Republicans debate local-option sales tax at Bangor forum

BANGOR – Lower taxes and local control are bread-and-butter Republican issues.

But with a proposed local-option sales tax pitting one GOP tenet against the other, local party members found themselves polarized on the issue at a Wednesday night forum.

“When you say it is not your problem, but you take away our ability to solve it, you become part of our problem,” City Councilor Frank Farrington told state Rep. David Bowles, R-Sanford, an opponent of the local sales tax legislation set to go before the House sometime in the next two weeks.

The proposed legislation, titled the Debt Avoidance Act, would allow a municipality – with voter approval at local referendum – to impose up to a 1 percent local sales tax to fund a specific project.

The bill’s supporters, including Farrington, see the tax option as a way to return financial control to the local community instead of relying on state lawmakers to fund a project such as a replacement for the aging Bangor Auditorium.

But at the Wednesday forum, sponsored by the Bangor Republican Committee, Bowles, a member of the Legislature’s Taxation Committee, said the tax – optional or not – ultimately would hurt Bangor.

“This is an imposition of a new tax,” said Bowles, predicting that the city would see a decline in retail activity with shoppers traveling to avoid the 1 percent tax. “Yes, the voters get to decide. Nevertheless, it is a new tax.”

The party split seen at the GOP forum, which drew only about 10 people to the Bangor Public Library, is similar to that seen in Augusta, where the bill’s success is questionable at best.

But as the split among Republican lawmakers might suggest, the local-option sales tax is not a partisan issue.

Instead, the divisions are largely along urban-rural lines, with the city’s delegation – including Sen. Tom Sawyer, R-Bangor – squarely behind the bill. The rural caucus, however, is dead set against the legislation, saying it unfairly benefits urban areas while forcing those from surrounding communities who shop there to foot the bill.

While many Republican lawmakers have vowed not to raise taxes, supporters of the bill maintain that Augusta is not implementing a new tax, only giving the local communities the ability to put a tax proposal out to referendum.

On Wednesday, Bowles found himself in politically hostile territory in a city where the City Council and the legislative delegation unanimously support the idea.

“I feel like the missionary getting an invitation from the cannibals,” Bowles joked at the forum’s outset. “Is it an invitation to dinner or to be dinner?”

It’s the bill’s supporters, however, who likely could find themselves outnumbered when the legislation reaches the floor of the House.

But while the Debt Avoidance Act might be “on life support,” to use Bowles’ words, competing legislation has surfaced in recent weeks.

Rep. Brian Duprey, R-Hampden, last week introduced a state bond of $10 million to $15 million to help pay for a new Bangor Auditorium. But in a tight budget year, that proposal, too, faces an uncertain future in the Appropriations Committee, set to consider the matter this week.

Meanwhile, Bangor officials still are pinning their hopes on the local-option sales tax, calling it a fair way to fund the regional project without borrowing the money and unduly burdening the city’s already-stressed property tax payers.

“We’re tired of Augusta spelling out what the funding formula is going to be,” City Councilor David Nealley told the group. “We need to have Augusta return more of the money back to Bangor.”