From the bottom up

When the new Maine Legislature convenes in January, it can have no doubts that there is one thing voters throughout the state want — a future.

The $20 million bond for research and development passed Tuesday with nearly 63 percent of the vote. In any election, that’s more than enough to qualify for landslide status. In this particular election, given that Maine has no history of R&D investment beyond the trifling stage, it’s a rout.

Better yet, Question 1 passed in every county; by comfortable margins in the rural counties, where the decline of Maine’s traditional economy is a fact of daily life, by huge margins in the urban, where the technology-driven prosperity of Boston already is trickling from over the horizon.

As everyone who followed this campaign knows, Maine now ranks 49th among the states in its investment in R&D. It is important for the Legislature to remember, however, that this $20 million to boost university and private sector innovation will move Maine up to only 47th or so. Provided other states stand pat. In these competitive times, that is unlikely.

This bond issue is just a down payment, it is merely an indication that 50th place is a place the people of Maine do not want to go. The new Legislature will have before it a proposal by Gov. King to make $25 million in R&D funding a regular annual appropriation, if the money is available in the state budget.

The money will be available if the Legislature deems it so, the same way money for every other on-going function of state government is available. The difference, of course, is that no other function of government generates the four-to-one return on investment R&D does with research grants, no other function of government has the potential to create new, high-value products out of Maine’s untapped natural-resource wealth.

Legislatures have looked at R&D funding proposals before. With the timidity that comes with any venture into the unknown, lawmakers always have whittled them down to an amount that is insignificant, that is too small to do any real good, to create any new jobs. Inertia always won. It was always easier, more comfortable, to do nothing.

Now the voters have spoken. From the cities already enjoying a new economy to small towns that want one, the message from the polls is clear: It’s OK to want something better and it’s OK to make an investment to get it. Maine is being led into the future from the bottom up and those elected to lead had best follow along.