Realizing Maine’s best chance for success

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P. James Dowe Jr.

Maine has been a place where great leaders – individuals, organizations, and companies alike – have been enabled to contribute locally, nationally, and globally. Here are just a few names to illustrate the point: Joshua Chamberlain, Dr. Bernard Lown, Duane “Buzz” Fitzgerald, Betty Noyce, Stephen King and Harold Alfond. Also, Jackson Laboratory, Portland Sea Dogs, Maine Public Broadcasting, Bath Iron Works and L.L. Bean.

An environment where leaders can cultivate the necessary skills, enjoy the intellectual freedom and obtain the financial support to develop ideas is most worthy of preserving, because if we have that, everything falls into place. Maine must safeguard the right proclaimed in our state motto: Dirigo (I lead).

I worry that we are losing some of the capacity we once had to develop leaders. But, I am confident we can regain that capacity.

Here are five initiatives to consider:

. Develop a real plan for the state of Maine. (What do we want to be as a state? How will we get there? And what indicators must we monitor to get and stay on track?)

. Think regionally. For example: Every map of Maine should be of the Atlantic Northeast with Maine at the center, reinforcing our larger role and the greater responsibility and opportunity that concept represents.

. Encourage our visitors and our retirees to share their experiences with our students, expanding their exposure and wisdom through the rich lives of those often untapped resources.

. Ask our post-secondary educational infrastructure – public and private, large and small, rural and urban, to work together to make Maine people the most educated in the world.

. Finally, consider a cabinet-level position responsible for Maine people; to ensure our people are educated, healthy, and that we are growing at a sustainable rate to support the future success of the great state of Maine.

P. James Dowe Jr. is president and chief executive officer of Bangor Savings Bank.

Christopher St. John and David Vail

Many of us move to Maine and most native Mainers choose to stay because the state offers a high quality of life, even if it cannot offer most of us material riches. We like to live in small cities and towns, close to the countryside and with access to mountains, lakes, rivers, and coast for our re-creation. We like being able to know and cooperate with our neighbors. We value Maine’s comparative physical security, its healthy environment for children, and its broad mix of cultural and entrepreneurial opportunities. Our social problems are real, but not so massive that we cannot address them effectively through coordinated voluntary, municipal, and state initiatives.

To sustain and enhance these qualities of Maine life, we must do the following:

. Sustain the richly varied natural environments that make Maine so special and underlie so much of our economy.

. Broaden and strengthen investment in our most important resource – Maine’s people – with outstanding pre-school and K-12 education, expanded post-secondary opportunities, and a greater commitment to lifetime learning for a continuously changing economy.

. Implement a universal health care system that contains costs by emphasizing prevention and public decisions on key resource allocation issues.

. Ensure that all publicly supported jobs pay livable wages and encourage private jobs that do.

. Invest in our communities to sustain the economic, social, and cultural vitality that make them wonderful places to work, live and raise families.

. Restructure state and local revenues to ensure that they are adequate to finance these crucial initiatives and that they more fairly reflect individuals’ and businesses’ differential ability to pay.

Christopher St. John is the executive director of the Maine Center for Economic Policy. David Vail is the Adams Caitlin Professor of Economics at Bowdoin College.

Dianne Tilton

Quality of life is the ability to have the lifestyle you choose. Whatever lifestyle that is, poverty eliminates the choices you have, and diminishes quality of life. Successful state policies will help people be in an economic position to make choices.

My appeal for state policy changes is a familiar one: target economic development resources to the most distressed regions. Rather than sweeping reforms, this can be accomplished with manageable policy adjustments and modest financial resources.

Suggested changes include raising the “cost per job” requirement in the Community Development Block Grant program from the state’s maximum of $10,000 to the federal maximum of $30,000 in these most distressed counties. CDBG Business Assistance funds now used for low interest loans could be used as grants in these regions. Other state programs, such as grants for transportation enhancements and planning, could set aside funds for the distressed counties, and ease match requirements. Organizations that purchase land in these regions for conservation should be required to demonstrate the economic impact of their proposal, much as a development project must account for environmental impacts.

For $1.5 million, flexible financial resources could be available to Maine’s three most distressed counties. The state could provide matching funds up to $500,000 in the region for economic development endowments. A total endowment of $1 million would mean a discretionary revenue stream for economic development projects would be available forever, to be spent the way the local communities decide, for seed money, staff, studies, or whatever is needed.

