Thorough, But Not Enough

Kerry Leichtman, Camden and Rockport tax assessor and newly appointed member of the Real Estate Property Tax Relief Task Force, shares his first impressions of the Progress and Poverty Institute‘s interim report. While Kerry found the data to be thoughtfully presented and thoroughly analyzed, he believes further study is needed to fully understand the core issue.  As he puts it, the central question remains—do property owners simply dislike paying taxes, or as he suspects, are many genuinely unable to afford their tax bills.  Podcast hosts, Rebecca Lambert and Amanda Campbell discuss the key issues Kerry believes the task force should prioritize as it enters its second year of work.     

Transcript

Welcome everyone to Potholes & Politics: Local Maine Issues from A to Z. I'm your co-host, Rebecca Lambert, and with me as always is my amazing colleague, Amanda Campbell. 

Good morning, Rebecca. Thanks everybody for listening. 

Yes, thank you to all of our listeners. We really appreciate your support. With the LPC elections underway, our last two episodes featured current members of the LPC, both appointed and elected officials, who were willing to share what the experience of serving on the LPC has been like for them. They also shared some great advice to those who have been thinking about serving but may have not have sought out the nomination. The deadline for nominations was due on June 4th, and key municipal officials should be receiving the ballots soon if they aren't already in those inboxes. A big thank you goes out to those of you who have been nominated to serve on this exciting committee. Don't forget, there's always a write-in option, and to find out more information about that, please contact Laura Ellis, and we will put her contact information into the transcript. Speaking of Laura, a big thank you should go out to her as well. She plays a major role administering the LPC elections and knows everything there is to know about the Legislative Policy Committee, so she's amazing, and thank you to Laura. 

Yes, thank you, Laura. Woo-hoo. 

If you haven't had a chance to listen to our previous episodes, they are available now for your listening pleasure on whichever platform you use for podcasts. And as always, please consider liking and subscribing to our podcast so you'll always be notified of our latest episode. 

This week, we are shifting our focus back to the Real Estate Property Tax Relief Task Force since they have begun the second round of interim meetings. Since we last talked about this, there has been a change-up in task force membership, and we've invited Kerry Leichtman, who was appointed by the Speaker of the House for the seat representing assessors. He has replaced Nick Cloutier, who is now the city manager of Waterville. Welcome Kerry, and thanks so much for agreeing to be on our podcast. 

Oh, hi. Good morning. Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this. 

So, to start off, could you tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself and what your first impressions are of the task force's first meeting for this interim? 

Sure. I'm an assessor. I've been Rockport's assessor since 2010 and Camden's since 2014, so I continue to work for both towns. I've been involved in legislative, creating legislation and such for, for quite a while now, both on my own and then later as a member of the LPC. By the way, thank you, Laura. And, and so I've been active in, in assessor organizations and in legislation. My first impressions of the task force are that it's, it's an incredible array of people with varied backgrounds and perspectives and points of view, and ideas, and it's been interesting to be a part of it. I think that the people on the panel ask good questions. They bring and, and are not shy about expressing their expertise. So, it's, it's been very positive. But I was watching it from afar before when Nick was in my chair and it's everything that it appears to be, which is a wide-open conversation about the need for tax reform. 

At the first meeting, which was held on May 18th, there was a lot of information provided by the Progress and Poverty Institute on the data they collected through their research. As a reminder to our listeners, the institute was tasked with determining the sources of problems with the current system of property taxation. In addition, they were directed to look at who is most negatively impacted by the current system. Kerry, do you have any thoughts to share on their presentation from that meeting? 

I do, and it's mixed. I thought that the Progress and Poverty report, I thought that was-- they were very thorough on what they reported on. I forget his last name, Steven, the fellow who spoke to us on the 18th, was well-presented and had lots of good information, and obviously, has a good grasp of his subject and the data they came up with. But I had so- I had some problems with what they didn't address and some conclusions that they came to, that I don't think are a valid reflection of what's going on. I'll, I'll start with that. He didn't seem to portray that the problem is as deep as we're all, we've all been talking about. I even got the impression that, that he thought people were complaining, when maybe they just don't like paying taxes rather than they're having trouble paying taxes, and there's a, a very good distinction between the, the two there. And I, and I think one of the reasons was, and I brought this up at, at the meeting, was they focused on, when they were crunching their numbers, they seemed to focus on mean averages rather than median numbers. And, and everything we do assessing when we're talking valuation, we're always dealing with median, yet he was using mean. And to give you an example of how big a difference it is between the two, I did a calculation in Camden that, the median property value in Camden was $661,900. The mean was $200,000 higher than that. So, that's quite a difference, and I, and I think that's what led to them thinking that it, it's less of a problem than, than we've been portraying it as. So that bothered me. The statute - LD 1770, calls for looking at other states and seeing what they're doing, what their property relief programs might be and, and, and everything and, and they did very, very little of that. I tried to do that on my own about a year ago, when on the LPC we formed our own property tax relief task force or working group, and I wanted to do that research and bring it to the group, but it's a lot to do, and I wasn't able. I just don't have that kind of time. But I-- my interest in knowing what other states are doing is, is, is been long-term, and it's shared by other people on the committee, so I thought that was a, either a misstep or I don't know why they didn't do it, but, but they didn't, and I'd like to see that change. So while I thought what they did do was thorough, I don't think it was enough.

