UPDATES
Eliot has been spending a lot time talking about Maine’s financial and budget problems. Maine needs to re-start economic activity — investment, jobs, and incomes — and Mainers need to start mapping out a strategy works toward shared goals.
Here are three, separate YouTube videos in which Eliot discusses Maine’s financial problems and how we can go about solving them.
PART I
PART II
PART III
Derek Viger from blog Augusta Insider recently asked for Eliot to comment on the $99.2 million “jobs bond package” proposed by Maine’s Democratic leaders. Below is Eliot’s response:
Borrowed money isn’t free.
We need to pay it back, and we need to pay interest on the debt. That is why I believe that every cent we invest in roads, rail, and other infrastructure projects – whether from tax revenues, from Federal funds or from the proceeds of bond issues — should reflect decisions made in the context of a capital budget that sets priorities and that seeks to leverage Maine’s competitive advantages. That is the way to maximize job creation and economic development. And that is the kind of disciplined stewardship of their tax dollars that Maine people need and want.
Sen. [Libby] Mitchell and the Democrats haven’t told us very much about the projects that they want to fund with this bond issue. I know as well as anyone that many of Maine’s roads and bridges need repair, and the threatened loss of rail service in northern Maine is a grave concern for all of us. Yet, many Maine cities and towns have projects in mind that they would nominate for consideration in a special bond issue, but I suspect that they have not be included in this process. That’s the problem, and that’s a real issue.
There may well be elements of this proposal that deserve support, but I would want to be assured that they have been carefully considered in terms of priorities and impact. I don’t see any rational, disciplined process behind this proposal. Frankly, I wish that the Democratic leaders would also put a real effort into making Maine a more affordable and inviting place to do business. That would really create lasting jobs.
I also want to be assured that this new proposal is fully aligned with the bond package approved by the Legislature last June, the first installment of which was approved by the voters in November, and not simply added on top of that package for short-term political gain.
You can read the complete article here with Eliot’s comments highlighted in yellow.
This blog post also appeared as an op-ed in the Times-Record on February 12th.
Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont received their report cards earlier this month from NECAPS, the new multi-state consortium that assesses the performance of our education systems. Maine finished third and last among our three neighbors in both reading and math for grades three through eight. “Maine’s performance is sound,” said a spokesman for the state Department of Education. “We’re where we hoped we’d be.”
Well, this isn’t where I want Maine to be, and I’ll bet that it’s not where most Maine voters want Maine to be — whether they are parents of school-age children or retirees worried about the future of Maine’s economy. Bluntly, we are failing our children, denying them the opportunity to reach their highest potential in an increasingly competitive world.
Maine needs to innovate, to hold educators accountable for student performance and to create a culture of expectations and achievement that gives every Maine kid a fair shot at success, wherever she or he lives in Maine. To do this, we need to make excellence, quality, performance and efficiency our touchstones.
The facts are as plain and harsh as the glare of a full moon on a clear winter night. Maine has one of the most expensive public school systems in the nation, yet too many young people are graduating from high school without being ready for either college or skilled employment. We are doing many things well, but there are twice as many lower performing and less efficient schools and school districts in Maine than there are higher performing and more efficient schools and districts.
It’s time to insist on reform and to get smarter about how we use our resources, so that we can eliminate this achievement gap and raise our statewide performance results.
While Maine’s public school enrollment has been steadily declining, across the state we have continued to build expensive new schools with excess capacity.
Our student-teacher ratio has become the second most favorable in the nation at 11.3:1 versus a national average of almost 16:1. If we increase our student-teacher ratio to 13.5:1 — the average of several rural states that are currently performing as well or better than Maine — we would save $155 million each year.**
We could invest some of those savings in reforms that will make a real difference to our kids:
Finally, let’s tear down the bureaucratic and political walls that protect mediocrity and keep out innovation. Let’s authorize charter schools and charter districts in Maine. Let’s take a fresh look at education by creating exciting new places of learning designed around the needs of students, their families and the community.
President Obama’s “Race to the Top” education initiative will bring hundreds of millions of dollars to states that qualify by authorizing charter schools and pursuing other reforms. Maine will lose out, because the Democratic leadership in the Legislature bowed to the teachers’ union and defeated the bill that would have allowed charter schools. Instead of joining the Race to the Top, we will continue to scrape along the bottom.
Maine’s system of public education needs strong leadership from the top, from the Blaine House.
