Maine drain: rural Mainers hit the road, but to where?

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Part 1 of a 6-part series

From his 30th floor office in Boston’s bustling financial district, Medway native Michael Faloon scanned an online newspaper for the latest turn in the bankruptcy filing by Great Northern Paper Co., the once indomitable employer in his small hometown.

“I’m just hoping to have a place to go back to someday,” mused the 27-year-old municipal bond analyst, who hit the road south six years ago after graduating from the University of Maine.

Faloon is one of the thousands of people from Maine’s eight northeastern counties who left the state for better opportunities, according to a Bangor Daily News analysis of government data tracking people’s movements during the latter half of the 1990s.

Not all were fresh out of college. Many, in their 30s and 40s, took their families with them.

Many of them never came back – nor were they replaced by people from other states or countries.

This was especially true in four of those eight counties – Penobscot, Piscataquis, Washington and Aroostook – which saw a net loss of approximately 11,200 migrants between 1995 and 2000. Those 11,200 people represented 62 percent of the population loss in the four counties for the entire decade.

In this six-part series, NEWS reporters used Internal Revenue Service data tracking county-to-county moves to determine where people went after moving out of northeastern Maine, and they conducted dozens of interviews with those who left to find out why.

Faloon’s departure to Boston – the second most popular destination for northeastern Mainers – is but one example of the struggling region’s inability to hold on to its most valuable asset, its people.

Most who left the northeastern eight counties stayed in their home state, making the Portland area their top destination and Lewiston their third choice.

While GNP’s current shutdown has fueled fears of a mass exodus from the Katahdin region, the paper giant has not been alone in its struggle. Massive layoffs at GNP, Guilford of Maine, Pride Manufacturing, Ames Department Stores, Dexter Shoe, General Electric, Osram Sylvania, the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad and dozens of smaller companies sent thousands seeking more fertile economic territory.

They took with them their education, their families and their job skills, leaving the once formidable natural resource-based economy in near obsolescence, and raising the credibility of visionaries calling for the creation of a giant national park in northern Maine.

For some who left, warmer weather beckoned.

For others, the promise of culture and diversity in big cities contributed to their decisions.

But for Faloon and the majority, there was only one major reason.

“It was pure economic reality,” he said while having a beer after work with friends one recent evening in an Irish pub on the edge of Boston’s financial district. “There was just nothing up there for me then.”

Growing problem

The exodus of people – especially the young – from economically depressed rural Maine has long been considered a problem. With the exception of the 1970s, the state’s population growth has failed to keep up with the national average since the 1830s.

Indeed, in 1867, during the decade in which the state’s population actually declined for the only time in history, newly elected Gov. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain cited business attraction and youth out-migration as his top two priorities in his inaugural speech.

But in Maine’s four most northeastern counties, the out-migration problem, coupled with a low birth rate, has grown to disturbing proportions. In the 1990s, three of those counties – Penobscot, Piscataquis and Washington – experienced a decline in population for the first time in three decades. Aroostook County’s population had been declining every decade for 50 years.

The only county in southern Maine to experience a decline in population was Androscoggin, ironically the third most popular destination for departing northeastern Mainers between 1995 and 2000, according to the NEWS analysis of IRS data.

More people moving to Hancock, Knox, Somerset and Waldo – the other four counties included in the NEWS analysis – helped offset the losses to out-migration in the four most northeastern counties.

But, in total, the eight northeastern counties still experienced a net loss of 5,400 migrants in those five years – helping place Maine among the five slowest growing states in the nation with the fourth oldest residents.

Rapid growth in parts of southern Maine, where prosperous Cumberland and York counties together experienced a net gain of about 19,000 migrants during the same time period, couldn’t bring Maine even close to the national average population increase.

Population loss is not unique to rural Maine. The largest population losses have been in the nation’s upper Midwest, where entire towns have disappeared. Several counties in North Dakota lost more than 20 percent of their people in the 1990s.

