If a bill currently in Maine’s legislature passes, foreign-flagged megayachts in Maine will face additional fees based on length.
Rep. Grayson Lookner introduced the bill in March, and discussed it further during a legislative hearing earlier this week. The bill lets cities and towns charge megayachts exceeding 100 feet (30.5 meters) $10 per day for every foot (0.3 meter) of additional length. The fee would apply regardless of a yacht docking in a marina, tying up to a pier, or mooring. Ninety percent of the fee will go into a fund for working-waterfront and public-transit projects. The remainder will go to the local municipality.
According to an article in the Portland Press Herald, Lookner believes the fee won’t scare away yacht owners. He compares it to the lodging tax ashore. Additionally, Lookner accuses the foreign-flagged megayachts in Maine of being tax dodgers, registering offshore to hide their wealth. He levies other criticisms, too. “There are few things that demonstrate the unsustainable levels of inequality that exist in society today more than the megayachts that billionaires bring to coastal Maine every year,” Lookner says. He goes on to say their carbon emissions in one summer equate what “hundreds of American families do annually.” He also notes that the Gulf of Maine “is one of the fastest-warming bodies of water on the planet.”
Lockner believes working-waterfront projects like dredging and ferries deserve funding from the fee. He adds, “In the near future, there will be an unprecedented need to invest in sea-level rise infrastructure to keep our historic communities and preserve our working waterfronts.”
During the same legislative hearing, however, business owners relayed how charging foreign-flagged megayachts in Maine more will turn them away. “It’s easy to say tax the million- and billionaires, but these yacht owners will pursue other options outside of Maine, and the people that will suffer the consequences are the citizens that you have sworn to protect,” says Laura East, the dockmaster at Strouts Port Wharf, located in South Freeport. Luciano DiMillo, marina manager at DiMillo’s Marina in Portland, agreed. “A tax on berthing such as this will do nothing but hurt the local marine-related industries,” he says. “These yachts provide jobs to many U.S. citizens, young and old, and provide economic impact in every port they visit. They spend thousands of dollars.”
A florist-shop owner in Portland attested to this, too, further saying restaurants, art galleries, and more businesses benefit. Dan Kennedy, the owner of Harmon’s Floral Company, said the pandemic in 2020 nearly led to laying off all of his wedding-floral employees. But, the influx of megayachts in Casco Bay that summer “was a godsend for us.” Indeed, “On some days, the phone wouldn’t ring at all, not a single customer, then a yacht would call and we’d have $10,000 worth of business in a day.”
The bill, currently with eight additional sponsors, requires a two-thirds majority to advance. The Maine House consists of 151 legislators.
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