We need a governor with the courage and independence to put kids first, a governor who won’t rest until all Maine children receive a quality education, a governor who will be a champion for innovation. Hardworking Maine taxpayers who want the best for their children need a governor who will end duplication, fragmentation and inefficiency. Maine needs a governor who understands that economic activity, jobs and incomes require an educated and skilled workforce.
We need a No Excuses policy of education reform. When I am governor, we will have it.
**Note as of 6/21/2010: The Maine Department of Education has just determined that the teacher data provided to the National Center for Education Statistics was incorrect and resulted in the US Department of Education miscalculating the student-teacher ratio. The corrected ratio is 11.3:1, not 9:1 as originally reported by the USDOE and the MDOE. Based on this revised information, Maine ranks second in the nation, immediately behind Vermont, in the fewest number of students per teacher for 2007-2008.
Here is a recent op-ed from the Ellsworth American, in which Eliot voices his strong disapproval of the recent supplemental budget submitted by Gov. Baldacci.
Please click here to download “The Supplemental Budget Is a Travesty”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DECEMBER 21, 2009
CONTACT: TED O’MEARA
207.699.4401
ted@cutler2010.com
CUTLER CALLS SUPPLEMENTAL BUDGET A “FAILURE OF LEADERSHIP”
PORTLAND, Maine – Independent candidate for Governor Eliot Cutler today called the Governor’s latest supplemental budget a travesty, saying it represents a failure of leadership.
“Instead of facing the music and proposing the kinds of fundamental changes we need to make Maine work again, the Governor’s supplemental budget avoids the tough calls, relies on the most transparent gimmickry and fails the test of leadership,” Cutler said in a blog posted today on his campaign website,www.cutler2010.com.
Cutler renewed his call for a BRAC-type process for reorganizing state government, a proposal that he made in his announcement speech on December 9. The process would be similar to the one that the federal government uses to realign or close military facilities. Cutler said he would chair a special commission that would review all state agencies and expenditures and make recommendations on which should stay and which should go. He then would ask the Legislature to take a simple yes or no vote on the entire package.
Cutler also noted several major and fundamental changes in state government policies that he already has proposed in his campaign that the budget fails to address:
Cutler called the Governor to task for relying on “sugar pills”, when the state budget needs what he says is major surgery. He criticized the supplemental budget for passing the buck by delaying payments to cities and towns, making one-time transfers to the General Fund from other special funds, and engaging in a “Shell Game” whereby the state will be “borrowing” $93.5 million from Other Special Revenue Funds on June 30 and then paying it back 24 hours later on July 1..Cutler likened this to someone paying overdue credit card balances with another credit card.
Cutler said he holds out little hope that the Governor and Legislature will deal effectively with the continuing budget shortfalls. “We’ll see what the legislature does with the travesty of a budget that the Governor has turned over to them, but nothing so far suggests that the political parties that got us into this mess are going to get us out of it,” the Independent candidate said.
About Eliot Cutler
Eliot Cutler was born and raised in Bangor. After college, he worked in Washington, D.C. for Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, helping to craft the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and other laws important to Maine. He went on to serve as Associate Director for Natural Resources, Energy and Science in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and was the principal White House official for energy matters from 1977 to 1980. At President Carter’s request, he helped negotiate a settlement to the Maine Indian Land Claims.
Following his government service, Eliot founded the law firm of Cutler & Stanfield LLP, which grew to become the second largest environmental law firm in the United States, concentrating on job-creating infrastructure projects such as airports, highways and other major public facilities. After a number of years of working on projects around the country from a base in Washington, Cutler returned to Maine permanently in late 1999, just prior to his law firm’s merger with the international firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
Cutler also has been a highly successful businessman and entrepreneur, helping to start or acquire several businesses and serving on the boards of large and small companies, as well as not-for-profit organizations. He was chairman of the board of visitors of the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine for nearly a decade and helped lead the School to its position as one of the leading graduate schools of public policy in the United States.
Cutler lives in Cape Elizabeth with his wife, Dr. Melanie Stewart Cutler. Their family includes three grown children.
Many people across Maine have asked me how I intend to vote on the contentious issue of school consolidation — Question 3 on next Tuesday’s ballot.
I answered that question in an television interview with Augusta schools superintendent Connie Brown several weeks ago, and again just this past Friday in response to a question from blogger Derek Viger of The Maine View. Regardless of what happens on Tuesday, we need to sit down and figure out the answers to much bigger questions about K-12 education in Maine. There are much bigger issues at stake here than whether or not we consolidate schools. The important questions are whether our schools are producing excellence. Are our kids getting a quality education? And, are we doing so at costs we can afford to pay?
