Republican gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles told WGAN on Inside Maine Saturday he would provide every Mainer with a $100,000 homestead property-tax exemption, with the state fully reimbursing municipalities for the revenue lost. He says the proposal would offer broader relief than the existing exemption and avoid shifting costs onto towns.
Charles made the proposal during a discussion of property taxes and his opponent Hannah Pingree’s proposal to raise taxes on homes owned by people who do not live in Maine for at least six months and a day. He questioned whether that approach would pass legal muster, citing the Constitution’s equal protection clause, while acknowledging there may be other ways to raise revenue from nonresident property owners.
Instead, Charles said he would “give every Mainer a $100,000 property tax exemption as a homestead exemption” and reimburse towns in full. He criticized the state’s current $25,000 homestead exemption, arguing that municipalities are reimbursed for only about 75% to 76% of the cost and may make up the difference by raising property taxes.
“You drop the cost of your property being taxed by $100,000, and it will not be partially reimbursed. It’ll be totally reimbursed,” Charles said.
Charles said his proposal had been costed at $150 million, followed by $300 million. He said he would offset the cost by eliminating waste and fraud and consolidating services to create economies of scale across the state. He did not specify a timeline for those cost figures during the interview.
He also proposed rolling back what he described as hundreds of state-imposed unfunded mandates affecting municipalities, schools, jails and environmental programs. Charles said the state requires local governments to carry out new policies but, in some cases, removes the funding intended to cover them. He argued that towns then have to absorb the costs.
Charles said lawmakers had passed a law barring unfunded mandates but then violated it. He described a process in which legislation is stripped of its “fiscal note”—the funding attached to a requirement—before it reaches a final vote. He cited the Maine Municipal Association’s complaints about the burden of state mandates as support for his position.
The proposal and Charles’s characterizations of existing state policies were presented during the campaign interview; the interview did not independently assess the plan’s cost, legal questions or likely effects on municipal budgets.
