Camelot: the mythical place next door

You’ll recall Camelot. Not the Morte d’Arthur serious stuff but the Lerner and Loewe version: “In short, there’s simply not a more congenial spot/For happy ever-aftering,” etc., etc. Broadway’s Camelot was full of song and romance, where winter “exits March the second on the dot” rather than precisely in early mid to latish May, as in other places. Camelot also turns out to be right next door.

Perhaps you thought our neighboring state was New Hampshire. Technically, yes. But according to numerous surveys on the quality of life, including one called the Camelot Index, New Hampshire has the ideal mix of essential services, economic vitality, amenities and low taxes that make it just the place for Guineveres and Arthurs (or Lancelots) to alight.

You already know about the low taxes. If you live in Maine and think about taxes at all, New Hampshire crowds out all else under the heading “What We Are Not.” And that means you’ve also heard about the Granite State’s lack of income and sales taxes but presence of business profits and enterprise taxes. Those are interesting details, but we’re following the musical here, not the original epic, so all you need to know is that state and local tax burdens in New Hampshire rank it second lowest, according to the Tax Foundation, while Maine ranks second from the top. The Camelot Index, which measures not only taxes but crime, education, governance, health care – 26 variables in all – recently named New Hampshire its most congenial spot for the second consecutive year. (Maine dropped from 10th to 17th.)

There is a needed caveat in the Camelot Index: Its creator, Hal Hovey, editor of State Policy Reports, says that because so many of the scales used in the index are based on values (more education is better than less,

for instance) with improvements being sought not only by governments but also individuals, social and religious groups, state governments shouldn’t get all the credit or blame for how a state ranks. However, “the results are certainly relevant to evaluating the challenges facing officials of individual states, and to some degree, relevant to considering their performance.” End of caveat.

I always figured the disparity in tax levels between New Hampshire and Maine meant that New Hampshire was serving a second-rate mead or an inferior cut of wild boar at the Round Table of state services. Not so, according to a bunch of surveys. Kid’s Count, for instance, the excellent annual rating of states for such issues as immunization, high-school graduation and percent of children in poverty reports that New Hampshire is among the best states, often ahead of Maine.

Even within business-centered surveys New Hampshire does very well on quality-of-life components. The Corporation for Enterprise Development presents an annual report card on the states that looks at all kinds of issues, including university R&D, state crime rate, infant mortality rate, environmental measures and a hundred more. New Hampshire has twice as many strengths in that survey as Maine, while spending considerably less, about $1,500 per person compared with $2,000 here.

Sure, New Hampshire is more densely populated and attracts higher pay from jobs in Boston. But densely populated Connecticut draws wealth from New York and even more densely populated New Jersey draws wealth from New York and Philadelphia and those states have some of the highest taxes around. Location isn’t everything, though it is certainly true that you could cross into northern New Hampshire and get a similar sense of desperation that resides within a fair portion of Maine. Still, given the outcomes in all those surveys, how, specifically, does New Hampshire spend its tax dollars so efficiently?

The answer from April Preston, press secretary to N.H. Gov. Craig Benson, unfortunately, reveals no secrets. “Gov. Benson knows New Hampshire has to live within our means. Sometimes that makes people unhappy but it’s important.” Calls to several economic policy-types also provided some commonsense answers, but none so useful to explain what separates one state’s performance from the other’s.

Back in March, Gov. John Baldacci met Gov. Benson at a press conference, where they pledged to work together to keep the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard open. For two states that have fought repeatedly over the possession of the shipyard, the announcement from the governors was terrific. On his way back to Augusta that day, Gov. Baldacci effused over the New Hampshire governor, saying he hoped there would be other opportunities for the states to cooperate. Well, here’s one: Encourage Maine lawmakers from both parties and a couple of members of the governor’s staff to travel (carpooling, of course) across the border to Concord. Let them spend a little time learning how New Hampshire gets so much bang for its tax buck.

There’s no need to worry that the Maine officials would feel like supplicants approaching King Arthur – they wouldn’t be going to be taught how to run Maine. They would go recognizing that Maine does very well on the quality-of-life surveys too, but it does so at a higher cost and at the expense of residents who make less money than the people of New Hampshire. Their goal would be to see whether that state performed its services in ways that could be effectively applied here. They might think of it as a workshop where the work is for real.

Then they could return to Maine to tell us all of the noble ideals of Camelot.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.