I have just finished reading Roy Lenardson’s March 29 guest column regarding Maine’s proposed budget. He suggested reading the Maine Heritage Policy Center’s report on taxes and spending. He is a senior policy analyst at the Maine Heritage Policy Center.

While I disagree with his premise and his conclusions, that is not my chief issue with his column. Rather, it is the Sun Journal’s ongoing failure to identify advocacy groups as such when such columns are run, liberal or conservative.

The Heritage Foundation, and its progeny such as the Maine Heritage Policy Center, are funded by wealthy conservative individuals and their foundations, and carry out very specific agendas. In this case, reducing taxes, particularly on the most wealthy, and reducing government programs, particularly those that benefit the least wealthy. As put by Grover Norquist, perhaps their best-known ideologue, their goal is to reduce government to the size of a baby, and drown it in the bathtub.

The Sun Journal’s failure to identify these guest columnists as to purpose and funding does not serve the readers well, and is no help to us in assessing the validity of their ideas.

Stephen C. Lunt, Auburn