So at the end of the first interim, , group of meetings at the end of 2025, the task force produced a interim report, which became law at the end of the legislative session, and part of it created a working group to review the tree growth current use program, specifically from the perspective of the assessors. And in addition, during the PPI presentation, they reported that in a survey to assessors as part of their research and in conjunction with MMA, the number one free response from the assessors was related to a regular review of the current use and exemption programs. Can you tell our listeners why this kind of program review is important? 

Sure. Sure. Well, they're state programs that are administered locally by the municipality, but it also, they're also they're tax relief programs for the participants, but for the people who are not in the program, they have to pick up those other people's share of the tax burden. So when somebody gets an exemption, and let's just talking, you know, round numbers, somebody gets an exemption and, and their, their taxable value was, was a million dollars, that say somewhere between fifteen and seventeen thousand dollar tax amount that is not gonna be realized has to be picked up by somebody else. So, and the same thing with current use. Current use gives steep discounts on land values and therefore land taxes in exchange for something that the state wants produced. In terms of tree growth, it's for raw materials to the wood products industry. So, you get a very low, acreage rate, like in Camden and Rockport, where our excess acreage rate is five thousand dollars an acre. In tree growth, it's three hundred dollars an acre, about. That's an average. So it's, it's quite a steep discount. And, and to earn it, people are supposed to be harvesting tree, managing their forest and harvesting trees and, and unfortunately, it's not that well abided by. But anyway, so all of these programs take tax money away from the municipalities, and so it's important that we make sure that the municipalities and the state are getting in exchange what they are supposed to get for that. So yeah, a, a good amount of focus should be paid on, on both of those current use and exemption programs. 

What about when you talk to other assessors across the states? What are their thoughts on the work of the task force thus far? 

Well, they're looking forward to the results. Everybody's paying attention. And, and I think there's a, a healthy mix of optimism and cynicism, attached to it. But, people are watching and, and they understand that or are hopeful that some good changes are coming their way. Because don't forget, I mean, we're the, we're the people that face the taxpayers on a daily basis. And, and even if, for example, in Rockport, the, the budget went down this year by almost 1%, but the schools in the county went up. And so, we're-- I'm still gonna face the criticism of rising taxes even though the municipality is not responsible. So, we assessors are the-- We're, we're the tip of the spear, and we recognize that and, and wouldn't mind a little relief. 

And so finally, this episode of the podcast will be published the same week as the second meeting of the task force. What are your expectations for this next meeting? And in addition, what are one or two things that you think are most important for the task force to be considering as they continue their work? 

Well, we've already talked about the two that I think are most important, which is current use , and exemptions. I'm pleased that the task force is spending so much energy and time on it, and I think it's worthy of that. And before this meeting, we were asked to submit ideas for what we thought the task force should be focusing on in the future. And I liked it. I mean, - everybody came in, chimed in with their expertise. And it's been fascinating. So I think at the meeting on the 18th, I think we'll find some direction and  that we're gonna pursue , in the upcoming meetings. So, it'll be an interesting meeting for sure. And I think you'll be there, Amanda, right? 

I will be there. And that meeting is this coming Wednesday on the 10th, at 10:00 AM, and we'll put the link in the show notes just in case this podcast gets released in time. And if it doesn't, you'll still be able to go back and watch the recording of the meeting and catch up on everything that the task force has done. 

So this will do it for this episode of Potholes and Politics. Thank you again, Kerry, for sharing your insights with our listeners. We really appreciate your expertise. 

Thanks for having me. Be on the lookout for the much-anticipated legislative takeover edition of the June Maine Town and City Magazine. It's almost ready to hit the press. This issue will include the new laws article, the updated information on MMA's platform, an update on studies, and a housing update. As always, feel free to reach out to any of us on the team with any questions or comments. 

Yes, you know we're always happy to hear from our members about any topic or question, including what you might like to hear more about. Off session, we love to have members as guests to discuss topics that are important to you and we are always open to suggestions for content. And most of all, we hope you have found this information helpful and thank you so much for listening. We appreciate you all. 

Thank you all. Have a great week.

Laura Ellis – lellis@memun.org

Real Estate Property Tax Relief Task Force webpage