Please read the rest of this blog to see what I have said on this critical challenge.
There’s are much bigger issues at stake here than whether or not we consolidate schools in Maine. The important questions are whether our schools are producing excellence. Are our kids getting a quality education? And, are we doing so at costs we can afford to pay?
Those are the central questions facing our education system. And the answers are going to be different in different parts of the state. Because of that, consolidation isn’t the right answer everywhere.
With that said, I’m going to vote to sustain the enacted school consolidation law because I think it’s a set of tools that we just can’t throw out. I think we need to take what’s there and fix it.
The issues to me with Maine’s K-12 education come down to equities, excellence, efficiency and cost-effective performance.
Every kid in Maine should have an opportunity for an excellent education. I believe every kid in Maine should be able to stay in school and to be excited about it. I don’t believe we can write off kids in one part of the state or another part of the state. That’s just not the right approach. As governor, I simply won’t permit it. Our kids are too important. They need and deserve more from us.
Now, we need to figure out how to correct inequities and achieve excellence in a more cost-effective way, because in the next few fiscal years in Maine, we are going to have a budget crunch the likes of which we’ve never seen before. There’s going to be a lot of pressure to cut spending on state aid to K-12 education because it’s such a big part of our state budget. When that happens, some towns in Maine are going to be just fine because they can raise the money to make up the difference. But there are a lot of towns in Maine where they are not going to have that opportunity. So the gap is going to grow and not narrow.
We need to figure out how to narrow that gap – even in tough budget times — because all Maine kids are our kids, and every single one of them is entitled to a great education.
Maine’s budget is heading down an icy road toward a steep cliff [see Government VFM here]. Any one of us who learned to drive in Maine winters knows that this is a time when the driver needs to pay close attention to the way ahead and to keep two hands on the wheel.
The hole in the budget for the current biennium is expanding toward triple digit millions – $69 million and counting. Senator Bill Diamond (D-Windham) and Representative Emily Cain (D-Orono), the chairs of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee, are courageously and responsibly leading their colleagues through the agonizing process of assessing the growing revenue damage and identifying areas where savings can be found. Quite understandably, no legislator wants to be the first to propose program cuts, reforms or curtailments, and, frankly, no legislator should need to be in that position. That’s one of the things we hire a governor to do – but the silence from the Blaine House has been deafening.
Strong leadership can make a difference. All state governments will be operating on the edge for the next several years, but some will be better prepared than others to cope with the budget crisis.
The non-partisan and non-profit Pew Center on the States evaluates the performance of all 50 states on a regular basis. Maine was one of the nine lowest-ranked states in the nation in the most recent, 2008 Pew Center report on overall governance. Some of the reasons for our low score were what the Pew Center cited as Maine’s past failures to innovate, to measure performance and to wisely budget and manage our money. For example, compare Maine’s with Utah’s performance in the “Money” category.
Hopefully, our governor will share with the legislature his ideas about how to plug the growing holes in Maine’s budget when he returns from his trip to Spain, Germany and Norway. It’s time. Winter’s coming, there’s black ice on the road ahead, and we need both hands on the wheel.
In an interview with Susan Cover, published in today’s editions of the Kennebec Journal and the Portland Press Herald, Mr. Karass got right to the point. “It’s very important that the State of Maine right-size its government going into the future and make it affordable.”
Asked which skills he thinks Maine’s next governor needs to bring to the job, he told Ms. Cover, “You’re going to need a very experienced hand, somebody who understands how government runs and somebody who is more interested in getting the house in order rather than promoting new programs.”
Ed Karass is right, and we need to listen.
We need to muscle out of our budgets a growing wedge of savings, so that we can invest in Maine’s future. As much as possible, those savings should come from dramatic reductions in our hidden taxes — the excessive overhead and administrative costs that we pay for the delivery of public services. But make no mistake: we also are going to need to take a hard look at all of our state government programs.
We govern ourselves in Maine — and deliver public services — in ways that have not changed for decades or even centuries and that no longer serve very well either the vital needs of the people who need the services or the interests of Maine’s taxpayers. We need to be innovative, hard-headed, realistic, focused and unrelenting in a drive to make Maine government more innovative and more efficient.
It will be much harder to do that without skilled and experienced public servants like Ed Karass to help us.
Thanks for your efforts, Ed. You’re a hero.