ROCKLAND — Maine Governor Paul R. LePage held a town hall meeting Wednesday evening at Rockland City Hall. Despite a late start, the Governor spoke and answered questions from the audience. 

Following the Pledge of Allegiance and taking a seat, LePage touched on four points. Reform welfare, lower the income tax, reduce energy costs and help students succeed. To read his complete presentation, click here.

In his opening statement the Governor said his absolute priority was to make the state of Maine prosperous.

Adrienne Bennett, the Governor’s press secretary, moderated the question and answer session. Residents who had submitted questions before the governor’s arrival were called and asked to step to the podium to address the governor. They were then asked to take their seat as the governor responded.

First to the podium was Rockland resident Elaine Riedy: “How do you propose to make up the revenue that will be lost if or when the state income tax will be repealed and how will the tax repeal benefit the poor.”

LePage: “As I said earlier there are 653 thousand income tax returns that are sent to the government. The tax cuts that we have given so far affect about 500,000 people. If you think those are wealthy people, many of those are people who don’t pay any income tax. Anybody under $19 thousand pays no income tax if they are single and if they are a family they certainly don’t pay. We cut the lowest level, so they are the ones who are already benefitting the most.

“The way we reform it is this way. The budget that I have put in this past year was $300 million lower then what it is right now. The Legislature overruled my veto on the budget and they added the $300 million. The $300 million that is in there, much of it is not needed. It’s simply overkill. Now people will say, oh my kids and education. The state of Maine spent $2 billion on 179,000 kids. $2 billion. We have 179,000 children in K through 12. We have 127 superintendents and we’re ranked 38th in the nation. The state of Florida has 2.8 million children K through 12; 64 superintendents and they’re ranked seventh. That’s one place we do it. We take money from the administration and put it into the classroom and we do a better job with our kids.

“Number two: Liquor contracts. When I became governor we were getting $10 million a year for 10 years. We took that back in house and last year was our first year we got $50 million form it. Now we have $50 million a year we never had. As soon as the bonds are paid we’re going to have about $30 million in the bank because we’re going to pay back $190 million, then we make $50 million a year over ten years is $500 million. Add one point to the sales tax will be another $300 million. If we continue to do what we need to do in areas of DHHS, in other words, 19 to 49. People 19 to 49, the able bodies will be asked to either volunteer, look for a job or go to school. We are all in, in helping them to go to school because I have a program to help lower the cost of education for higher education.

“Do you think I came up with all this? No. I just went to other states like Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, North Dakota and Indiana. We look at what they’re doing, what works good and we bring it to Maine. That’s how you get it done. It’s no different then when I go into a company that was losing money and you fix it and then you make it profitable.”

“For instance: We have 14,000 positions in the budget. We only have 11,500 employee checks that we write every two weeks. It’s been like that ever since I’ve been governor. We have way too many people who work for government that have to little to do. We have a lot of vacancies we haven’t filled and the only people that are grieved about them are certain people on the appropriations because their friends aren’t getting jobs.”

Ron Huber: “Hello Governor.  I think were finding two visions in the Rockland area. One of them is the nature based incredible lobster fishing, the best in the whole country. This is the hub of it right here. At the same time there is a whole vision of going into an urban technopolis. Usually by being by a lot of bays the two don’t normally go together too well. The question is how do we get both? Get that computer growth and keep the fisheries going. Which one do we stay with?”

LePage: “First of all I believe very, very strongly that there is no reason why you can’t have a good environment and a good solid place to live and have good jobs. I don’t think that one goes against the other. I think it’s a matter of finding a balance. I don’t see why you can’t have high tech and biotech. Let’s take Mt. Desert Island for instance. Mt. Desert Island is a fishing community, but they have Jackson Lab. I think you can do it, there’s no reason you can’t. There are many fishermen down in Cumberland County. Look at the Bath area, the Brunswick area, there’s fishing down there. They have many other industries, so I believe that one is not exclusive of the other. I think you can have both. I think what we need to be cautious about is having too much of one and not having a good balance.”

“For instance: I get criticized a lot for challenging the Land for Maine’s Future.  There has been $250 million that have been taken off the tax roles in the last 15-20 years, $250 million taken off the tax roles. All your communities have lost taxable properties. And then they come to the state and the state sells bonds and pays for that property we took off the tax roles. I’m all right with that. We have roughly about 800,000 acres right now in the state. I’m fine with that, but we ought to be using it to the highest value. For instance: I believe the lands for Maine’s future is very good, but it’s very costly to tax payers. And some of the tax payers are poorer than others, so I’ve asked the Legislature, if I’m going to put $6 million in to lands for Maine’s future, sell bonds, can I have $5 million to help the heating systems of people in rural areas that are having a hard time. I think that’s a good balance. They’re saying no, we want the $6 million; we don’t care about the poor. I’m sorry, while I’m governor I’m not giving up on that one.”

