Penny-tax proposal

It is good to see Belfast City Manager Terry St. Peter’s penny- tax proposal get floated right now. It’s a reasonable proposal. With the newly formed commission to look at restructuring Maine’s tax systems, the idea is being raised at the right time to enrich popular discussion.

I agree with the locality-directed one-cent sales-tax addition articulated by St. Peter and also with the tax-base-broadening approach raised by Galen Rose of the State Planning Office – for reasons of equity as well as economics, we need to broaden the sales-tax base and, at the same time, provide overwhelmed property taxpayers with stronger homestead and circuit breaker programs.

I see St. Peter’s and Rose’s proposals as two legs of a necessary three-legged stool for larger-scale reform. The third leg – and the toughest sell – is revamping some of what Maine citizens choose to spend their tax investments on: namely, a superabundance of small-community governments. Whether it involves Orono, Belfast or Waterville, local control deserves to be balanced with the concept of economies of scale.

Here in the Penobscot area, for example, we may not be comfortable with something as extensive as countywide governance, but it could be reasonable (given strong incentives) to consider a combined administrative structure for Orono, Veazie, Old Town, Bradley and Milford. Likewise throughout our county and throughout our state, there are natural aggregations around service center communities.

Thanks to St. Peter and Rose for offering meldable ideas for public scrutiny, and thanks to the Bangor Daily News for making this discussion part of its front-page coverage.

Kenneth L. Nichols

Assistant professor

Department of Public

Administration

University of Maine

Orono