Maine’s Decider is going to need backup

Ever since Gov. Baldacci’s swaggering performance at his inaugural address earlier this month, I haven’t been able to shake the mental image of him in a flight suit striding across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln with a banner behind him that says “Macho Accomplished.”

Want to lower spending? He’s using his budget to pay for fewer school districts. Property taxes too high? Cap ’em, he says, the effects be damned. Don’t like the state’s health care costs? Slap those Medicaid recipients into managed care. That’s in his budget too, and if the policy doesn’t work out, let the Legislature solve it. Our mild-mannered governor, the man who once formed stakeholder meetings as reflexively as you and I might reach for morning coffee, has become The Decider of Maine. Shock and … what?

Acting tough is about the desire to appear confident in the face of difficulties. George Bush had a war, until the war had him. Baldacci has a budget and four years to drop Maine’s tax burden.

He has chosen an interesting time for this personality makeover because hovering just beyond the border of official governmentdom are two remarkable groups that have designed reforms for state and local government based on the methodical, data-driven inclusiveness the governor is rejecting. Between Baldacci and these groups, the public is being offered a distinct choice: precipitate action or improved versions of a process that has failed repeatedly.

Why aren’t you more grateful?

The first of the two groups is GrowSmart Maine, which presented its report by the Brookings Institution last fall. No one seemed happier about this than the governor, who ran the final month of his re-election campaign on its themes. The report proposes that Maine cut spending – reducing school administration, for instance – and invest in the economy and places that make the state so desirable. It imagines an efficiency commission in an 18-month process, with national-level experts giving it advice on how the state might improve its performance. There would be consultations with agency representatives and regular public meetings, a procedure that may be repeated after the first commission had completed its work.

The second group is made of up of the sorts of people who don’t often associate – the state Chamber of Commerce, Maine Municipal Association and Maine Education Association. The pro-business and pro-local government groups are together for a single reason: They thought the defeated Taxpayer Bill of Rights would have been harmful to the state, and they believe it eventually will prevail unless Maine makes some major changes. This group too wants a commission to hear advice and be responsible to the public while also persuading the Legislature to accept higher standards for exceeding Maine’s spending cap and looking at the cost of public administration. It wants Maine to spend more on R&D and roads.

Together, the groups attack old problems of government inefficiency and lack of investment with old-style consensus building but, they believe, they will get better outcomes than the numerous commissions that have tried and failed because the desire is high in Maine for these changes and the experience of both groups is superior to those who typically talk about these things.

Played right by Democratic leaders in the Legislature, nothing could be better for Maine than the apparent conflict between the governor’s approach and that of these groups.

Baldacci doesn’t dismiss either group but he is fed up with a bureaucracy that refuses to acknowledge taxpayers are frustrated with a lack of tax reform and relief. He has nothing to lose and a limited time in office so he is pushing hard. His strategy is fine until his plans require substantial amendment – both the school-district and Medicaid plans will inspire plenty of protesters – or are plain harmful, such as the property-tax cap.

A swashbuckling governor who finds a couple of his major policies are unacceptable to the Legislature will also find his swash fairly buckled unless he has backup. Legislative leaders can solve that problem for him by having those commissions up and running before the protests kill the governor’s legislation. They would take some of the pressure off the governor’s plans and contribute their own ideas even as the budget moves through the Legislature.

The easiest thing to do in Augusta is kill an idea – a good idea or a bad one, doesn’t matter. If someone tosses up a halfway decent argument against it, enough legislators will back away on the chance that the argument may be right or may at least seem right. Baldacci is trying to get around that by starting the debate with new policies already in the budget and forcing opponents to try to get them out.

But he will need help – thoughtful, unglamorous help – if he is to have a lasting success. A lot can go wrong with budget reform between now and the end of the session.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News. His e-mail address is tbenoit@bangordailynews.net.