But on the East Coast, Aroostook County had the dubious distinction of experiencing the largest population loss – 15 percent, or nearly 13,000 people – between 1990 and 2000, according to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

At least some of that loss can be attributed to the fact that there were 333 more deaths than births between 1995 and 2000 in Aroostook County. During that period, Washington, Piscataquis, Knox and Hancock counties also saw deaths outnumber births.

Meanwhile, southern Maine – with a fresh influx of young families – experienced a baby boom in those years, with Cumberland and York counties combining for 7,700 more births than deaths.

Population losses and low birth rates are nothing new for Maine’s upper reaches, especially Aroostook County, which has seen a steady population reduction since 1960, partly because of a declining potato industry. The severest blow, however, came in 1994, when Limestone’s Loring Air Force base closed, taking with it 10,000 people.

The result is fewer people and less money to support necessary municipal services. In some instances, companies struggle to find employees to fill jobs, because so many working-age residents have left and not been replaced.

This leads to an economic malaise that makes a region more unattractive to those who might move there, said demographer Deirdre Mageean, associate vice president for research at the University of Maine.

“It’s like a vote saying there’s nothing here,” she said.

Heading south

Fourth on the list of destinations – after the Portland, Boston and Lewiston metropolitan areas – was Tampa, Fla., a haven for both middle-income retirees and young people looking for clean, high-paying jobs.

State officials acknowledged that competing with sunny – and income-tax free – Florida for retirees is no easy task. “We shouldn’t be pushing them in that direction,” said state economist Laurie Lachance, who called for targeted tax incentives to help stem the tide of outgoing retirees. “If we make it more neutral, and make some options available to them, it could have a positive effect.”

State officials point out that Maine – with its low crime rate and picturesque coastline – has held its own in attracting wealthier retirees, less concerned by the tax burden. Many of them head south during the winter to a second home.

While the state has seen a slight net increase in retirees moving to Maine each year, northern Maine has seen losses in almost every other age group, especially among those age 18 to 44.

“Young people should be moving to pursue jobs and higher education, and to see the world,” Mageean, a native of Ireland acknowledged. “The problem isn’t young people leaving; it’s that they’re not coming back.”

Twenty-three-year-old Jennifer Carney isn’t going back to her hometown of Ashland, despite her nostalgic affection for the isolated Aroostook County community of 1,500 people.

“I loved growing up there, being a teenager there, my teachers, my friends, everything,” said Carney, who moved to Portland last year to take a job – and a 50 percent pay raise – as a lab technician at Maine Medical Center, the state’s largest hospital. “Things just change.”

The cost of leaving

The fact that Carney and others like her are leaving parts of the state is not necessarily a bad thing, said Philip Trostel, an associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Center.

Anytime there are economic shifts, like the current decline in the forest products and shoe manufacturing industries, for example, some people win and some lose, he said.

The problem comes, Trostel said, when property values fall dramatically and taxes are spread among a dwindling number of people to continue to support municipal services.

The way to solve the problem is not to offer incentives to companies to stay in the area – because they will simply add the money to corporate coffers and ultimately go wherever costs are cheapest – but to give the money directly to the workers who are most affected by change.

Some may leave. But others will stay, Trostel explained. And with an infusion of cash, they may start a business or embark on another venture that will create jobs.

“We’ve got to stop fighting it. Fighting it is a waste of money,” Trostel said.

But Gov. John Baldacci, whose first day in office was marked by news of GNP’s bankruptcy, said he isn’t willing to give up that fight anytime soon.

“You’re going to watch those trend lines change because of things like the need for affordable housing, the desire to raise your family with a quality of life and with surroundings that are safe,” said the Bangor Democrat.

He has proposed eight Pine Tree zones – three of which will be reserved for northern counties – to lure business to the state, mostly with targeted tax incentives.

Gov. Chamberlain had a similar idea in 1867 when he proposed lowering taxes on businesses if they would agree to stay in Maine.

What is the problem?

It’s clear that for the better part of at least 130 years, there has been much hand-wringing about the “brain drain,” the common catchphrase for the outflow of state’s educated work force to points south.

But there has been little study of what causes it and how it can be stopped.

