2/11/99
A recent press release headline on Maine State Legislature stationery but attributed to no legislator, just two staffers in the Senate President's and House Speaker's office, said "Legislators Call for Funding for Public Land a High Priority."
Following the headline was the statement that "a bi-partisan group of legislators announced broad support...for adding 100,000 acres to our state's public lands."
The only two legislators named in the press release were Sen. Phil Harriman (R-Yarmouth ) and Sen. Chellie Pingree (D-North Haven).
Two senators do not make a case for "broad bipartisan" support.
The press release named 73 businesses who supported the 100,000-acre buy-out of private property. At least two of these companies were not aware they had been listed nor were they supporting the goals outlined in the release.
Sen. Pingree is proposing some $95 million - a $75 million bond issue and $20 in surplus - to fund her plan. Speaker Steve Rowe proposes that 45% of revenues from the real estate transfer tax go to land acquisition over the next ten years. These revenues would delete about $5 million a year from the general fund.
There are about a dozen ways that proponents of land buy-outs are scheming to fund more public land. Bond issues must pass by two-thirds and it's doubtful that votes are certain in the legislature nor in the public if they get that far. Twice before bonds issues for more public land purchases were defeated.
The proponents of more public lands claim that Maine only has about a million acres or roughly 5 percent of "public" land. Public is a key word. Maine has several million more acres of "public access" land including nearly 200,00 acres of federal land.
Incidentally, Maine ranks number one of all 50 states with 16.4 percent of foreign owned land. No other state even comes close to Maine in this category. The next highest is Hawaii with 9 percent. The Maine lands are owned primarily by paper companies and generally open to the public.
The average Maine state and local tax per acre of agricultural real estate was about $11 per acre in 1994, the 17th highest in the country. The national average was $5.86 per acre.
All land buy-out proposals would remove land from taxation. Since 1987, over 65,000 acres involving 44 projects have been removed from the tax rolls of communities from Caribou to Portland.
The land rush in Maine coincides nicely with the national, that is, President Clinton's billion dollar plan to acquire more public territory. There can be no question that an ultimate goal is the creation of a national/state park in northern Maine.
One of the questions not raised by the more-land proponents is who will become the stewards of these lands. That is, which elitist environmental group considering that Maine has neither the money nor manpower to manage these lands. That is why there is a long list of supporting organizations to acquire more private land.
Gov. King shot down the Sears Island Cargo Port. Then the state bought the island which now stands idle, gated and removed from the tax rolls which has caused great concern in the Town of Searsport about its lost tax revenue.
The alternative management scheme is turning any newly acquired state land over to Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (that is, the Sportsman Alliance of Maine) or to the Sierra Club, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Nature Conservancy or some other environmental organization. They are all lined up with waiting hands.
The environmentalists are in every corner of Maine strangling job opportunities. And the state bureaucracy backs them up.
During the next 5 years, 550 dams throughout the country are up for re-licensing by the federal government. Eighteen of these dams are in Maine and scheduled for re-licensing between 1999 and 2005. For some it will be a fight. Look what happened to the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec.
The environmentalists led by American Rivers and Trout Unlimited (and abetted by Maine's Dept. of Marine Resources) triumphed and the dam is scheduled for removal. On settling the litigation the dam owners, Edward Manufacturing Co., agreed to donate the 160-year-old dam to the Sate of Maine and make a grant of $100,000 to the City of Augusta for redevelopment of the site.
The state will remove the dam at a cost of $2 million to $6.5 million. But Bath Iron Works agreed to donate $2.5 million to the National Fish and Wildlife Federation towards the dam removal and fish enhancement.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by a 2-1 vote had told Edwards to remove the dam, the first ever such federal order. But the order had been contested by Edwards in court. Because the case was resolved in a settlement, FERC's power to order dams removed and to order owners pay for their removal is unresolved.
But the hand of environmentalists and the state bureaucracy is all over the Edwards Dam removal as it will be with other dams that will come up for re-licensing in the next five years.
It would not be surprising that more land proponents like Sen. Pingree and Gov. King will come up with another financing gimmick much as they did with bonding for the State House renovations. In that slick and slippery case, no way was some $130 million in bonds going to pass the legislature or a public referendum. So the governor and Democrats fashioned the private vehicle called the Governmental Facilities Authority and issued the bonds without one single public referendum vote.
Maine citizens are not denied access to the state's great outdoors. Through federal and state parks, through access to private lands, it is a rare community in Maine that does not afford access to the state's coastal waters and inland woods and forest streams for recreation.
The Land for Maine's Future Board is essentially a state agency with token public members all appointed by the governor and run by the State Planning Office. It hardly needs $200 million of new land grab proposals despite the barrage of propaganda rising out of Augusta.