Greetings,

Success in the State House:
Your Advocacy at Work

Thanks to our grassroots advocates, coalition partners, and forward-thinking legislators in Augusta, we've implemented a number of new policies and programs that will improve our state's prospects for growing new jobs and businesses while also enhancing the places and landscapes that are our state's primary economic asset. Here are a few of our accomplishments from the past year:

Communities for Maine's Future: In the closing days of the legislative session, lawmakers approved a new Communities for Maine's Future program that will provide targeted "quality of place" investments in the downtowns, Main Streets, and village centers where Mainers live and work. It will include capital investment grants for downtown areas, and a revolving fund to protect and redevelop endangered historic buildings. The goal is to simultaneously enhance the Maine "brand" while also building more vibrant local economies.

Voters will have a chance to approve a $5 million bond investment for the newly-created Communities for Maine's Future program in June 2010. We'll provide additional details here as the election approaches.

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Your contributions make our advocacy work in Augusta possible. Help us build a stronger economy, while enhancing Maine's quality places:

Click here to give an online contribution.

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Transit TIFs: GrowSmart Maine also helped advance new tools for investing in transit infrastructure and transit-oriented development. With transit-oriented "tax increment financing" (or TIF) districts, real-estate development near transit routes can now contribute a portion of new property tax revenues towards transit infrastructure. This will give towns and cities new financial leverage to create and expand transit services statewide, in conjunction with new transit-oriented downtown and Main Street development.

Over the summer, GrowSmart Maine hopes to provide educational materials to help planners and activists use this new tool and create new transit-oriented development districts statewide - we'll let you know when they become available.

Sustainable Government: A projected half-billion-dollar shortfall is forcing extremely painful cuts to important programs in state government. It's also limiting our ability to make meaningful investments in our quality places and innovation economy. While this year's Legislature deserves commendation for its bipartisan efforts to contend with these difficult budget shortfalls, GrowSmart Maine continues to advocate for long-term, structural solutions.

Reducing Mainers' Tax Burden: Maine's newly-passed tax reform package implements two key recommendations of the "Charting Maine's Future" report: reducing Maine's top income-tax rate, and 'exporting' a greater share of the state's taxes to out-of-state visitors.

Besides these efforts, GrowSmart Maine worked to protect the statewide building code and the historic preservation tax credit - which together are facilitating a number of planned or under-construction redevelopment projects across the state - against efforts to weaken or undermine those previous victories.

Curious to learn more about our advocacy work in Augusta? Read all the details of these and other GrowSmart Maine advocacy priorities on our web site.

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As a nonprofit organization, GrowSmart Maine relies on ordinary Mainers like you to support our advocacy and outreach work across the state.

We're now equipped to accept electronic fund transfers - a new way of giving that minimizes paperwork and mailings through automated monthly donations. By becoming a "Constant Friend," your donations will go farther with lower overhead costs: it's the most effective way for our supporters to give. Sign up here.

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