Publish or perish: a candidate’s handbook

Barbara Merrill wonders whether she should be governor, so the state representative from Appleton has done what anyone in her position might do. She’s written a book explaining her views on the big wonky issues of the day. It’s a fine book, one written with a combination of zeal, frustration and the pleasure of argument. You will recall that Angus King started his successful race for governor with a book too. His “Making a Difference” was more overview than the detail in Merrill’s “Setting the Maine Course,” perhaps a result of her first-term experience in the Legislature. If you don’t recall King’s book, Merrill reminds you in her introduction. It’s an important point because if she ran she could, like King, do so as a Democrat turned independent against a strong Democrat, a trailing Republican and a Green, among many others. The difference between 2006 and 1994 is that King ran for an open seat. And he had higher name recognition. And scads of money.

But a potential candidacy isn’t the primary reason to read Merrill’s book. Read it because Merrill is a smart, articulate politician trying to raise the level of debate and offer new ideas on topics that have bedeviled Maine for decades. Sometimes she succeeds and sometimes I find her arguments unpersuasive, but even then they are interesting, fair and often fun to consider.

Here’s a successful example, on the economy: “Maine’s future is to be found by studying the small specialty store. … On a world scale or even the national scale, Maine’s needs are small and we can prosper if we understand our position and develop our niche.” Business experts have been talking about this sort of thing for years, most recently about how premium-goods makers can extend their brands to the upper middle class – exclusive but not out of reach for many. Maine may need to come at it from the other direction, but the niche is the same and it could be lucrative for the state.

Another, more specific example: Under the heading of changing some services from an SUV to a minivan, Merrill writes about the cost of providing people who have developmental disabilities with one- or two-person homes, when many Mainers can’t afford that kind of housing. The state, it turns out, has trouble affording it, too, and now “we need to be concerned with over-reaction in the other direction,” which may mean large group homes. Her point was that had Maine struck a middle ground to begin with, gotten a minivan rather than an SUV, this debate could have been avoided.

Another, on setting water-quality standards for the Androscoggin River and the ability to attract new people and businesses to the Lewiston area. “The paper industry … came before us and argued that, if we cared about jobs we would turn down the people of Lewiston-Auburn.” The Legislature agreed with the paper companies, though Merrill did not. “I have witnessed these debates for years and seen the past beat the future time and time again.”

I don’t know how pristine the Androscoggin should be, but I like that Merrill emphasizes the opportunity cost in siding with one type of business over another, and that as the paper companies employ fewer residents that cost increases. Not necessarily original but well said.

Less well said are some of her observations on school funding and composition. Merrill, who is on the Legislature’s Education Committee, devotes the largest chapter of her book to schools, where she opposes reducing the number of school districts to 35 to save money on administration, as proposed by the state Board of Education. She calls this “false economy. Up until recently,” she writes, “Hawaii, a state with a population close in size to Maine, had just one state-wide school unit. It got rid of it because it found it inefficient. Chicago has about 427,000 students in its school system, twice the number of students in all of Maine. Is it more efficient?”

Actually, Hawaii still has just one district, but does have 15 of what are called complex areas that comprise 286 schools; that state remains far from Maine’s 288 districts for 683 public schools. And because no one here is suggesting anything like forming a Chicago public school system (or a Hawaiian one, for that matter) the comparisons don’t take us anywhere. More intriguing is her school-funding plan. She would have the state pay demonstrated, legitimate costs as follows: 100 percent of the cost of teachers, 90 percent of the cost of transportation, 50 percent of construction plus a supplement for certain schools. All administrative costs would be picked up by local taxpayers, which she believes will provide plenty of incentive for districts to cooperate, or not, as they chose.

I asked Merrill whether the process of writing the book changed her mind about anything. One in particular, she said: “the need to get the state out of investing in one business over another as we do with programs like Pine Tree Zones.”

This is part of a theme throughout the book – that the state should provide a guiding hand but not a determining one and, following this, that a decision that can be made locally is likely a better decision. It is an appeal for community in the traditional, geographic sense, and taps a powerful current in Maine culture.

Angus King wrapped up his book with a lofty invitation: “Together, we have the power to seize and shape the future … let us begin.” Barbara Merrill goes for “Animal House,” the 1978 movie of drunken college kids in which one character declares: “I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.” The character played by John Belushi takes up the challenge: “We’re just the guys to do it!”

Merrill may be closer the truth on that one.

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