All of us who struggle with family budgets wrestle with difficult borrowing decisions. We are, after all, a nation of debtors. Most of us know it’s a vicious cycle to rely on a strategy of balancing our family budgets by borrowing to pay short-term bills and credit card statements. And most of us also recognize that it can be entirely prudent to borrow for things like home improvements that are important long-term investments.
During most of the recent long winter and even longer spring, the Maine legislature and Governor John E. Baldacci seemed poised on the brink of a major economic blunder — borrowing to pay short term bills while simultaneously failing to raise funds for long term investments. Our fearless leaders had somehow convinced themselves that it was OK to borrow $250 million by selling revenue bonds to balance the state budget with future state tax revenues, while deciding they (we) could not afford investment bonds for vital long-term improvements like transportation, water quality, economic development and conservation.
But somehow at the penultimate moment, common sense reared its comely head. The very real threat of a “people’s veto” to take this folly to a referendum vote and the discouraging recommendation from the Pentagon to shut down the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and the Brunswick Naval Air Station focused the state’s mind on Maine’s real priorities. A new budget has been passed without the disastrously shortsighted borrowing package.
But, as we go to press, the bond package still languishes in legislative desuetude.
The bond package is vitally important for working waterfront interests all along the Maine coast. For the first time ever in Maine history, a very large number of legislators from all across the state and from all across the political spectrum have come together and recognized that access to vitally important commercial fishing, lobstering, clamming and other job-producing, economic activities is disappearing daily along the Maine coast from York to Washington Counties. If we are to avoid becoming a series of merely picturesque theme park towns and harbors, we must acquire more of this vanishing resource before it is all gone — sold forever for second homes, recreation, condominiums and the like.
The Working Waterfront Coalition, a membership of over 100 groups and individuals, has worked with an amazing variety of legislative groups to propose an $8 million working waterfront-working farm bond issue package. This bond will provide matching funds for helping acquire interests in properties used for commercial fishing. Eight million dollars is not going to save the Maine coast, but it is a start. You have to crawl before you walk. This proposed bond provides important state leadership and gives impetus to countless local selectmen and women and other local activists to make acquiring a few key waterfront projects a vital priority. But more important, it speaks volumes about the state’s intent to act rather than to fiddle while the coast burns.
The partnerships that have coalesced around this particular bond initiative are impressive. This bond has been endorsed by the Coastal Caucus and by the Rural Caucus. It has been endorsed by three legislative committees including Marine Resources, Agricultural, Conservation and Forestry and the Business Research and Economic Development Committees. It has strong support in both the Republican and Democratic caucuses.
So what are we waiting for?
Apparently for a special session some time later in the summer or the fall to act on all of the deferred bond packages — or to punt on all of them the way the legislature did last year. If you know how hard it is to organize special sessions once the legislature adjourns from its arduous tasks, you will understand why this strategy sounds like a way to pave with good intentions the road to perdition.
There is still momentum for this bond package. Let’s keep our eye on the ball — or our eyes on our legislative leaders who are leading this effort in Augusta–Republican Representatives such as Chris Rector and Stephen Bowen and Republican Senators Kevin Raye and Mary Black Andrews, along with their Democratic colleagues, Dennis Damon and Leila Percy. And countless others who go here un-thanked. They need our help and support to get the job done. Thank them by sending them back to Augusta this summer.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.