meeting point for cities that at present have “no forum to communicate and make collective decisions except in Augusta where they meet as adversaries.”

At present, he says, the towns and cities within Cumberland County have an inward focus that prevents synergy that would enable a more efficient regional government. For example, affluent communities that are not faced with visible substance abuse problems don’t want to pay for treatment centers in other cities. Urban communities are unconcerned about the sprawl affecting suburbia. Suburban and rural communities are indifferent toward the plight of service-centers like Portland, or even Gorham, which have higher property-tax burdens thanks to a large number of non-profit entities.

As a result of this attitude, city-owned resources are not used effectively. For instance, a city will plow only up to the city line even if continuing down the street would be a better use of resources.

“I see Cumberland County as one city spread over 850 square miles,” says Dion. The advantage of thinking this way, he believes, is it allows “the county to broker solutions to problems that don’t stay within city boundaries.” For instance, presently each city has its own traffic plan. However, this does not make sense in a world where commuters cross city limits on a daily basis. Regional traffic planning would be more efficient, says Dion.

Another example of the potential for regionalism is in social services. Currently, city borders conscribe service agencies’ funding and area of service delivery.

Ethan Strimling, director of Portland West, says the agency is hurt by the lack of regional focus. For example, the community restitution program — a program where youths can serve community service sentences — takes kids from all over the county, but Portland is the only municipality that funds the program. At the same time, Portland is the only city that benefits from the service. Strimling believes it would work better with a broadened focus. “. . . It’s important that these communities pay their fair share, but it’s almost as important that we go up to Falmouth and clean graffiti up there.”

Dion also believes that the plan could mark the beginning of a change in thinking about the property tax. Currently the property tax is at the bottom of many local and county tax woes. Anytime a Maine city needs more revenue, it has no choice but to cut services or raise the property tax. This has resulted in a property tax increase of six percent this year in Portland, and a recently-defeated proposal of a 27 percent increase in the town of Gray.

The Strategic Plan recommends “a one to two percent increase in the meals and lodging tax for all of Cumberland County, which would generate $5.3 million to $10.6 million, and have those funds redistributed to the municipalities and county on an equitable basis.”

Portland’s cut of the $5.3 to $10.6 million amounts to small potatoes for a city that collected $97 million in property taxes in 2000. However, it is a step. Unfortunately it is a step that would require an act of the often hard-to-move state legislature.

However, this leads to Dion’s next point — a strong collaboration between Cumberland County’s 27 towns and cities would probably have enough clout to get what it wants in Augusta. Voting as a block they might even be strong enough to pass a more comprehensive form of tax reform — a county-wide local-option sales tax. Currently, all the sales tax paid in Maine goes directly to the state’s coffers. For years the Maine Municipal Association, a group that lobbies for local governments, has tried to pass a local-option sales tax to no avail. However, a unified county may have a chance where cities have failed.

New England’s approach to the weak county government is somewhat unique in the United States. In the South and the West in particular, county government is usually a more powerful body. This is due to the fact, says Dion, that the northeast was dominated by industry located in cities, whereas, in the south and west, power was concentrated in the hands of large landowners, whose needs were better served by county governments that oversaw large geographic areas.

According to Donald Gerrish, town manager in Brunswick and chairman of the Strategic Planning Committee, counties in these parts of the country perform services like planning, human services and welfare, and sometimes tax assessment and billing.

However, in Maine, county government takes a backseat to local government, especially in larger cities like Portland. It’s a good bet that many Cumberland County citizens do not realize what the county actually does. A Gorham business owner Dion met while campaigning didn’t even know which county he lived in. “He said ‘I’d like to vote for you, Mark, but I can’t.’ I said, ‘why not?’ He said ‘I live in Gorham.’ ”

Even Portland Mayor Cheryl Leeman, when asked what the county does, responds, “You should ask them.”

Currently, Cumberland County’s responsibilities include the county jail, the registry of deeds, the court of probate (which deals with adoptions, wills, and estate issues), the district attorney’s office, the Civic Center, emergency management (911 and coordinating disaster relief), and a domestic violence prevention program.

SHERIFF MARK DION: passionate about regionalism.

A large chunk of the Strategic Plan is devoted simply to improving on existing services. For example, it recommends upgrades to the jail, the civic center, and the emergency management building. It advises upgrading the computer system for the registry of deeds so the system could be accessed online. It also recommends pressuring the state to fund the jail at the level it has promised.

