Fishin’ for the moon BY AL DIAMON

There’s a question on the November ballot that calls for granting special rights to a particular group. Sorry, homophobes, it’s not the gay-rights bill. It’s the proposed constitutional amendment to give the commercial fishing industry a huge tax break.

At your expense.

If approved by voters, this amendment would allow passage of a law requiring cities and towns to assess "waterfront land used for or that supports commercial fishing activity" at far less than its fair-market value. By taxing these properties based on their "current use" (such as a stinky bait shack), rather than what could be done with them by rich people from away (such as a summer "cottage" with 18 rooms, a helicopter landing pad, and a machine that automatically shells lobsters so the servants won’t have to), this measure is designed to preserve a traditional Maine industry.

Unfortunately, it’s also designed to cost anybody who’s not in the fishing business a lot of money. Every dollar saved by waterfront property owners will have to be made up in the form of higher taxes on everybody else.

If this sounds familiar, it may be because voters turned down a similar proposal in 2000, correctly identifying it as a scam designed to lower the tax burden on people who own valuable land fronting on the ocean, while raising it on people who own less desirable property fronting on the Wal-Mart parking lot.

As the Maine Municipal Association put it at the time, "[T]here will be shifts in property-tax burden in coastal communities from one class of property owners to all others because the state is not proposing to financially address the property-tax shift it is recommending. [The amendment is] an example of a solution proposed by the legislature with all the negative financial impacts borne by the municipalities."

Even though this proposal was defeated at the polls five years ago by a narrow margin, it won unanimous approval in this year’s Legislature (motto: We Can’t Remember Much, Including Our Motto). Which means that unless you hold a commercial fishing license or own a waterfront business that sells to those who do, you are being represented in both the state House and Senate by politicians who voted to increase your property taxes. Remind them of that when re-election time rolls around.

Supporters of the plan argue the bigger bill is a small price to pay to save our coast from being turned into a giant condominium development. But there’s no evidence this measure will ease demand by folks from New York and Massachusetts for any scrap of land offering a water view. In fact, the amendment may exacerbate the problem by making such properties scarcer. That would almost certainly boost prices, which, in turn, would make the prospect of selling off the old lobster pound and moving to Florida even more attractive.

But regardless of whether this legislation would help or hinder, it would still be bad public policy.

Until now, the Maine Constitution has allowed only three types of land to be assessed based on current use: property used for agriculture or forestry, open space preserved for recreation or scenic value, and land employed for wildlife sanctuaries or game management. A reasonable argument can be made that these uses provide a benefit to the public by retaining valuable resources that might otherwise be lost to development.

The same can’t be said for private property on a waterfront. In many cases, there’s no public access to these sites, so replacing them with McMansions will have no negative impact on the average taxpayer. The new construction might even generate additional revenue for the town, thereby lowering the mil rate.

As for the contention we ought to do all we can to preserve our traditional industries, tell it to the paper companies, which have been a mainstay of the state’s economy for nearly two centuries. But nobody is clamoring to give SAPPI or International Paper a big cut in their local tax bills. In part, that’s because such a deal would bankrupt the towns that host those operations. It’s also because the financial pressure on Maine’s mills is caused not by local policy decisions, but by global economic shifts that are beyond the sway of the state constitution.

All the well-intentioned amendments in the world wouldn’t have saved the state’s shoe industry, poultry industry, and — perhaps in the near future — shipbuilding industry from extinction.

Likewise, the fishing industry is impacted by events taking place beyond our borders, from federal regulation to cheap imports to global warming. The demand for house lots on the Atlantic is being driven by whatever primitive emotion compels human beings to construct their vacation homes in places where there’s a maximum chance they’ll be damaged by the weather. There’s nothing constitutional that can be done to change that.

Vote no this November. That’s one Maine tradition worth saving.

I’m not fishing for compliments, but you can email me at ishmaelia@gwi.net