York-Ogunquit Election News
Gregg, Weaver seeking term representing District 150 in Augusta
By Virginia L. Woodwell
YORK - Democrat Kinley Gregg and Republican Windol Weaver and are vying for the Maine House of Representatives seat being vacated by David Ott, R-York.That seat represents District 150, which runs east of I-95 from the Cape Neddick River on the north to the Kittery town line on the south.
Kinley Gregg
"The most important issues of this election will be resolved in Washington, not Augusta," she said. "The federal deficit is gargantuan and growing larger. Abroad, we are engaged in a gratuitous war that angers our allies and emboldens our enemies. At home, it's called unpatriotic to question the government's abuse of the Constitution and our Bill of Rights."
Republicans running on a platform of fiscal responsibility are being hypocritical, she said, since, at the national level, "They've run up the biggest deficit in the nation's history."
A lifelong Independent, she registered as a Democrat in 2004 when she became concerned about the direction in which the country was headed.
"Obviously," she said, "the major issues are not going to be resolved at the state level, but I want to work to restore accountability in government, and at a level at which I am able to serve."
In Maine, a top priority will be to restrain the legislature from "funding failing programs" such as Dirigo Health Care, she said, adding, "We shouldn't spend tax revenue solving a problem that government created. Instead, private sector competition must be revived in Maine. Deregulate insurers and remove coverage mandates so that no one company controls an uncontested market."
Unlike her opponent, Gregg does not favor the citizen-petitioned Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) on the ballot this November.
"TABOR is undemocratic in that it robs us of the right to govern ourselves by majority rule," she said. In York, she noted, voters' right to exercise line-item control over their municipal budget resulted in the purchase, last May, of land on which to build a new town hall. To do so if TABOR passes, Gregg contended, "we'll need to navigate a sea of red tape, and on top of that secure a two-thirds majority of the legislative body - that's us, the voters - in order to raise the revenue required for a construction bond. That's a much higher hurdle than we have failed to clear in the past."
TABOR would also mean that state legislators would limit their own budgets "not by cutting state operations but by cutting dispersals to local governments" and it would "calcify current tax code and fee schedules," she said. "… Under TABOR, the imposition of any new fee would require a special notice to be mailed to every registered voter and a two-thirds majority in the subsequent referendum."
Gregg favors the repeal of LD 1535, the state law which results in forcing York to permit several more housing starts than its growth cap allows. Paradoxically, she notes, the rationale for LD 1535 is the belief that growth caps foster sprawl by dispersing populations into formerly rural areas.
"I don't buy this argument," she said. "Developers who want to build in York aren't throwing up their hands and heading to North Berwick."
Since repeal is unlikely, Gregg urges town officials to "interpret its provisions as strictly as possible to preserve us a measure of local control over York's march toward build-out. … I have supported our local growth control ordinance as a damper on speculation that gave local officials and organizations a chance to preserve open space before it was lost to the creep of the East Coast megalopolis."
On education, Gregg said she generally favors local control. A move afoot toward school consolidation as a cost-saving measure might be transformed into reexamination of mandates that have hiked school costs in the first place.
"As a first-time legislator, however, I have a lot to learn, as anyone would," she said, setting her candidacy back into national perspective, using a sports analogy. "If they were going to put the bat in my hands and I walked back to the dugout instead of stepping up to the plate, then I've lost my moral standing to complain."
Gregg attended local schools and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Skidmore College. Gregg's community activities have included service on the York Historic District Commission, the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities and the Portsmouth Historical Society. She is currently a proprietor of the Portsmouth Athenaeum, where she volunteers on archival research projects. An avid rower, she regularly competes in regional rowing and paddling races.
Windol Weaver
Democratic control of the legislature for 32 years, he contends, has left the state taxed out, pointing to the facts that one-third of school children are eligible for lunch support and the number of Maine residents on food stamps increased by 50 percent between 2002 and 2005.
Weaver's solution would be to stop adding new taxes first, and then "look at every program on the books to assess its benefits and rewards and costs." After that would come elimination of, or reductions in, programs found wanting.
While acknowledging that TABOR (the "Taxpayer Bill of Rights") is controversial as a solution to taxation challenges, with York's selectmen and school authorities opposing it, Weaver favors it and termed it "a win-win situation" for the town.
"It doesn't cut a thing," he says. "All it does is limit increases in spending." York voters, he maintains, have proven in past votes that they could override its restrictions should they feel that necessary.
While Maine is doing "a pretty good job at education," it's significant that young adults are leaving to find work in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, he said. The number of Maine people between the ages of 20 and 34, he reports, dropped by 20 percent in the last decade, in contrast to a national-average drop of 5 percent. Tax reductions for businesses, he maintains, would make the Maine business climate more inviting to companies that could provide such young people with jobs and put the state's economy on a sounder footing.
On the high cost of health insurance in Maine, Weaver contends that the root of the problem is the lack of competition. New Hampshire has eight insurers while Maine has only one, he said.
On funding for education, Weaver argues that the state needs to be held to its commitment to provide 55 percent of local school funding instead of the 45 percent it's actually paying, and it needs to stop legislating programs without funding sources.
On environmental matters, Weaver sees Maine's economy so tightly dependent upon "fishing, farming and forestry" that "everyone in Maine should be an environmentalist. … You have to be a strong environmentalist to maintain those industries."
Weaver said that, given his interests and experience, he would welcome committee assignments in legal and veterans' affairs, and in appropriations. But he would accept, he added, whatever assignments he might be given as a rookie.
"I will just go up and work hard and take one thing at a time, doing the best I can on whatever committee I'm on," he said.
Weaver, a Texas native who has lived in York for 26 years, is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel whose 23 years of active duty included flying 524 combat missions over Vietnam from 1967 to 1970, a three-year tour of duty at Pease Air Force Base, followed by three years' as a member of the Joint Strategic Planning Staff at Strategic Air Command Headquarters in Nebraska. In a second tour of duty at Pease lasting from 1979 to his retirement in 1987, Weaver served as assistant director of operations for the 45th Air Division, charged with overseeing the five Air Force bases in New England.
Since his retirement, he has served on the York Budget Committee and Capital Committee and the York County Budget Committee. He is a member of the American Legion and VFW, and attends the First Parish Church. He and his wife, Sondra, have been married for 42 years and have two sons and three grandchildren.
