Jonathan Kilbourn

Democrat

Candidate’s Links:

Office Sought: Senator – District 34
Age: 62
Occupation: Environmental Business Consultant
Education: BA – Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
Family: Married, 2 Children (27 & 30)
Hometown: Kennebunk

Political experience

Public service has always been a part of my life. I served 6 years on the MSAD 71 School Board and 3 years on the Board of a Kennebunk Light & Power. As the founding Executive Director of a community organization, I developed local food systems and land conservation solutions. I serve on the York County Selective Service Board, and I am a volunteer at Citizens Climate Lobby promoting the Carbon Fee & Dividend. I volunteer for “No Place Like Home” a community based group helping the elderly. A founding member of the Solar Association of Maine, I have also worked in community development and affordable housing. My business experience is important to successful public service. I recently served as a Regional Vice President of a large, publicly-traded environmental & agricultural services company, Casella Resource Solutions, where I worked for 26 years, with a BA degree (concentration in Political Science).

Why are you running for office?

Something’s amiss in York County. We need a change, while insisting on open government, honest debate, and “nothing but the facts”. Let’s all hold our leaders accountable to bipartisan, respectful problem-solving. Our working families, the elderly and poor face many challenges, after 20 years of bank and corporate scandals and bailouts and a recession at the expense of our once strong middle class, while those the top have continued to prosper.
We have great people, too many of whom don’t see pathways to success. Hard-working Mainers should be able to provide for themselves and their families with good jobs. Let’s improve skilled trade training opportunities from high school through community colleges. Our youth should be able to work their way through college, graduate debt-free, and find great jobs here. Better childcare access, affordable housing, MaineCare expansion, restored revenue sharing and property tax relief will help secure the health of our people and families. With a comprehensive and honest look, we could even fix our welfare system, eliminating cheating, and helping all Mainers to live to their highest potential, not falling into a culture of dependency.
York County is in danger of becoming “North Boston”. Let’s conserve our “world class” natural resources (rivers, lakes, forests, soils and ocean) for our children, while we use them sustainably to grow our forestry, fishing, farming and tourism industries. We must pass a comprehensive renewable energy policy that addresses climate change, gets us local jobs and is developed, manufactured and installed in Maine.

• Income Tax: Gov. LePage would like to lower Maine’s income tax rate and eventually eliminate it, by increasing the state’s sales tax and expanding it across a broader range of goods and services. Do you support this proposal?
  • No

    The Governor would eliminate property tax relief for young families and seniors and offer tax breaks for Maine’s wealthiest. We should prioritize tax cuts for the middle class and seniors, lower property taxes and invest in schools, workers, communities and infrastructure. This would improve our economy and build our people. The State should restore revenue sharing to Towns to protect education, police, fire and public works, while stabilizing property taxes. Approaches like the “Better Deal for Maine” budget included comprehensive tax reform that would cut income taxes for most Mainers by hundreds of dollars, offered $120 million in Property Tax relief and $100 million for towns and schools, and was fully paid for. Let’s ensure that government programs are efficient, effective and accountable to control expenditures. Welfare should go to truly needy people to get the resources they need to succeed as contributing members of society to their best ability.

• Background Checks: Do you support background checks for privately sold firearms in Maine?
  • Yes

    Daily we are upset by violence in America. Violence is rooted in mental health, poverty, the impoverishment of our working/middle class, parental guidance, availability of guns, domestic abuse, media messages, anger, a sense of lack of power and lack of trust in our democratic process, and many other factors.
    Guns are not the root cause of our problem, but there is no doubt that they play a role. We are not well served by the facts in solving this problem. Congress stopped the CDC from conducting research into violence and the role of guns. With more knowledge we could surely develop gun policy that would be effective and acceptable to all, respecting rights to own guns. A common sense step is to conduct background checks, but a better solution would be to work together to better understand the causes of violence and develop comprehensive solutions based on good facts and data.

• Minimum Wage: In light of the ballot question facing voters this fall, do you support raising the state’s minimum wage from $7.50 to $12 an hour by 2020?
  • Yes

    A higher minimum wage will put more money in peoples’ pockets to spend locally and improve our economy. Working parents should be able to pay the rent, buy groceries, and meet their families’ basic needs. If you work full time on minimum wage you’ll take home about $12,000 per year ($300/week). The average tipped worker earns less than $9/hour, including tips. Why should we provide welfare and health care to workers to subsidize low wage business? Single parents shouldn’t have to work 3 jobs, neglecting their children to pay the bills. Over 90% of workers paid low wages are adults over 20 years old. They include jobs critical to our communities: firefighters, nursing assistants, pre-school teachers, daycare staff, home care workers looking after our seniors, and paramedics. Fair Wage is supported by the Maine Small Business Coalition.

• Marijuana: Do you support legalization of marijuana for recreational use?
  • Yes

    Marijuana should be legalized and regulated, but as with alcohol, its risks should not be minimized. Prohibition and the black market is not helping us in our efforts to minimize drug use or keeping marijuana out of the reach of our underage youth. Let’s focus on education and enforcement, as we do with alcohol. The revenues and taxes would be good for Maine’s economy and bad for organized drug cartels. There would be savings in costs of enforcement and prisons. Let’s focus on education, regulation, safety, mental health treatment, and protection of our young people. There are many things that informed citizens may choose to do that are not good for their health, but in the end, it is their right and responsibility, unless they harm others or their behavior imposes costs on society.

• Addiction/Overdoses: Do you believe the state is doing enough in response to the rise in heroin/opiate addiction and overdoses? If not, what else should be done?
  • No, in the short term we must reform medical prescription practice, and strengthen both law enforcement and treatment. Going door to door in Kennebunk, Wells, Berwick, North Berwick, Lebanon and Acton, I frequently hear personal stories of the toll that drug addiction and drug related crime is taking. 272 people died of drug overdoses in Maine in 2015. About 25,000 Mainers want substance abuse treatment and don’t have it. We need access to health care and addiction treatment centers. York County officials and York County Shelter Programs Inc. are launching a detox and treatment center in Alfred, which is a good start.

    In the long term, the issue of drug use and abuse requires a wholesale review in the United States and Maine. Over 30 years it has cost $1 trillion. Profits go to international drug cartels and terrorists. Over 2 million are in prisons for drug violations. We have the world’s largest prison population. A retired Maine State Trooper said to me earlier this year that decriminalization makes sense, “I would like to say that I’ve lost my last trooper fighting the War on Drugs”. If we maintain our present policies, how can we expect different results?