Anti-tax group begins campaign to cap real, personal property taxes

AUGUSTA — Anti-tax activists have taken the first step toward a referendum campaign to impose a statewide property tax cap, becoming the seventh group seeking to win space on the 1995 ballot.

The Maine Taxpayers Action Network has filed its petition proposal with the Secretary of State’s Office and hopes to gather the more than 52,000 signatures it needs on Election Day, Nov. 8.

“A quiet tax revolt is in the air. Citizens are in danger of losing their homes while local government borrows, taxes and spends,” the group’s president, Carol Palesky, said in a prepared statement.

The proposal, modeled after California’s Proposition 13, would limit real and personal property taxes to 1 percent of the property’s assessed value.

Palesky also was a leader of the petition drive that forced the upcoming referendum on congressional term limits.

Deputy Secretary of State Gary Cooper said his office has 15 working days to act on the proposal, but that it could take longer if the reviser of statutes recommends changes in the wording of the proposed changes in law.

If the petitioners gather the necessary signatures by late January, that would force a referendum in November 1995, Cooper said.

Six other groups also hope to place proposals before Maine voters at that time.

One of those groups, Concerned Maine Families, already has turned in what it claims are more than enough signatures to force a vote on its plan to overturn municipal gay-rights laws. The secretary of state has yet to certify the signatures.

Three other groups are gathering signatures on proposals to legalize marijuana, legalize medically assisted suicide and repeal the emission testing program in southern Maine.