I was born in Maine and except for going to law school for three years in Boston, I’ve lived here all my life. This gives me a unique perspective on Mainers that those “from away” might not appreciate.
Mainers have many enduring traits: we’re hard working, often surprisingly generous, fair minded, friendly (but not overly so), and we use our common sense. All in all, we’re pretty decent people.
We’re also complainers. Yep, I said it. Mainers are complainers — we complain about everything. The weather, of course, is the number one complaint. If it’s cold outside, people will be grumbling and begging for warm weather. When it’s warm for several days in a row, folks will nit pick and call it a heat wave.
Mainers are complainers — but with a twist. We want things to change for the better but we don’t want to do anything major that will change the very things we like about Maine.
For example, we criticize the lack of business growth in our state, but don’t want our cities and towns to change much (if at all) by having new buildings and too many homes go up. We don’t want big box stores everywhere, but whine about the prices the little guys charge.
We crab about the stagnent population (Maine had a little over a million people in the state when I was a kid — still does), but we don’t want to invest in the industry and technology necessary to keep our young people in the state and really develop a business climate. We also don’t want housing developments going up where we’re used to seeing open fields.
Why? Because it would change the character of the state. Portland, for example, is the state’s largest city. When I moved here nearly 30 years ago, the tallest commercial building was the 14–story “Time and Temperature” building in Monument Square. In the time I’ve live here, probably no more than a dozen major buildings have gone up in the city (if that many). Know what the tallest one is now? You guessed it, the same Time and Temperature building.
I’m not saying that you need a 60–story skyscraper in order to show growth. But even in the best of financial times over the last 30 years, the reason there isn’t a much larger building is mostly because Mainers don’t want that kind of change.
Just try to propose something as outlandish as a 30–story commercial building in Portland and the howls of complaint would be heard all over the state. Right now, if you want to build a defining commercial building in Portland that is significantly taller or grander in scope than what currently exists, you’d have a better chance of beating Kobe Bryant in a little game of one-on-one.
Mainers want big business in the state, they seek a growing economy, they’d love to have a vibrant private sector — but not if it changes the character of how they live on a day to day basis.
So what is all this rambling leading to, you might ask? One thing: taxes. Because if Mainers complain about anything, second only to their misery with the weather, it’s taxes.
Every time you read about state taxes, there is something mentioned about how high Maine taxes are. And people protest and moan incessantly about the outrageously high taxes — how they’re preventing businesses from coming to the state, how they’re hard on small businesses, and draining the incomes of workers.
Yet no one really wants anything to change if it’s going to adversely affect them in any way.
The legislature finally listened to the unending complaints about high taxes and came up with a proposal that would lower income taxes from 8.5 percent to 6.5 percent. In order to do so and keep roughly the same amount of money going to the state, the bill would apply the sales tax to a variety of new items, and also increase the meals and lodging tax from 7 percent to 8.5 percent.
Seems to make sense, doesn’t it? I mean if the state takes in $100 in income taxes, but reduces the income tax rate so it only takes in, say $80, it has to raise taxes somewhere else to make up that lost $20. (Unless it cut $20 of state services or laid off state workers to save the $20. Think anyone would complain about that idea? You bet they would.)
So what happens now? If you don’t know already, you haven’t been paying attention.
As reported in today’s Press Herald, a coalition of business groups have asked Gov. John Baldacci to veto the bill. The business groups say the bill could hurt the tourism sector, that it shifts taxes “from one area to another.”
Duh.
If you want lower income taxes without a loss of state spending, you need to get the money from somewhere, don’t you? The business groups also find fault for the proposed increase in the real estate transfer tax for homes worth more than $500,000, calling it “unprecedented.”
Give me a break.
What do you bet that some of this business owners in this unhappy coalition happen to have homes themselves worth more than $500,000?
Finally — and how cute is this — the group calls itself the “Not This, Not Now Coalition.” How precious is that?
What do you bet that when the Not This, Not Now Coalition reads about Maine’s income taxes being among the highest in the nation, they’ll be one of the first to piss and moan about it?
It all just goes to show what I’ve been talking about.
I’d appreciate any comments about this article. I hate to sound as if all I’m doing is complaining. But, after all, I’m a Mainer.
