YES ON QUESTIONS 1 AND 2

Voters who do not belong to a political party may think the June 11 ballot has nothing for them on it. In addition to local issues, two state bonds equaling more than $63 million are on the table, promising school repair, research investment and job growth, now and for the long-term. All registered voters can cast ballots on these questions, which are worth serious consideration.

The money in Question 1 breaks down this way: $13 million for school renovation; $7 million for sprinklers at the University of Maine and the technical college system; $8 million to repair a state office building used by the Department of Conservation; and $500,000 for the Portland homeless shelter. Besides fixing up the public buildings and helping teen-agers in Portland, the bond’s redeeming feature is that it provides construction jobs when construction work is down, slightly, in the state overall.

The school renovation should be encouraged as a cheaper alternative to building new, which is what will happen if the schools are not maintained. A couple of tragic fires on campuses nationally convinced the Legislature that putting off the retrofit for Maine’s dorms was a risk they were unwilling to take. The Harlow Office Building, built as part of the original version of the Augusta Mental Health Institute, is a historic structure with all the blessings of old buildings: lead paint, asbestos, mercury was stored on site and moisture seeps through the brick facade.

An $8 million renovation of a building that will provide office space for 120 or 130 members of the Department of Conservation may seem high, but leasing space, as Conservation does now, or building new while maintaining an empty historic building is even higher. In a nod to efficiency, returning Conservation to the Harlow building will put it back next to other natural-resource agencies with which it often meets, the Departments of Environmental Protection and Agriculture.

Voters may ask why lawmakers propose to take on added debt now when it cannot pay its bills for next year. It is a fair question with perhaps the best answer being that the work must be done sometime and the bonds will be paid off over many years so that the current slow growth in the state’s budget is a small factor in the overall maintenance of public buildings. It also helps that interest rates are unusually low.

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Do you favor a $34,970,000 bond issue to stimulate job growth, renovate buildings, defend against terrorism in Maine and promote tourism? The bonds would be used for the following purposes:

1. Funds of $4,000,000 for the Municipal Investment Trust Fund to provide loans and grants to municipalities for public infrastructure to support economic development and other purposes of the fund;

2. Funds of $8,000,000 to the Finance Authority of Maine to create and retain Maine jobs through the funding of community, regional and state business financing programs;

3. Funds of $540,000 for the protection of the lives and property of Maine citizens;

4. Funds of $6,000,000 to capitalize the Maine Rural Development Authority to facilitate job creation through the development and redevelopment of commercial and industrial buildings in Maine;

5. Funds of $400,000 for renovation of buildings and associated infrastructure at the Schoodic Education and Research Center. State bond funds will match $4,000,000 in federal funds;

6. Funds of $5,000,000 for the construction of a facility for product development and support that will provide the University of Maine with the resources needed to help solve daily manufacturing and engineering problems;

7. Funds of $4,000,000 for the construction of a facility for product development and support that will provide the University of Southern Maine with the resources needed to help solve daily manufacturing and engineering problems;

8. Funds of $5,500,000 for medical research and development by Maine-based biomedical research institutions in order to obtain matching federal funds for health research to cure disease and to retain Maine graduates by providing quality Maine jobs;

9. Funds of $1,000,000 for the planning and construction of the Franco-American Heritage Center at St. Mary’s in Lewiston;

10. Funds of $30,000 to assist the Moosehead Marine Museum in the renovation of its flagship, the Katahdin; and

11. Funds of $500,000 for the renovation of the Center Theater in downtown Dover-Foxcroft.

Question 2 requires a good bit of reading, and voters might be excused if they see merely a long list of expenditures that may or may not be good for Maine. It helps to view them as groups: Nos. 1 and 2 are public and private capital for business development; No. 3 is what’s left of a much more ambitious plan to make Maine more secure. Nos. 4 and 5 establish buildings for industry and education, with an attractive federal match at Schoodic; 6, 7 and 8 are investments in R&D; 9, 10 and 11 are what members of the Appropriations Committee promised the folks back home.

Taken together, these items go from the desperately needed to expand Maine’s economy to the useful but odd (See No. 10. Why would a state with any pride bond for $30,000? It is the equivalent of using a credit card to buy a pack of gum.). Unfortunately, voters can’t choose just the items they like and reject the rest. They have to decide whether the good or bad predominates, and in this case the big-money items are so badly needed that accepting the remainder is part of the price to be paid. For instance, university R&D leverages in additional funding four or five or eight times the amount the state pays, returning important research and good jobs while supporting local businesses and returning tax revenues to the state.

This is not just good intention. Though only a few years old, the state’s investment in R&D already has a terrific track record. The $7 million in state funding that went to the Maine Research Biomedical Coalition last year in turn leveraged another $70 million in grants, which yielded $33 million on construction, supporting 300 jobs, and added, within the labs, 173 jobs with average pay and benefits worth $47,500 each. Just the sales and income taxes returned to the state for its investment was approximately $8 million. That is, state funding was more than repaid in a single year in addition to all the economic activity.

One of the biggest hurdles to getting a business started in Maine is a lack of capital. This bond question makes a real improvement to the state’s ability to help businesses get on their feet and start running. Previous capital loans from FAME have resulted in both jobs and the ability to raise further funds from private banks, and there is every reason to believe that the authority would be as successful this time. The several items devoted to improving building space for new businesses are nearly as important. All those site-selection experts who come here each year agree that Maine’s shortage of ready buildings to lure companies is a detriment to growth. This bond does something about the shortage.

Anyone reading the ballot June 11 could look at these two questions and conclude that they could have been better assembled – more might have been spent on schools, less on strictly local projects, etc. Certainly, lawmakers did not do their best work when they put these questions together, but overall they make sense and deserve support. Maine’s economy is in too poor a shape to let minor flaws overwhelm major advances.