AUGUSTA – A Republican lawmaker from York has submitted a bill to allow Peaks Island to break away from Portland and form its own town. A similar secession effort four years ago was narrowly defeated in a vote that fell on partisan lines.

This time, advocates of secession sense opportunity.

Portland’s legislative delegation has lost much of its clout. In 2007, Glenn Cummings of Portland opposed the measure while serving as speaker of the House.

Another difference: Republicans — many of whom come from small, rural towns — now have majority control of the House and Senate.

Republicans may be more supportive of secession because they value the principles of self-determination and tax fairness, said Rep. Windol Weaver, R-York, who submitted the secession bill this week after learning that Portland legislators had refused to do so.

“I believe Peaks Island is putting a lot more money into Portland than they are getting out of it,” Weaver said. “They would be better off keeping the money and doing it themselves.”

Weaver supported the secession bill in 2007 as a member of the Legislature’s State and Local Government Committee, which has jurisdiction over the issue. The bill died on a 7-5 committee vote. The only support came from Republicans.

Rep. David Cotta, R-China, the current House chairman of the committee, said he doesn’t believe the issue is a partisan one.

“It really comes down to money,” he said. “That case will still have to be made that secession is feasible.”

Peaks Island, the most populated island in Casco Bay, is about three miles from the mainland and has a year-round population of fewer than 1,000 people.

Secessionists complain that property owners on Peaks pay about $6 million in property taxes annually while Portland spends only half that amount on services for the island.

Sen. Joseph Brannigan, D-Portland, said the bill may serve as a test of the Legislature’s support for other municipal efforts to secede or disorganize.

He said those efforts would take the state in the wrong direction, because there already are too many governmental units to deliver public services efficiently.

“I just think that 500 towns is expensive and we need to come together more than breaking up,” Brannigan said.

He acknowledged that Portland is vulnerable because it has lost so much influence in the Legislature.

Russell Edwards, 77, a Peaks Island secession leader who visited the State House on Thursday, said he was encouraged by the new faces in the Legislature.

“Portland doesn’t have the control it has had up there in the last few sessions,” he said.

Secessionists will still face some significant obstacles.

For one, Michael Richards, the outspoken island resident who led the secession effort in 2007 and until recently was chairman of the Peaks Island Council, is not involved this time.

Richards said the city should be given another chance rectify the situation. He said secessionists also must build more political support on the island.

Richards said a major governmental change like secession should have the support of at least two-thirds of the voters. In the last vote — an advisory referendum in 2006 — 58 percent of voters supported secession.

It is unclear whether state law even allows the Legislature to take up the issue at this point.

The law says the Legislature can take up a secession bill only at the end of a long process that includes the submission of a petition to the city or town, at least one public hearing, an advisory vote held by the municipality, and a six-month period in which secessionists and municipal leaders try to resolve their differences, possibly with help from a mediator.

Edwards said there is no need to go through that whole process again. He said his group only needs to update its budget figures and continue where it left off four years ago.

Even before the Legislature can take up the merits of the bill, it will have to decide whether the secessionists have followed the law, said Cotta, the committee co-chair. “If there is a formal process and it hasn’t been followed, then you have issues from day one.”

MaineToday Media State House Writer Tom Bell can be contacted at 699-6261 or at:

tbell@mainetoday.com

 

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