Maine is a small state, off the radar of much of the rest of the United States. Now, more than ever, state leaders need to unify Maine’s population behind policies that will bring jobs and new residents to the Pine Tree State.
Instead, the state’s top leader continues to perpetuate the common trope that southern Maine — and especially Portland — stands in the way of prosperity for the rural parts of the state.
“People in the south part of Maine will not allow people in northern Maine to earn a good living,” Gov. Paul LePage said at a town hall meeting in Lewiston earlier this month. “I know it sounds hard and cruel, but it’s a fact.”
At a town hall meeting in Bar Harbor earlier in October he said: “Now most of the votes in Maine are down in Portland and York. So we can’t have mining up north where people are starving. Where unemployment is 20 percent, we don’t want them to have a job.”
So, let’s look at the vote on the most recent bill concerning mineral mining in Aroostook County and elsewhere in Maine. In 2012, J.D. Irving Ltd. began public discussions about developing an open-pit mining operation to harvest substantial deposits of copper and zinc from a 500-acre site it owns on Bald Mountain near Ashland. The Legislature that year, with LePage’s support, passed legislation to open the door to mining in Maine and direct the Department of Environmental Protection to revise rules for such mining.
But last year, the Legislature rejected a bill containing the DEP’s rule revisions, saying that the regulations failed to protect the state’s lakes, rivers, streams and taxpayers. The DEP submitted the same rules again in 2015; the bill that contained them met a similar fate.
Yes, most lawmakers from Aroostook County voted to approve those revised rules, which would have paved a path for mining companies to propose operations. But senators from Washington, Piscataquis and Penobscot counties — hardly southern Maine — voted against the rules that the bill, as amended, would have established for mining operations in Maine. In the House, 109 members from across the state (including one from Aroostook County) voted against the legislation.
These lawmakers aren’t heartless jerks who don’t care about the people in northern Maine. They likely voted against the mining legislation because they didn’t believe the rules drafted by DEP were sufficient. This isn’t a north-south issue or an attempt to keep a part of the state poor.
Southern Maine, specifically Cumberland, York and Sagadahoc counties, accounts for more than half of the state’s economic output. Nearly a third of the state’s sales tax revenue comes from the region. And one-third of the state’s jobs are in Greater Portland, which is also where much of the state’s limited population growth is occurring.
Rather than denigrating this region for being successful, LePage and others must focus on how to replicate or build upon these successes so the rest of Maine can share in the prosperity.
Maine can’t afford to have residents of different regions badmouthing and working against each other. More important, Maine needs a governor who brings people together, regardless of political affiliation or geographic location, to work to improve all of Maine.
