Recently, the Press Herald wrote a helpful piece where it interviewed all 21 (wow!) candidates for governor and asked them about their ideas and plans for lowering costs and generally making life in Maine more affordable.

Some of these ideas are solid, practical and evidence-based: price negotiation for prescription drugs, public housing, MaineCare expansion (that one came from a Republican — you can imagine my shock.) And some of the ideas seem like the political version of when you’re in school and forgot there was a test that you didn’t study for so you just start throwing out answers in the hope that something sticks (using eminent domain to take over abandoned properties to sell at affordable prices, for example — I appreciate the concept, but abandoned properties are usually abandoned for a reason). 

One thing I noticed that made my eyebrows creep up was that fully one-third (seven out of the 21) candidates advocated for eliminating or freezing property taxes. (And those were just the ones who had it as part of their elevator speech to the paper!)

The idea is also spread throughout the political spectrum: Republicans, independents and Democrats (OK, one Democrat). I don’t want to sound conspiratorial but is this some sort of real estate lobby plan? Or did seven candidates separately come to a conclusion that will disproportionately help the wealthy? 

Property taxes are a perennial hot topic. For the record, I’ve been a property tax-paying homeowner for going on four years now, so I also have skin in the game. Maine also has a very high homeownership rate, at almost 74%. Property taxes do affect a lot of people, although cutting them wouldn’t help the 24% of Mainers who rent, which already puts them at a financial disadvantage because rent tends to be more than an equivalent mortgage would be and you don’t even get to build equity. (If you think landlords would pass on those tax savings, I have a fancy bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.) 

There are a few cases where a freeze or reduction of property taxes can do good: I’m thinking specifically freezing property taxes of seniors who are on fixed incomes, as they’ve often owned those homes for decades and are uniquely vulnerable to rising taxes.

Independent John Glowa Sr. and Republican Owen McCarthy have specifically indicated they want to freeze, decrease or eliminate property taxes for seniors but made no mention of income or asset limits, meaning that a wealthy 65-year-old with stocks, investments and oceanfront property would get just as much tax relief as a 65-year-old struggling to make ends meet on Social Security. Doesn’t strike me as fair. 

Shenna Bellows suggests a freeze on property taxes for full-time Maine residents, while increasing rates for nonresident homeowners. Probably a popular move in a state with a 74% homeownership rate and a good way to get votes but again, there are a lot of well-off Mainers who have no trouble affording property taxes. They just don’t like them.

Republicans Bobby Charles, David Jones (a real estate broker, quelle surprise) and Ben Midgley and independent Derek Levasseur all simply state their desire to cut or eliminate property taxes regardless of income, assets or financial need in general. 

This idea would starve municipal government of needed revenue. Property taxes fund about 60% of local government. Everyone likes to rail against how inefficient and expensive government is, but I get the feeling we would hear just as many complaints if the trash stops getting picked up or the roads stop being plowed in the winter, or if the police or fire department gets laid off.

Property taxes also fund the schools. We can all think of communities with low property taxes, whether deliberately set low or because the assessed property values are low. It tends to reflect in the resources of the local school system. This drives young families to move elsewhere, taking their own tax dollars and local economic spending with them.

So the schools end up with fewer students, which means they receive fewer state resources, which means the quality of the schools suffers, and the cycle goes on. It’s often a downward, spiraling cycle.

Now, I don’t actually think the way that public schools are currently funded via local property tax is fair, because it usually means that the quality of a child’s education is dependent on their ZIP code and the wealth of the grownups in their community. But that’s for another column.

As it is, the imperfect property tax-driven system as it is currently set up is a lot better than the alternative, where public schools are crumbling from lack of public investment while well-off kids get to pay for private schools, padded by their parents’ tax savings.

When it comes to making Maine more “affordable” by cutting property taxes and the local services they fund, I must say, in the words of Randy Jackson, “That’s gonna be a no from me, dawg.”