Margaret Dunst: “I just want to know what you would say about the vote that just happened the bond issues that were approved in our area?”

LePage: “The people of Maine have spoken.”

Dunst: “So when would you release them?”

LePage: “When there’s a project in front of me that’s worthwhile.”

Dunst: “The two that were in our area, one was the roads.”

LePage: “We’re going to spend $2.2 billion in roads over the next two to three years. We’ve been spending between $750 million to $800 million a year for the last five years. We do it every year. That was needed. Unfortunately, I would have preferred to see the other $15 million go into roads and I’ll tell you why. Last year I released $120 million in bonds for housing. Earlier this year I released another $65 million in bonds for housing. The Maine State Housing Authority is specifically built for residential, public, moderate income housing and elderly housing. That’s what it’s there for. To take our bonding, our credit rating of $15 million and do it for bonds only serves the good of one person. Who wants to run for governor, that’s all, because $15 million you don’t hardly get anything for it in housing. And to use general obligation credit line to do housing, its two different markets and we tried to explain that, but they just did it anyway. If there is a project that is viable we will take a look at it, but right now I don’t know where they’re going to put the $15 million because I have nothing to do with it.”

Jane Newcomb: “I have an easy question for you, Governor. First thing I want to thank you for coming here. And my question is, will you stay in politics after your governorship is over?”

LePage: “Ah, ah…. Possibly. Not at the state level, but possibly at the federal level.”

Barbara Moran: “Govenor, what’s your opinion on raising the minimum wage to reduce the safety budget? Aren’t we now subsidizing employers who cannot provide a living wage to our hard working citizens?”

LePage: “Rather than talk about a minimum wage, let’s talk about a salary, a good middle income salary. Let’s talk about bringing Airbus here that pays $75 an hour, 25 of it being in benefits, $50 of it being an hourly rate for a technician, but we lost them to Alabama because our energy costs were too high. That’s the kind of jobs we want to bring. We’re talking about the jobs we just brought to Washington County, the two tissue machines, those are the kind of jobs I want to talk about. Minimum wage jobs, as long as your mind is set to minimum wage you will never be prosperous. Let’s talk about prosperous wages. Not minimum wages. Indecently, so that you know, there’s roughly 6,000 working full time in Maine that make minimum wage. The overwhelming majority of people making minimum wage are high school kids in service and restaurants. The over whelming majority, I see the statistics every month.”

Paula Sutton: “Governor, I need to understand why you continue to work so hard for the people of Maine, when some work so hard against you? What drives you out of bed everyday to do this?”

LePage: “My children and my grandchildren. I want them to live in Maine the way I lived in Maine. I lived the American Dream. I know what it is to come off of skid row off the street and make a living. And I want my children to be able to enjoy the state of Maine, which I believe is the most beautiful state in America, and I want them to earn a prosperous wage, I want them to earn a wage….”

Deborah Parker: “Thank you, Governor. You have spoken of welfare, unemployment, skilled labor and education, etc. What if there was one solution to these issues and that solution would demonstrate results in three to four months? Would you make time for us to sit down and discuss this?”

LePage: “I do this all the time. You’ve got an idea like that? When do you want to meet? 8 o’clock tomorrow morning?”

Parker: “Perfect.”

LePage: “I’m going to have from eight till 10 tomorrow morning. Frankly, there are no civil bullets and if you’re going to solve a problem state wide in three or four months, I don’t want to see the tax bill.”

Parker: “It will reduce your tax bill.”

LePage: “I’m all in. You call my office and we’ll get you in. I would love nothing more then to see everybody make more than I make.”

Heidi Alley: “Why isn’t the unemployment system more consolidated, more efficient? I graduated in 2014 finally with my bachelor’s degree at 46 years old. I finally got the salaried position I wanted and a month later they restructured, so now I’m back on the unemployment line. This is the third time in my life I’ve ever filed for unemployment. This will be the first time I ever received a check. I received three others from three different places, three different people working on one claim. The system needs to be more efficient.”

