Very soon legislation sponsoring an $80 million bond issue for the Land for Maine’s Future program will be heard in Augusta, even though having taxpayers borrow that amount of money and re-paying it with interest during the financial hardship of a pandemic doesn’t seem like the best time to increase the public debt.

A similar LMF bond (L.D. 911) was considered in 2019.  Seventy-one people testified, 17 for, 54 against the bill as written. Instead of accepting the clear majority of the vote and defeating or amending the bill, legislators eventually carried it over, and mixed it in with other legislation in an omnibus bill, but that didn’t work either, and by November of that year L.D. 911 was declared dead.

It turns out it wasn’t dead after all; it was just sleeping, and will soon awaken in Augusta’s hallowed halls. We can be sure that, just as in 2019, the language that so many Mainers objected to in L.D. 911 will be intact.  That’s the mandate that hunting, fishing and trapping must be allowed on all LMF-funded properties, whether or not local land managers agree. It’s a requirement most people never see because it’s buried in the bill’s fine print.

As in the past, some have already claimed that including the mandate is necessary to gain public support, but experience proves otherwise. According to the Maine Legislative Library, the first of six LMF bonds that was voted on was in 1990. Others were in 1991, 1999, 2005, 2007, and 2012.  Of these six, only two (1999 and 2012) included the mandate which, as per usual, was not even in the ballot language where voters could see it. Of the four bonds that passed (1999, 2005, 2007, 2012) two had the mandate, and two did not.

Let’s remember these facts when LMF legislation is heard again.

 

Don Loprieno

Bristol

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