A group that wants to avoid a tax cap releases the results of an unscientific opinion poll.

AUGUSTA (AP) – An overwhelming majority of the nearly 400 municipal officials who responded to a public interest group’s survey said the Legislature should take action this year to overhaul Maine’s tax system.

The nonpartisan Maine Citizen Leadership Fund conducted its unscientific survey among elected municipal officials and town managers in December and early January.

The group is trying to refocus public attention on tax reform two months after a statewide referendum that called for property tax relief achieved through higher state school subsidies, and six months before a second vote on the same proposal.

The Citizen Leadership Fund is even more concerned about a pending initiative on whether to cap property taxes at 1 percent of assessed valuation, plus each taxpayer’s share of town debt, which it says would financially devastate Maine towns.

The group believes that if the Legislature doesn’t enact meaningful tax reform this session, “voters will go out and vote for the tax cap,” Executive Director Arn Pearson said Sunday.

Eighty-seven percent of the municipal officials responding to the survey said they were concerned or very concerned about the tax cap, while only 10 percent said they supported it.

Also, 86 percent of those surveyed said they support reforming Maine’s tax structure by increasing revenues from the sales tax and using the money to ease the reliance on property taxes.

Of those who approved of higher sales tax revenues, 65 percent called for adding a penny to Maine’s 5 percent tax, 61 percent would eliminate sales tax exemptions and 26 percent called for local option taxes. Those responding were allowed to choose more than one option.

Eighty-nine percent said the Legislature should enact tax reforms this year in order to give voters an alternative to the tax cap.

The nonprofit Citizen Leadership Fund, which has also been active in prescription drug and publicly funded elections issues, distributed surveys to more than 1,900 municipal officials and received 372 replies, Pearson said.

Results were released after discussions between the Baldacci administration and advocates of the tax relief referendum measure that’s due for a second vote in June were put off at least until after the legislative session.

The proposal to increase the state subsidy to public schools from 44 percent to 55 percent was backed by the Maine Municipal Association and the teachers’ union, the Maine Education Association.

The 55 percent proposal is up for a second vote in June because it did not draw sufficient support in November to win immediate passage.

Negotiators since then have been looking for a compromise that would enable the state to avoid the $250 million cost of increasing state school subsidies all at once to 55 percent.

Meanwhile, backers of the tax cap referendum say they’ve turned in far more voters’ signatures than needed to force a referendum on their proposal. The signatures must be verified before a referendum can go forward.

AP-ES-01-18-04 1546EST