Excise excuses

The relationship between an ounce of prevention and a pound of cure is well established. When it comes to the persistent and increasing theft of excise payments, however, what many taxpayers get from their town officials is a ton of excuses.

Hardly a week goes by without a town tax collector getting indicted, arrested or sentenced for embezzlement: $10,000 missing in Northport; $500,000 in Fort Kent; $255,000 in Madison; $32,000 in Thomaston; $400,000 in Burlington; $100,000 in Phippsburg. Pretty soon it starts to add up to real money.

The problem is on the rise, but it is hardly new. Back in 1994, while investigating the Thomaston embezzlement, then state Auditor Rodney Scribner estimated millions in excise payments were stolen annually. He urged towns to improve record-keeping and oversight.

This October, three years after Scribner’s warning, the Maine Municipal Association convention will include a seminar on excise-tax collection. Representatives from the offices of the attorney general, secretary of state and state auditor will urge town officials to improve record-keeping and oversight.

The names of the towns and of the larcenous change, the stolen sums vary, but the one constant through all the cases through all the years is the banal litany offered by town officials as to why the thefts go undiscovered for so long — not enough staff, the bookkeeping’s complicated, we’ve always kept our cash in a cigar box under the front counter, our tax collector looked so honest.

Enough already. Those elected to conduct municipal affairs, whether called selectmen or councilors, have an obligation to keep the public trust and that includes keeping the public’s books in a manner consistant with modern business practices. Use that computer raised and appropriated for at town meeting as something more than an expensive paperweight. Learn enough about bookkeeping to not get hoodwinked. If more money is needed to run the town, tell the voters so, tell them why.

The problem is that town office embezzlement is not just the town’s problem. These expensive cases take months to prepare. Most Mainers would prefer to see their state-paid investigators and prosecutors investigating and prosecuting real crime, not serving as back-up bookkeepers for towns too cheap or too inattentive to do it right the first time.

Every so often, someone with an eye toward efficient government suggests that tax collection be consolidated at the state level, a suggestion the home-rule crowd greets with torches and pitchforks. Local control works only as long as the locals are capable of maintaining control. After that, Big Brother in Augusta starts looking pretty good.

No discussion of excise embezzlement is complete with the standard disclaimer, so here goes: most local tax collectors are upright citizens, earnest and honest as the day is long. Something to do with the relationship between a few bad apples and the rest of the barrel.