Yet, the plan undoubtedly goes further and recommends that the county expand beyond its current role. In advising the creation of a charter, the Planning Committee recognizes the need for the county to operate under a expressed set of guidelines. A charter should go a long way towards giving the county accountability, an area that has been questioned by critics like Portland City Councilor Tom Kane, who this year exclaimed that Portland was being taxed by the county “without representation.” Kane’s problem was that the county, like the city, is fueled by the property tax, but, unlike the city, it does not collect its own taxes; instead it just hands the city a bill.

Gerrish notes that the new charter could call for an increase in the number of commissioners. Currently, there are only three commissioners, so it only takes two votes to vote an issue up or down. According to Kane, a charter and a larger board of commissioners would help the county to gain trust.

With its suggestion to create the Cumberland County Collaborative Leadership Forum, the Strategic Committee advises a second step beyond the county’s current role. The plan says the forum could function “as a way that local governments in Cumberland County can identify regional issues, examine possible solutions, and recommend what agencies should be responsible for implementation.” The fact is, currently the different towns and cities in the county do not sit down and discuss how to tackle regional issues. Gerrish believes “the Leadership Forum sets the stage for the possibility” of having this kind of discussion. In addition, the forum could perhaps serve as the means to creating the cohesion necessary to pass changes to the tax structure in Augusta, as suggested by Dion.

ýhile the forum seems like a good idea, like any attempt at regionalism within Cumberland County it faces suspicion and apathy. The plan lists “local parochialism,” “lack of leadership/advocates,” and “competing priorities” as obstacles to the implementation of the forum.

The largest growth measure within the plan is the recommendation to centralize tax functions. While the plan lists both assessing and collection as functions that should be explored for the possibility of centralization, Gerrish says that, in truth, assessing is the more probable approach. Still, having the county performing the tax assessing for all the municipalities would represent a large procedural change. The Strategic Plan says that the benefit from such a change would be a cost savings due to “economies of scale.”

Probably the biggest challenge to achieving these goals is the mistrust at the local level. Any changes at the county level rely on the participation of the towns and cities that make up the county. And Cumberland County lacks the trust of its biggest city — Portland.

Portland officials like Kane and Leeman are suspicious of any added responsibility at the county level as they believe Cumberland County government has proved itself incapable with what it currently has on it’s plate.

“I’m afraid it’s a government in search of a mission,” Kane says.

“I think the public needs more accountability,” echoes Leeman. “We need to know where this money is going. This year was a big chunk of change.” In fact, Portland forked over $3 million to the county this year.

“The figure went up 12 percent,” she continues, “and we have to pass that on to our taxpayers. It was a significant part of our six percent increase, and we have no control over that.”

However, county manager Crichton claims the county practices responsible fiscal management. In the last seven years, he says, the county budget has grown only 10 percent. “Ask [city officials] how much their budget has grown in the past seven years,” he says. Further, he says the $3 million the city had to pay the county is only 2 percent of the city’s budget.

Kane says that, in theory, he “is a big fan of regionalism . . . It’s the way to go, but with my most recent experience with the county, I can’t say they’re the ones to be doing this.” Kane is “ticked off” that the county took an increased amount of property tax money from Portland during a budget crunch for the city. In addition, Kane claims the county is sitting on a nest egg of cash that it could have allocated towards property tax relief. Kane lists two $1.6 million allocations and two $750,000 allocations that he thinks the county could have used to defray the amount they took from the city. “If they’ve got a surplus,” he says “and we’re doing away with special education and teachers and volunteers in the Portland Partnership Program . . . If they’re waiting for a rainy day, it’s pouring outside.”

Crichton, however, claims that each of the allocations has a specific purpose. One of the $750,000 funds is allocated towards purchasing better technology, mostly for the registry of deeds. The other $750,000 will, as Kane hopes, be put towards property tax relief. One of the $1.6 million funds is allocated to space needs — upgrades to the courthouse, the emergency management building, and the jail. The other $1.6 million is an emergency fund, and Crichton says municipal government also has such a allocation.

Although it is not mentioned in the Strategic Report, Crichton and Gerrish both mention the idea of the county sending out its own tax bill to the tax payer instead of simply taking from the city. This would serve the dual role of improving relations between local governments and the county and educating the taxpayer about the function of county government.

These two issues are key to any expansion of county government, expansion that ideally could save the taxpayer money, increase the effectiveness of social service agencies, and even perhaps reform the troublesome reliance on the property tax. But, without a commitment to regionalism from the municipalities involved, the county’s efforts will all go for naught. “At the county level, we have interconnections . . . We’re missing the boat if this is about an addition to the jail or new computers for the probate court,” says Dion.

Noah Bruce can be reached at nbruce@phx.com