Mary Adams (activist)

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Mary G. Adams (born 1938) is a tax activist who successfully led the effort to repeal Maine's statewide property tax in the mid-1970s. She recently led a failed 2006 referendum effort to enact a Taxpayer Bill of Rights in Maine.

In the mid-1970s, Adams challenged Maine's educational establishment and through her grass roots "Freedom Fighters" successfully repealed Maine's statewide property tax and prevented the state from reducing local control of public schools in Maine. In both 1996 and 1997, Adams and her "Common Sense" grass roots effort defeated the $8 million campaign backed by environmentalists to expand the regulation of private forest land in Maine.

Adams is a Maine native who, following the repeal, was appointed to the Maine State Board of Education by Maine's first independent Governor, James B. Longley. In 1978 she received the Rockefeller Award for Political Courage for her work in repealing the state property tax.

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