REBUILDING MAINE

Investing in Maine’s Competitive Assets

For decades in Maine, our economic development efforts have been uncoordinated, duplicative, wrongheaded and unproductive. Cities and towns in Maine with the same fundamental interests in economic development have been competing against each other in exhausting, expensive and fruitless efforts to build their individual commercial tax bases. Literally hundreds of state, regional, local and non-profit agencies in Maine spend millions upon millions of dollars every year chasing jobs and industries that have little cause to move to Maine, while paying scant attention to the needs of businesses that already are in Maine and want to expand.

Our high cost structure has built a wall around the State of Maine, one that discourages new businesses from moving to Maine and investing here, while behind that wall we have failed to invest in a focused way in our competitive assets. Cutting our cost structure – lowering the cost of living and doing business in Maine – is our most urgent and immediate challenge, but at the same time we also need to bring a new, strategic and far more focused approach to investing in Maine’s competitive advantages – our young people, our quality places, our natural resources and our strategic location.

1. Investing in a Trained and Educated Workforce

Ultimately, the shortcomings in Maine’s job market and the deterioration in our incomes won’t be fixed until we invest in post-secondary education – both academic and vocational – in a strategic, focused, consistent and sustained way. We need to stop putting the cart before the horse. Knowledge economy jobs haven’t come to Maine, because the knowledge base isn’t here. A weakened public system of post-secondary education has driven more high school seniors to colleges and universities outside Maine, taking knowledge and innovation with them.

Maine already is the oldest state in the U.S. In only Maine and three other states will the annual number of high school graduates drop by more than 15% between 2006 and 2016.

As it is, not enough of Maine’s high school graduates go on to college, underperforming four of the five other New England states by a considerable margin. And to make matters worse, too many Maine kids who do go on to college leave Maine to do it, attracted by better, albeit often more expensive alternatives, outside our state. The average percentage of out-of-state matriculation climbed from 37% during the 15 years between 1975 and 1989 to 50% for the period between 1990 and 2005.

Our kids are voting with their feet, and we are suffering the consequences. Because college graduates tend to stay to live and work where they go to college, these patterns are leaving Maine with a misshapen work force. Among our important younger age groups, Maine now lags behind the New England average for the percentage of workers with college degrees by staggering percentages of more than 30%. An undereducated workforce will have an overwhelming, negative impact on incomes in Maine – individually and on a statewide basis.

At a time when the states in America with the best systems – and, not incidentally, the strongest economies – are moving quickly in the direction of pre- kindergarten-20 strategies, or at least serious integration of the PK-16 management of education, we in Maine have stuck to a fragmented model that virtually guarantees duplication of effort, misallocation of resources and ultimately poorer performance. In a country that is now lagging behind the rest of the world in educating our children for jobs in the knowledge economy, Maine is falling even further behind the rest of the country. This is a full-blown crisis.

It’s clear that we haven’t had a strategy for keeping kids in Maine and educating them here for jobs in the knowledge economy. Indeed, we haven’t even put in place an organizational framework that promotes strategic decision-making, coordination and the disciplined allocation of resources. In a small state that is by almost any measure one of the most fiscally challenged in America, we are trying to maintain quality post-secondary education programs on 14 different college and university campuses, at 17 outreach centers and in 75 other learning sites.

We will merge our two college and university systems into one that costs less to operate and makes available more to invest in education. We will make the best use of all of Maine’s post-secondary assets, by creating a Center for Professional Graduate Education, by achieving closer coordination with Maine’s K-12 systems and instituting additional magnet high schools on or near college campuses. And once we have made the kinds of changes that are necessary to bring the size and shape of our system of public post-secondary education into line with what Maine needs and what Maine can afford – but not before – we will commence a 10-year program of sustained reinvestment in that system.

2. Investing in Maine’s Natural Resources

Maine is blessed with abundant resources of farmland, mighty forests, clean waters and the Gulf of Maine. Farming, forestry and fishing were the cornerstones of our state’s economy in our beginnings. These remain keystone industries. In a world increasingly desperate for the products that we can harvest, investment in the sustainable development of our natural resources can drive Maine incomes higher.

