Gov. King devoted the first quarter-hour or so of his State of the State address this week to bricks and mortar. From roads and bridges to prisons, hospitals for the mentally ill, schools, even the State House itself, Maine has been on a major fix-it-up binge the last several years.

It was hardly the most gripping way to begin a speech, but it did serve a purpose. Maine has a long and sorry history of not investing in itself and the bill for decades of neglect inevitably comes due. It took a lot of taxpayer money and hard work by the governor, state agencies and lawmakers – and it produced a lot of grumbling – but, in truly concrete ways, Maine looks a lot better today than it has in a very long time.

Gov. King concluded his speech with a philosophical musing on Maine’s social fabric – friendly neighbors, nice kids, quaint villages and such and how they must be preserved as we proceed into this new, though already somewhat dinged up, century.

This, too, has produced grumbling. Some say it was altogether too valedictory for a governor with one more very difficult year in office. Some could have done with a little less of the warm-and-fuzzy and a lot more of the quarter-billion budget gap and how we close it. My objection is that he talked about Maine’s social fabric as something fine and unstained that only needs gentle laundering and a few swipes with a cool iron. There was no mention of the parts of this state where, thanks to those decades of neglect and despite two recent economic booms everywhere else, the social fabric is in tatters.

A week or so earlier, I met with Jim Rier. Around Maine, he’s known as the chairman of the state board of education. Around Washington County – he’s from Machias – he’s known as one of those resolute souls who, no matter how chronic the poverty, high the unemployment or rapid the population flight, simply will not give up.

Mr. Rier and some of the region’s other habitually resolute have put together something called the Washington County Education and Economic Development Alliance. One might think this is just one more of those commonplace committees that meet, discuss and eventually produce a report that produces nothing. Think again. These people are deadly serious and, like I said, they simply will not give up.

They intend to rebuild the region’s economy. It’s a job that entails some renovation, but it’s mostly new construction – the economy that produced that poverty, unemployment and population flight is a failure. And to rebuild their economy, they’re starting by rebuilding their schools.

Not the buildings themselves, but what goes on inside. In fact, Mr. Rier points out, you have to go pretty far down the alliance’s to-do list to find anything that has to do with building new buildings. The reason space is not an issue is frightening – it is projected that enrollment in the high schools of Washington County will decline by as much a 40 percent in the next eight to 10 years. That’s right, 40 percent. It’s hard to imagine, in a place with plenty of friendly neighbors, nice kids and quaint villages – a more telling indicator of economic failure than to have that many families leaving.

People leave because there aren’t enough good-paying jobs because there aren’t enough people with the education and skills to do good-paying jobs. It’s always hard to know where to start in dealing with vicious circles, so the alliance starts in two places: meeting the work force needs of existing employers to keep them there, and creating the education and training programs for the most promising employment fields of the future.

“It is a balancing act,” Mr. Rier concedes, “but we have to be very aware of the present, not just the future. There won’t be a future if we keep losing our population.”

In brief, the plan calls for restructuring the entire education system, K to adult, with an immediate emphasis on high school vocational/technical education. (Here Mr. Rier points out one possible exception to the “no new buildings” rule. At Machias High School, they have to roll the table saw outside to have room to use it. Maybe a wall or two could be moved.) The goal is to turn the economy from its hopeless reliance on farming, fishing and forestry to health care, marine sciences, business and finance, biotechnology and entrepreneurship.

It’s a tough job, made even tougher by a palpable defeatism that’s crept into discussions about Maine’s most glaring economic failure. You won’t hear it in the crowd Jim Rier runs with, but you do hear it out of Augusta (I’ve heard it twice from two very high-ranking elected officials in just the last couple of weeks): people in Washington County don’t want to work, they’re all on drugs, they steal anything not nailed down, what’s the state supposed to do? This smear campaign is a despicable and cowardly way to deflect responsibility for failed state policies, and one more ugly hurdle for Washington County to clear.

Jim Rier’s heard the smears, too, and he’s worried about what they do to Washington County’s social fabric. “My biggest worry is that all the good people we have will believe it. We’re starting over in just about every way. I have no problem admitting it’s hard. We don’t need anyone making it harder.”

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