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PORTLAND, Maine – Independent candidate for governor Eliot Cutler said that promises Republican Paul LePage has made so far in the campaign will nearly triple the size of the $800 million dollar budget shortfall that already is awaiting Maine’s next governor.

“Paul LePage is no fiscal conservative. He’s just another pandering partisan politician,” Cutler said. “Maine is already facing a huge budget hole, and Paul LePage is digging it deeper. We all want lower taxes, but right now, more than anything else, Maine people deserve honesty and straight talk.”

Cutler presented a list of tax cuts and increased spending that LePage has proposed or promised to various groups, including lowering the income tax, removing all taxes on pension income, regardless of their size, eliminating the estate tax, and reducing sin taxes by 25%. When added together, LePage’s promises total nearly $1.4 billion on top of the estimated $800 million shortfall for the next biennium. (See attached list)

“Libby Mitchell and the Democrats got us into this mess through decades of reckless spending and higher and higher taxes, and Paul LePage will just make things worse,” Cutler said. “Both clearly have been schooled in the ‘promise ‘em anything’ politics of the two political parties. If you’re a true fiscal conservative like me, there is no difference in promising new programs or new tax cuts when you have a billion dollar shortfall. We can’t afford either one until we get spending under control.”

Cutler said that all of the candidates for governor have been besieged with questionnaires from interest groups looking for commitments for increased state appropriations or new tax breaks. “I have said the same thing to every single group,” Cutler said. “I want to lower taxes as much as anyone, but the next governor is going to be confronted with massive budget shortfalls, and under those circumstances I have not made – and will not make – any commitments to any special interests. We need to get our financial house in order.”

Cutler said that LePage is making promises that he will only be able to keep by cutting the next biennium budget by almost 40% from current levels, and that Maine people have a right to know how he plans to accomplish that.

“I am offering Maine people the only responsible choice this year when it comes to fiscal responsibility,” Cutler said, “I have said that we will implement zero-based budgeting across the entire state government – all spending and all tax expenditures. Maine’s tax structure needs a complete overhaul, but before we pursue that we have to demonstrate to Maine people that we have spending under control.”

Cutler, who served as associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said that serious change – real budget and spending reform – is hard work. “Paul LePage talks the talk, but I’ve walked the walk. I’ve cut back massive government spending programs. He increased spending on municipal services Waterville by 22%, while using millions of dollars from state taxpayers to balance the books,” Cutler said. “When you’re governor, there’s no one left to bail you out.”

STATE BUDGET GAP: $800,000,000

“2012-2013 Shortfall Preliminary Estimates,” Office of Fiscal and Program Review, 7/27/10

DIF&W FUNDING PROMISE: $12,000,000

“Candidates Offer More Opinions on Outdoor Activities,” Downeast Magazine, 9/28/10
Data: www.downeast.com/georges-outdoor-news/2010/september/gubernatorial-candidates

NO ESTATE TAXES: $63,600,000

“Roundtable — Five Candidates,” Maine Ahead, September Issue
www.maineahead.com/roundtable-five-gubernatorial-candidates-talk-business/
Data: http://www.maine.gov/legis/ofpr/compendium/09compend/2009compendium.htm#EstateTax

REDUCING SIN TAXES BY 25%: $66,000,000

http://lepageforme.com/issues/ [REMOVED BY LEPAGE CAMPAIGN AFTER DEBATE]
Data:http://www.maine.gov/legis/ofpr/compendium/09compend/2009compendium.htm#EstateTax

REDUCTION OF AUTO EXCISE TAX BY 25%: $100,000,000

http://lepageforme.com/issues/ [REMOVED BY LEPAGE CAMPAIGN AFTER DEBATE]
Data: Email from Maine Revenue Services

NO TAXES ON PUBLIC OR PRIVATE PENSION INCOME: $109,386,000

“Roundtable — Five Candidates,” Maine Ahead, September Issue
www.maineahead.com/roundtable-five-gubernatorial-candidates-talk-business/
Data: LD 319: “An Act to Exempt Retirement and Pension Income from the State Income Tax”

5% FLAT TAX — CORPORATE & FAMILY: $1,018,000,000

www.lepage2010.com/issues/taxes/
Data: Email from Maine Revenue Services

The Portland Press Herald published a profile of Eliot Cutler. The profile discusses, at length, Eliot’s public and private sector experience. It also features remarks from those who know and have worked with Eliot. Leon Billings, with whom Eliot worked under Ed Muskie, said of Eliot:

” I think Eliot is capable of making the kinds of decisions and recommendations to the Legislature that will move toward [addressing Maine's structural problems].”

You can read the full article here.

The Morning Sentinel published an op-ed by Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine director George Smith in which Smith credits Eliot Cutler as the only candidate offering an honest assessment of Maine’s current fiscal situation and the need to address spending cuts, tax reform, and economic growth:

We’ll get the job [tax reform] done , he says, only with a “statewide conversation” — but we can’t even get that far until “we prove spending can be controlled.” Hence his conclusion that taxes can’t be reduced in the next state budget.