LePage: “Well, first of all I’d love to get a copy of those three letters if you don’t mind because that’s inappropriate for sure. Number two: Then state of Maine is currently working with IT, the state of Mississippi and I believe one other state, I’m not sure which one, it’s a three-state consortium to build an automated system for unemployment. The reason three states is that we are sharing all the costs instead of one state doing it. I could never understand why 50 states have to have 50 different systems, so what we are trying to do is lower the costs for all states, so we can do it consistently. I will say this to you, I have made several efforts to reform the unemployment system, to reform the career center system, career centers. I go up against a stonewall every time upstairs. A certain party doesn’t like that. They think that we should not be efficient. For instance: I believe that anybody on unemployment should have one visit, face to face, with a state employee either at the career center, the educational system, or the unemployment system to evaluate the skill sense that we have available.”

“Right now, I have 15,000 jobs I can’t fill. Not enough people to fill 15,000 jobs. They may not be in your backyard and they may not be the perfect job, but we have got 15,000 jobs we cannot fill. Do I believe that the system can be improved? Absolutely. We have what is called work force investment boards. We have four in the state. In the state of Maine for Maine people. The state of Texas has one. $10 million comes from the federal government to operate four workforce investment boards. When we first looked at it, $7.2 million of this $10 million was going to salaries and overhead, so we reformed it. Now we’re getting about 50 cents on the dollar going toward training, and 50 cents on the dollar going to overhead. Frankly there should be $1 million at most for one board in the state working through Chamber of Commerce’s that can tell us what companies in their communities needs jobs and we can go help fill those jobs. But, that’s not the way the legislature wants to work it. They want to work it with four different groups around the state. And they take all this federal money and it’s gone, so I agree with you 100 percent. If we could get like minded people in Augusta we can get it done.”

Adrienne Bennett: “Usually I prefer reporters not to ask questions, but you do have a reporter here who is from Rockland, so we’re going to allow him to ask a question. Don Carrigan.”

Carrigan: “I’m not a resident of Rockland.”

Bennett: “Oh you’re not?”

LePage: “You’re on.”

Bennett: “OK, the Governor is going to let you ask.”

Carrigan: “Governor I apologize for taking up your time and these folks’ time, but obviously if I wanted to ask you a question then this is how I need to do it. Do you plan to work with the Legislature, try to work with them during the coming session, including proposing a budget that necessary, or will you try to avoid working with the Legislature?”

LePage: “Well first of all Don I think it’s an unfair statement that I don’t want to work with the Legislature. Shame on you. I will work with anybody, but this is the way it has to work. Communications is a two-way street. You can’t everyday be blasting a guy and calling him names in the newspaper and then say oh by the way; we want to work with you on this. I’m willing to work with anyone on anything, anytime, but I will tell you this: I can walk away from the plate, but I never have. I didn’t walk away, folks. You can read the newspapers all you want. That’s your privilege, but don’t come to me and say I don’t want to work with the Legislature because that is a false statement.”

From the second row, a man rose and begins addressing the Governor.

Penter William: “Governor, my name is Penter William, I’ve sent you poems and I have one of your blue notes, which was misspelled; but anyway, I have a very simple question and I’m going to answer it. Why do you and Mary Mayhew hate the poor and the disabled so much? The answer is because you’re an evil man, who hires evil staff, to do evil work!”

LePage: “OK, thank you. Now, I will say this. Last year I took $15 million, which could have been called illegal, because I didn’t get permission from the Legislature and I gave it to the nursing homes. I took $46 million this year to eliminate wait lists and the Legislature put the wait list back up. Sir, I don’t mind being called an evil man, if I’m evil, but get your facts straight.”

Doug Curtis: “Welcome Governor to Rockland, the lobster capital of the world. We just had an election yesterday and we had some really tough decisions to make regarding our education for our kids. We basically want to fund our kids education here in Rockland, but we’re really concerned about the Department of Education and I know that revenue sharing has been cut to the towns, I know your position on that. I would like to ask you a simple question. Since you said you will work with anybody, I’ll ask you to work with me. Would you be willing to look at a  local option sale tax to fund our education since that seams to be one of the things that you want to do? The other thing I will tell you is when Maine on January 1, 2016 makes the estate tax $5 million I know at least one person who is moving back to the state.”

LePage: “Well thank you, glad to hear somebody’s moving back. I think it’s a consumption tax. I prefer that over an income tax. However, a local option sales tax is going to create dire competition among communities and the losers are going to be the smallest communities. In other words those little rural communities…like Garfield, Maine. Those are the type of communities that might have 100 people, but no commerce of any kind. They’re going to get hurt hard because they are going to be paying and they don’t have any chance of getting it back. I will tell you this, something I’ve always said, what I’m willing to do is to take a look at our tourism budgets, the 40 million people that come to Maine this year, and where they spend the money is where the money should be going for the community.

