MAINE’S FACTUAL PICTURE …

Gov. Ken Curtis is recalled often by Democrats in Augusta these days because he was the last of their party to lead a major tax reform that had a significant effect on the state. Gov. Curtis was successful in part because his proposal arrived at time of fiscal desperation at the Capitol, much like today, when the state again needs a strong leader to propose equally bold answers.

No doubt many residents still are angry over the Gov. Curtis’ 1969 income-tax plan, but at the time, failing schools, an underfunded university system, poor social services and an overburdened property tax forced a tax that now seems inevitable. What is worth remembering is that Gov. Curtis did not approach the proposal apologetically or with mincing steps that shaved funding from one department or another. He told a state with a budget shortfall that cutting funds to schools that were already struggling was no answer, and that Maine would have to spend far more if it hoped to improve conditions.

A few years later, he commented in a recounting of his administration by a former aide and current federal judge, Kermit Lipez, that, “Our needs were so great that I presented a bigger budget just to dramatize the needs. If I had presented a fairly conservative budget there would have been a temptation to minimize the needs for new revenues.

I really presented a factual picture – not a realistic picture of what we could expect to do, but a factual picture of what was needed.”

Maine is in a far different tax situation now than it was 33 years ago, but the comment about his strategy for presenting a budget remains valuable. The governor makes what he did sound like a simple example of bargaining – ask for more than you expect and then compromise to what you really think is possible. But the hard part was what he called the “factual picture.” He chose among thousands of current expenses, proposed programs, nascent ideas, requirements for the present and the future, and assembled a budget that would take Maine in a specific direction for specific reasons, and he did so knowing it would be resoundingly unpopular, at least initially.

Creating a factual picture of Maine’s balky tax system and the demands on it is especially important today, at another time of budget shortfalls, a burdened property tax and new demands for economic opportunity. (It is the income tax, oddly, that caught Maine short this time – with fewer, wealthier people whose incomes more often come from the swooning stock market being depended on for state revenues.) So some gentle questions to gubernatorial hopefuls and others who want to lead Maine in the coming year: Assuming a $600 million to $700 million biennial shortfall, what will your first budget look like? Under a new tax system, which entities that are not now taxed would be?

For a variety of good reasons, politicians of the right, center and left have concluded that Maine’s tax system no longer serves the state well and needs to be reformed, but they are having a hard time agreeing on answers to the above questions. To make their cases persuasive, these leaders must not only offer a budget but paint a factual picture that describes where Maine could go, perhaps one vivid enough to last the next 33 years.