Expert says Maine is moving fast on report
By Deborah McDermott
Portsmouth Herald: May 8, 2007
YORK, Maine — Seven months after a Brookings Institution report called for sweeping changes in the way Maine operates, even the seemingly intractable Legislature has been moving at relatively quick pace to implement portions of the plan.
That was the news that Alan Caron, president of GrowSmart Maine and the report's sponsor, brought to a group of about 50 southern York County residents at a town meeting-style event Monday at Village Elementary School.
Caron said two bills containing key elements of the report have been sponsored by legislative leadership, some form of school consolidation is very likely to pass this legislative session and some increase in the lodging tax to create a "quality of life" fund appears to be inevitable.
One of the bills arising out of the report and sponsored by Senate President Beth Edmonds, D-Freeport, calls for creating a government efficiency commission to lop off hundreds of millions of dollars of state spending. Caron said the only way such a group will work is if it is structured like the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission — it has to be composed of independent members who have no political aspirations or need to appease, who make decisions based on facts.
"You love to hate it, but it has actively streamlined" the number of bases and shipyards in the country, he said of the federal commission. "Government is not good at all about restructuring itself. That was the brilliance of BRAC."
Businesspeople in tourist-driven coastal southern Maine have been up in arms about another Brookings report recommendation, the creation of a "quality of place" fund through an increase in the state's lodging tax from 7 percent to 10 percent. Several local chamber of commerce officials have protested the proposal in Augusta.
Caron said Maine's lodging tax is the lowest in New England, and Brookings was firm in saying "we're not driving a hard enough bargain" with tourists. "People say they'll go to New Hampshire or Vermont. How many lighthouses are there in Vermont?"
Kittery School Committee member Tess Schneier questioned Caron about school consolidation, a topic that has raised much ire in southern York County. She said she was concerned that the plan was geared for small districts in northern Maine but would unfairly impact this area.
Caron said whatever plan finally emerges in the Legislature, the report stressed that something has to be done to reduce administrative costs. "The status quo can't remain,." he said.
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