REPRIEVE ON THE PENOBSCOT

John Baldacci has been acting a lot like Jimmy Stewart lately, rushing about solving everyone’s problems – patching a massive hole in the state budget, helping to negotiate a deal to keep the paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket in operation. Now, less than a month after it said it was losing too much money in Maine and would cease making tissue in Old Town, Georgia-Pacific has been convinced by the governor to restart some of its machines there. When operations re-start in mid-May, 150 people will have their jobs back.

He has accomplished this not by promoting airy concepts and calling for studies of the state’s business climate. He’s done it by finding out what the problems are and then immediately working on solutions. In the case of Georgia-Pacific, he and paper industry experts met with corporate leadership to find out why they were moving tissue making operations out of Maine.

The reasons were ones policy-makers have heard for years: high energy and transportation costs, etc. Working with G-P officials, the governor’s team came up with a plan to address these concerns head-on. The beauty of the plan is that it doesn’t just apply to the mill in Old Town but provides the outline for what needs to be done on a broader scale to address the state’s persistent economic woes.

While some may argue that the governor has gone too far – by having the state assume environmental liability for landfills in Old Town and Millinocket, for example – but no one can fault his commitment to trying to save the state’s economy. As the governor himself said, his administration is not willing to take no for an answer. He is not willing to let a company leave the state without making every effort to keep them here.

“We were astounded by the efforts put forth to develop a tangible economic package – one that is too good for us to walk away from,” said G-P’s chief executive officer, Pete Correll.

Such efforts will go a long way toward making Maine known as the little state that could rather than the state that was.

At the same time, Gov. Baldacci has become realistic about Maine’s future. Even if a few hundred jobs are maintained in Old Town and Millinocket, the pulp and paper industry will continue to shrink in Maine. Once a stalwart of the state’s economy, it is a much smaller part of its future. That is why the governor is wise to search for ways to diversify the state’s economy. As he did with Georgia-Pacific, he should find out what it would take for companies to locate here. With that information in hand, he can begin making the changes necessary to ensure that Maine really is open for business.