State legislators to attend conference

AUGUSTA – A handful of Maine lawmakers are joining fellow legislators from around the country in Utah this week to discuss the problems they all share – taxes, budget deficits, rising health care costs and federal education mandates.

“I think it is extremely beneficial to have some legislators attending these every year,” said state Sen. Betty Lou Mitchell, R- Etna. “There are just dozens and dozens of meetings and workshops on every topic you can think of.”

Mitchell is on the executive committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures, and, because of term limits, is attending her last annual NCSL conference.

She believes her attendance at past conferences and other NCSL meetings have made her a better lawmaker.

Another participant from Maine, Sen. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, is a former president of the NCSL, having held that office one year during his tenure as Maine’s speaker of the House of Representatives. He said more lawmakers should attend either the annual conference or one of the issue-specific meetings the NCSL holds every year.

“With term limits there is tremendous turnover in some 25 states every year,” he said. “There is a tremendous rotation now with new people with no continuity and no idea what happened yesterday.”

Another Mainer, University of Maine political science professor Richard Powell, will be among the academic panelists leading a forum on term limits – “Truth and Consequences: The Results of Legislative Term Limits.” Powell is working on a book with colleagues on the impact of term limits.

Another forum on maintaining the “institutional memory” of a legislature will be chaired by Maine House Clerk Millicent McFarland.

Rep. Ben Dudley, D-Portland, will participate in a panel exploring ways to help the uninsured get health insurance coverage. He said he has received a lot of questions about the state’s Dirigo Health plan.

“State legislatures are the laboratory of democracy and we rely on each other an awful lot,” he said. “They are very interested in how Dirigo Health is going to work, the structure of Dirigo Health and the politics of how we got it through.”

Sen. Mitchell is participating in several discussions on the issue of lost Internet sales taxes. She said studies indicate Maine is losing substantial sums of revenue every year because of the growing use of Internet shopping by Mainers.

“We know its going to grow more,” Mitchell said. “We need to do an analysis of the costs versus the benefits and whether it will benefit us overall.”

She said the state is expecting a revenue shortfall next year and lawmakers should consider making sure they are collecting all the taxes due the state before considering raising news taxes.

“This is taxes that are due the state. It’s not new taxes,” Mitchell said.

That is one area Rep. Joseph Perry, D-Bangor, had planned to explore at the meeting because of his service on the Legislature’s Taxation Committee. But, he is not attending the four-day meeting.

“I just couldn’t afford to take a week off from work,” he said. “I know how important these meetings are, but that is a long time.”

The cost to Maine taxpayers for lawmakers to attend the meeting is difficult to estimate. Some lawmakers attending the meeting have part or all of their expenses covered by the NCSL because of service on an NCSL committee or because they are invited to be on a panel of experts discussing an issue.