We simply will not be able to do the things we need to do as a country to move forward “with all the vested interests that have accrued,” columnist Tom Friedman wrote in the Oct. 2 New York Times. “They cannot think about the overall public good and the longer term anymore because both parties are trapped in short-term, zero-sum calculations,” where each one’s gains are seen as the other’s losses.
Last week marked the release of “Reinventing Maine Government,” a wide ranging and comprehensive report detailing dozens of specific actions that, in the view of the nonpartisan think tank that published it, the state must make in order to stave off impending disaster. The full report can be viewed at www.envisionmaine.org. I highly recommend it.
I want to commend yet another fine effort by thinking people in Maine looking to make meaningful changes. But anyone who’s been around the state for a while knows there are a lot of thinking people here looking to make meaningful change.
Similar to Tom Friedman’s description of our current national state of gridlock, Maine has no shortage of great ideas. The issue isn’t lack of ideas.
Broadly speaking, we know what the problems are and we know what the solutions are. What we seem to lack is the political will among those in state government to take the leap into action. The real question is: Where is the leadership that we need to implement all these ideas?
Last winter, when I announced my “Reboot Augusta” plan, I stood next to a stack of similar reports taller than I am — reports that had been done over the last 30 years but had been mostly ignored, often by the same legislatures and bureaus that commissioned them. Granted, I’m not that tall, but the point is we’ve been doing studies for years upon years. We’re spending a lot of money, all well intentioned, but the unfortunate reality is that without true leadership, these well-researched reports will continue to collect dust in Augusta.
We just saw a great report come out of a joint effort between the Maine State Chamber of Commerce and the Maine Development Foundation in July, titled “Making Maine Work,” and great energy surrounded that as well. But will it, like the 2006 GrowSmart Maine report, “Charting Maine’s Future” and the EnvisionMaine report, be picked apart by competing interests, dismissed as being too closely aligned with the interests of one party or the other, result in legislation so watered down as to be wholly ineffective or simply branded too difficult and forgotten?
In my view, the changes these reports recommend are not overly hard in and of themselves. We know what needs to be done. What we need are leaders in Augusta who have the conviction to step up and do the right thing for Maine’s future regardless of political self-interest, or the interests of only a narrow group.
I’m not suggesting that we must implement every recommendation in every report. Clearly we need to prioritize and be smart in deciding which measures get implemented. But once decided, the implementation has to be pure in order to get the outcome we want. School consolidation is a great example of a noble idea that could have been much more effective, but the implementation and the outcome has clearly not worked.
Our leaders in state government have a great opportunity with the arrival of a new governor in Augusta early next year, whoever that might be, to listen to the true middle — everyone across the broad political spectrum who wants to see Maine do better. Not one way or the other way, just better.
We don’t have much more time before our inability to create dramatic change becomes a crisis. We can’t go halfway, we can’t water it down and we can’t reject ideas out of partisanship or self-interest. We need a leader who will put these ideas into action.
Rosa Scarcelli is CEO of Stanford Management, an affordable housing provider in Maine and three other states. As a Democratic candidate for governor, she gained a strong following in the 2010 primary. To see more, go to www.rosaformaine.com.