“The problem is this. It’s so easy to go after a governor because he’s the only state wide elected official. Most people in the Legislature, there are three types of people who go there. There are one third of the Legislature that are people who are there to do well and to work hard for the Maine people. It’s not about money, they’ll work 80–90 hours a week. And they’ll do what they know is best according to their training and skills. Mine happens to be in finance and economics, I do understand it. The whole deal with the liquor contract, I do believe that was a good deal and the state of Maine paying the hospitals off $750 million without raising taxes. I do believe that do have something to offer the state. And I am that top third.”

“Then there is a middle third.  The middle third are very smart people most of them, but they are there for one thing and that’s for themselves. It’s not for you or I. They’ll come to you if they can help themselves. That’s the second group. Then the third group. And as bad as I despise the second group, the third group I hate even more. I think the Maine people should ask questions and not send those people to Augusta. Those are the ones that come to Augusta, They’re happy to have a plate to put on their car and they sit in the back of the room and never open their mouth. Those are the bad people because they do what they’re told and they don’t contribute to society. All I ask, I will work a 100 hours a week if you do me one favor and you ask questions before you vote for a person. You put facts where you’re going to get pressed air. There are some great people in Augusta on both sides of the aisle, Democrat and Republican. There are some bad people Democrats and Republicans. We the people, we the people who choose to govern ourselves have to make sure that those who govern us and make those decisions are the right people.”

Derrick Clayton: How are we going to pay for what happened on Question One?

LePage: “The way question one reads and I don’t know if you know what it says. Question one says it in two sentences, but unfortunately there are 13 pages of legislation behind it. The businesses in Maine are going to pay for it. It’s already in the legislation. The tax breaks, the so called corporate welfare is going to pay for it. Now, I will say this to you, the people have spoken, we’re going to work on it and see what we can do. In 2010, if that would have been in effect in 2010 when I first ran, it would have cost just the governor’s race, just the governor’s race, not all the legislators, not the 186 people in the legislature, just the governor, it would have cost you 33 to $34 million. Two years ago in 2014 it would have cost for the governor’s race only $9 million. Because the way this reads is every candidate for governor will get up to $1 million in the primary and $2 million for the general election. In 2010, 23 people came on the primary. That’s $23 million, and then five people ran for governor, that’s $2 million each, that’s 33 or $34 million. The house you’re going to go from $5,000 to $15,000. If you’re going to take $13,000 for a house where you’re going to go around and knock on every door, with the exception of a few house districts, I find that sad, but I’ll give you that. And I’ll give you that because I think it’s OK to help the people in legislature because it is. It’s a very low paying job.

“For governor it’s a statewide election. If you can’t get your message across to the people without getting in their pockets and taking their money; shame on you. And as far as the Senate goes, there’s not a senate seat in Maine that is worth $60,000 and that’s what they’re going to get now, $60,000 a seat. Does anybody know who paid for this campaign on question one? George Soros paid most of it, the co-owner of Facebook paid the other big part of it. The problem is, you cannot violate the federal constitution. And by saying that you’re going to stop it, you can’t stop it. The Supreme Court has already said that big business can put money in. Did you realize that big business, we a lot of those in Maine, but anyways, those businesses if you exempt them would you exempt unions. Unions don’t make contributions.”

Clayton: “I just know that some people are willing to put millions of dollars, some very big people are willing to put millions of dollars in certain candidates is worth people who don’t have a million dollars putting in a million dollars. That’s all I know.”

LePage: “Let me give you an example. In 2010, there were seven candidates for governor in the Republican party. One spent $2.5 million. One spent $1 million, $750 thousand. And the winner, by 21 points, spent $189,000. Last election in 2014, if money would have won, Mike Michaud would have been your governor, because Mike Michaud outspent me two to one. I’m including the Republican Governors Association, $5 million from them; $2 million from what we collected. $7 million and he spent $14 million. The Independent spent three. There was $17 million to seven.”

Clayton: “Isn’t this the problem, all that money is buying you. You owe them. You owe the people who put up the money. You just said you spent $7 million, who do you owe for that.”

LePage: “Nobody! You ask my staff. I don’t give anybody any break. That’s why Time Warner was going to do a big fundraiser for me. I wouldn’t veto a bill they wanted me to veto. They stopped it. Let me tell you. You’re going to buy me; you better have a lot more than $7 million.”

