Taxes and Election Year

Vehicle Excise tax is a hot issue, as are most tax issues. But come November the voter will have a chance to decide on a couple of tax measures. First let me state that I support an increase in sales tax and flat federal tax, maybe even a federal sales tax. But with that do away with the current income tax system. This way EVERYONE pays and the higher bracket purchasing high end items will pay more. But back to Vehicle Excise tax - I beleive that any rate of any fee, license, charge or tax should be directly related to the purpose for which it was collected - not just another way to collect or raise money for government. With that said, excise tax is not 100% used for local road repair - with that in mind and the fact that many folks don't purchase new because of the high excise tax - I vote to reduce the amount charged by town's. I know that the town's have a great lobbying group, lawyers and association called Maine Municpal which is to protect the town's interest. They are pulling out all the stops to insure that excise tax and income for town's is protected this fall. Some say this will raise property taxes, that will happen only if the voters allow it to happen. Instead we should look at mergering offices, reducing overhead and cutting costs - in case you haven't heard things are tough out there! Next on the voter list is TABOR II, again MMA is against this. TABOR II limits how much state/local can raise property taxes in a given year, much like LD 1 was intended to do a few years ago. MMA says that voting in the excise reduction and limiting how much property taxes can go up will cripple local towns. I am not buying that story one bit. Let make sure we have our priorities correct, roads maintained, plowed, trash picked up and ambulance service. The rest is gravy on potatoes. I would love to have talk about school budgets, but Rusty has the view of that which I agree with. Maybe to save SAD funds, Russel could double as superindent, the Eddington office staff could balance the books and cut checks...hmmm, this could work.