A long-lost Facebook post first raised my interest in LD1781, “An Act to Encourage New Major Investments in Shipbuilding Facilities and the Preservation of Jobs”. It caught my attention because it suggested (or maybe actually said) a Legislator had repeated that mindless and shopworn “Corporate Welfare” talking point. A search of Maine media coverage of LD 1781, showed headlines in guest columns and letters to the editor in several Maine newspapers that all repeated that “Corporate Welfare” talking point.

Those letters were remarkably similar if not quite identical. Even the protest signs and opposition testimony followed the same template, sometimes rearranging the order of the points. Those were:

1. Tax breaks are “corporate welfare.”

2. BIW is owned by General Dynamics and does not need assistance.

3. The value of the package was cited at $60 million, that is the 20- year value of a $3 million per year tax reduction.

4. The General Dynamics CEO received $21 million in compensation

“last year,” which was sometime between 2013 and 2017, depending on the specific letter.

5. General Dynamics bought back $14.4 billion of its own stock (or $13.7 billion, or $12 billion).

6. General Dynamics is the fifth largest Department of Defense contractor and has $ 31 billion in revenue, four times that of Maine. Another writer claimed $60 billion.

7. Maine could not “afford” to “give” General Dynamics money which was needed for education, health care, and other priorities.

8. BIW should be building solar panels, windmills and high-speed trains, not warships.

9. Maine needs the money for healthcare, education, combatting climate change, and feeding our starving children.

Some “testimony” was creative, claiming BIW was responsible for climate change, that the sonar used by its ships were killing Maine children, and that stock buybacks were responsible for the economic stagnation over the last eight years. One writer urged that Maine or the city of Bath seize BIW and sell it to a private entity. Another recommended taxing the machinery as well as the real estate at BIW. Yet another asserted that defense spending returned less than half as many dollars to the local economy as spending on education and health.

That LD 1781 passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities is evidence that our Legislature was unpersuaded by the templated opposition to the bill. Readers will make individual assessments of whether the opposition arguments were as mindless as they were repetitive. What is not a matter of opinion that Maine is one of the highest tax and least business friendly states in America. General Dynamics is a sophisticated contractor, not married to building ships in Bath and the corporation will not subsidize BIW from their other businesses. If taxation in Maine drives the BIW overhead high enough that the facility cannot compete with yards in other states, General Dynamics will move existing work and stop spending the money to write losing proposals for Bath. Four or five thousand jobs will be lost. There will be no future for BIW unless another buyer is enticed with much larger tax incentives.

Our Legislature made a rational decision and rejected the nonsense opposition to LD 1781. We all owe thanks to legislators for supporting this bill and putting the health of Maine’s economy ahead of pandering to a noisy, mindless rabble whose motives are beyond my understanding and, I would propose, beyond their own.

Another View is written on a rotating basis by a member of a group of Midcoast citizens that meet to discuss issues they think are of public interest.