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Maine House Rejects Income Tax Repeal Bill on Party-Line Vote

AUGUSTA, Maine - The Maine House dealt the LePage administration yet another setback today after lawmakers rejected the governor's call for a constitutional amendment to repeal the state's income tax. The measure requires two-thirds support to reach the governor's desk, but the Democratically-controlled House split along party lines to scuttle the bill.

Up until 1969, Maine didn't even have a state income tax. That was when the Legislature approved it as a temporary measure to cover a boost in state spending.

Rep. Jeffrey Pierce, a Dresden Republican, asked his House colleagues whether that temporary measure has done much for Maine taxpayers. "It's now been 44-plus years since this was supposed to have sun-setted," he said. "Do you think that's long enough to see if this worked?"

Pierce, and nearly all of the 68 Republicans in the Maine House, and are throwing their political weight behind a bill that would send a question on abolishing the state income tax directly to the voters in a statewide referendum.

"We can follow the decline of Maine and its economy through the income tax, starting in the early 70's," Pierce said. "And as the taxes went up, we saw our mills closing, we saw our people leaving."

And what's worse, says fellow Republican Rep. Lawrence Lockman, is that Maine has little to show for the taxpayer dollars it continues to collect today, other than a bloated government.

"Are Maine people better off after the explosive growth of state government since we passed the state income tax nearly half a century ago? Are the roads better?" Lockman said. "Are Maine kids better able to read, write and compute than they were in the 1970s? Mr. Speaker, these questions answer themselves."

But before voters can have their say on the measure, the bill, which is backed by Gov. LePage, must win two-thirds support in the House and Senate. And Democrats say Republicans have made no effort to explain how the state would continue to pay for programs and services that are currently covered by the $1.7 billion that taxpayers contribute each year.

Rep. Adam Goode is a Bangor Democrat who co-chairs the Legislature's Taxation Committee. "One-point-seven billion dollars is a lot of money," said Goode. "If you eliminate every cent of state spending on public higher education in K-12 funding you would still need to find $400 million to fill that hole."

And Denise Tepler, a Topsham Democrat, says that without explaining how to make up for that revenue loss, voters would be making a false choice. "I believe that the proposal to send this recommendation to the people of Maine without careful consideration means that we are offering and dangling the idea of a free lunch - there is no free lunch," Tepler said.

Still, House Republicans say the case for abolishing the state income tax is sound, and they have no concerns about putting it out to referendum. The bill now moves to the Maine Senate.