Bliss bill would outlaw idling
    State Rep. Lawrence Bliss (D-South Portland) has submitted a clean air bill to the Maine State Legislature. The bill, titled “An Act to Establish Clean Air – No Idling Zones,” was referenced to the Transportation Committee recently.
The bill establishes the zones, with a dual purpose of protecting public health and the environment by reducing tailpipe emissions and conserving fuel by restricting the unnecessary operation of motor vehicle engines.
    Idling produces unnecessary pollution that contributes to climate change and smog, causes health problems, wastes expensive fuel, and contributes to our dependence on foreign fuels, according to Bliss.
    “Over 13 percent of Maine children suffer from asthma,” Bliss said. “It’s the highest rate in New England. Vehicle emissions can trigger asthma attacks and other respiratory and cardiovascular health episodes. Vehicle emissions contribute air toxics, as well as nitrogen oxides, which react with sunlight to form ozone pollution. We should do what we can to minimize this clear risk to our health and our economy.”
    The bill establishes as “Clean Air – No Idling” zones areas within 100 feet of Maine State Ferry Service loading areas; within 100 feet of state-controlled drawbridges and within 100 feet of a public building that are designated as areas where smoking is prohibited.
    The bill provides exceptions for on-duty emergency vehicles, and vehicles with refrigeration units requiring engine power.

Eberle offers three environmental bills       
Rep. Jane Eberle, D-South Portland, submitted three environmental bills recently that would help fight milfoil, promote municipal energy conservation, and improve lake water quality by restricting phosphorus use.
    “I am excited about these three bills and their potential to protect our invaluable natural resources,” Eberle said. “Preventing phosphorus and invasive plants from degrading our lakes and streams, and reducing the carbon going into our air will help Maine keep its environment and economy strong and its citizens healthy.”
    Eberle testified in front of the Legislature’s Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee on LD 153, which would streamline the milfoil sticker program by combining it with boat registration. In-state residents would receive only one sticker that is a combination boat registration/milfoil sticker. Out-of-state residents would still have separate stickers.
    The program would create savings and generate revenue to help fund the invasive plant prevention programs that have been extremely successful in Maine due to the participation of lake associations and volunteers partnering with the Department of Environmental Protection and Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
    LD 645, An Act to Promote Municipal Energy Conservation, would establish funding for grants to municipalities in order to identify energy conservation measures and improvements to municipal buildings and vehicle fleets. The bill would provide grants of up to $40,000 for five to 10 municipalities annually. Eberle presented the bill to the Utilities and Energy Committee, which has oversight over the state’s energy providers, and considers bills aimed at improving efficiency.
    The third bill, LD 587, would protect lake water by banning the sale or use of fertilizers that contain phosphorous for most household use. Phosphorous runoff has been linked to algae blooms, which can lead to decreased fish populations due to lack of oxygen in the water. Eberle presented the bill to the Natural Resources Committee, of which she is a member.

Dill seeks study of NH tax policy
    Rep. Cynthia Dill, D-Cape Elizabeth, challenged the Taxation Committee to address tax reform by conducting a bi-partisan study of the tax structure in New Hampshire, since the state is a constant point of reference in the debate on tax reform.
    “If there are things that New Hampshire is doing that we should be doing, we need to seriously consider them,” Dill said. “Otherwise, explode the New Hampshire myth.”
    New Hampshire is one of only two states in the nation with neither a broad-based income tax nor a significant sales tax. The other is Alaska. According to a report by Governing magazine, New Hampshire ranks 50th in the nation for overall tax burden, which measures state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income. Conversely, Maine ranks second in the nation, though the disparity between the neighboring states results in part from a disparity in per capita income. Whereas New Hampshire is ranked seventh in the nation, Maine is ranked 34th.
    “The best solution to lowering our tax burden may be raising the incomes of Mainers,” Dill said.
    The New Hampshire coast benefits from a close proximity to Boston and serves as a bedroom community to commuters with high-paying Massachusetts jobs. New Hampshire is also approximately half the geographic size of Maine, with fewer roads and rural communities to service for a similarly sized population.
    However, an increasingly tumultuous relationship between taxes and public education has called into question the sustainability of New Hampshire’s tax structure. After a 1999 Supreme Court decision challenged the state’s minimal contribution to public education, the New Hampshire Legislature had to assist localities with $900 million a year, nearly half of which had to come from new revenues, including a new state property tax.
   
Cap and trade comes to Maine?
    Maine lawmakers recently joined Governor Baldacci to support a broad new consensus plan to limit global warming causing CO2 emissions in Maine, crafted by what may have seemed liked an unlikely alliance between some of Maine’s largest commercial and industrial businesses and leading environmental advocacy groups.
    The coalition of business and environmental leaders worked with Baldacci, state lawmakers, and the Department of Environmental Protection to craft a bill that could make Maine one of the first states to take legislative action on the multi-state agreement to fight global warming, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, “RGGI” known as “Reggie”.
    According to Speaker of the House Glenn Cummings, the consensus between environmental and industrial leaders in Maine represents a breakthrough on the issue of global warming, and makes Maine a model for progress in the region and in the nation.
    In addition to Maine, nine other New England and Mid-Atlantic States have signed onto RGGI, including New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Maryland.
    The multi-state RGGI plan would cut emissions of the global warming pollutant CO2, by using a flexible market-based “cap and trade” system that would control the right to emit by setting an overall emissions cap, but would allow companies to trade carbon credits to meet their emission requirements.
    The free market system would provide flexibility to companies to reduce emissions in a cost-effective manner, while providing incentives by allowing more efficient plants to sell their allowances to plants that have trouble making reductions.
    The bill would use the revenue from the sale of the carbon allowances to create a trust fund that would invest the money in energy efficiency projects for both residential and commercial energy consumers, helping to lower long-term energy costs and make Maine more economically competitive.
    The consensus plan also includes a price “safety valve.” Under the new proposal, if the price of carbon allowances rises over five dollars per ton, any of the additional revenue would be returned directly to consumers through credits on their electricity bills, to ensure that the cost of electricity is not affected.
President Greg Sweetser of the Ski Maine Association, which operates several resorts and ski mountains, was one of the large commercial business leaders that joined the governor and Democratic and Republican lawmakers to announce support for the new consensus plan.
“The Maine ski industry contributes more than $300 million dollars to the Maine economy annually, as well as providing healthy, outdoor, winter recreation to tens of thousand of Maine skiers,” said Sweetser.  “Climate change obviously threatens our industry and we support legislation that is properly designed to mitigate climate change. This legislation, as presently written, is a step forward.”
The RGGI consensus bill is sponsored by Governor Baldacci, Rep. Koffman, Sen. Phil Bartlett, D-Gorham, and co-sponsored by a bi-partisan group of lawmakers.  The bill was referenced by the Legislature on Wednesday, and will have a public hearing in the coming weeks.