As a vegetable farmer, Richard Belanger doesn’t make a lot of money. In fact, some years, he pays more in local taxes than he pockets after expenses.

That’s especially true now, since the 2004 property tax bill on his roughly 500 acres of farmland has shot up by 35 percent.

“It was a killer,” he said.

The owner of one of a dwindling number of farms in Lewiston, Belanger said he doesn’t want to have to sell off his land to developers and retire as others have done.

“To be a farmer, you’ve got to have land,” he said.

After getting his latest tax bill, Belanger went to City Hall where he met with Lewiston’s assessor. Together, they managed to reduce his tax bite by $2,500 a year by putting off paying the higher taxes until Belanger sells his land. He is grateful for the help, he said.

Still, it may not be enough.

Like thousands of other Maine property owners, Belanger is looking to the Legislature to do something about rising property taxes.

Gov. John Baldacci had promised he would address the problem whether a proposed 1 percent statewide tax cap passed or failed on Election Day.

The measure was defeated 63-37 percent.

True to his promise, Baldacci unveiled a tax relief package less than a month later. He called on state lawmakers to review his proposal and pledged to lock State House doors until a bill appeared on his desk ready for his signature. House Speaker John Richardson has set Jan. 20 – less than three weeks away – as his target date for the measure’s passage.

A special joint committee has met several times and held a public hearing on Baldacci’s plan. As proposed, it would:

• over four years increase to 55 percent the amount the state pays for essential K-12 public schooling costs;

• boost the number of taxpayers eligible for tax refunds and beef up the refunds;

• cap increases in state, county and local spending; and

• give financial incentives to towns and school districts that regionalize services.

The committee

Not all aspects of Baldacci’s tax relief package are expected to pass muster in the Legislature.

Already, a proposal has been rejected that would have lent state money to higher income Mainers who pay more than 6 percent of their incomes on property taxes. The committee also voted not to recommend higher taxes as a way to pay for property tax relief.

At the committee’s public hearing last month, none of the more than 50 speakers endorsed the idea; most panned it.

State Sen. Peter Mills, R-Skowhegan, a member of the Joint Select Committee on Property Tax Reform, said the reverse mortgage component was “a loser from the get-go.”

What is likely to end up in the final legislation is a bigger and better Maine Property Tax and Rent Refund program, more commonly referred to as the Circuit Breaker.

The amount of refund depends on the homeowners’ (or renters’) income levels. Baldacci has proposed a maximum refund of $1,000 in 2005, $2,000 in 2009 and $3,000 in 2011.

Mills said his committee probably would augment those amounts.

“He’s so stingy sometimes,” Mills said.

Christopher “Kit” St. John, executive director of Maine Center for Economic Policy, said that’s a good start.

“The Circuit Breaker program is the best way to target property tax relief to the households that need it most,” he wrote in one of the group’s recent newsletters.

The money

Also likely to find its way into law this month is a plan for ramping up state school funding to 55 percent by 2009.

The two groups responsible for authoring and championing a referendum passed last June requiring the state to ratchet up state school aid had a more ambitious time frame in mind for its implementation: two years. But the roughly $250 million needed to fund the greater commitment will be hard to find at the same time the Maine Legislature looks for more than $700 million to close a projected shortfall in the second half of state’s biennium budget, Mills said.

“We’re likely to end up sticking with four (year phase in,) it’s so expensive,” he said.

Mills said some committee members have said they would like to abolish the state’s Homestead Exemption program and siphon that $36 million into the Circuit Breaker. But doing so would, in effect, raise taxes on those property owners not eligible for the latter program. Baldacci has, so far, resisted the notion of raising any taxes.

Spending caps will appear in the final legislation, Mills said, probably with the same loopholes – sudden and significant demand for services – for all levels of government similar to those first proposed only for state spending.

Republican leaders have pressed Baldacci for a constitutional cap on state spending. But Mills said that is not likely to be a deal breaker that would jeopardize passage of overall tax reform. In fact, Mills said GOP lawmakers could always pursue a constitutional amendment after tax reform was completed.

Still hope

Lewiston farmer Belanger said he remains hopeful the Legislature will finally take some action after failing to address the problem last year. He was tempted to vote for the tax cap referendum in November to send a message to Augusta. But they appear to have gotten the message anyway, he said.

He doesn’t want any government handouts, he said, even if his income bracket makes him eligible. He just wants to see the politicians make good on their promises. They could start by paying for the mandates they put on towns and schools, he said. For that matter, he added, so could the federal government.

He wouldn’t mind paying a higher sales tax if that would lower property taxes. He also believes land should be taxed according to its current use, not what it would be worth if sold to a developer.

He acknowledges it won’t be easy for the Legislature to come up with a solution. He doesn’t envy them their task.

“It’s a very complex problem.”