AUGUSTA – Members of the Legislature’s Taxation Committee tabled action Wednesday on a proposed milk handling fee that with a companion piece of legislation would provide more than $5.5 million in emergency aid to Maine’s dairy farmers.

Viewed by Gov. John Baldacci as a tax, the 8-cents-per-quart fee was shelved pending release within the next two weeks of a dairy farm aid package by the governor, who has promised to veto the handling fee.

Speaking about the governor prior to the Taxation Committee’s work session, Anson dairy farmer Richard Williams said, “He’s abandoned us.” Williams, his brother and parents farm 1,200 acres and milk 500 cows on a farm that has been worked for three generations. On their way to the committee room, the family happened upon Baldacci in a hallway.

They tried to convince the governor that the handling fee is not a tax but the only salvation for Maine’s remaining dairy farms.

“We talked, but he didn’t listen,” said Williams. “We tried to tell him this is a fee, not a tax. If he’s so hung up on words, let’s call it a cost-of-living increase. Let’s call it overtime pay.”

Williams said the governor called a special session to deal with the Great Northern Paper crisis but refuses to see that the loss of Maine’s dairy industry would cost the state even more.

A member of the Taxation Committee, Rep. Edward Suslovic, D-Portland, agreed. After more than two hours of discussion that centered on the complicated system of milk pricing and the role retail prices play in the situation, Suslovic said: “This is about the farmer. If we do nothing, we lose farms and the consumer will end up paying more for milk. That will be compounded from a taxation perspective because you don’t have to put cows on a school bus.

“There is a good chance that property taxes will go up because it is a lot more expensive to provide services for houses than cows,” he said.

Richard Davies, Baldacci’s senior staff adviser, said that he could not reveal the details of the governor’s plan but noted that “he is working hard on a package that he will announce within the next 10 days.” Davies said the governor is relying on a regional economist’s prediction that milk prices will rise to a cost of production level – $17 per hundredweight – by next October and is putting together a plan for the interim seven months.

“The governor is taking this problem very seriously,” said Davies, “but the governor believes there are other ways rather than a tax mechanism.”

Davies said Baldacci is solidly behind the creation of a task force, proposed by Reps. Linda Rogers McKee and Nancy Smith of the Agriculture Committee, that will study long-term solutions for the dairy crisis and report to the Agriculture Committee next January.

Agreeing to wait for the governor’s proposal, the Taxation Committee tabled the handling fee bill until 10 a.m. Friday, April 11.