Help Down East and help yourself

Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, Dianne Tilton observed the other day, a falling one drops them as surely. Washington County is a falling tide, and will drain this region of Maine until the state applies commitment and cash to the good ideas from the bookcase full of economic plans to revive Down East.

Tilton is the executive director of the Sunrise County Economic Council and has seen plenty of plans come through. Augusta, she said, “has tried to help Washington County on the cheap for a long time but hasn’t gotten anywhere.” That, in gentler language, is just what David Flanagan concluded in the latest examination of Washington County, which he submitted to Gov. Baldacci last month.

It’s in everyone’s interest not to be cheap.

Pick your preferred question of economic struggle – percent of people below poverty, on food stamps, unemployed, receiving Medicaid benefits. The answer is almost always the same: Washington County. It has had the worst economy in Maine for decades, and despite instances of good news and a ton of hard work by a lot of people, the hope for growth has yielded to merely a hope for a slower decline. In 1900, 45,000 people lived in the county; last year, 34,000 did. Some live well and might like to keep things just as they are, but more do not and are not fooling themselves into thinking that communities untended do anything but wither.

Flanagan’s report received a re-spectful observance. He was from outside Washington County and was appointed by the governor in what looked like a top-down, tell-’em-what-to-do model that causes teeth to grind. Only it wasn’t, and next up is a local task force that will take the ideas of the former president of Central Maine Power Co. and plot a course, with a lot of public input, based on his 70 or so suggestions.

The rest of Maine should be eager to support that outcome because Washington County is a part of the state with more natural assets and more economic misery than anywhere else. Yet it could attract many more seniors who’d like to retire to the coast, more tourists if there were more activities there and more businesses if there were more links – air, rail and road – to the rest of the world. It could – and should – rebuild its freight rail; it could, with the right safeguards and public incentives, have a successful LNG terminal. All boats rise if these happen.

The report describes many other such possibilities. It presents the potential of a thriving Washington County that helps surrounding counties. That picture would attract some legislative support because there’s no reason not to support it. But support based only on an absence of a reason for opposition is the most dangerous option.

That results in something like this: Legislators propose $1 million in state money to get started on rescuing Washington Country. A legislative committee sees its way to backing $300,000 of it before sending the bill through the appropriations process. With only tepid enthusiasm from most lawmakers, the $1 million gets further reduced to an amount that leaves just enough left to buy some new signs and pay an out-of-state company to come up with a branding slogan. Does “Been Down East So Long It Looks Like Up to Me” do anything for you?

Washington County deserves better, which means it deserves steady, serious funding of $5 million to $10 million a year for the next decade for new economic development. I think a bond would do that and that it would find statewide support. Flanagan tells me that’s not such a hot idea, but then he prefers the rails-to-trails deal Down East and I think restoring as much of the freight-rail system as possible would make attracting new businesses easier. Most of the bond money I had in mind would go in that direction.

We agree on this, however. Lowering the cost of doing business, making the county especially attractive to retired people looking for second homes and funding both a high-level state administration official to be responsible for economic progress and an economist to focus on the region’s competition and how to beat it builds opportunities not now available. Tilton adds that endowments to ensure small pots of funding to help new businesses get going are also needed perhaps a local bonding authority similar to the one in Limestone.

Where does the money come from if not a bond? Flanagan suggests a toll on the new Calais bridge or from lease revenue from the state’s submerged land for an LNG facility. In addition, Downeast LNG is promising about $500,000 a year for economic development if it operates. All good, but if it’s not enough, at least a highway bond with money specifically for Washington County rail should be part of the mix.

More than any single proposal in the Flanagan study or in the many that came before it, however, the value of these exercises is in providing the chance to make a long-term commitment to support Washington Country’s choices for development. Maine should do so because of the region’s strong potential in its people and geography, because doing so builds a model for helping other parts of the state and because not doing so is harmful to the entire region. Also, no more doing things on the cheap.

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