Lowering Maine’s cost structure in the ways that our Strategy suggests will have a discernible impact in short order. Lower electricity and healthcare costs can extend the growing season throughout our state, revitalize our pulp and paper industry and promote more efficient and more profitable lumber and wood products mills. Research and development efforts in composites and bio-fuels also hold great promise for using Maine’s resources in new and innovative ways.

While Maine’s traditional fishing industries face many challenges, our coastal waters and the Gulf of Maine represent an amazingly diverse resource that will continue to be a bountiful source of food and protein that the world needs. The same is true for Maine’s agricultural lands, as demand for locally sourced foods increases and the issue of food security becomes more prominent.

All of these efforts to use Maine‘s natural resources in innovative and sustainable ways benefit from something else that has incredible value: Maine’s legendary reputation for quality. That’s our brand, and we must continue to safeguard it, invest in it, and promote it.

3. Investing in Tourism, Recreation and Maine’s Places of Character

We call ourselves Vacationland, and tourism is our largest industry, but it also is an industry that for too long has been taken for granted and underappreciated. We will change that. People come to Maine from all over the world because of what we have to offer: a beautiful coast, pristine lakes and ponds and miles of rivers for fishing and recreation. We also have vast tracts of wilderness areas, majestic mountains, and communities filled with history, culture and warm and friendly people.

People come here to hunt and fish, to go sailing, kayaking, canoeing, bicycling, hiking, skiing, snowmobiling and a host of other outdoor pursuits. Many people own second homes in Maine. And Maine is an increasingly popular place for people to retire, bringing with them disposable incomes and valuable skills, while placing few demands on our schools and state services.

But like any industry, tourism requires investment. We are competing for visitors with other places around the country and throughout the world. We cannot simply take it for granted that people will come here because they always have; we must promote ourselves aggressively, continually search out new markets and find ways to help our tourism, recreation and sporting businesses invest in the kind of infrastructure and amenities that will keep people coming back to Maine.

Lowering the cost of doing business in Maine will help our tourism-related businesses, just as it will all other businesses, and investing in education, especially hospitality and recreation management programs, will make sure that the industry has trained workers and is developing the next generation of industry leaders.

Finally, people come here because Maine is special – what has come to be called quality of place. Maintaining that quality experience is the most important investment we can make. That means respecting and protecting our natural environment and our wild and scenic places. It means preserving farmland, forests, working harbors and downtowns. It means welcoming investment in our state, but doing so on our terms, not someone else’s.

4. Investing in Our Strategic Location

For too long we have thought of ourselves as being at the end of the line. That is a shortsighted view. Instead of just looking south to the rest of the United States, we should look north to Canada, our largest trading partner, east to Europe, and over the North Pole to Asia.

In a world that is increasingly interconnected, Maine is strategically located to provide access to population centers in the Northeast and Midwest U.S. As Canada develops its energy resources and a major international deepwater port in Halifax, Maine can position itself as a critical link in moving energy and goods through our state. However, we need to invest in our seaports, rail lines, roads and airports. We need to support the responsible development of LNG terminals and energy corridors and to undertake a public-private partnership to build an East-West highway.

Great opportunities to create new jobs, increase incomes and develop new revenue sources lie before us if we take full advantage of our location and invest in the infrastructure that will put us in the center of the action, instead of at the end of the line or sitting on the sidelines.

Maine Can Work.

Maine Can Work. But it must work for all of us, because unless it works for all of us, it can never really work for any of us. Our future is filled with challenge, but it also is brimming with opportunity. With strong, independent leadership, a sound strategy and plain hard work, we can make tough choices and share with our children a future of expanded opportunity and higher incomes.

Dirigo is our state motto. It means, I Lead. I want Dirigo to mean something again in Augusta and to be a source of pride for every citizen throughout the great State of Maine.

If you have the pride in Maine that I have, if you love Maine as I do, then I hope you will stand with us and work with us.

Together, we will prove that Maine Can Work.

Eliot Cutler
Candidate for Governor