Local spending is out of control

There has been a plethora of recent letters, columns and editorials bemoaning the condition of local and state budgets. Expenses are up, revenue is down. Sounds like someone looked at my checkbook.

Unlike my home budget though, municipal, county and state budget priorities have grown confused to the point of being out of control. The upshot is that property taxes along with the reassessment of property values continue to rise at a rate that far outpaces inflation. Sadly, even this increased tax burden is inadequate to meet the fiscal demands of our towns and state, forcing cuts in essential services such as health care and general assistance.

How did our priorities get so out of control? There is a group of well-meaning folks who believe the state should spend beyond its means to grow its way out of recession. This “damn the torpedoes, growth at any expense” group has created a situation of leaving cash-strapped taxpayers to cope with payments for local public works projects beyond their ability to pay, literally for decades into the future. These projects now seem to be at an all-time high. Worthy projects? Yes perhaps, but incredibly expensive.

Let’s look at a very small sampling. Brewer has a new public safety complex. Bangor has built a new police station and now there is talk of a new $100 million Bangor arena to replace the old one. Lincolnville just built a new school and Bucksport is working on a multimillion-dollar sewer project. This town of 5,000 actually has a recreation department. In one recent year this department bought a new vehicle and then spent $60,000 on a playground upgrade of the swing set.

Hampden has a new school in the works. Belfast recently completed refurbishment of the old bridge and wants to refurbish a building for a performance center. Belfast just lost a bundle in property tax revenue when MBNA left and one has to wonder where it thinks the money will come from.

Space confines my list here, but almost every town seems to have a wish list of expensive municipal projects that are actively being pushed on the taxpaying public.

Let’s go up a tier from town government to county. County commissioners in Waldo want to build a prison campus, perhaps approaching a cost of $100 million with interest. Waldo County taxes have doubled in the last seven years. Property taxes have risen almost as much percentagewise. How many taxpayers in Waldo County have seen their income double in the last seven years? Expensive projects such as this jail are being planned in almost all of Maine’s counties.

Let’s go up another tier. At the state level we have all those bonds for hundreds of millions of dollars that voters approved recently. As of September 2007, the state owed more than $493 million in bonds and interest. Voters then approved another $174 million in new bonds and interest. That’s roughly $1,300 of debt for every household in Maine.

Then taxpayers were told, and actually believed, that requiring the state to cover more of the local school budgets would provide a break in local property tax. Predictably, the state is in a dire fiscal situation now and property taxes didn’t go down a hoot. Didn’t these people understand that the money has to come from their pockets one way or another? All that legislation did was provide more money to the local “pro-growth even though we’re broke” cadre.

To make things even worse, the state tax system is almost unanimously considered in need of a total overhaul. One example of state tax policy gone amuck might be the “unanticipated” decrease in cigarette tax revenue. Wasn’t a decrease in cigarette smoking supposed to be what the increased cigarette tax was all about? Now House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree wants to increase the cigarette tax another 50 cents and increase health care costs by 1.8 percent to fund the Dirigo Health plan.

Then we have Sen. Carol Weston’s suggestion to sell Maine state park entrance fee rights to balance the budget. In my humble opinion, all parks ought to have free admission to the citizens of this country. This is our heritage and it’s an outrage that we get charged at all to visit something we share ownership in. I submit that making entrance to our state parks free might actually enhance the tourist revenue for our state.

Everybody knows it costs a lot more to live today than yesterday. To make it worse, real wages have gone down significantly over the last seven years and continue to decimate the financial well-being of middle-class wage earners. These are the folks who carry the vast majority of the tax burden. So where do people think the money for civil works projects is coming from? Politicians and pro-growth supporters can, and often do, say their project isn’t costing anything because it qualifies for a grant from (the county, the state, the federal government) as though that brings us money for free. But really, it’s all coming from our pockets no matter who collects and then dispenses the money.

Good gosh, people, the spending has got to stop.

J. Gordon Williamson is a woodworker who lives in Prospect.