This story will be updated.
Former Gov. Paul LePage and his wife, Ann LePage, are still benefiting from a property tax break intended for permanent Florida residents, The New York Times reported Saturday.
The LePages are set to save $8,500 in total taxes under the arrangement by carrying exemptions from 2009 to 2015 and from 2018 through this year. Ann LePage began winding down the tax break this June, saying she and her husband were no longer living in Florida.
While the tax issue does not appear to violate state laws or endanger Paul LePage’s Maine residency, it emerges in the homestretch of the Republican’s campaign against Democratic Gov. Janet Mills. He registered to vote in Florida on her inauguration day before returning in mid-2020 to declare Maine residency while mapping out his political comeback.
The couple has shuttled between Maine and Florida since before LePage’s 2010 election. During that campaign, another Florida home became an issue for him. Ann LePage was listed as the buyer of an Ormond Beach home in 2008, when her husband was the Waterville mayor.
In 2010, Ann LePage was initially cited in Florida after claiming a homestead exemption on homes there and in Waterville. His campaign described it as an inadvertent error that would be corrected, but she was eventually cleared by officials there because her ailing mother lived in the home, meaning the property qualified for the tax break.
The LePages sold their Waterville home when they moved to the Blaine House, keeping the homestead exemption in Florida through 2015, the year Ann LePage’s mother died. The couple has not owned a Maine home since 2018. They are renting one now in Edgecomb.
Ann LePage sold the first Florida home in December 2017 and bought another one about 20 minutes away in March 2018 as the governor wound down his second term. He said that November he would move to Florida and become a resident, citing its lack of an income tax.
By then, they had claimed a homestead exemption on that home, indicating it was at least the permanent residence of Ann LePage at a time when her husband was still Maine’s governor. A Florida tax lawyer told The New York Times this was possible under state law but “atypical” since spouses typically are in homes together.
LePage’s campaign has not commented on the second exemption. Drew Gattine, the chair of the Maine Democratic Party, called it “a slap in the face” to people here in a statement.
The former governor’s residency status had not been a major campaign issue because Maine’s constitutional requirement is fairly loose. A governor only has to be a Maine resident at the time of the election and have resided here for a cumulative total of five years.
LePage has continued his crusade to eliminate Maine’s income tax during this campaign, often citing a desire to lure “snowbirds” back from Florida for most of the year.
His final budget proposal in 2017 contained a tax overhaul that would have melded income tax cuts and a broadening of the sales tax with limiting Maine’s homestead exemption to people over age 65, though the package was never seriously entertained in a divided Legislature.
