Maine’s grass-roots consumer organization COMBAT has made and kept the same New Year’s resolution for 29 years: to promote doing business with Maine merchants, to resolve disputes fairly and objectively, to protect Maine merchants and consumers from interstate fraud and abuse, and to be a reasonable and effective voice for Maine interests.

This year, COMBAT is making an even more ambitious resolution … one it also intends to keep.

On April 23, 2002, COMBAT will celebrate 30 years of service with a $2.1 million statewide campaign to fund a visionary Maine Center for the Public Interest, or MCPI.

During two years of preparation, COMBAT met with 325 community leaders, business and professional organizations, corporate executives, media outlets, government agencies and individual consumers throughout Maine.

These meetings revealed universal support for a funded business-consumer partnership to identify fraudulent practices, alert merchants and the public, take collective action against abusers and form coalitions on issues of mutual concern. Telephone, mail and Internet scams have become an epidemic costing Maine’s economy millions of dollars each year.

Fraudulent practices rob both family budgets and cash registers. Bogus charitable solicitations not only siphon money away from legitimate Maine charities, they also make it hard for local charities to raise needed cash because potential donors are justifiably suspicious or just plain sick of the endless solicitations by high powered out-of-state fund-raisers.

Whether you are a homemaker or a merchant; whether you live on a high , middle, low or fixed income, you are a target. And you are a sitting duck because “they” have Maine outmaneuvered, out-technologied and out-financed.

In preparation to level the playing field, COMBAT-MCPI has moved to new quarters at 109 State St., Bangor. About $300,000 of the $2.1 million that must be raised will be used to purchase and renovate the building after which rent from existing tenants will be used to cover 25 percent of the center’s annual operating expenses.

COMBAT’s Web site, www.consumerprotect.org, is under construction and soon will be available. The Web site will be used to investigate reports of fraud, distribute alerts to consumers and merchants who subscribe to the site, conduct dispute mediation and information services online, and include a “Consumer Friendly Business Directory” of COMBAT-MCPI members with whom consumers may do business.

The Web site will include a national component where out-of-state subscriptions will subsidize services to Maine households and merchants. Maine can win against the invaders from “away,” but only if we have the facilities, equipment, staffing and technology to do so.

The 1970s film “Network” made the words “I’m damned mad and I’m not going to take it any more” a national catchphrase. If you feel that way about telephone, mail and Internet scams that are robbing Maine, make a resolution to DO something in 2002. Merchants, join your local Chamber of Commerce. Individuals and merchants, send tax-deductible contributions to support the effort to fund a Maine Center for the Public Interest. Call COMBAT-MCPI at 947-3331, and offer your services as a volunteer. As it turns 30, COMBAT will keep its promise to Maine … it asks that you make a resolution to help.

If you have a problem purchasing goods or services, write “Consumer Forum” and COMBAT’s Maine Center for Public Interest. There is no charge for information and assistance, but if we contact a company on your behalf, a reasonable membership fee is required. Consumer Forum is a collaboration of the Bangor Daily News and Northeast COMBAT-The Maine Center for the Public Interest, Maine’s membership-funded nonprofit consumer organization. For help or to request individual or business membership information write: Consumer Forum, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402-1329.