There is nothing like startlingly fresh information and thoughtful analysis, such as recently presented in a new Brookings Institution report, “Charting Maine’s Future,” to help us answer whether Maine’s economic and government policies are on the right or wrong track. And then to think about what these new findings mean for the coast and islands of Maine.
Here are three of Brookings’ recent and highly instructive facts to ponder. First, the surprising facts:
Here are three Brookings facts that are not so surprising:
The solutions proposed will certainly generate debate in the legislature, in town offices and at school board meetings during the next few years. Here are some of the Brookings report proposals:
Maine’s first economic development need is to invest in our “brand” -that is, aspects of our quality of place that make us distinct: working waterfronts, open farmland and traditional compact towns. The report’s authors propose a large “Maine Quality Places” bond program totaling $190 million over the next 10 years as a start to acquire open space and lands traditionally used for fishing (working waterfronts) and hunting as well as to help towns revitalize the core of their downtown areas and buildings.
Then we must harness our “Yankee ingenuity” and invest in innovation, especially in those businesses where there are emerging clusters of successes, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS), advanced composite materials (for example in boat building), cold water aquaculture, marine sciences, toxicology and organic agriculture. For this we will need another $200 million bond, over the next three years.
The Brookings report says we can pay for these investments by trimming state government through a “Government Efficiency Commission” that would hold hearings and draft a bill that identified $60 to $100 million in savings that would be voted up or down in toto in the next 18 months. Reorganizing K-12 administrative and school construction costs can save additional tens of millions of dollars. We could raise upwards of $20 million a year by means of a three-point increase in the lodging tax, shifting some of the burden of protecting the Maine brand to visitors and tourists who benefit. With the savings and additional revenues from tourists, we can fund the bond issue payments described above. We should also apply some of the savings to property tax reduction and reduce the top income tax rate from 8.5 percent (second highest in New England) to 8 percent.
Like many reports, “Charting Maine’s Future” is full of bold ideas and in that sense may sound radical and idealistic. But as more and more of us realize that the way we are literally consuming our “sense of place” is utterly unsustainable and deeply threatening to our well-being, perhaps this kind of new thinking will take root. Otherwise we will fall victim to one of the most fundamental truths that has already run its course in much of America: great places attract people until they are no longer great places to be.
I like to think that the Island Institute has helped “brand” Maine’s island and working waterfront communities as among the state’s most distinctive assets that are valuable in and of themselves, but also will pay huge dividends long into the future — because these kinds of communities have disappeared everywhere else in America.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.