Kennebec Journal Editorial 

We urge you to vote "yes" on repealing the beverage tax for two simple reasons:

1. The public -- including consumers, interest groups and the large and small businesses affected -- did not get a reasonable opportunity to put in their two cents. The bill was passed late at night with no effective public notice. Just because that's legal doesn't make it right.

2. The tax on beer, wine and on the syrup that goes into a range of drinks -- from sugary sodas to flavored water -- is being sold as appropriate because these drinks are unhealthy. The argument goes that taxing them could reduce consumption, improving Mainers' health while contributing the tax to the Dirigo Health program. But that's partly false: beer and wine and some (but not all) of the other beverages taxed are not per se unhealthy. The premise behind the bill is a glass half-full ... of Miller Lite.

In the past, we have given qualified support to the state's experiment in subsidized health insurance called Dirigo Health.

We still do. Obtaining health insurance is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, problems for businesses and individuals across the country.

Nevertheless, Maine's experience with Dirigo has been a rocky one. It hasn't covered the number of people its promoters predicted; right now its enrollment stands at approximately 16,000, not the tens of thousands first projected when the program was initially approved by lawmakers in 2003. The program's design includes many worthy components besides individual insurance plans, including an effort to lower health-care costs -- but paying for Dirigo has proved to be a vexing problem from the start.

The beverage tax was passed earlier this year by lawmakers trying to find a new way to pay for Dirigo.

Since its inception, Dirigo has been paid for primarily by a Rube Goldberg-like funding mechanism called the "Savings Offset Payment." Essentially, it's a payment from insurers and hospitals that's supposed to represent how much money the health-care system (doctors, hospitals) has saved because of Dirigo's efforts. The mechanism relies on estimates of savings by the state's insurance superintendent, and over the years those estimates have been the subject of costly legal challenges.

So this past year, Dirigo's supporters in the Legislature struggled to devise another way to pay for the program. Their efforts were based on a bipartisan study that had recommended a variety of ways to fund Dirigo, including raising cigarette, snack or beverage taxes.

Lawmakers settled on a bill to increase tobacco taxes -- and it looked likely to pass after much public input and legislative debate. But opposition in the Senate pushed the majority of Democratic lawmakers (with a handful of Republicans supporting them) to make a last-minute, late-night and unexpected change to the legislation. What passed was not a tobacco-tax increase, but a beverage-tax increase.

If the law is allowed to go into effect, Mainers will pay 11 cents in taxes on a liter bottle of soda, 4 cents on a can of soda, 7 cents on a bottle of wine and 16 cents on a six-pack of beer.