Bill Nemitz columnMeet the Maine Senate's new odd couple.
On the far right, we have Sen. Richard Nass, the hard-core conservative Republican from Acton.
On the far left, we have Sen. Ethan Strimling, the left-leaning liberal Democrat from Portland.
And in the middle, we have a one-of-a-kind tax reform plan.
"All of this stuff is hard," Strimling said Thursday just outside the bustling Senate chamber. "As hard as it is for the two of us to figure out how to come together on this, that's how hard it's going to be for the rest of this building to do it."
Sitting next to Strimling, Nass nodded. "Or worse," he said with a rueful smile.
It all started last summer in, of all places, the woods behind Nass' rural home.
Strimling had called with an off-the-wall idea: What say the two senators quietly get together and see if they can hatch a tax reform plan acceptable to the left, the right and everyone in between?
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http://www.bangordailynews.com/news/t/viewpoints.aspx?articleid=147829&zoneid=227">Bangor Daily News Editorial
Their plan would provide a big boost to the Homestead Exemption — from $13,000 to $50,000 — an increase in the Circuit Breaker program, a drop in the income-tax rates and a larger personal exemption. In exchange, they want to wipe out some sales-tax exemptions, increase the meals and lodging tax and increase the taxes on wine and beer. They would also require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to raise a major state tax and a two-thirds vote of a town body to raise a property-tax rate.
The conservative Heritage Policy Center of Maine sent out an e-mail urging the plan’s swift death eight minutes into the two legislators’ press conference describing it.You can predict there will be other opponents — restaurants and hotels, wine and beer distributors, any business (such as, perhaps, newspapers) that lose their sales-tax exemption. But mere opposition shouldn’t be enough to kill the idea. The question for lawmakers is whether the reform makes for a better system — is it fairer, simpler, neutral, etc. — than the system Maine currently has?
In at least some respects, this reform does. It drops the burden on the middle and lower class most, depends on well-established programs for collection and relief and neither raises nor lowers the overall tax revenue while constraining only future tax increases.
To the five measures for judging a tax, Nass and Strimling could add a sixth: Does somebody else pay? By shifting the tax burden to those taxes more often (but not always) paid by tourists, the Maine Revenue Service estimates that this plan would reduce taxes for Mainers by $127 million annually.
Nass and Strimling have taken a risk in a couple of ways. Within their parties, the new-taxes portion of the reform will irritate Republicans and the two-thirds votes will annoy Democrats. But the larger risk is that they have offered something that asks legislators and the public to think beyond slogans and change the dynamics of parts of the tax system.
"We haven’t been taxing the things we should be, and we’ve been overtaxing what we shouldn’t," says Strimling. "Rather than pick at the pieces," says Nass, "this looks at the overall burden and adds restraints."
I don’t know if this reform is a substantial enough improvement over the current system that it makes it worth pursuing — that’s what committee hearings will figure out — but I do know that any plan that does not take into account both party’s desires, that fails to combine, as Strimling says, progressiveness and restraint, will not pass in the Legislature. This one has both.
Every reasonable study of Maine’s tax system notes its high total burden, overemphasis on property taxes and high-income tax rate. Strimling and Nass went after these issues directly, but their proposal includes the dreaded new taxes while reducing old ones. Does that mean it’s automatically dead, or can Maine look beyond what will fit on a sticker?
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