Building community

At the conclusion of his sixth year in office, Gov. Angus King has offered enough state-of-the-state addresses to skip the enthusiastic vision statements, inspiring words, aphorisms and discussions about how children are our future, etc. He provided them Tuesday anyway, maybe because he thought Maine needed some encouraging words, and maybe was right. But it also needs specifics, including these: Maine ranks 37th by most measures in income, 44th among states in real per capita income, according to Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School; the new Census ranks Maine 45th in population growth, with the percentage of residents under age 18 ranking 49th in the Kennedy study. How can Maine lift itself out of these abysmal and eventually defeating positions?

It needs hardly be said that the problems are not unique to Maine or unique to the King administration. Rural states across America have found that while low wages can attract enough businesses to keep unemployment low, they do not adequately replace lost manufacturing jobs and do nothing to inspire young, college-educated residents to remain. Maine has suffered from one form or another of this problem for generations. Still, the 3.8 percent population growth over the last decade was remarkably bad news.

The theme of Gov. King’s state of the state speech the other night was community and opportunity. It consisted of a list programs his administration planned to undertake, an assertion about the limits of government, a description of how individuals can get involved in community, a recognition of Maine’s relative poverty and a more thoroughly evolved argument for the technology endowment to supply computers to students. He began and ended the speech by acknowledging that the foundation on which his ideas rest is a strong and growing economy.

There’s no reason for anyone to argue with the governor’s call for Mainers to get more involved with their communities, especially to help children. But the idea doesn’t mean much if it is merely a plea from a government official who has heard too many requests for government to take care of people. To be effective, the governor and many others will need to explain further, for instance, why community seemed to have occurred spontaneously in previous generations but in many places and situations now must be cajoled into forming. The governor mentioned one reason Tuesday night: both parents or a single parent working all day, taking away time from all other parts of life.

And that would return him to Maine’s economy and its low-income level. OneMaine, the governor’s broad plan two years ago “to achieve prosperity for all of Maine,” as his brochures put it, is rarely heard of anymore. Meanwhile, Evan Richert, director of the State Planning Office, has looked at what other states have done to make themselves successful. There are, of course, many answers to this question, but in at least two areas, successful states have achieved where Maine is noticeably deficient: Successful states have a far larger percentage of adults with four-year college degrees and they invest, publicly and privately, a lot more in research and development.

To lift Maine up to average income levels, Mr. Richert estimates that the college-degree percentage in Maine must move from 19 to 30 and the level of R&D investment per worker must increase from $238 to $1,000. The governor mentioned this strategy for growth in the list of programs during the early part of his speech, the 30/1,000 plan.

A primary problem with the idea is that it is ambitious at a time when the governor is urging moderation. Gov. King in his speech celebrated the increase by 3,000 students in higher education over the last six years. Mr. Richert’s plan envisions an increase of 10,000 per year for a decade. That would mean, at the very least, a massive increase in student scholarships and investments in the university system. University Chancellor Terry MacTaggart has proposed funding increases of 9 percent and 10 percent over the next two years; the governor wants 2.5 percent for each year. Similarly, the chancellor and others in research across Maine have called on lawmakers to make significant increases in R&D; the governor was relieved to balance his budget without having to cut the current level of R&D funding.

That low ranking on children under age 18 may seem curious at first glance. Many people recognize that young adults who go to college out of state often do not return to Maine (the exodus helps explain Maine’s low college achievement level among those who remain), but are the 12-year-olds packing up and leaving too? Of course not. They never get the chance. Their parents – adults of childbearing years looking for economic opportunity – are taking those southbound U-Hauls the governor feared in his speech and moving on. Some perhaps bring their kids back to Maine for a week each summer to show them where Mom and Dad used to live.

The governor is right when he said Maine has to find its niche to outcompete the nation and climb the income ladder. He is further right when he leans toward education and technology as areas where Maine could excel. But the risk is not in his $50 million computer plan for students, however good an idea that is. The risk and the potential reward is in strategies such as 30/1,000, which require large, long-term demands on the public and private sectors of Maine to pull together in a concentrated effort to get Maine out the place it has been stuck for so long. To make it a place where more and more people can afford to raise their families and where the grown children of those families can stay and find satisfying and remunerative careers. That is the surest, though most difficult, path to community and opportunity.