March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Where McKernan succeeded

One heck of a roller-coaster ride,” Gov. John McKernan said a year ago of the Maine economy. It is equally apt a description of his two terms as governor — eight often highly emotional years characterized by unmet expectation, personal tragedy, political bitterness and modest accomplishment.

The epitome of political charm and image, the tall, athletic former 1st District congressman replaced Joseph Brennan, who was ineligible to run for a third term. In January 1987, when McKernan took over, the state seemed poised for economic and political renaissance. It never happened. Instead, when the bottom fell out of the state’s economy in 1989, its government lost its way in a miasma of confusion and despair.

It would be convenient to blame the man who is leaving the state’s highest office for the systemic failures of the past six years, but it wouldn’t be accurate or fair. History will apportion his burden of responsibility, but it also will remind Maine of accomplishments during this period:

Many of the concepts in the failed federal health care initiative became law in Maine, including increased access, portability of benefits, protection of coverage for pre-existing conditions and guaranteed renewal of insurance. The reforms don’t go far enough, and the funding is inadequate, but they were an expression of the need for a more rational health care policy.

Three times in this administration, the Workers’ Compensation insurance system law was amended. The comprehensive Blue Ribbon reforms of 1992, and the contentious debate of 1991 that shut down state government for 13 days received the most public exposure, but McKernan’s 1987 reforms cleaned out costly provisions in the sick system, and built political momentum for more radical changes later. Maine’s program, once one of the worst in the country, now is on the mend.

The governor and Education Commissioner Eve Bither built on the education reforms of 1984 and preserved the integrity of the Maine Education Assessment test, which for the first time held schools to a standard of performance, provided comparisons among systems and caused parents and taxpayers in many parts of Maine to demand improvements in local education. McKernan also recognized the paradigm shift in education — the need to concentrate on the futures of traditionally non-college-bound students.

Little noticed, but extremely important, McKernan tried to bring the two Maines (Aroostook County residents maintain there are three) together. A Bangor native with a political base in the south, the governor, with a foot in each part of the state, knew how geography could foster unfairness and be an impediment to consensus. He recognized that he was chief executive of the entire state.

… and where he failed

Neither on the exhilarating climb to the economic pinnacle early in his first term, when he had the resources to do it, nor in the final four years, when he should have been compelled to, did Gov. McKernan adequately address two problems:

Maine does not have a government it can afford. Worse, it has not adopted a systematic method of assessing what it does.

The deinstitutionalized mentally ill continue to wander the streets of Maine cities because no chief executive of the past 20 years — Longley, Brennan or McKernan — has made the plight of these citizens a priority.

For the past 16 years, through two recessions and two gubernatorial regimes, state employment has increased. Since 1978, when Joseph Brennan came to office, it has been a steady march, from 18,284 the day he was sworn in, to 20,440 when he turned the bureaucracy over to McKernan. The most recent count is nearly 23,000, according to the Maine Department of Labor.

The public is confused about state employment numbers. It’s understandable. Some published charts show state employment at around 13,000, or 15,000, reflecting declines in the work force. Such figures are not inaccurate, but they give an incomplete picture.

They don’t include the hundreds of mental health system workers who are still employed by the state, but who have been shifted, technically, to federal funding sources. They don’t include thousands of people employed by the University of Maine System, the vocational colleges and myriad agencies with financial resources outside the General Fund.

Repeatedly, this governor identified the problem, but never agressively addressed the solution: a re-engineering of state government. In fact, he joined those who avoided it, and many of his partial remedies, shifting workers to other budget lines, produced a mirage that obscured the truth and discouraged effective action.

A similar lack of vision and commitment was evident in the steady deterioration of the support system for the mentally ill. Money taken from the budgets of downsized institutions was not invested in a network of community-based care, but instead was used to sop up red ink related to other agencies, the net product of declining revenue in the absence of government restructuring.

In the last half of his term, due perhaps to the loss of his son and the wearying persistence of the recession, Gov. McKernan appeared to become overburdened, disconnected, a personality without strong presence. As a result, for nearly three years, Maine sometimes meandered behind a leader without focus.

It has been a roller-coaster ride for this state and its governor. History will be kinder to him than his critics would like, and more restrained in its praise than he hoped it would be going in. An concise synopsis of his eight years: a case of the times making the man.


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