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Maine’S Dubious Odyssey Into The Funding Of Local Government, Peter Mills

Maine Policy Review

Despite recent reforms to Maine’s school funding, State Senator Peter Mills argues that the formula will not be truly “fixed” until the state addresses the municipal side of property tax inequities. To that end, he prescribes some tough medicine for Maine policymakers to relieve the disproportionate tax burden on the state’s service center communities. Among other things, he suggests we consider repealing some of the exemptions that exclude a quarter of all property from taxation; permitting service centers to adopt local option taxes; and injecting the state’s limited revenue sharing funds into just those municipalities with intolerable tax burdens that …