Democrats Who Voted for Higher Property Taxes Now Confused Over Higher Property Taxes

Democratic lawmakers want to form a taxpayer-funded task force to figure out why property taxes are going up, but they voted for LD 2102 -- a bill that was designed to increase property taxes.

Senate President Mattie Daughtry (D-Cumberland) posted a video on social media this week announcing the formation of a task force to get to the bottom of Maine’s crushing property tax burden. But she was among the many Democrats who voted in 2024 on a bill that would allow for higher property taxes.

In response to criticism of her lunatic hypocrisy, she told Republicans to “sit down, shut up, and do the work.”

This is borderline psychopathic behavior and true gaslighting — akin to O.J. Simpson standing over some stabbing victims and filming a TikTok video demanding an explanation for how they ended up dead.

Here’s why: On two occasions just this year Daughtry has celebrated — yes, celebrated! — taxes going up on working Mainers.

In January, she held a press conference in Bath to cheer the imposition of a new one-percent tax on paychecks. That is, Daughtry was joyous that working people would see their pay reduced by one-percent for a new government program.

(Of course, Daughtry didn’t mind the new tax, considering she’s probably still flush with cash from the $500,000 taxpayer-funded grant she got from the Finance Authority of Maine.)

Then, later this summer, Daughtry posted celebratory images on Instagram as the Democratic Majority sealed the deal on a slate of new taxes and tax increases.

Maine now has a Netflix tax, high tobacco taxes, high cannabis taxes, and higher taxes on prescription drugs and hospitals.

Suddenly, though, Daughtry has come to the conclusion that higher property taxes are a problem, and the only solution is a new government task force. Reagan’s overused expression about the government coming to help us comes to mind.

But here’s why the hypocrisy is so glaring: Daughtry and her fellow Democrats voted to approve — and Gov. Janet Mills (D) signed into law — LD 2102, a bill that repealed a decades-old limit on property tax increases.

The fiscal note for the bill explicitly said property taxes would go up.

To repeat: Democrats voted intentionally to allow municipalities to increase property taxes and are now mystified that property taxes are going up.

They’re either too stupid to realize cause-and-effect, or they’re maliciously gaslighting the people of Maine — and I’m not sure which is worse.

Here are the receipts:

Here’s the House of Representatives rollcall vote.

Here’s the Senate rollcall vote.

Here’s the new property tax increase law in its entirety: