GEORGETOWN — After weeks of avoiding media inquiries, State Treasurer Bruce Poliquin addressed questions about enrollment of his Georgetown property in a tree growth program that detractors argue gives the state official inappropriate tax breaks. Poliquin addressed the issue during a Capitol for a Day event Thursday night in Madison.

Scrutiny of Poliquin’s enrollment in the state’s Tree Growth program has come largely from the Maine’s Majority, a group critical of Gov. Paul LePage’s administration. Maine’s Majority distributed footage of the Madison meeting.

In that video, a woman asks Poliquin if he plans to release the forestry management plan that landowners are required to submit to benefit from the program’s tax break, which allows property tax assessments for enrolled lots to be based on the productivity value of the forest rather than the fair market value of the land.

Watch the footage here:

In general, especially for valuable coastal property, the program allows forested land to be taxed at a lower rate, based on the wood type of the lot, if that land is managed for commercial tree harvests.

Chris Korzen, executive director of Maine’s Majority, said Friday that the group is planning to deliver a petition with more than 1,000 signatures to Poliquin’s office this week, asking the treasurer to release the management documents, which the Maine Forest Service (MFS) does not consider public documents.

According to a 2011 presentation on the Tree Growth program from the MFS, that plan would include an assessment of the property and conditions, recommendations for harvesting forest products from the property, cost and revenue estimates, and guidelines to evaluate compliance with the management plan in 10 years.

Critics have pointed out an apparent contradiction in Poliquin’s enrollment in the Tree Growth program and a deed restriction with The Nature Conservancy prohibiting the commercial cutting of trees on his Georgetown property.

But full-scale logging operations are not required by the program. In fact, no timber harvesting is required at all, according to David Ledoux, director of the Maine Revenue Service’s property tax division.

By law, qualifying land could include any forested land covering more than 10 acres on which “forest products that have commercial value” are harvested or could be harvested.

In a Maine Revenue Service bulletin on the tax law, those forest products are identified as: “logs, pulpwood, veneer, bolt wood, wood chips, stud wood, poles, pilings, biomass, fuel wood, Christmas trees, maple syrup, nursery products used for ornamental purposes, wreaths, bough material or cones or other seed products.”

Ledoux said there are no minimum dollar or raw material requirements that a participating landowner must meet.

The 2011 MFS presentation on the project indicates that there is also no requirement for the frequency of harvests, indicating that landowners “do not have to harvest every year, every 10 years, or a certain amount of wood.”

At the Thursday Capitol for a Day meeting in Madison, Poliquin did not respond to whether he would release the management plan, commenting instead on political aspects of the scrutiny, which he characterized as “taking shots” at the current administration.

“When it comes to my tree growth lot, I am one of 23,000 tree growth lots in the state of Maine. Those lots total 11 million acres. Now, my lot is 10 acres,” Poliquin said, “so I appreciate very much the question and can understand why folks are uncomfortable that we are changing the culture in Augusta but we are going to continue to do it, undeterred, and folks can take shots at us if they wish.”

The comments Thursday were Poliquin’s first in response to the accusations that his Tree Growth program participation contradicts with deed restrictions since Maine’s Majority alleged that the treasurer avoided an estimated $5,000 in property taxes to the town, lowering the taxable value of the property by more than $1 million.

LePage, who was also a part of the Thursday forum, defended the treasurer.

“The tree growth law allows people who have land to put it into a management plan,” LePage said. “ The responsibility of the community is to see that the people who benefit from the plan are abiding by their plan.”

As the documents are considered private by the Maine Forest Service and require town approval, only the town assessor has access to those plans.

“And as the governor, the town in which Mr. Poliquin’s land is located has not contacted me that he is in violation of the tree growth plan,” LePage said.

Poliquin did not return messages from The Times Record left at his home and mobile numbers last week, prior to a Georgetown selectmen’s meeting where the three- member Board of Selectmen indicated that it would be unfair to single out the state official for scrutiny under the program.

Selectman Geoffrey Birdsall said last week that the wave of attention on Poliquin’s enrollment in the Tree Growth program “has indicated that it might behoove the town to evaluate all of the lots that are currently in the Tree Growth program to see if compliance is occurring.”

Birdsall said the board would discuss the 10 tree growth lots located in Georgetown at a future meeting.

In Augusta, legislators are putting forth two laws that they claim would tighten loopholes in the Tree Growth program. One, LD 1470, would allow for the Maine Forestry Service to conduct random surveys of Tree Growth parcels and another, LD 1138, would make numerous changes to the current law that legislators claim would close loopholes in the law.

¦ CRITICS HAVE POINTED OUT an apparent contradiction in Bruce Poliquin’s enrollment in the Tree Growth program and a deed restriction with The Nature Conservancy prohibiting the commercial cutting of trees on his Georgetown property.

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