“There has been no in-depth analysis. We just look at the number and say ‘We lost another 4,000 people,'” said Bob Clark, executive director of the Northern Maine Development Commission, which serves Aroostook County. “We assume it’s good-paying jobs [that lure people away], but we don’t know.

“It’s pretty hard to solve a problem when you don’t understand the problem,” he added.

Jobs may be the main reason people leave, but they are not the only reason.

Some move to be closer to their children.

Others move to be closer to needed health care providers. For example, 15 people from Aroostook County recently moved to Bangor for dialysis treatments.

Included in the top 20 destinations are the obvious – Phoenix, Ariz., another popular retirement Mecca – and the not-so obvious – Killeen, Texas, home of Fort Hood, one of the largest military installations in the world, with 72,000 civilian and military personnel.

As for the fifth top destination on the list – Hartford, Conn., Clark pointed out there is a long history of people, especially Franco-Americans from northern Aroostook County, moving there to work for companies including Pratt & Whitney and Stanley Works.

Though that migration pattern began during World War II and peaked shortly thereafter, northern Mainers remain more likely to go to the Hartford area because they already know people there.

Clark’s group aims to bring them home.

Last year, Aroostook County was designated an Empowerment Zone by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The northern Maine county was only the second in the country to get such a designation due to out-migration. The other was in North Dakota.

The designation will bring more federal money to the region for business and community development projects.

But national experts say the designation alone won’t reverse the county’s misfortune. It can be reversed with – among other things – efforts to change state and federal funding formulas for such things as Community Development Block Grants, which tend to favor urban areas.

“The federal money is very critical, but more important is creating a commitment on the part of people to a new vision for their community,” said Chuck Fluharty, the director of the Rural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri. “It ain’t easy. It’s damned hard.”

Some hope to return

Deciding to return to northern Maine after more than 20 years away wasn’t hard for Fort Fairfield native Bob Hunt.

“The area’s a tough sell for some, but not for me,” said Hunt, a 34-year-old physician assistant at The Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle. “I’ve been a lot of places but none of them compared.”

Hunt, who lived in the Portland area for several years, was not alone in his desire to come back. Many relocated Mainers interviewed for this series expressed similar wishes – for the right opportunity.

Last fall, the Northern Maine Development Commission was seeking to fill an engineering position. Thirty-three applications were submitted, seven of them from former Aroostook County residents who wished to return home.

On the other hand, the commission recently did a mail survey of alumni of the county’s colleges. Only 1 percent of those who responded said they hoped to return to Aroostook County. The survey only had a 10 percent response rate.

The long-standing worry about population loss does not have to go on forever, demographers insist.

If the nation’s growing desire for outdoor recreation and small-town life, in addition to good jobs, continues, Maine is well-positioned to lure people here, Mageean and Trostel agree.

“If the current love of amenities continues, Maine has a future, if that is paralleled with good economic policies that bring in high paying jobs,” Mageean said.

And, Maine could be the next state to be discovered, even if demographers aren’t predicting that today.

It’s not so hard to imagine. During the 1970s, the state’s population increase surpassed the national average, as thousands of often well-educated young people flocked here during the “back-to-the-earth” movement. Many are still here.

“No self-respecting demographer would have predicted that Nevada would be the fastest growing state for many years in a row,” Mageean said.

Although a lot of work remains to be done to make northern Maine a more attractive place for new generations, Mageean believes more people are committed to getting that work done.

People are more supportive of higher education than they used to be, with voters in recent years backing bond issues designed to bolster the University of Maine System and the state’s technical colleges.

But money for college doesn’t necessarily translate into jobs at home for graduates.

It was the state’s flagship university that educated Faloon, who said he regretted not being able to find a job in his field in Maine after his graduation.

But he doesn’t blame himself.

“How many of you looked for a job in Maine?” Faloon loudly asked a group of his former fraternity brothers crammed around a small table at the Boston pub.

Three of the four raised their hands.

“The thing is, if Maine wants to bring in an educated work force, it has to change some things,” he explained over the din of nearby conversations. “They were there. They just left.”

NEWS reporters Michael Moore and Susan Young contributed to this report.

Monday: The other Maine