Measure for Measure

The Camelot Index ranks states on the condition of their economy, health care, crime, education, social services and state management. There are many other indices like it and many of them come to roughly similar conclusions. But this one is noteworthy because it is a more comprehensive outside observer of Maine that is widely accepted in state. Its recent conclusions point to where Maine has more work to do.

The index, created by the Federal Funds Information for the States, was accepted in a recent news story by both the liberal Maine Center for Economic Policy and the conservative Maine Heritage Policy Center. It contains both good and bad news about the state: Maine’s rank is fairly high but falling; it does well with such issues as crime and education but poorly with its economy and with some governance components.

None of these are surprising. More useful are the underlying measures. For instance, what makes for a prudently managed government, according to the index, are low taxes as a percentage of income, low levels of state and local debt and unfunded pension liabilities, strong bond ratings and structural surpluses. Maine ranks an unhealthy 42nd on this index, but it is clear that the popular response of simply lowering taxes would not move the state as much as an overall strategy to address each of these parts.

Another area where Maine struggled, its economy, was divided into seven components: poverty level, employment growth, population growth, total income growth, federal tax liability, fiscal capacity and average retail pay. The unfortunate result in this area, where Maine ranks 31st, is that the state’s score has worsened for the last three years. It may be that one link between these two weak areas is low income, which makes tax collection to pay down liabilities more difficult and raises the overall burden and increases the poverty level.

But even this is tricky. Maine’s own extensive index, Measures of Growth, Christopher St. John of the MCEP points out, urges Maine both to increase its number of jobs with a livable wage and to lower the cost of doing business, including labor costs. It’s hard to do both.

The index comes with an important caveat: “Neither state governments, nor other factors affecting the results, can claim credit or should be given total blame for how states rank on the Camelot Index,” though because much of state government’s role is directed toward meeting the standards within the index “the results are certainly relevant to evaluating the challenges facing officials of individual states, and to some degree, relevant to considering their performance.”

Finding a fair and widely accepted measure to judge how well or poorly a state is performing is a rare event. The Camelot Index, despite its mythic name, looks like the real thing.