Some legislators favor increasing state taxes to ease local burden

While budget talks in Augusta have stalled, there was plenty of talking in Bangor on Tuesday evening as area legislators met with superintendents, administrators and school committee members from southern Penobscot County to discuss what the proposed 1992 budget cuts will mean to education.

The powwow, initiated through the Bangor School System and held at Bangor High School, drew about 50 people from 15 school districts in the region.

With little definitive information coming out of Augusta, area educators went into the meeting armed with concerns that the budget season is beginning and they have little to work with.

They didn’t like what they did have, the state’s funding proposal which would set area districts back about $7 million. What they feared, and what some refused to do, was pass the loss on to local taxpayers.

In response, and in what may have been a surprise to some people, a number of legislators showed that they weren’t afraid to say the T-word — taxes. They said they would support a broad-based increase in state taxes to relieve the burden on property taxpayers.

Rep. John A. Cashman, D-Old Town, chairman of the House’s Taxation Committee, broke the ice for legislators on the subject.

“If you are looking for a commitment that we would support a tax increase at the state level in order to avoid a tax increase at the local level, I have no problem giving that commitment for myself,” he said. Cashman’s statement received a round of applause from the group, the only applause for the evening.

Earlier, Cashman assured the group that Gov. John R. McKernan’s budget did not necessarily reflect the views of the Legislature nor did it reflect the Legislature’s priorities.

Rep. Patricia M. Stevens, D-Bangor, also indicated support for a state tax increase. But she doubted that such a push for an increase would work now. Stevens said there is currently not enough of a public outcry and sentiment to overcome the governor’s refusal to approve a tax increase or enough to warrant legislators to override his veto.

“In all honesty, I don’t think enough people have been hurt enough to get the message through to most legislators,” she said. “And that’s a sad thing to say, isn’t it? But there has to be a certain amount of personal experience of how failure to raise taxes affects your lives.”

The meeting was marked by heavy criticism from educators who vented some of their frustration and distress over the state’s flat funding proposal.

Bangor School Committee Chairwoman Martha Newman and others described the proposed funding as unfair and a corruption of the legal and moral obligation of the state to provide equal access and opportunity of education for all students.

They pointed out that property valuations and changes in enrollments in this region had already cost them $2.1 million in lost state revenues for next year. Also under the proposal they would lose another $6.9 million in funding from the certified level.

Not only was this increase what they had already paid into the system and was promised and owed to them, superintendents said, but it was also a break from the letter of the school funding formula law. They argued that the state’s funding formula requires that general funding revenues amount to no less than 55 percent of their two-year-old adjusted costs. The proposal would clearly result in less than that amount, they said.

In SAD 22 (Hampden, Newburgh and Winterport), Superintendent Carlton Dubois said that the elimination of the 13-percent increase certified in December would mean a loss of $1.2 million from what they should be getting. And that figure is slightly larger that what Bangor, a larger district, would be losing, Dubois said.

In Union 90, which represents five communities in the Alton and Greenbush area, the loss of the certified level amounted to $612,636, or about 10 percent of the districts budget, it was reported.

One superintendent wondered if as much budget-cutting was being done at the state level as is being asked of local officials. “I would like to spend a day or two in the Department of Education and help them reduce,” said Brewer Superintendent Perry Jordan.

Old Town Superintendent John Grady said that approving the funding proposal would return Maine to the days when getting a good education was a matter of where you were born.

Another concern was a bill in the Legislature to increase the minimum state aid to a district from 5 percent to 10 percent. Bangor School Committee member Phyllis Shubert said the minimum of 5 percent was unfair to begin with since the people receiving it would be the wealthy districts such as Wiscasset and they didn’t need it. Meanwhile, she said, that the poorer districts that really need the funding are being cut.

Rep. John O’Dea, D-Orono, a member of the Education Committee, said the bill is not widely supported in the House and that people shouldn’t “lose a lot of sleep” over it.

A second meeting is expected to be held in the spring.