Dear Governor,
One of the good things about being Governor, especially of a small state like Maine, is all the valuable free advice you get, and I’d like to add to your trove.
Several otherwise unconnected events of the past month need to be highlighted in the hope that you will see an important connection among them, and act accordingly and vigorously because time is running out. The events are, of course, the November election results on casinos and tax reform and the Blaine House Conference on Natural Resources that you recently convened. All of these events are telling us (and you) the same thing.
The overwhelming casino vote resoundingly says that we want Maine to remain Maine, in spite of the obvious attraction and deep need for additional jobs and revenues. The Blaine House Conference underscores what makes Maine, Maine – it is our vast treasures of relatively undeveloped, but working landscapes, forests, lakes and coastline that provide us with a sense of place unlike anywhere else in the country. There is also no disagreement on the diagnosis for the future of Maine’s north woods, open space and working coastline and fisheries – they will be extinguished unless we find a way to act collectively and decisively to confront the inexorable trends of our times.
As the Blaine House Conference amply demonstrated, no other state has such an expansive working forest or such a long, working coastline. These are twin pillars of our identity – fishing and forestry; they are our history and our future. Today access to Maine’s invaluable waterfronts is threatened by their very distinctiveness. Above all else, people from away want a piece of our shorelines – whether those are along our saltwater coasts or great ponds, rivers and lakes of the interior. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this – we all came from “away” at some point in history-even our Penobscot and Passamaquoddy brethren. But new seasonal development and money is driving out old lifeways and we’re both scared and mad. Property tax burdens are simply squeezing the life out of traditional communities, whether those are on the shores of Chebeague Island or Moosehead Lake in Greenville.
Although there may be more political discussion on what the tax reform referendum results actually mean, I suggest even those results are crystal clear. The results of the tax reform vote show that virtually everyone who voted on 1A, 1B or 1C was voting for change; 1A is a red-hot tax revolt, pure and simple, and it almost won. 1B, your 5-year plan, was, I am afraid, a slow and tepid response to how deeply tired Mainers are to the crushing burdens of local property taxes that threaten everything we hold dear. The 1C vote essentially said neither 1A’s crapshoot, nor 1B’s timidity would do, but still it’s a vote for change. Thus, you must act and act soon and boldly on tax reform or voters will do it for you in June.
For our part here at the Island Institute, we are part of the Working Waterfront Coalition – now numbering 32 diverse groups. We are all doing the hard, hard work of maintaining a coalition, of trying to speak with one voice when we have a history of speaking with many voices. The good news is the Working Waterfront Coalition is growing; we are adding members. The Coalition is also, thanks to the Blaine House Conference, beginning to reach out to forestry and farming interests equally interested in how tax policies affect their access to the resources they need to sustain their businesses. The Coalition is grappling with hard issues of developing policies we can all support, of debating how much to rely on changing Maine’s current use tax policies to include land used for fisheries, how much to rely on the circuit breaker program or the purchase of easements to insure long term access to our coastline, forest and farms.
Please stay in touch and we’ll do the same. We know that we are all in the same boat, and are finding the single voice with which to speak to you. But at the end of the day we are all going to need your leadership.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.