(Inaudible): “Thank you for this opportunity. I would like to say I’m a small business owner, very small. I’ve never been to business school, but I know that if you keep your overhead down, you can run a business and not be in debt. That’s pretty much in a nutshell for me. The thing that’s happened here in Rockland, and to me personally, is that my property tax, the year after I bought my house, went from $1,700 to $3,600, so I want to know why you consider that…I have it written down here…businesses are badly affected by high property taxes leading to high rent. There has just been a business here in Rockland that wanted to develop a downtown building and the city council said yes. They didn’t ask for tax exemption, but a cap on property taxes and the city council agreed to it. And for me that made me think that, that is important to this business. I see so much money coming in from income taxes and property taxes, and I want to why you consider income taxes are more important in lowering then property taxes?”

LePage: “First of all, that’s a good question. Income tax you have no decision making on. Property taxes you do have decision making on. You have the value of the home and you have a choice in the value of the home. Sales tax you have a choice of either buying or not buying. I don’t agree with one thing you said because if you’re right the city of Rockland is in violation of state law. That is, you cannot fix, you can give Tiff’s, but you cannot fix a tax. It’s unconstitutional, but my point is this, in the state of Maine and this is why I firmly believe it’s more important to get the income off your wages and let you decide what you’re going to do with it than anything else, because the reason your property taxes in this area, like many coastal areas in the state of Maine are skyrocketing, is because out-of-state money is buying up a lot of properties. That’s the reason why Mainers’ can’t and Mainers’ are forced to move inland to the 95 corridor and that’s where the population is. Why? Because mountain property, like at Sugarloaf, Sunday River and ocean property have become so expensive.

“I, like you, my wife and I have been looking for 10 years for a piece of property on the coast. We’ve looked from the Belfast area all the way to Washington County. We finally bought a piece of property; you all heard it was in the paper, it also had the address and that it was vacant. I paid $200,000 for a house, I’m being taxed at two and a half times its value because that’s the tax. I had a choice. I knew what the tax would be and I made a decision on that property. If it was income tax I had a choice. The only choice I had was don’t give me a raise, I don’t want my taxes to go up.”

Kathleen McCormally Meil: “How do you see the state taking over the lead in taking over broadband Internet service to our residents especially in rural and island communities?”

LePage: “The newest technology is going to be wireless. It’s happening in the Portland area and it’s happening in the Waterville area, a big city and the smaller communities to try and see what we have. The backbone of the Internet structure in the state of Maine is really good. The backbone. The problem with the state of Maine is from the pole, or from the wire to the home. Nobody wants to pay for that. The resident doesn’t want to pay for it, it’s very expensive, the fiber optics. The state doesn’t get involved in it, or hasn’t in the past because there isn’t a utility that the state should be involved in. First I would take what the Constitution says, and we’re limited on things we can do, or supposed to do, but we do it anyway. Is it appropriate? You would need to answer that. How many taxes are you willing to pay? If it’s the state that puts it in, your taxes will go up. If your local community puts it in your taxes won’t go up.

“Believe me when I tell you this, there is no free lunch. Somebody will pay. The issue is how do we want to do it? I know that right now there is a big movement, there is a three ring binder that has not worked as well as it should have. Now we have several companies that are in to get the Internet. To get high speed Internet you need to be in populated areas. You can’t get it in smaller communities because of the infrastructure. The answer is going to be over the next three years is you’re going to have a lot more opportunities with satellites because of going wireless, more it’s going wireless.

“ I would like to say we’ll sell a bond, put the Internet around the state and we’re all set, but who’s going to put up the infrastructure? Is the Internet more important then roads? Is the Internet more important then the safety net? Is the Internet more important then water and sewage? These are all things we pay into. One of the big priorities I have not talked about tonight, that I am really concentrating on, is that I am trying to get more clam flats open that are contaminated because their shores have been over filled. Sewage is going into the ocean; we’re trying to stop that contamination. How important is that? To me for the long term future it’s super important because if we continue to contaminate our shore line, we lose…. I agree with you. I would love to have to have Internet because the house where we live doesn’t have Internet. I can’t stay there because I have to be able to get in contact.”

Adrienne Bennett: “One more. I know how you like children, so we have a young boy here tonight. Harrison Garfield please come up. Aske your question and make it a fun one.”

LePage: “Make it easy, OK?”

Harrison Garcia: “If you were a superhero, what would your name be and what would be your superpower?”

LePage: “What superhero? I want to answer this very honestly. I don’t want to be a superhero. I don’t. I just want to be someone who contributes to society. Who does the best he can do with what he has available. I think if you ask a lot of people in this room, they have a lot of names they would like to call me.”

Governor LePage called the boy to the podium and presented him with a gift and a high five.

“You’ve been a very civil crowd and I thank you. This was a very good crowd, I thank you. I’m not saying that we need to agree on everything. I want you to understand however that 90 percent of what you read in the newspapers about your government is not true.”