Sold my fortune BY AL DIAMON

I bet you thought I was going to rip Governor John Baldacci a new exit door from the gubernatorial office for his plan to balance the state budget by selling off $400 million in future lottery revenues for $250 million in up-front money.

Wrong.

I like Baldacci’s idea. My only objection is it doesn’t go far enough.

Critics of the governor’s proposal, a group that to date includes just about everybody but me, argue that disposing of valuable assets for fast cash is short-sighted. They claim covering the cost of increased education funding for the next two years with a one-time infusion of mad money exacerbates the problem of future deficits, while failing to deal with the state’s continuing fiscal problems.

Idiots.

Sure, once the lottery revenues are spent, there’ll be a quarter-billion-dollar shortfall in every spending plan for the next decade. But filling that hole should be so easy even a politician could do it.

Just sell off something else.

For instance, there’s the state’s wholesale liquor business. Over the next decade, that’s got to be worth at least — oops, never mind, the guv unloaded that for $125 million to balance the last budget. If he hadn’t made that deal, we’d have about $34 million more in revenues this year. So part of the lottery sale is supposed to cover that hole.

No problem. We can easily make up the loss of income from both booze and betting by allowing some Saudi Arabian oil magnate or the national bank of the People’s Republic of China to purchase 10 years worth of the Maine Turnpike’s toll revenues. Over the next decade, the pike is conservatively estimated to take in more than $800 million, so it should be simple to get somebody to give us $570 million up front. That’s 10 percent of the entire state budget, a significant chunk of change. Best of all, this sell-off wouldn’t exacerbate future deficits, because turnpike revenues aren’t part of the general fund. The only downside is that the Maine Turnpike Authority wouldn’t be able to make payments on the bonds it took out to widen the highway. Also, a few ill-maintained bridges might collapse. And there’d be potholes the size of downtown Skowhegan.

So we need to raise a little extra revenue to cover those costs. Easily done. Don’t you think Wall Street investors would be lining up to grab the state’s cut of the Bangor racino? Nobody knows how much that’ll amount to, but we’re talking gambling, so let’s make the high-rollers slap down at least $100 million to get in the game.

How about hunting and fishing license fees? That’s a cool quarter-billion bucks between now and 2015. Nobody even thinks about the real-estate transfer tax, so we won’t miss the $20 million a year it generates, particularly if we get an immediate $100 million for a decade’s worth. Then there are the gas tax, the beer tax, state-park entrance fees, and dog license fees. All available for the right price.

Just check the Maine government listings on eBay.

That’s before we even get creative. Somebody in the state medical examiner’s office had an interesting method of generating extra income by selling brains from corpses to a Maryland research lab for $1000 to $2000 apiece. But that was just a small-time operation. Harvesting the brains of everybody who dies in Maine could generate millions a year. Removing them from living legislators and the governor’s staff would boost potential income, without interfering with anybody’s job performances.

Medical marijuana is legal in the state, but there’s no lawful source. Open a state distribution network, then sell off the wholesale and retail operations, just like Baldacci did with liquor. There are already thousands of qualified dealers ready to put up significant money for a legit franchise.

These suggestions all have merit, but they suffer from a certain timidity. They’d patch budget holes for a year or two, but over the long term, they wouldn’t make a significant difference in state financial planning, which would continue to be conducted employing a bizarre mixture of parapsychology and disaster control.

What’s needed is something bolder. Such as:

Sell the sales tax.

Over the next 10 years, that five-percent levy is expected to bring in more than $11 billion. Somebody with more money than brains (did I mention that, for a nominal fee, we can correct that problem, too?) ought to be willing to pay $5.7 billion for the total receipts. Which happens to be the exact cost of the entire state budget for the next two years. That’s right, for the whole biennium, we wouldn’t have to undergo the stress of dealing with fee increases, layoffs, gimmicks or endless blathering by the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee. The moolah would already be in the bank.

The only drawback is that by 2007, the state would be broke. But by then, I’m sure we’ll have come up with some new source of income.

Outrage tax, anyone?

Bids on my future income may be emailed to ishmaelia@gwi.net. No supermarket coupons, please.