Snowe’s economic committee

Sen. Olympia Snowe last week formed a group of local leaders to give her input on economic-development issues in Maine. But if the group works out as well as it could, its findings should be presented statewide as the beginning of a plan to revitalize this state’s economic health.

The chief cause for optimism with this group is the questions it has been assigned. Sen. Snowe wants ideas to help Maine face the global economy and the state’s loss of manufacturing jobs. She is looking for ways to let improved transportation systems lead to improved economic strength and diversity. She wants to find ways Washington can help Maine, with particular emphasis on under-developed areas of the state. She is asking the right questions.

And she has a statewide group capable of providing some intriguing answers — business people and city officials, state lawmakers and economic developers. It will be their option to provide the senator with the usual lists of the state’s shortcomings that keep its per-capita income at 37th in the nation or to really dig into these chronic problems and think big. If it does the latter, its conclusions could be useful all over the state, including to the King administration.

That such a group is badly needed can be seen by the stories last week of layoffs at Mead and Bath Iron Works and the threats at Great Northern. These layoffs exacerbate the related problem of labor productivity, highlighted recently by James Breece, an associate professor of economics at the University of Maine. Not only did Maine begin the latest national economic surge well behind in productivity, but, according to Professor Breece, Over the past seven years … Maine has not kept pace with national productivity gains, and in fact it has significantly fallen behind the rest of New England. That results in bad news getting worse.

Even an experienced advisory group dedicated to targeting higher-value, long-term work for this state would have a role much larger than that envisioned by the senator. But changing the path Maine is on must start somewhere; the Snowe Committee is an excellent place to begin.