FARMINGTON – Four state legislative candidates participated in a debate Wednesday night at the University of Maine Farmington.
Sponsored by the Farmington-Wilton Chamber of Commerce, the format included five issue questions for each district’s candidates, and time for rebuttals and opening and closing statements. Each candidate had three minutes to speak on the Palesky tax-cap proposal, regionalization, the bear-baiting referendum, Dirigo Health and transportation.
The four candidates deviated little on the issues of the tax-cap bill or the bear-baiting ban. All said they would be voting against them in November.
“When a fiscal conservative stands before you and says it’s bad, you can believe it’s bad,” said Lance Harvell, Republican challenger for the District 89 seat, about the Palesky bill.
His Democratic opponent, Janet Mills, said she is committed to bringing tax relief to the people of Maine. This tax cap, though, is too broad and will provide tax relief to the “Rockefellers on the coast, the Maine Mall and Wal-Mart,” not to those who really need it, she said.
Republican Roger Lambert of Strong is running against incumbent Democrat Thomas Saviello of Wilton in District 90. He is a master Maine guide and sixth-generation Mainer.
“In Maine we are hunter-gatherers,” he said concerning the bear-baiting issue. He said he wants to defend Maine’s way of life.
Saviello said that if the proposal passes, businesses stand to lose up to $63 million in revenue from bear hunting and associated spending. A forester with an advanced degree, Saviello said he trusts the expert opinions of biologists from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, calling them some of the best experts on black bears in the country.
They all agreed in varying degrees that the Dirigo Health Plan is a good idea, and is not yet perfected.
It needs time to “ramp up,” Saviello said, likening it to a new paper machine that takes 18 months to produce quality paper.
More contentious perhaps was the issue of transportation. Lambert vociferously supported an east-west highway. Mills opposed it, saying the current proposal is a limited access road that would bypass Farmington and other towns.
Saviello focused his comments on local transportation issues, saying he has worked in the Legislature to obtain $25,000 to study a transportation system between Farmington and Wilton.
Harvell opposes indexing gas taxes to allow for inflation; Maine is only one of three states that does so, he said.
In response to Lambert’s proposal of a regional airport with daily flights, Mills said voters defeated such a proposal in 1984.
Also participating Wednesday night were three candidates for the District 18 Senate seat. Republican incumbent Chandler Woodcock of Farmington defended his positions against challengers Spike Carey, Democrat of Belgrade, and Clyde Dyar, independent of Mount Vernon.
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