I know the full measure of the health cost of lead in homes.
Senators Snowe and Collins,I want to draw your attention, not to the institutional issues that surround the discussion of Rule 22, nor to the partisan issues that surround the renominees as a group, nor to the Lochner, or Takings Cases, or incorporation doctrine positions of Janice Brown. Those are all issues that affect Mainers, but not as Mainers.
Sixty percent of Maine's housing is lead contaminated. I know the full measure of the health cost of lead in homes. My son Jonah became lead poisoned when he started walking, and chewing on window sills. He underwent chelation, the standard treatement to extract lead from soft and hard tissue, at Maine Med, and contracted a nearly fatal infection at his IV site. Mary Beth and he spent six weeks in the Barbara Bush (pediatrics) unit at Maine Med. Later that year he and I returned to Maine Med for a second round of chelation. I know a lot more about lead, paint, social history, heavy metals and neuro-toxicology than I ever imagined when I became a parent.
Prior to coming to Maine eight years ago, I lived in California, where my family has lived for generations. I voted against Jarvis-Gann (Prop. 13). I recall the "property tax rebellion" campaign messaging of Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann. It was simple and direct, as Carol Palesky's was last year. No one was insane enough to think that a cap on property taxes, regardless of what one thought of the merits of that position, vacated regulation of paint applied to residential walls on a theory that regulation of paint, in particular, paint containing heavy metal neuro-toxins applied to areas occupied by children and toddlers, constiuted a "tax" within the meaning of Prop. 13.
I think it is fair to say that the public positions of Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann and the people who supported their "property tax rebellion", and those who opposed it, as I did, supports the claim that Prop. 13 vacated California's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act about as much as a claim that Prop. 13 protects California property owners from being "taxed" by the impact of planetary coments, or "taxed" by the state sinking into the Pacific.
It is possible that the Palesky cap initiative in the last cycle and the legislative non-response to the same issues in the budget in the current session will result in a TABOR being on the ballot in the next cycle. The language could be as draconian as Colorado's TABOR, given the cookie-cutter approach in the last cycle. I'm not asking your positions on Maine's tax structure, or "revenue cap" proposals. Reasonable people can disagree about how to raise revenue for, or cut the expense of, government.
Here is my question. Knowing why Mainers could pass a TABOR next year, and knowing that Mainers could also pass a Jarvis-Gann spending cap, as Coloradans did, do you each think that you could, in good faith, fail to place a hold on the nomination of a Maine jurist to the DC Circuit, who held that Maine's (hypothetical) tax cap barred Maine's (actual) Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program from regulating the use or remediation of lead paint, on the slender, if not completely imaginary thread of reason that that regulation was taxation within the meaning of some ballot initive?
That is what the nomination of Janice Brown means to me. Lead in children. I look forward to your replies.
Eric Brunner-Williams
P.S. My wife wrote about TABOR last year during her race for the 116th House seat. Her pieces are TABOR 101, written during the primary season, and Lack of will..., when Homestead Plus was discarded for the Governor's pet plan with a few bones tossed in for other interest groups.