AUGUSTA, Maine — A state commission crafting recommendations for the management of public lands is not embracing Gov. Paul LePage’s proposal to use revenue from the sale of timber to help low-income mainers heat their homes.
The Legislature's Commission to Study Public Reserved Lands was formed in part in response to legislation proposed by LePage that would have dedicated $5 million from the fund used to manage the state's public lands for heating assistance for Maine's poor. Lawmakers rejected that proposal but agreed to look into the issue.
Republican Sen. Tom Saviello of Wilton, who co-chaired the study commission, says Attorney General Janet Mills was asked for an opinion on whether LePage’s proposal was in line with constitutional limits on how that revenue can be spent.
"She pretty much came back and said you can't do it constitutionally," he says. "So as much as I want to do it, or others on this committee might have wanted to do it, we couldn't do it because of the fact the constitution doesn't allow us to do it."
And the co-chairman of the panel, Rep. Craig Hickman, a Democrat from Winthrop, echoes Saviello's interpretation.
"We took the very strong guidance from the attorney general that such a thing would not pass constitutional muster," he says.
The LePage Administration takes a very different view. In a written statement, Press Secretary Adrienne Bennett says that the attorney general's opinion is just that, an opinion, and that only the courts can determine whether the governor's proposal is constitutional. And she says the governor believes part of the $8 million currently in the fund would be better spent on heating assistance than being held in reserve.
Saviello says the panel has concluded that it takes about $2.5 million a year to run the public lands program, and the commission is recommending that funds be spent to make those areas more accessible to the handicapped, a priority that Saviello says was underscored on a visit he made to Yosemite National Park earlier this year.
"Seeing how everything was paved in some of these special places, and I kept questioning why, and then all of a sudden it hit me when the first wheelchair went by," he says. "They have accessibility to that, why do we not allow them to do that? So maybe boat launches and campsites are the first things we focus on with some of this money."
The panel has also recommended using some of the surplus timber revenues to improve recreational opportunities on Maine's public lands, and they also propose that legislative oversight of expenditures from the fund be strengthened.
The commission's recommendations will go to the Legislature in January, and are likely to become intertwined with another controversy. LePage has held up more than $11 million in bonds under the Land for Maine's Future program, saying he'll release them only if lawmakers approve his plan to spend timber harvest proceeds on heating assistance for the poor.
