Phoenix endorsements (continued)

QUESTION 5: BOND ISSUE

"Do you favor a $12,000,000 bond issue to purchase land and conservation easements statewide from willing sellers for conservation, water access, wildlife and fish habitat, outdoor recreation, including hunting and fishing, farmland preservation and working waterfront preservation to be matched by at least $7,000,000 in private and public contributions?"

Considering the condition of the state budget, one might wonder if now is the time to get further into the real estate business. However, in order for the Land for Maine’s Future program to continue, it needs funding, and we believe in this program that will protect Maine’s greatest asset, its undeveloped land, from ruin. Yes, there are processes in place to make sure that development doesn’t happen haphazardly, and there are groups like the Maine Coast Heritage Trust who do this on a private basis, but this remains a good project for Maine’s future.

The Phoenix recommends a Yes vote on Question 5.

QUESTION 6: BOND ISSUE

"Do you favor a $9,000,000 bond issue to make building renovations at campuses of the University of Maine System , improve and expand the facilities of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Maine and make building renovations at campuses of the Maine Community College System?"

There is no doubt that the UMaine system is in need of investment. People talk about increasing tuition, but, if our increased tuition buys greater educational opportunities and increasingly talented people come to study in Maine, the return will be a higher endowment and a halt to that tuition increase. We need to invest now. Look at what has happened in Vermont and Connecticut. Both states made major investments in their public colleges and have begun to seriously outstrip Maine in terms of national reputation.

The Phoenix strongly urges a Yes vote on Question 6.

QUESTION 7: CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

"Do you favor amending the Constitution of Maine to permit the Legislature to authorize waterfront land used for commercial fishing activities to be assessed based on the land's current use in a manner similar to treatment now available for farms, open space and forestland?"

Who could possibly oppose referendum Question 7, which proposes a property tax break for commercial-fishing businesses on the state’s waterfronts?

The Legislature voted unanimously to recommend this constitutional amendment to voters, and it would appear that the entire Maine establishment supports it, from the preppy Island Institute to the decidedly nonpreppy Maine Lobsterman’s Association; from the Maine Municipal Association — which helped defeat a similar measure in a 2000 referendum — to the liberal Maine People’s Alliance.

Indeed, who could possibly resist a proposal that would ostensibly prevent the last 25 miles of salt-water shorefront still devoted to commercial fishing from being purchased by rich outta-staters able to flash enormous wads for a summer home with harbor view?

The amendment would allow working-waterfront property to be taxed at current use rather than market value. The resulting lower taxes theoretically would encourage wharf owners to hang on to their barnacled pilings. Thus, one of Maine’s traditional industries, always described as struggling, would be preserved.

We’ve done it for the logger and the farmer, says the Campaign to Save Working Waterfront Jobs, and now it’s time to help the fisherman with a tax break. Under certain conditions, farm and forest land (e.g., the Tree Growth Tax Law) are permitted to be taxed at current use.

Well, it turns out that a key political figure, Maine’s foremost anti-tax crusader, Republican activist Mary Adams, is opposed. Until recently, she had been wrapped up in her effort to get a sweeping tax-and-spending cap on the ballot, the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights or TABOR proposal. Her organization submitted its initiative petitions to the state a couple of weeks ago.

"If you exempt large amounts of valuation, other people are going to pick up" the missing tax revenues, she says. And why discriminate in favor of fishing businesses? "There are elderly families who are just as hurt as fishermen" by high property taxes. In addition to the question of equity, what bothers her about the working-waterfront tax break, however, is its piecemeal approach to tax reform.

Adams agrees with working-waterfront proponents that market-value-based property assessments provide problems. She sees such valuation as assisting governments collect lots of money and spend it. Current-use valuation may be a good idea, she says, but "use it for everybody."

One of the working-waterfront-campaign leaders, Dennis Damon, a Democratic state senator from Trenton and a former commercial fisherman, believes that, politically, tax reform will only come about in a piecemeal way.

"How do you eat an elephant? You do it one bite at a time," he says. "Practically, that’s the only way to tackle it."

Damon, who headed up the past legislative session’s special committee on property tax reform, says a shift of the tax burden to other taxpayers will not necessarily take place if a tax break is given to commercial fishing property. The state reimburses municipalities for losses under the Tree Growth Tax Law and the open-space tax break. He thinks the Legislature might be persuaded to support a similar reimbursement if the working-waterfront amendment passes — and he says he’d support it.

We agree with Mary Adams: This is not the way to go about property-tax reform. It is, indeed, tax shifting. However, we think it is also disingenuous to tax a fishing operation for its potential value rather than its current value, and we believe that property-tax burdens do present a real threat to the working waterfront.

Thus, the Phoenix half-heartedly endorses a Yes vote on Question 7.