Service centers, unite

For years – make that many years – municipal leaders from Maine’s service centers have gone to the State House, individually or in small groups, to make the case that communities providing the health care, higher education, jobs and shopping for their regions could use some help paying for the police, firefighters, utilities and roads that make it possible. For just as many years, lawmakers, the majority from outlying towns that use those service centers, have nodded politely and sent those municipal leaders home with the friendly advice that they quit whining.

It’s a tiresome routine that may begin to change today with the first official meeting in Augusta of the Maine Service Center Coalition. While meetings of coalitions and coalition-like organizations are commonplace in the state capital, this one has the potential to produce real and positive change, for service centers and outlying towns alike.

The service center situation – some 69 Maine communities, ranging in size from Portland to Eastport, meet the commonly understood definition as such – has grown from being an annoyance to something that is approaching crisis. As these communities are forced to shoulder the growing burden of providing social infrastructure for their region, they often are forced into some self-destructive combination of cutting services for themselves, such as school budgets, and raising taxes. This makes the low-tax outlying towns even more attractive as places to live and raise families and hastens the decline of the communities that make an entire region livable.

The municipal leaders who meet today will be plenty busy adopting bylaws, electing officers and appointing committees. Once all that organizing is done, the work begins of convincing lawmakers that the problem facing Portland, Bangor, Presque Isle and Eastport is a problem for Scarborough, Hermon, Mapleton and Pembroke as well. And after that comes the real work of actually fixing the problem.

In the past, and especially since a 1997 governor’s task force report on this issue, the real work went undone. Proposals for a local-option sales tax of, say, a penny never even get out of committee, even though that is a remedy found acceptable in 37 other states. Proposals that the sales-tax base be expanded to apply to the types of services service centers often provide, even when coupled with a cut in the tax rate, fare even worse.

As it builds a legislative agenda for the coming session, this new Service Center Coalition would be wise to set aside reasonable suggestions already thoroughly rejected and instead focus upon the one small success municipalities have enjoyed on this issue. With Revenue Sharing II, an extra boost from the state treasury to communities with the highest property taxes, the last Legislature demonstrated it at least perceives a problem, although in returning an additional $2.5 million out of the $1.3 billion it receives from municipalities, that Legislature also showed it fully grasps the meaning of the word “pittance.”

Still, it was a success and on that can be built upon, especially when combined with the great affection lawmakers express at every opportunity for local control. Nationally, state and local governments split sales and income taxes nearly 50-50. In Maine, the state’s take is nearly two-thirds – 63 percent. Even a small percentage shift returning more to the towns that generate this revenue would help both service centers and outlying towns in proportion to their contributions.

The beauty of this approach is that it would help eliminate the artificial animosity that has grown between service centers and the outlying towns, since all municipalities would gain. It would gives all cities and towns a greater opportunity to chart their own courses and makes lawmakers choose between talking about local control and actually allowing it. Perhaps best of all, there would be a marked reduction in polite nods and friendly advice.