Governor Baldacci's efforts to accelerate a small-business diaspora continue. This time, Baldacci's economic stormtroopers are trying to stamp out the last vestiges of potential tourism revenue from airfield hangers across the state. Here's the AP report:

Looking for revenue, states go after out-of-state plane owners
When Steve Kahn got a $26,000 tax bill on his airplane, he thought Maine Revenue Services had made a mistake. Kahn lives and works in Massachusetts.
But the bill was no error. It was part of the agency's efforts to collect taxes on aircraft owned by out-of-staters, even though they bought their planes elsewhere and brought them to Maine only to visit.
Many pilots are outraged.
"At best what Maine is doing is underhanded and devious. At worst it is illegal. Either way, it's wrong," Kahn said.
Maine officials say they are simply enforcing the state's tax laws when they send bills -- into six figures -- to out-of-state plane owners....

Brian Cleary of Longboat Key, Fla., flies to Bethel, Maine, on business to tend to his timber and property management company, Saddle Ridge Holdings. When he got a bill for more than $175,000, it seemed so far-fetched he thought the state had made a clerical error.
Now he is so angry that he said he has stopped buying land and timber in Maine and is preparing to move his holdings to New Hampshire. Maine, he said, should embrace people like him who want to invest in the state.

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