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“Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.”

Doug Larson

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Have you noticed that when political power changes, nothing else seems to change to any meaningful extent? I have seen tax breaks that did nothing but increase taxes. I have seen tax shifts that supposedly were tax breaks and yet my tax bill still increased. Now that we have experienced a political power shift in Augusta and Washington will it really make any difference in the long run?

Recently Gov. LePage stated he wanted to do away with Maine’s income tax and raise the sales tax in order to make up for the lost revenue of the income tax. Sounds great, but is it nothing more than a tax shift and ultimately probably a tax increase as well?

LePage’s proposal reveals what political shuffles politicians will do once they either gain or lose power in their positions. What’s really funny here is didn’t the Democrats in Augusta propose something similar when they were in power in Augusta and the Republicans led a drive to defeat it? Of course, now the Democrats oppose shifting away from the income tax to increasing the sales tax. Can someone tell me if we have hypocrites on both sides of the aisles in Augusta?

I really don’t expect anything different in Washington either, although the Republicans now control both the House and Senate. I can bet that Democrats will want to return to the old rules that Congress had on filibusters now that they have lost power. At the same time, our president will call for cooperation and the only way that will happen is if the Republicans do what he wants. In other words, I expect that Congress will finally start to pass legislation and I fully expect that President Obama will veto each and every one of them.

I seriously doubt that the Republicans will do anything significant about President Obama’s executive order on immigration, which tells me very few people in our nation’s capital know what “illegal” really means. I am a first generation American and I thank God my parents came through Ellis Island legally.

Now I can get to Windham, about which I have had several phone calls regarding what the town councilors are up to. Coming as no surprise to me, some of the calls have been about the so-called holiday lights, which would never have happened if Christmas hadn’t come along. It’s not up to me to explain how the town councilors make their decisions but the biggest complaint about the Christmas lighting coincided with the decision to shut off some street lights. To make it perfectly clear, it wasn’t the town councilors who decided to shut off some streetlights in Windham but rather someone on a committee who must have jumped the gun figuring out that they had the power to do that. In typical Windham fashion, citizens received the two-foot shuffle from those governing us so who knows how it happened. Then along comes $30,000 or so of holiday lights along with, I presume, the electric bill that goes with them.

Then I noticed an item on last Tuesday’s Windham Town Council agenda (which was later postponed to Dec. 16 due to weather) to allow cluster subdivisions in all residential zoning districts. This was proposed for some areas in South Windham by a previous council. It was defeated by a citizens group that didn’t want cluster subdivisions in their neighborhoods. I have no idea how the vote will go but we will see who stabs who in the back.

And if that is not enough I hope that Windham residents paying property taxes are going to be happy with the increases that I already see coming. The Cumberland County commissioners are going to raid our wallets for even more cash while the RSU 14 School Committee has proposed a tax increase for Windham property owners while decreasing the tax burden on Raymond residents.

Lane Hiltunen of Windham wonders why the School Committee would want to reduce taxes for Raymond.