Economist wary of gap between state’s rich, poor> LaChance says Maine poverty rate hasn’t really improved in 3 decades

BANGOR — In Maine, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, at least when it comes to counties. That’s what the state economist said Wednesday during a Maine Economic Growth Council meeting on regional disparities.

The trend is for southern Maine to produce the most jobs and have the highest per capita income, the major concentration of wealth and the lowest unemployment rate, Laurie LaChance said.

LaChance told government, business and education leaders that Washington, Aroostook, Piscataquis, Somerset, Franklin and Oxford counties have had long-standing economic woes, while southern counties such as Cumberland and York have been thriving.

Participants gathered at Eastern Maine Technical College’s Rangeley Hall to exchange ideas on how all of Maine’s 16 counties could achieve equal economic vitality.

According to LaChance, Maine’s poverty rate has shown no real improvement in three decades. Washington County has continually experienced the highest rate, with 22 percent of its residents living below the poverty line.

“But what disturbs me most,” LaChance said, is the ongoing population influx from northern Maine to southern Maine.

“It’s almost as if southern Maine has pulled the plug and the vitality of northern Maine is being zapped,” she lamented.

Migration hurts the state as a whole, said the economist. When people move to southern Maine, they locate to the suburbs, putting pressure on those outer regions to build to accommodate the inflow.

LaChance said cohesiveness could help solve the regional economic inequities.

“We need to deal with Maine as one state,” she said. “Our resources are far too limited to waste on in-fighting. We need to recognize the disparities and recognize that the type of economic growth we’ve been having is unhealthy. But we can’t let it divide us. When we pit one region against the other, it doesn’t do any of us any good.”

LaChance had another caveat.

“Don’t try to impose a southern Maine solution on northern Maine,” she said. “The issues are different and the population base is different.”

Participants’ ideas ranged from using rail and water to transport goods, to lengthening Interstate 95, to offering tax benefits to businesses that subsidize day care for their employees.

David Cole, president of Eastern Maine Development Corp. in Bangor, urged the group to stop thinking of the north-south trade corridor as the only game in town.

“We’ll always be at the end of the line in the north-south trade corridor,” he said. “Why not look at new ways that puts us more in the center of things, like trading overseas and with Canada.”

Another participant thought rural areas should veer away from trying to attract new businesses, and concentrate instead on those already present.

“We need a local economic development effort to create new jobs and growth,” said Dianne Tilton of the Sunrise County Economic Council in Machias.

State Senate Majority Leader Chellie Pingree, D-North Haven, and co-chair of the Maine Economic Growth Council, said the Canadian fishing industry is outcompeting Maine’s because of governmental help.

“Our government isn’t supportive enough of our natural resource based industries, like fishing, farming and wood products,” she said.

For Bangor officials, the east-west highway is the way to bring economic development to all of Maine.

The state should “think big,” said Bangor City Councilor Mike Aube, who called the highway “a bold new vision that takes into account where Maine is today, where the world economy is and what our role is.”

The road would foster the economic ties between Bangor and the Maritimes and Quebec, said Mayor Timothy Woodcock.

“We could reach two thirds of the population of Canada,” he said. “And instead of central and northern Maine being at the end of the line, we’d be at the center of a regional economic line.”

On Wednesday evening, the Bangor City Council approved a new committee to work on the topic of an east-west highway. Woodcock suggested that it would be a good way to collect and preserve the variety of information city officials and councilors are receiving.

The committee will comprise three councilors and two members of the public, one of them a state legislator.