5/20/99
mbrown@agate.net
This is a very dangerous time in Augusta. Legislators are gazing out windows into the May sun wishing they were out rather than in. The session end cannot come to soon for the lawmakers. And therein lies a potential carte blanche menu problem that serves up and passes dangerous legislation.
Last week the state's Revenue Forecasting Committee "found" another $57 million to spend on new programs. The found money wasn't found at all. It was the primarily the $60 million give or take a few clams that CMP must pay in taxes from its sale to Florida Power & Light.
Of course, the sale has been known for months and so has the sales tax coming from the sale. The forecasting committee just found it. (Can we expect that the forecasting committee will soon plug into revenues the billions not yet received by Maine from the tobacco settlement to spend on new programs?)
Dangerous times.
Sitting on the appropriations table before the found CMP bonanza was some $200 million which the Republicans more rightfully call over-collection of taxes.
With all this record money taxes pouring, or projected to be poured into, Augusta one would think that the source, the taxpayers, would get a break. Like lowering the sales tax to 5%, killing the 5-cent fuel tax increase, burying a 50% raise for legislators and trimming hundreds of other tax increases off the state's sugar daddy tree.
But no, the D's have enough new programs in the fire to not only spend the $260 million or so on the Part 2 budget, but pump up the whole state bureaucracy into la-la land. If the D's get their way, and they probably will with majorities in both Houses and Gov. King in their pocket, the taxpayers are about to be stiffed - again.
Dangerous times.
Gov. King is playing to popular applause by saying he sides with the R's to roll back the sales tax to 5%. Well, he's a wet finger in the wind ally. King knows perfectly well that a series of re-projections places the automatic 8% increase in state revenues close to the chopping block so that the state would have no choice but to cut to 5%. Hey, it's the law.
But King has a caveat with his fickle finger. Wipe out the automatic 8%increase statute.
Dangerous times.
And look how the DOT played its "shortfall" pressure hand to strong-arm a 5% fuel tax increase which King supports along with the Maine Municipal and swarm of other good roady lobby groups. DOT did not put the $45 million in its biennium budget for Local Road Assistance (LRAP) which is a normal DOT budgeting item.
And so without an infusion of new revenues - a 5% fuel tax increase, that is, - the DOT will have to decide to either put the LRAP out to bond or cut other DOT programs to give the Maine towns and cities the money for local roads. Call it roadmail.
Dangerous times.
Legislators aren't only creating new programs for new money but fooling around with old programs that work like the 1992 reform of worker' comp laws. The ones that former Gov. McKernan insisted on and instead got blamed for shutting down the government. Most of his reforms are now laws.
Now there are about 30 unresolved bills to whack away at worker's comp. If all were passed, which they will not, it would cost businesses some $80 million a year. Comp costs have dropped by 46% over the past five years. Maine has gone from the second highest worker's comp costs in the country to 23rd. No quick super glue needed here to fix something that ain't broke.
Dangerous times.
Of course, most of the legislative leadership, the biggest spenders in the state's history, will be term-limited and out of Augusta next term - so who will be accountable for the hefty increase in future taxes?
Dangerous times.
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