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Lepage Seeks Control of Legal Settlement Funds Over Standard & Poor's Credit Rating Practices

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LePage seeks to wrest control of millions from MillsThe governor orders the transfer of $21.5 million from a lawsuit settlement out of an account controlled by the attorney general.BY EDWARD D. MURPHY STAFF WRITER

 Response to Article Above:

In this layperson's opinion Governor LePage, once again exhibits  confusion about the role of government and the rights of individuals. Funds derived from a lawsuit belong to those hurt by the action against which the lawsuit was brought. Such money is not the property of the state to spend for its own purposes. It is appropriate for the Attorney General to be in charge  of dispersing the funds to the intended recipients and inappropriate for the Governor to busy himself with such a task. The drama over who should be in charge of said task gives the appearance  of a Governor blinded by a lust for capital who believes that the lawsuit money is the property of the state and not of the victims of the crime.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

LePage resorts to a constitutional argument but only cares about the Maine Constitution when it suits him. In 2013 Lepage didn't mind signing a bill repugnant to the constitution that moved a short paragraph of fiscal information for which the constitution Article IX Section 14 mandates that it will accompany bond questions on the ballot but the 2013 statute Title 21-A, sections 651 orders that information to be placed somewhere outside the guard rail separating the voting area from the rest of the world. If the constitution were honored none of the bonds passed in the last election are ratifiable. All but one of those bonds are targeted to be channeled through state corporations which have come   into being by ignoring Article IV Part Third Section 14 of the Maine Constitution which prohibits the legislature from chartering corporations for state purposes.

In current legislation H.P. 166 concerning allocation of funds identified as a GOVERNORS BILL it states

State - Municipal Revenue Sharing 0020Initiative: Adjusts funding for municipal revenue sharing to bring allocations in line with changes in projected resources resulting from the implementation of a Maine capital investment credit and conformity with the United States Internal Revenue Code of 1986 as amended through December 31, 2014.

That figure is in parenthesis ($345,149)  indicating an amount taken out of Municipal Revenue Sharing to the benefit of a Maine capital investment credit- which I am guessing is the Expanded and Improved Seed Capital "refundable tax credit" which is for an up to 60% refund of private investments. A refundable tax credit means that if no taxes are owed, we taxpayers owe the private investor a cash payout for that up to 60% refund on his investment.




There is also a 1977 statute, §5202-A.Small business investment companies exempt, which as far as I have been able to determine has not been repealed- it grants blanket tax exemption to investment companies investing in Maine- so what does that make the Seed Capital Tax Credit- a "refundable tax credit" of not a direct cash transfer from taxpayer pockets to private investor's bank accounts?



So the trend seems to be to rob the individual and the common welfare (municipal revenue sharing) for the benefit of private investors and sell it to the public as "job creation" and all of this channeled through The Department of Administrative and Financial Services.

I am just a layman but I am telling it as it appears to me. If the money is left under the control of the Attorney General, it has more of a chance of being used to the benefit of those hurt by Standard & Poor's credit rating practices. If the administration controls it, the money will likely be used to the benefit of private investors sharing in the corporate state's capitalistic schemes.

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