If distressed regions are held to the same standards as more prosperous regions of Maine, they will continue to lag and suffer. Some flexibility in state programming could go a long way toward improving these regions’ economic performance and improving the quality of life for their citizens.

Dianne Tilton is the executive director of the Sunrise County Economic Council.

Christian P. Potholm

First, Democrats have controlled the Maine House for the last 30 years. Whenever there is more money, their strong interest group allies such as organized labor, teachers, child and women’s advocacy elements, push to have it spent and the Democratic majority proceeds to spend it. There is no excuse for this year-by-year drawing down of state revenues when any prudent person would not make the assumption that the next year will bring higher revenues.

Second, then when there is a shortfall, the Democrats’ first assumption is to raise taxes. Watch what happens this fall as the Legislature grapples with the current ballooning deficit. The entrenched bureaucracies and interest groups make it easier to raise taxes than to cut spending. The Democratic mind-set accepts this process as a given.

In this context, the thought of Democratic governor John Baldacci having a Democratic controlled Legislature is too frightening for words and its fiscal implications are overwhelmingly negative. A full examination of these ramifications would require a separate column of much longer length.

Third, previous Republican leaders deserve considerable blame for the mess, too. Eight years ago, when Angus King became governor, the Republicans had a chance to make common cause with him to reduce spending, cut taxes and put a lid on the growth of government. Instead, in one of the stupidest moves of modern times, they assumed he was but a Democrat in Independent clothing, attacked him constantly and, in fact, drove him from their position on spending and the growth of government into the arms of the Democrats. Very shortsighted.

The solution? Elect Republican Peter Cianchette as governor and support his package of fiscal reforms to enable Maine to get control over the process of spending and reduce the impact of the special interest groups who never saw a surplus they couldn’t spend. Then make sure the Republicans regain control the state Senate so the ongoing cockamamie spending ideas of the House and liberal Democrats in the Senate will be thwarted before they cost us hundreds of millions of dollars.

Christian P. Potholm is professor of government at Bowdoin College and “An Insider’s Guide to Maine Politics.” His latest book is “The Delights of Democracy.”

Paula Valente

Maine, the way life should be. We know the saying, we’re proud of it, and we believe it. And why wouldn’t we? We boast tremendous natural resources, low crime rates, a strong K-12 education system, and we reside in communities full of kind-hearted, genuine neighbors.

By now we’ve all heard the negative reports on Maine’s taxes, incomes, and business climate. These trends alone are troubling, but unfortunately, they also are on a collision course with the state’s demographics – our population is getting older and our young people are leaving at an alarming rate. Failure to address these daunting challenges will inevitably detract from the quality of life that we all cherish.

In today’s global economy, change is constant and the competition is tough. The states and countries that are thriving are fast, agile, forward thinking, responsive, and innovative. Here in Maine we must be leaders in the global marketplace, or we will fall victim to it.

The choice is clear. We can ignore the warning signs, accept the status quo and see our cherished quality of life diminish over time; or we can confront the painful realities now, and demand the bold leadership required to bring meaningful economic change. All that we hold dear – good schools, good health care, a clean environment, care of those less fortunate – ultimately depend on the strength and vitality of our economy. The health of our social fabric is directly tied to the health of our economy, not mutually exclusive of it.

These recommendations come directly from the report “No Place to Hide: Confronting Maine’s Economic Future,” from the Institute for a Strong Maine Economy:

. Restructure Maine’s tax system to promote private investment, export activity, business competitiveness, stability and predictability of revenues.

. Reduce the cost of government by restructuring the delivery of regional and local governmental services.

. Limit the growth in government spending to the growth in gross state product, income, or some other logical benchmark.

. Promote a culture of lifelong learning through a seamless educational system running from pre-school to university to adult education. Maine must commit to investing in post secondary educational attainment to give Maine people the tools with which to compete and the capacity for higher incomes.

. Over time, through the combined impact of the above actions, reduce Maine’s tax burden to within the range of the national average.

As the pollster who did the “They can run but they can’t hide” study, the causes of our current problems and the way to prevent our past from becoming our future are quite simple.

Paula Valente is president of the Institute for a Strong Maine Economy.