MORE OBSERVATIONS FROM AUGUSTA

Legislative Blog # 5

For people new to these Observations:

You might want to scroll down to previous Blogs, and read up.

"In November 2016, Maine voters . . . adopted Ranked Choice Voting in the second largest referendum vote of the people in Maine's history. In October 2017, the Maine Legislature repealed Ranked Choice Voting . [. . .] Voters responded immediately by filing a People’s Veto to restore Ranked Choice Voting for primary and federal elections beginning with the June 2018 primary elections." 

[. . . .] Today, Friday, February 2nd the Committee for Ranked Choice Voting meets "for a rally and press conference at the State Capitol building as we submit signatures to Maine's Secretary of State for the second time to insist on more voice and more choice in our democracy."   

Tuesday, January 30, I attended a Public Hearing of the Taxation Committee to testify on  LD 1781 “An Act To Encourage New Major Investments in Shipbuilding Facilities and the Preservation of Jobs.” 

About 7 people spoke in favor of this bill: Legislative sponsor JenniferDeChant of Bath , several legislative cosponsors, Dana Connors from  the Maine State Chamber of Commerce (COC), General Counsel to Bath Iron Works (BIW) Jon Fitzgerald, and a union spokeswoman spoke in favor of the bill. All focused on jobs, benefits to employees and the community, and the need to be competitive with a ship builder in Mississippi. The need to be competitive got the most attention in this testimony with strong suggestions that BIW could or would go out of business if the subsidy is not granted.  

Many questions for Fitzgerald from some committee members focused on the relationship between BIW and its owner and parent multinational corporation General Dynamics (GD). Fitzgerald said he did not know how much the CEO of GD made. He said he did not know how much the CEO of BIW made. He said he didn’t know how much profit GD made. He said he did know that BIW profits are shared with GD investors, but he didn’t know how much. He declined to be specific about what the tax-relief  money would be spent for. The focus on needing to be competitive suggests the money would not be spent for greater financial benefits for workers.

The rest of the testimony was offered by 20 citizens opposed to the bill. Those opposed to the bill included at least 1 former employee of BIW who was the chief tax officer for BIW from1986-1994, and several residents of Bath.

Listing myself as from Presque Isle on the sign-up sheet for giving testimony, I got to testify first, being the furthest from away.  I confessed to the committee my sense of being a fraud because I was temporarily living in Augusta, and they allowed me to proceed anyway. There are definite advantages to confession, to being from away, and to being an old lady—listen up old folks.

I was particularly interested in this bill, it being the first I have heard here that is directly relevant to my #1 priority, income inequality and the political and social power of the richest multinational companies. This is #1 for me because I believe this power affects everything else I care about. Here is my testimony, including comments in brackets and cross-outs that I added while listening to testimony in favor.

Senator Dow, Representative Tipping, members of the Committee on Taxation: 

I am Alice Bolstridge from Presque Isle. Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

[Let me first say that I greatly respect the Bath Iron Works workers--their skills, their work ethic, and their pride in their work]

[Nevertheless] I speak in opposition to LD 1781. The owner of Bath Iron Works, General Dynamics, is the 5^th largest Defense contractor in the world and within the top 100 Corporations of Forbes Fortune 500. They are already profiting from recent corporate tax cuts. They make their profits from making defense products taxpayers pay for.   A large profit margin is built into their defense contracts. And now they are asking for an additional $60 million in Maine taxpayer subsidies.

This company is among the largest corporations in the “military industrial complex” that President Eisenhower warned us about. I am nearly 80 years old, and I have watched the bitter results of Eisenhower’s warning come to pass. The more profits this complex makes, the more unstable the world becomes and the more the military industrial complex uses fear-mongering about national security and job insecurity to persuade voters and our leaders we have no choice but to help them make more profits so they can be competitive.

General Dynamics does not need this subsidy. Maine needs that $60 million to help improve our education, to help provide health care for all, to help fight the opioid epidemic, to help fix up our crumbling infrastructure, to help clean up our environment and avert a climate-change disaster.  I would gladly pay my tax dollars for these urgent needs. [to create jobs to meet these urgent needs. This bill serves greed, not need.]

Please vote “Ought not to Pass” on this bill.

I stayed until the end of the Public Hearing. Some things I learned listening to others’ testimony in opposition:

• ·        This bill is a request for only one entity in the state to get a tax break. Why should this one multi-national corporation be favored for a tax break over Maine-based business owners who keep their profits in Maine?
• ·        The work force at BIW is reduced from about 12,000 in 1986 to about 5000 now, due primarily to automation. That trend will continue. $60 million will not go to increase the number of workers.
• ·        BIW has contributed to the degradation of the Kennebec River.
• ·        The use of Sonar in construction and deployment of BIW ships causes irreversible neurological damage to any life that comes in contact with it.
• ·        Federal contracts include federal payment (from taxpayer dollars) of all expenses including a hefty profit margin for GD and the items BIW lists as things it needs money for to be competitive: worker training, salaries, and benefits; increasing costs of materials.
• ·        BIW has contracts extending at least 10 years into the future. There is no emergency, no threat of imminent closure of BIW.
• ·        “The annual income of GD in 2016 was roughly four times this state’s total annual budget.”
• ·        GD is so rich they bought $9.6 billion dollars of their own stock to drive up stock prices.
• ·        GD paid its CEO $21 million dollars in 2017
• ·        At least 8 citizens from Bath testified against the bill. Bath citizens are advocating that Bath Iron Works convert to production of products that benefit the economy and the environment: “wind generators instead of warships; solar panels vs stealth destroyers; and high speed trains.”
• ·        The use of Sonar in construction and deployment of BIW ships causes irreversible neurological damage to any life that comes in contact with it.
• ·        “A study by the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that every billion dollars invested in the military creates 2.38 times more jobs when invested in education, 1.54 times more jobs when invested in healthcare, and 1.5 times more jobs when invested in clean energy”

This effort by Bath Iron Works and General Dynamics touches some of my most sensitive concerns: the widening income inequality between the richest and the rest of us; the increasing degradation of the planet and its effects on all life; the willingness of our Maine and US governments to sacrifice basic needs of health care, infrastructure, and education for the sake of more corporate welfare to the richest.