Panel presses lodging tax increase Strategy part of larger tax-reform plan to preserve state’s scenic lands

AUGUSTA – As a legislative committee plodded toward completion of a comprehensive tax-reform package, Maine’s House speaker joined statewide advocacy group GrowSmart on Monday to press its case for an increase in Maine’s lodging tax from 7 percent to 10 percent.

With the sun shining brightly on a waterfront park in downtown Augusta, House Speaker Glenn Cummings joined GrowSmart President Alan Caron in pitching the tax to preserve the state’s scenic lands, downtowns, farms, forests and waterfronts, and improve access to hunting, fishing and boating areas.

It is part of a strategy to make Maine more attractive to tourists – a goal GrowSmart says can’t be achieved by tourism advertising alone – and help the state to achieve long-term prosperity.

“Quality makes a difference,” said Cummings, D-Portland. “We have the most spectacular place in the world.”

The lodging tax increase is among the major proposals advanced by a Brookings Institution study, which touts strategies for achieving prosperity in Maine and has become a playbook for the session in the view of many elected officials. GrowSmart commissioned the Brookings study.

The Maine Hospitality and Tourism Alliance is opposed to the lodging tax increase, saying it will discourage group visits, social events and business meetings where overall costs are a factor. But one innkeeper at Monday’s news conference said the industry’s fears are unfounded.

In the 36 years he has owned the Sunday River Inn in Newry, “never once have I heard someone talk about the relative lodging tax in New Hampshire, Vermont” or any other state, said Steve Wight.

Caron noted that the tax would have the most direct impact on visitors while easing the tax burden on Maine residents.

Exporting more state taxes is also a goal of the Taxation Committee as it continues plowing through scores of bills calling for specific changes in the state’s tax laws.

The panel’s co-chairman, Sen. Joseph Perry, said GrowSmart’s and all of the other proposals are being looked at as possible pieces of a comprehensive tax reform package that would expand some taxes while reducing others.

“My first interest is in tax reform, comprehensive rebalancing of Maine’s tax code that will expand some taxes, primarily consumption, and reduce some, primarily property and income taxes,” said Perry, D-Bangor.

Perry said the committee now is encountering some tough issues after reaching agreement on perhaps 80 percent of its package, but said he remains confident the panel will have a proposal.

“We will vote out a package … that has bipartisan support of a majority of the Taxation Committee, I would say, within two weeks,” said Perry.

Two of the committee members, Republican Sen. Richard Nass of Acton and Democratic Sen. Ethan Strimling of Portland, already have advanced a package they say would ease the tax burden on Maine families.

When it was unveiled in March, the two senators’ bipartisan package called for enhanced property tax relief programs, lower income taxes and changes in sales tax exemptions.