The inscription on the Statue of Liberty reads, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

How wide we open that “golden door” in Maine is a perennial question that is never easy to answer. Maine is not a Mecca of wealth. It is a land of ingenuity and grit, though not at the expense of compassion. When faced with the needs of our various populations, instead of closing the door on our homeless, immigrant, poor, ill, young or elderly, we have often been able to devise solutions that welcome our vulnerable in to benefit from some safety, comfort and hope.

Yet our efforts are counterproductive if we welcome someone through the door and have to push another out because we overextend our capacity to help. However, we can expand our capacity: not by inflating our support system, but by making it more efficient.

That is why I submitted a bill this session that would address the gap between our increasing homeless population and our available support services by directing the Statewide Homeless Council to assess how to streamline services across state agencies, remove duplications and determine how to best deliver help to those who need it most.

Most people who end up in our shelters are suffering from disabilities and extreme poverty. In many cases these individuals utilize a number of different state, local and private agencies – from corrections facilities to emergency rooms to municipal social services – before they even land in a shelter.

The demand on shelters has nearly doubled in the last 10 years. In 1997, shelters provided 148,368 bed nights per year; in 2006, more than 246,500. Given that an average bed night costs $37 (funded through a combination of state, federal and private resources), we could significantly reduce the strain on our support system if we were able to help people headed toward homelessness before they arrive at the last stop, a shelter.

By the same token, our inefficiency at helping people out of homelessness is costing taxpayers more than it should. The Palesky referendum, TABOR and the Brookings Report have made clear that Maine people are frustrated about the delivery of government services and genuinely desire to see those services utilized more efficiently. Through consolidated services and interagency cooperation, we can and should make the effort to help our state’s most vulnerable populations as effectively and efficiently as possible.

We can have a win-win situation if we do this right: We conserve taxpayer dollars, and we bring compassion and hope to individuals who currently have little to none.

I followed the same principle last session as I worked to forward a bill that was signed into law in 2005. It enriches the Maine Civil Legal Services Fund to support legal services for persons who are unable to pay for those services. It appropriated $400,000 per year for two years into the Maine Civil Legal Services Fund and sustains funding by depositing 7 percent of all fees collected by the Judicial Department after July 1, 2005 into the fund.

I am especially proud of how this law has benefited an important program based in Bangor. The Penquis Law Project – a group established to serve the legal needs of low-income individuals experiencing domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking and who cannot otherwise afford an attorney – received a grant from the MCLS Fund that allowed the project to hire an additional full-time attorney. The project anticipated the new hire would allow the group to serve an additional 70 individuals for the year. The project’s annual report on the grant’s outcomes boasts 89 people served.

This law helps break the financial constraints that keep many of our low-income citizens from being free from economic, physical and emotional abuse. Once free from abuse, these folks are empowered to contribute to society. By helping people help themselves, our initial investment results in long-term cost savings because we reduce spending and strain on the support systems in place for those who have been stricken with misfortune. And by improving the quality of their lives, they in turn can open the door to those less fortunate than them.

Michael Dunn, D-Bangor, represents District 18 in the Maine House of Representatives. He may be contacted at RepMichael.Dunn@legislature.maine.gov.