Joe Atkinson of Dresden, ME An interesting editorial comment from Fred Nutter 2 weeks ago. As I recall, he stated that Maine used to spend 25% of its revenue on transportation infrastructure and now we spend 10%. If my recollection and/or his data are correct, we might suspect that the Maine Legislature is moving revenue to support politically popular, social spending into the current expenditure budget and moving essential infrastructure and maintenance expenditures into bonded monetary support. It may be easier to persuade the public that we should spend money to maintain our highways and bridges by voting for a bond than to convince them to support additional welfare spending.
I recall past bond referendum items like "repairing University of Maine leaking roofs", waste treatment plants (that were projected for years), repairing airport facilities and runways, etc..
These are, of course, worthwhile and prudent expenditures. The question that may be worth exploring is whether or not the Legislature has positioned the Maine public to have to vote in the positive for essential expenditures while it commits our revenues to "discretionary" spending.
Should we be questioning our Legislative representatives on the issue of why we are not spending our current revenues to maintain our roads and why it is necessary to float a bond to take care of our highways or any other current maintenance or capital expenditure?
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Tim of Weld, ME Vote NO!report abuse