Officials hear tax cap presentation Ellsworth meeting features Maine Municipal Association representative

ELLSWORTH – Roughly 100 people from Hancock and western Washington counties, many of them municipal, school and county officials, got a crash course Wednesday night from Maine Municipal Association about how their towns likely would be affected by the Palesky tax cap proposal.

According to MMA official Geoffrey Herman, not every town would be affected the same way by the proposal. In addition, the degree to which each town would be affected depends on the results of legal challenges to the proposal that are likely to come up if it is passed, he said.

There is at least one certain thing about the proposal if it is passed in the statewide election this fall, Herman said: Municipalities would be forced to give up some local control over their annual budgets.

“It interferes with that decision-making at the local level,” Herman told people at a two-hour presentation Wednesday night at Ellsworth City Hall. “To have somebody impose this decision-making authority on another town goes against the culture of this state.”

The proposal, which was brought about through a citizen initiative led by Topsham resident Carol Palesky and the Maine Taxpayers Action Network, will appear as Question 1 on the statewide ballot on Nov. 2. If passed, it would cap property taxes at $10 for each $1,000 of a property’s value.

Jen Webber, spokeswoman for pro-Palesky group Tax Cap Yes!, said Thursday that if the tax cap is passed, municipal spending will still be locally controlled. She said the most important effect of the measure will be to rein in out-of-control government spending.

“Cost-saving measures need to be looked at,” Webber said. “This is the only opportunity [Maine residents] have for guaranteed and immediate tax relief.”

Webber said that although the proposal would affect only municipal spending, there has to be a “first step” by which the state’s increasing tax burden is addressed.

“Maine’s taxpayers are overly reliant on the property tax,” she said. “Something’s got to be done.”

Herman said that the state supreme court, in an advisory opinion, has determined that parts of the proposed law are unconstitutional. If it is to go into effect, he said, it will have to be amended before it can be enforced.

To illustrate the possible effects of the measure, Herman said Ellsworth likely would have to cut its annual municipal spending by $3.35 million to meet the 1 percent cap. Penobscot, by contrast, likely would not have to cut its spending at all and therefore would not see a tax reduction, he said.

Though some voter-approved debt would be exempted from the 1 percent cap, according to Herman, the likely total loss of tax revenue throughout the state would be $600 million.

“I think this is very bad public policy,” he said of the proposal. “It is shoddy work.”

Municipal officials at the MMA presentation appeared dismayed at the prospect of having to drastically slash local services.

Donald LaPlante, superintendent of school Union 96, said at the meeting that challenging the constitutionality of the proposal likely is the best way to go about defeating it. He said that the wording of the proposal, as it will appear on the ballot, is so simple as to be misleading and that most voters likely would not take advantage of information sessions about the proposal to learn more about it.

According to MMA, the wording of the ballot question will read, “[D]o you want to limit property taxes to 1 percent of the assessed value of the property?”

“You’d have to be against Mom and apple pie to vote this down, the way it is worded,” LaPlante said.