Maine's golden opportunity - Bangor Daily News

Rob Brown is the Executive Director of Opportunity Maine. He lives in Stockton Springs.

I urge all Mainers to look for and sign the petitions to place the Opportunity Maine initiative on the ballot, and I thank the Bangor Daily News and columnist and political economist John Buell for their recent commentaries encouraging the same.

This initiative will make higher education more affordable for all Mainers, keep our degree earners in the state after they graduate and cultivate the skilled work force we need for strong economic growth.

At one time, a high school diploma and our Yankee work ethic was the ticket to a secure, middle-class life in Maine. This is no longer the case, however. In today’s economy, most people need a post-high school degree to ensure a life of economic opportunity and security.

For a number of reasons, Maine is falling behind the rest of New England in this respect. Good jobs in manufacturing and natural-resource based industries are steadily leaving Maine, leaving behind broad and deep pockets of unemployment and poverty. According to the new report "Charting Maine’s Future" by the Brookings Institution, Maine’s population growth in recent years has accelerated faster than any other state, but many young people, including roughly half of our recent college graduates, are leaving out of economic necessity. Maine has one of the highest high school graduation rates in the country, yet our workers are 30 percent less likely to have post-high school degrees than workers in New England as a whole, and our average income is 30 percent below the New England average.

A generation ago, student debt was minimal or nonexistent. Today, the average graduate in Maine is starting off, or starting again, with $25,000 in debt, a mortgage on their future that has perverse effects on life and career choices. Rising education costs have dramatically outpaced inflation and, with mounting student debt and continued cuts in federal support, have effectively become a regressive tax for many.

Lack of educational opportunity and the resulting drag on economic growth is throttling Maine’s economy and we are all paying the price. The best way to break this cycle is through education- a proven and effective driver of job, wage and economic growth.

This is why Opportunity Maine, a group of student and community leaders from around the state, has launched a campaign to expand educational opportunity and create higher paying jobs throughout Maine. We are recruiting volunteers to collect signatures this fall, particularly at the polls on Election Day, for a referendum next year.

Our plan will allow any Maine resident who earns an associate’s or bachelor’s degree here to claim an income tax credit to help pay down their student debt, so long as they continue to live and work in Maine after graduation. This tax credit would also be available to Maine businesses that make their employees’ educational loan payments, allowing a substantial benefit to current and future workers and providing a strong incentive for the development and attraction of new businesses.

Only graduates who live and work in Maine can claim this benefit. It will provide a boost to all those who want to further their education- from young people to laid-off workers seeking new training to adults pursuing higher-paying careers. This type of citizen-centered economic development will sustain our growing manufacturing and information design and service sectors, and provide further support for Maine’s burgeoning creative economy.

Businesspeople, economists and academics agree that the education level of a work force is one of the top considerations for businesses deciding where to locate. Bill Gates has said that if public officials want to bring the jobs of the 21st century to their state, the number one thing they need to do is invest in education. In an interview with The New York Times, Dr. John Fitzsimmons, president of the Maine Community College System, identified more than 4,200 good jobs recently that either went unfilled or were filled with out-of-state recruits because Maine could not provide enough workers with the needed skills.

Education is one of the most equitable public investments we can make and it pays the most dividends, since the average bachelor’s degree holder in Maine earns nearly $15,000 more than those with only a high school diploma, and associate’s degree holders earn nearly $9,000 more. Because of this, even by conservative estimates, this initiative will create a net gain in tax revenues of roughly $30 million a year within a decade, because of increased incomes and positive economic ripple effects.

Many lawmakers and civic, education, business and labor leaders are enthusiastically supporting the Opportunity Maine Campaign. Perhaps more important is that we have energized young people in Maine to become engaged in the effort, belying their usual characterization as apathetic and disengaged. They have been moved to action because they understand the difficulty of the problem, despite the fact that this initiative will not benefit them directly, as it is not retroactive.

The Opportunity Maine Campaign will benefit all Maine families by raising wages and giving our children the choice to stay in their home state after they graduate. And all Maine taxpayers will benefit from improving the economy of the great state of Maine.

