Pine Tree Zones News Today

We’ve gone down the “relief” road a long, long time. It’s time to consider a different route.

Rather than continually providing “relief” that’s never enough, wouldn’t it make more sense to assess income and sales taxes partly through counties and municipalities, as most states do, setting rates by local option?

In the 1960s, when Maine had poorly paid teachers, decrepit high schools and the lowest incomes in New England, it made little sense to increase property taxes to provide better schools. So Gov. Ken Curtis, with the aid of key Republican legislative leaders, enacted a progressive income tax in 1969 that lowered property taxes and […]