Maine, which could have been a national leader in government restructuring, instead is a bystander while dozens of states and the federal government get serious about overhauling the organization and function of their bureaucracies.

President Bill Clinton’s ambitious plan to “reinvent government” is months from producing tangible results, but it responds to a grass-roots demand that has been reverberating from the deep south to the Frost Belt:

Government must change the way it does business, reshaping agencies to fit new missions in harmony with needed public services and the taxpayer’s ability to pay.

A National Governors’ Association task force on state management recently issued “An Action Agenda to Redesign State Government.” The document’s cornerstone is performance-based governance, a concept built on a state’s vision of its future, strategic planning and an analysis of existing agency functions. Its objective is to deliver government services for which there is a demonstrated need, while giving citizens value received for tax dollars invested.

Sound familiar?

It should.

Maine was there first, with its own Special Commission on Governmental Restructuring, which issued a final report Dec. 15, 1991.

Its first recommendation:

“Building state government budgets from strategic plans that establish expected outcomes and measurable performance objectives, and set … program priorities.”

The special commission gave Maine a blueprint for restructuring state government. It didn’t oversell the cost savings. It handed this state built-in bipartisan support for overhauling the bureaucracy (a requisite for success, according to the governors’ association), but the exercise thus far has been a failure because it lacks critical support from the governor and legislative leadership.

The Maine commission’s recommendations were deliberately ignored. Its architects, men and women of both parties who had taken the mission seriously and given generously of their time and creativity to state government, were forced to form a political action committee to keep their ideas before the people of this state.

Because of its overriding importance to the state budget, Maine’s economy, and decisions to thoughtfully pare the state work force and address the financial black hole in the state retirement system, the issue of government restructuring must have the attention of the next governor and should be a focus of the 1994 gubernatorial campaign.

Independent Angus King points out that Maine has 30 percent more state employees per capita than states of similar size — a luxury this state’s taxpayers can’t afford. He is determined to make state government smaller and less expensive.

Democratic candidate Tom Allen, who says he wants a revolution in Augusta to create a customer-oriented, mission-driven state government, said of the discarded commission recommendations: “They will bury every report that the governor does not take on as his or her personal project.”

One man who has taken on restructuring as a personal project, rebuilding government and the university system after the Longley years, making the only significant cuts in state employment during the 1980s, is former Gov. Joseph Brennan. He also is in the race.

The candidates for governor must not allow the work of the special commission to be wasted. Restructuring government is too important to the future of this state. Maine may have squandered the opportunity to lead, but it should have the sense to follow where others have succeeded.