Opportunity Maine believes that opening the doors of educational and economic opportunity for Maine people is a process that needs to begin now. If you agree with us and can spend a few hours making this vision a reality, please contact us at www.opportunitymaine.org or 567-3074.

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Affordable education in Maine’s future? - Bangor Daily News

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail messages to jbuell@acadia.net

It is not surprising that recent state elections have focused on the issue of expanding economic opportunity for Maine citizens. Maine’s economy, like the nation’s, has seen its fair share of cyclical trends, but over the last generation Maine has lost a disproportionate number of high-paying manufacturing jobs. Neither manufacturing nor natural resource industries can be expected to carry the burden of future growth. What strategies can Maine employ to foster sustainable growth and to preserve our quality of community life?

Strengthening our human capital, the educational resources of our work force, becomes all the more imperative. A coalition of Maine students, workers and social activists, united under the banner of Opportunity Maine, is seeking signatures for a 2007 citizens’ initiative on higher education This initiative proposes a tax credit to repay tuition costs for those who remain in Maine after graduation. The proposal not only opens a needed debate about state economic development but also may have positive spillover effects on the broader tone and nature of our politics.

Though it is a mantra of much of the business establishment that low taxes drive economic development, most of the scholarly literature shows that the education of the work force is a larger factor in business location decisions. When it comes to worker education, Maine is doing some things right. The state has the highest high school graduation rate in the country. That fact reflects the importance Maine citizens attribute to education and a broad citizen commitment — however imperfectly executed in practice — to equalize educational resources.

Yet Maine’s success at the high school level highlights its greatest educational failure. We have the lowest rate of post-high school degree attainment in New England. Maine workers are 30 percent less likely to have post-high school degrees than workers in New England as a whole, and their average income is 30 percent below the New England average.

The state’s dismal post-secondary school record is not a consequence of the poor preparation of Maine students or their lack of hard work. The relative decline in Maine incomes, the growing cost of higher education, and declining levels of federal support make higher education unaffordable for too many poor and working-class families.

Maine problems are compounded because its low-wage economy forces many of those who do obtain their bachelor’s or associate degrees to leave the state in order to pay off their tuition debts. Maine is caught in a vicious circle. It can’t attract many of the best jobs because too many of its educated workers seek greener pastures elsewhere; and because it offers fewer opportunities to recent graduates, they must move. Much of what the state invests in higher education ends up fostering economic development elsewhere.

A program like that being promoted by Opportunity Maine would start to break the vicious circle. Since Maine lags so far behind its rival New England states in post-secondary education, it could reasonably anticipate large gains over a five- to 10-year period from a program that would make education more affordable and lure more college graduates to remain in the state. These graduates would in turn pay taxes to the state. Even under conservative assumptions such a program could be expected to pay for itself in less than a decade.

Opportunity Maine’s initiative petition reminds me of an earlier piece of very successful federal policy, the GI Bill. Political scientist Theda Skocpol points out in "The Missing Middle" that Americans do and will support government programs when they speak to widely recognized social needs and grow out of broadly based political movements.

Among other things the GI Bill made it easier for a generation of returning veterans to attend college, an accomplishment that would have been beyond the reach of many working-class soldiers of that generation. That generation’s educational attainments combined with expansive commitments to rebuild housing and transportation after the war contributed to both a demand for and supply of productive workers.

Opportunity Maine speaks to a significant state need and has already attracted the interest of a wide spectrum of the business and labor community. One of its most desirable spillover effects may be that it also attracts the effort and enthusiasm of young adults, those 18- to 25-year-olds who historically have had relatively low levels of participation in the political process. This initiative is not a panacea.

In the long run, economic development also requires more attention to Maine’s energy and transportation infrastructures, livable wages that help sustain high levels of demand, and efforts to foster the best business practices. Nonetheless, this initiative could both increase opportunities in the next decade and demonstrate the role that democratic activism and citizen initiatives can play in enactment of sound public policies needed to sustain a healthy private sector.

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