Overwhelming voter decision dooms tax cap

Voters resoundingly defeated a proposed 1 percent property tax cap Tuesday, based on unofficial results compiled by the Bangor Daily News.

Based on early returns, 63 percent of voters opposed the measure and 37 percent supported the so-called Palesky initiative, with 87 percent of precincts reporting. Tuesday’s apparent drubbing of Question 1 on the state ballot followed an unrelenting assault by well-funded opponents who warned of its potential to decimate local municipal and school budgets.

Those warnings brought 18-year-old Cassandra Kelley out to the Abraham Lincoln School in Bangor on Tuesday morning to cast her first vote ever.

“It’s just not necessary,” said Kelley, saying she feared the potential cuts would affect programs like after-school soccer and baseball, favorites of her 13-year-old brother. “I voted for everyone like that.”

Opponents, through an intensive media campaign, effectively painted the proposal – named for its chief advocate, Topsham accountant Carol Palesky – as a recipe for disaster that would result in the mass firings of teachers, police officers and firefighters.

Dennis Bailey of the anti-tax cap group Citizens United said supporters didn’t have much to work with in the flawed proposal, large portions of which were believed to run afoul of Maine’s constitution.

“The bill defeated itself,” Bailey said, citing supporters’ repeated acknowledgments that the plan had problems. “You can’t tell people in Maine that the bill kind of [stinks] but let’s vote for it anyway.”

The proposal, modeled in large part after California’s Proposition 13, would have limited property taxes to $10 per $1,000 in a property’s valuation – thus slashing town budgets by 30 percent on average.

Palesky herself declined to acknowledge the measure’s failure until more towns had reported their results.

But Phil Harriman, spokesman for Tax Cap Yes!, conceded the measure’s failure Tuesday night, saying that even in defeat the initiative could prove beneficial.

“Regardless of the outcome, this issue will not go away and will turn the spotlight on our Legislature to finally deliver tax relief,” said Harriman, noting that both supporters and opponents agreed on the need for such reform.

Palesky’s rank-and-file supporters, deflated by recent polls showing growing discontent with the proposal, also resigned themselves rather early on to defeat, even offering their own explanations of the referendum’s fate well before the polls closed.

“I know it’s going down. I think [opponents] have done their job scaring everybody about it,” said John Brown, a gas station attendant from Brewer, after leaving that city’s polling place. “I don’t believe [the threats] though. Other places have done it.”

While Tuesday’s vote resolved the bitter battle over the initiative, the issue of tax reform in Maine is anything but finished. Supporters of the cap worried that a sound defeat would send the wrong message to state lawmakers, who last session were unable to pass tax reform.

But Lee Umphrey, spokesman for Gov. John Baldacci, said the message was received in Augusta, and Umphrey committed the administration to produce tax reform in the next two years.

“I have all the confidence in the world the governor will be able to do this,” said Umphrey, reinforcing his prediction with an unusual political promise. “If we don’t achieve tax reform, I’ll vote against [the governor] myself.”

The cap, as written, would have rolled back values to 1996-97 levels, and limited assessment increases to 2 percent a year while the property’s ownership remains in a family.

If a property was sold to a buyer outside the family, it could then be assessed at market value.

Even if the measure had passed, legal challenges were certain with the Maine Supreme Judicial Court majority already advising that at least part of the proposal – the resulting inequity in value of similar properties – would be unlawful.

Its legal problems aside, the Palesky plan already had several strikes against it, said Jim Melcher, a political scientist at the University of Maine at Farmington, who attributed part of the initiative’s demise to the sheer length of the debate.

“The longer a campaign like this goes on, people are less likely to support it,” Melcher said, citing last year’s equally controversial American Indian casino initiative, which also enjoyed seemingly insurmountable early popularity, as another example. “As it gets closer, Maine voters, I think, are less likely to vote for change.”