Cutler may never be governor… but he’s doing us a favor — and raising the level of debate in this election — by talking the truth.

You can read the full article here.

Tony Buxton, a prominent attorney and longtime Democratic Party strategist, penned an op-ed for the Portland Press Herald named “Like some other election years, 2010 tears up the book“ that make a compelling case for comparing 2010 to the last two times Maine elected an Independent governors. Every voter should pay attention to his closing line:

“This history should also teach us that, especially in years of electoral volatility, we should focus not on predictions of political victories, but on the capabilities of candidates to win the changes the public so clearly desires.”

You can read the full article here.

Eliot Cutler, along with Democrat Libby Mitchell, Republican Paul LePage and Independents Shawn Moody and Kevin Scott, participated in the YNETV Youth in Politics gubernatorial debate. The video is available below:

PORTLAND, Maine – Independent candidate for governor Eliot Cutler said that Maine’s creative economy is a key to our future success and that he will provide the leadership to put this economic engine to work in generating prosperity.

“The creative economy is not just about the visual and performing arts, it is about the unique and innovative ideas, technologies and output of virtually every sector of our economy,” Cutler said. “It is the underpinning of virtually all we produce in Maine.”

Cutler said that Maine’s economy today — creative or otherwise — is stagnant, whether we are talking about our largest industry, tourism, or our farming, fishing, lumber, paper and textile industries. “We are providing neither the necessary impetus to grow more of what we have, nor the incentives to attract new investment,” he said.

Cutler said he will work to leverage Maine’s most valuable competitive assets — our unique people, our pristine natural environment and our creative and educational infrastructure — to help make Maine the comeback state of the decade. He outlined the following strategies to support the state’s creative economy:

1. BUILDING THE MAINE BRAND: Whether it is our lobster, our blueberries, our native raised and spun wool and wool products, our great restaurants, our Maine-built boats or our Maine-inspired and produced art, music, literature and films, we will aggressively build and promote a single unified Maine brand and strategically seek markets for our unique and sustainable products across the globe.
2. PROMOTING YEAR-ROUND TOURISM: We will promote not only the year-round beauty and excitement of our natural environment and the traditional recreational and eco-tourism activities it offers –hiking, biking, boating, fishing, hunting, skiing, snowmobiling, sledding, golf, leaf-peeping, maple-sugaring, apple picking, whale watching—to name but a sample, but also will draw cultural tourists from January through December to our outstanding museums, galleries and places of historical interest, to our destination arts and food venues, to our local farms and farmers’ markets, and to our festivals and fairs.
3. PUBLIC SUPPORT OF THE ARTS: We will actively foster the creative communities and living conditions that attract and sustain artists and creative entrepreneurs by: a) establishing visible arts districts in cities and towns throughout the state; b) protecting affordable work spaces and housing; c) making available affordable individual healthcare coverage; and d) working with private partners, such as banks, credit unions and foundations, to assure favorable financing options for creative endeavors, including the bricks and mortar needed to house them.
4. EDUCATION AT BOTH THE HIGH SCHOOL AND POST-SECONDARY LEVEL: We will ensure that education powers the creative economy engine by providing an education in the arts, from pre-K through high school, and an education for the arts that produces the creative entrepreneurs—artists, performers, writers, film makers, designers, architects, boat builders, chefs, artisanal food producers, vintners, and the many other creative small business entrepreneurs who make Maine a magnet for year-round tourism, who create the products for our global markets, and whose rising tide will help lift the Maine-built boats of us all.

Cutler said he will propose the creation of an arts magnet high school to do for the creative arts what the magnet school in Limestone is doing for science and technology education with such remarkable success. In addition, he will foster and encourage the creative economy missions of not only Maine’s colleges and universities, but also non-traditional schools such as the world-renowned Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle. These institutions can promote creative endeavor for its own sake and can help mobilize Maine’s arts, culture, and creative entrepreneurs and institutions in the service of economic development.

“For too long, our vision of ‘the arts’ has been through a narrow lens that relegates creative endeavor to a rarified niche of academia, museums, galleries and performance halls. It is time to unleash the full potential of our growing creative economy to create jobs, opportunities and incomes in Maine,” Cutler said.

The Bangor Daily News posts an article on a forum held in Brewer by the Maine Forest Products Council, Maine Pulp and Paper Association, Forest Resources Association, and the Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine. Eliot Cutler was joined by Republican candidate Paul LePage. Cutler outlined plans to encourage economic development by lowering energy costs for small business.

[Cutler discussed plans for an] Energy Finance Authority that would negotiate low-cost deals with Canadian power producers and work with the private sector to expand Maine’s energy infrastructure. In particular, Cutler said the state needs to expand natural gas lines up the major river corridors.

“When we do that we are going to reawaken the mills all over the state of Maine and we can do that with an Energy Finance Authority,” Cutler said. “And that’s an awful lot more sensible public investment than plastering the state with Pine Tree Zones.”

You can read the full article here.