The proposal of Sen. Olympia Snowe to offer prospective investors in a new Great Northern Paper Inc. $30 million tax credit, as reported in the Jan. 20 Bangor Daily News, is entirely bereft of details. We all know where the devil resides.

Would this faint ray of hope require a special act of Congress, or do existing federal statutes provide for such a tax credit? What is the timeframe to implement such a credit? One must assume GNP’s trustee in bankruptcy would be wary of potential investors wholly motivated by the tax credit, rather than ownership and operation of two paper mills. As Yogi Berra taught us, “Our great northern neighbors don’t want d?j? vu all over again.”

It would seem extremely unlikely that artificial inducements such as tax credits or direct subsidies would attract any major domestic paper producer or conglomerate to acquire GNP. Potential buyers will be few and far between unless federal, state and local economic conditions in the long term are benign and friendly to the industry, providing work for its employees and investors a return on their money.

At the national level, the most effective action our senators could undertake would be to exert their influence to impose tariffs or duties to stop the importation of foreign pulp and paper. At the state level, there seems to be little our new governor can do to improve economic conditions for GNP, unless it is to reduce the cost of power and prevent the environmental lockup of timberland. The long-term availability of timber and stumpage rights to it is an obvious necessity for successful operations.

There are three ways in which GNP’s employees can help themselves. First, dissolve or resign en masse from their local branches of national trade unions. Second, exert their local political influence to make sure real estate taxes on the mills are assessed at a level no higher than at comparable mill towns elsewhere. Third, employees should willingly pay half the premium cost of their health insurance.

Papermaking is a capital-intensive business. It would be most unwise for the assets or capital stock of GNP to be sold to underfinanced investors dependant on subsidies and borrowed capital. That kind of long-term financing, with its burden of high interest charges, would probably tip the new GNP into a second edition of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

There is no substitute for equity capital. That is why is it important that GNP be sold to a major domestic papermaker, like International Paper, that has ready access to national equity markets and the know-how to make the GNP mills operate profitably in this new century, for investors and employees alike.

Carle G. Gray is a retired certified public accountant from Sullivan.