Baldacci should step back from the edge
Kennebec Journal, January 5, 2007

(excerpt) It's not pretty to watch someone jump off a cliff. Yet that's just how we feel watching Gov. John Baldacci race headlong toward the economic and political brink as he stubbornly pushes his plan to limit property taxes on Mainers' homes.

We're happy to see such determination from the governor on this crucial issue. But it will be wasted if it isn't applied to a better idea.

The plan would limit assessment increases on primary homes. In short, L.D. 2 allows the governor to tell Maine taxpayers that he's working hard to limit the taxes they've so loudly proclaimed they hate. It's a bad idea that constitutes a cheap fix to a problem that needs a much more thoughtful -- and less political -- response. What L.D. 2 would really do is create an unequal property tax burden among taxpayers, where the owners of one home on a block who have been there for 20 years pay substantially less in taxes than the family that this year bought the identical house next door to them. It will diminish municipal revenues -- unless, of course, towns decide to undo its effects by simply raising the tax rate. And it will shift the tax burden to commercial property owners -- a disincentive to business investment that this state can ill afford.

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