Calling all campers

The Land Use Regulation Commission is contemplating some serious changes to its building rules for structures near water. And though the hearings have been well-attended, many landowners who closed their camps last fall and went back to their home states are going to be surprised to learn that the rules changed while they were away.

The lack of notification may be simply a case of good intentions gone awry, but it has some left LURC customers in a lurch.

The current LURC hearings address development in the 10 million acres of unorganized townships. Commissioners will consider whether to make changes to the rules that govern who can make changes to their camps that are within 100 feet of a lake and what scale of development will be allowed. It is understandably a big deal to the affected landowners.

Or it would be if they knew about it. Turns out that it isn’t only the townships that are unorganized. For hearings as important as these, LURC prepares a flier for inclusion in tax notices for landowners. That ensures that everyone, or nearly everyone, hears about the meeting no matter where they live. But this time the notices apparently never went out. Why they didn’t is a bit of a mystery — somewhere between the people at LURC and those in taxation what was supposed to happen, didn’t.

LURC normally takes pains to make sure that people who need to be notified of commission hearings are told in advance. The current mishap is less a question of blame than of process. If a significant number of landowners were not told of the hearings through a state oversight, the commission needs to make an effort to give them a say. That’s not only good policy; it’s good PR.

Vacationland has a responsibility to be kind to its vacationers — especially the people who come every year, pay property taxes and are, in a sense, unofficial ambassadors for the state. The least Maine can do is give them adequate notice when it plans to change the law of the land they live on, seasonally. A million-dollar tourism campaign can’t stand up to an RV’s worth of cranky visitors bad-mouthing Maine in their home states.

Whatever LURC decides on its land-use questions, it should do so only after the affected owners have been given every chance to comment. That may mean setting up another hearing and, this time, checking to make sure all the notices went out.