Michaud backs bill to create regional economic group

Power transmission lines from Carthage, N.Y., to the Allagash. Downtown beautification in northern New Hampshire and all along the Canadian border in the American Northeast.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation with a 264-154 vote Thursday that would create a federal Northern Border Regional Commission consisting of governors of Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont.

The vote is a good first step toward creating the commission and allocating at least $40 million annually to an ailing rural Northeastern economy that needs a comprehensive overhaul, said U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine.

“It’s extremely necessary,” Michaud said Friday. “We have to have a regional approach.”

“It’s a good bill for Maine,” said David Farmer, spokesman for Gov. John Baldacci. “It recognizes the problems of rural economies across the Northeast. What’s happening in the rural areas in New England is not isolated to Maine.”

Along with U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, Michaud is among the bill’s leading congressional proponents. Similar legislation must pass the Senate and be signed by President Bush. If that happens, the commission’s impact could be felt in 2009 or 2010, Michaud said.

Modeled on other three- or four-state commissions around the country, the commission, the Northeast’s first, would be charged with investing $40 million per year – rising to $60 million per year by 2012 – in federal funds for economic development and job creation in the most economically distressed areas of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York.

That includes Androscoggin, Aroostook, Franklin, Hancock, Kennebec, Knox, Oxford, Penobscot, Piscataquis, Somerset, Waldo and Washington counties.

Local economic development agencies cheered that approach.

“If we’re going to fix the persistent challenges we face in Aroostook County with attracting businesses, building new investment, creating jobs, and keeping young people, we need federal resources and a regional approach,” Robert Clark, executive director of Northern Maine Development Commission, said in a statement.

“This bill will give us exactly the type of investment and coordinated regional leadership that we need here in northern Maine,” he added.

“These areas suffer dramatically during recessions and never see much during boom years,” said John Richardson, Maine Department of Economic and Community Development commissioner. “We’re very optimistic that this money will assist us in diversifying the rural economies and bolster traditional industries. This will create potential.”

“This bill will help address Maine’s transportation and infrastructure challenges,” said Maria Fuentes, executive director of the Maine Better Transportation Association.

“While each community has specific issues, there are common concerns in the rural Northeast, specifically around rejoining the growing global economy,” Millinocket Town Council Chairman Wallace Paul said. “I believe we can compete in the new reality, and it won’t take much more than picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off and showing the world who we really are.”

“That $40 million is the kind of money that can remove a lot of the blight we see, spruce up downtowns and communities and build them back up aesthetically,” said Bruce McLean, executive director of Magic, an economic development agency that serves East Millinocket, Medway and businesses that pay for it in Millinocket.

Paul and Millinocket Town Manager Eugene Conlogue have been trying for more than a year to create a coalition of rural northern Maine government officials, while McLean and Councilor Matthew Polstein were appointed by Baldacci in 2005 to the Sustainable Economies Initiative, another regional board.

The commission also will address job skills training, entrepreneurship, technology and business development; resource conservation, tourism, recreation and open space preservation; and renewable and alternative energy creation, the bill says.