Re:Maine

The strange case of the Land Use Regulatory Commission just got a little stranger.

LURC, as it’s commonly known, is a relatively obscure state agency that nonetheless governs half the state’s land area.

“Govern” might be putting it a bit strongly. The state directly levies taxes and provides schooling, landfill access and other public services in the unorganized territories, the 10 million acres where there’s no municipal government. But LURC does control land use. If you want to build a garage, or construct a giant resort on Moosehead Lake, you have to see LURC.

As the comparison suggests, it has highly disparate responsibilities. Going to Augusta for a garage permit can seem absurd to the 10,000 or so people who live outside towns, cities, and plantations –  the latter a municipal form of government unique to Maine. On the other hand, many of us would be rather upset if Plum Creek, say, was offered a blank check to build as many houses on Maine’s wilderness lakes as it could sell.

So we have a proposed LURC reform bill. Sort of. The Republicans stage-managing this process, from Senate President Kevin Raye to Gov. LePage’s counsel, have committed one pratfall after another as they attempt to dismantle the agency.

Raye’s original bill was aimed at simply abolishing LURC, which was created by bipartisan majorities in 1971, and turn its functions over to the counties. This never made any sense.

In most states, particularly those created after 1840, county governments play a key role between state and municipal government. They run schools, build and maintain roads, manage airports, and – yes – do land use planning and permitting.

In Maine, they do none of these things, the legacy of the state’s creation at a time when municipalities were what mattered most. Maine counties do an adequate job of providing law enforcement, deed registries, and courts, but they’ve never had anything to do with land use.

Even before Raye’s bill, Gov. LePage’s initial wish list contained a bizarre proposal to zone 30 percent of LURC’s jurisdiction for development – three million acres. Maine as a whole, including all its cities and towns, isn’t going to develop three million acres in the next hundred years. Trying to set such a template over the very places where development rarely happens is beyond strange.

Fast forward to the current legislative session, where the Agriculture, Forestry and Conservation Committee is trying to absorb the results of a study commission created when Raye couldn’t find the votes for the county takeover plan.

The commission retains an unworkable notion of governance in its recommendations. Instead of turning LURC over to the counties, it puts the counties in charge of LURC.

The seven-member citizen board that now exists, by appointment of the governor and confirmation by the Legislature, would be replaced by one where six county commissioners could appoint themselves and furnish the majority of a nine-member board. Counties could also opt out of LURC’s jurisdiction after three years.

As a plan, it’s not much of an improvement. But apparently it was still so far short of the original goal that Sen. Roger Sherman, the hapless committee co-chair, decided to forbid the committee’s Democratic minority from helping draft a bill. Republicans caucused privately with Dan Billings, LePage’s legal counsel and most powerful advisor, then announced that two members of the study committee would do the drafting –  an unprecedented procedure. After all, the study committee was supposed to report to the Legislature, not the other way around.

What Republicans hope to accomplish with this charade is unclear. In theory, they have the votes to pass whatever they want concerning LURC. But whether GOP members soon up for re-election will want to scuttle an existing state agency with significant expertise, whatever its flaws, and hand the job to an utterly unqualified group of county officials is far from certain. Many were burned by voting to scuttle Election Day voter registration, later overturned by people’s veto, and are unlikely to court the voters’ wrath again.

Making LURC permitting easier and more user-friendly is perfectly sensible. A version of the permit-by-rule proceedings that now benefit forest landowners would work. Basically, if you want to get a permit for some standardized activity, such as building a garage, you get approval just by filing a form.

But it makes no sense at all to turn over the future of the Maine wilderness to a group not elected for the purpose, and possessing no qualifications to make the decisions. The anti-LURC contingent would be wise to cut their losses while they still can.