To paraphrase somebody who once paraphrased Mark Twain, everybody talks about the business climate but nobody does anything about it. Nobody until MERI.

MERI is the Maine Economic Research Institute. From its ivy-covered cubicle in the Augusta headquarters of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, with which it is affiliated, the institute assesses the business-oriented voting records of state legislators, gauges the business-oriented sentiments of the public in the various districts and issues report cards on how well the two match up.

All that assessing and gauging sounds complicated, but MERI, in just its first crack at it, has streamlined the process down to a miracle of simplicity: If your local legislator is Republican, odds are your district is a paradise of free-market economic opportunity and prosperity. If Democrat, you might as well be living in a suburb of Beijing. Democrats, morose recipients of failing grades, are sorely chapped at this. Rather than just mend their anti-business ways, they’re raising a stink, asking questions about how the grades were devised and how they are issued.

Issued probably isn’t the right word to describe the distribution method. Republican lawmakers and activists apparently got these ratings months ago, giving the GOP ample time to bludgeon the opposition party with rolled-up copies. Democrats complain that they either hear about their scores from shocked constituents or have to pester MERI incessantly for clues about how wrong-headed they’ve been.

Mostly, they complain about the way the grades were determined. Legislators are subject to scads of ratings developed by groups of every political persuasion. Most of these groups identify legislation important to their cause and use the final enactment vote as the true measure of a lawmaker’s position. MERI delves deeper into the legislative process, using roll calls on acceptance of committee reports or engrossment here, procedural motions and votes on whether to recede, concur or postpone there, even using different votes in the House and Senate.

Instead of focusing on procedural wrangling on just a few pieces of legislation that highlight long-standing differences between the parties, Democrats say MERI should have at least glanced at the most important legislation of any session – the budget – and Democrats’ support for business-equipment tax relief, investment in R&D, economic incentives for specific industries (such as tax breaks to attract mutual-fund and telecommunications companies to Maine), and a tax deduction for self-employed health insurance. Sort of like the difference between a pop quiz and the semester final.

Consider the case of Sen. John Nutting, Democrat of Leeds. He’s a part-time lawmaker and a full-time dairy farmer. His beef with MERI is that in the last two sessions he’s voted with the business community on 26 bills pertaining to workers’ comp, in opposition just twice. His dreadful MERI total score of 37 – pretty good for a Democrat – reflects his stubborn refusal to get it when it comes to comp.

Sen. Nutting also has a long record of voting against increasing the minimum wage in Maine, believing it would be best done at the federal level. He was absent the day of the final vote on that issue – an emergency back at the farm – and MERI assumed he’d have voted they wrong way if he’d been there.

Half of the score is based upon subjective analyses by 10 MERI-selected business-sector government affairs specialists – lobbyists to you. They hammered Sen. Nutting, or so he thought until he called them – nine of the 10 never even filled out the form. He wonders why his strong advocacy for getting the products of Maine farms – the ultimate small business – on supermarket shelves got no notice from MERI. Some of the subjective analyses MERI used for other legislators came in anonymously.

For an example of how business-oriented ranking should be done, Sen. Nutting says MERI should look to the National Federation of Independent Business, Maine chapter. “NFIB-Maine uses the same criteria, the same votes, to rank everyone,” the senator says. “They consider the entire record, they use a methodology that’s fair and understandable, there’s nothing subjective. If you get a 10 from NFIB-Maine, you deserve it. MERI’s made moderate legislators look extreme.” Of course, Sen. Nutting got an 80 from NFIB-Maine, so he would be partial.

So who is MERI? At the moment, it’s one person, former state Agriculture Commissioner Ed McLaughlin. Mr. McLaughlin utterly rejects the criticism, saying the use of different votes in the different chambers, the use of votes other than those for final enactment, merely reflects the complexity of the legislative process.

The weight given to subjective analyses “is fair to everyone, everyone’s treated the same. The only difference is that Republicans do come out looking better than Democrats, but it’s based on the legislative record, on public votes.” The model for this was devised by Dr. Vernon Kennedy of the Market Policy Institute, a business-climatologist of such renown Mr. McLaughlin calls him a “guru. He’s done this for 22 other states for 16 years. We’re trying to improve the economy; Maine shouldn’t stand out as not being business-friendly.”

Twenty-two other states can’t be wrong and neither, apparently, can MERI. No modification of methodology or recalculations of grades are planned between now and Election Day, although Mr. McLaughlin says there will be one change – rather then continue the slow agonizing drizzle of scores, MERI now plans to release them all in a downpour at a press conference in early September. Looks like a spell of bad weather ahead for Democrats.

Bruce Kyle is the asssistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.