As Joan Amory reports this month, commercial fishermen will see their license fees increase by 25 percent in 2004 as a direct result in the $1.1 billion revenue shortfall in the state’s General Fund. The increase will go into the General Fund to help erase the shortfall.
Granted, everyone has had to do his or her part to pick up the slack in state government this year, but this increase shouldn’t pass without noting what has really been happening this past year in Augusta and Washington. In a time of deep recession the Bush Administration drastically cut taxes, twice, creating deep deficits where once there had been surpluses. Some of the drop in revenues has been passed along to states, including Maine, whose tax collecting formulas are tied to federal schedules and whose revenues were already suffering because of the poor economy. As the federal treasury was depleted, so were the accounts of states; hence Maine’s shortfall. Governor Baldacci, meanwhile, pledged “no new taxes” as he came into office last January, and except for fees here and there (including those for fishermen) there weren’t any. We won’t even go into the connection between all this and local property taxes … everything, lest we forget, is connected to everything else.