Drink up, it’s for the kids Representative Sean Faircloth tries to tax fun to stave off Baldacci’s DHHS cuts BY ALEX IRVINE

Meritage and Market Wines owner Tom Hansen must have felt last Wednesday that Mother Nature didn’t want taxes raised on beer, wine, and cigarettes. Why else would she have dropped a foot of snow on the area the night before, canceling Hansen’s planned event in support of HP 500, Bangor representative Sean Faircloth’s proposal to up taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and soda (as well as raise the income level at which the state’s highest income-tax rate kicks in)?

"It’s the kiss of death to have to cancel an event and move it to the next night because of a storm," Hansen muttered after finding out that none of the Portland-area legislators he’d had scheduled for Tuesday could make it on Wednesday. To make matters worse, Faircloth was slowed down by the storm’s aftereffects, and hadn’t made it by the time the event kicked off at 7 p.m.

Why’s he going to all this trouble to support a bill that would raise taxes on his livelihood anyway?

"I look at what it’s for," he says.

HP 500’s goal is to raise $91 million annually to preserve funding for early-intervention and child-safety programs targeted for steep cuts or elimination under Governor Baldacci’s proposed 2006/2007 budget. One might think that, after the Logan Marr tragedy, the state would be loath to cut, for example, Community Intervention Programs, under which state employees monitor children in situations where they are at-risk for abuse and neglect, but this isn’t the first time the Baldacci administration has picked on the defenseless when proposing a budget. During the previous budget cycle, the governor proposed eliminating rehab funds for people who had suffered catastrophic brain injuries, a move that provoked large protests.

In this case, proponents of the cuts claim that the same level of safety inspections can be maintained by, for example, privatizing services without appropriating any money in the budget for private inspections.

Hansen and his wife Karen Gervasoni have a special-needs child, Cole, and they’ve seen first-hand the positive effect early-intervention programs can have. "It’s a small investment now for a big payoff later," Gervasoni says of early-childhood programs.

Both of them are aware of the irony inherent in a wine merchant sponsoring an event advocating increased taxes on wine, but Hansen doesn’t think the proposed hikes would hurt his business. "Historically when a tax has been levied on these goods," he says, "sales have not gone down," except for slight dips in sales to the youngest legal consumers, which is all to the good in Hansen’s book. "If you want a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of wine, a nickel more isn’t going to make a difference."

"When I go out to dinner and I buy a bottle of wine," Gervasoni chimes in, "I don’t look at what the taxes are."

The most noticeable increases proposed in HP 500 are a 50-cent hike in the cigarette tax and a new tax on soft-drink syrup and bottled soft drinks, along with a seasonal increase in the meals-and-lodging tax from seven to 10 percent. All three are more noticeable than a nickel, but Hansen and Gervasoni believe that taxing frills is a viable way to preserve important funding. "It doesn’t hurt people who are trying to buy necessities," Gervasoni says of the proposal.

Further, there is an unspecified (the bill is still a "concept draft") increase in "the income level at which is the highest marginal income tax rate is imposed," which would be a tax cut.

Faircloth, who formerly handled child-protection cases as an assistant attorney general, arrived on Wednesday after a half-hour or so, to cheers from the hardy assemblage. In an obvious reference to the Logan Marr case, he cited the importance of the Community Intervention Program and said, "We don’t want to go back to those times" when investigations of abuse were hamstrung by lack of resources. "If these cuts go through, there won’t be investigations of allegations of child abuse and neglect."

He shrugged off concerns that people would go to New Hampshire to buy their beer. "Most people go to their corner store to buy beer," he said. "People don’t want their income taxes raised, their property taxes raised," but he doesn’t think they’ll mind paying a little more for nonessential pleasures.

"Why should the most vulnerable pay a disproportionate share of the price?" he asked during his remarks to the crowd at Meritage. "There’s sometimes a fog that descends over people in Augusta," resulting in a knee-jerk flight away from new taxes, he said, getting laughs, "but I think the fear is more in the State House than on Planet Earth."

The choice, Faircloth says, is simple. "Do we want major cuts that would be harmful to children who are abused and neglected? Who have developmental disabilities? Who have mental illness?" Or "will we pay more for frills to sustain necessities for children?"

If previous behavior is any gauge, the governor will make a great show of backing off on some of the proposed cuts, which will let legislators crow about how they’re defending the most vulnerable Mainers. Faircloth, however, has the sound of a true believer when talking about the importance of community intervention. "Democrats espouse certain values," he says, "and I think we ought to hold them to those values."

Faircloth’s wholehearted advocacy for children like Cole moves Hansen to call him "a saint" on these issues.

"Sean is very good at helping us understand that we can be part of the solution," Gervasoni adds. She’s mobilizing a "network of friends and family and providers" rather than going directly to legislators, and thinks that people are "willing to pay a little bit more when they know it’s for something important."

Like Cole Hansen, who is now in kindergarten. "My son is going to pay lots of taxes someday," Gervasoni says, "and nothing could make me prouder."

Alex Irvine can be reached at airvine@phx.com