Three weeks have passed since Secretary of State Matt Dunlap was supposed to announce whether an effort to repeal the tax reform bill had submitted enough valid signatures to get on the ballot. The Maine Republican Party and other supporters of the people's veto effort now claim that the law is being thwarted by majority Democrats whose party members control both houses of the Legislature, the governor's seat and every constitutional office, including secretary of state.

"The people of Maine are tired of politicians setting one set of rules for everyday people and on the other side, they don't follow the rules themselves," says Charlie Summers, vice-chairman of the Maine GOP. Summers is among those aligned with the Still Fed Up With Taxes PAC that wants to defeat the tax reform bill approved by lawmakers earlier this year.

It would lower the income tax rate from 8.5 to 6.5 percent for most Mainers, but extend the sales tax to a number of currently tax-exempt services. It would also raise the food and lodging tax. State GOP Chair Charles Webster says the petitions have yet to be certified by the secretary of state because Democrats are focusing all of their efforts on defeating the TABOR 2 tax cap and on stopping the repeal of the gay marriage law, both before voters next week.

"They want to spend their energy and time on those issues, and I believe they've convinced the politicians not to deal with our issue now, even though we did what we were required to do," Summers says. "It's all about them putting their money and their energy towards those two issues and come November 3rd, then they want to spend their energies and time on defeating the people's referendum, which is a scam on the working class, a tax on the working people of the state of Maine."

Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap says he's made progress on reviewing Webster's signature petitions but he says he only has so much staff to work on the upcoming election. He remains confident that the signature issue will be resolved soon after the election.

"Given the fact that this would be certified for the June ballot, which is eight months away, and we're really talking about a wobble of a matter of a couple of weeks, or three weeks or something like that, I'm not sure the harm is demonstrated there," Dunlap says. "And frankly we've been quite upfront with our time schedules and what we were trying to do, and people have been very open and honest about asking us where we are, and we've responded to those."

State Republican Sen. David Trahan, of Waldoboro, says Dunlap's delay is costing his supporters valuable time that could be used to organize their campaign to repeal the law in June.