Senator Peter Bowman emails over a letter-to-the-editor he's submitted to the Weekly Sentinel in response to the AMF ad.

For the record, I am completely supportive of freedom of the press including advertizing! That said, I personally abhor attack ads, especially those paid for by lobbies that have their own interests at heart and not ours!

I want to advise your readers that the real nature of the very personal, inflammatory ad that appeared in last week’s Sentinel was just that: an attack ad, part of an effort largely paid for by the beverage industry lobbies (including some out-of-staters) to discredit those who voted for adding about a nickel-a-bottle cost to the consumption of discretionary beverages so that about 18,000 working Maine people would not lose health care insurance coverage. Also, not mentioned in the ad were the facts that in the last Legislature I sponsored a bill to reduce the size of state government and, in a separate bill, voted for reducing Maine’s personal income tax rate structure. These are much more important components of the very real tax/spending issues facing Maine today.

Contrary to what you may have read or heard, the issue had two full public hearings and was fully discussed by the Legislature’s Taxation Committee in the 123rd Legislature. The Legislature turned to non-health-enhancing funding sources (e.g., beer, wine, soda) unanimously endorsed by the Blue Ribbon Commission on Dirigo Health (remember, Anheuser Busch and Coke don’t want you to think of their products as potential health issues!). After thoughtful consideration, I reluctantly voted for the bill that included the beverage tax because I believed it to be a more transparent funding mechanism for Dirigo Health than the previous highly controversial “Savings Offset Payment” process (which estimated the savings in overall health care costs due to covering the previously uninsured).

Finally, when you consume that beverage that costs an extra nickel, I ask you to think of it as helping a needy child to be treated for asthma, or a woman to have a mammogram, or a man to have a prostate cancer PSA blood test. The picture looks quite different when viewed from that perspective!

Peter Bowman
Kittery, ME