Gov. Paul LePage’s reaction to the potential loss of hundreds of jobs in Maine is baffling. The governor almost bragged this week that he was right when he spoke earlier this year about 900 jobs leaving the state. It’s as if being right is more important to the governor than taking action to try to minimize the losses.
Maine workers deserve better from the governor’s office.
On Monday, Arizona-based ON Semiconductor announced that it had purchased Fairchild Semiconductor, which has a facility in South Portland. The acquisition had been in the works for nearly a year. ON officials said the merged company would save money by combining some operations. ON Semiconductor has not said whether it will shed jobs in Maine.
“I’ve known about the semiconductor one since back last April. I sort of hinted all spring-summer that there was going to be some major employers leaving,” LePage said Tuesday during his weekly radio appearance on WVOM, one of a small handful of media outlets he says he will talk to. LePage first publicly mentioned that a southern Maine company planned to shed 900 jobs at a town hall meeting in Orono in April.
“There’s nothing I can do about it,” he told the radio talk show hosts Tuesday.
This is a stunningly disappointing and defeatist statement from someone who ran, twice, on a platform of job creation. It also isn’t true.
Certainly, government officials can’t stop corporate mergers and they shouldn’t try unless they run afoul of anti-competition laws. They certainly can’t stop all mass layoffs, business shutdowns or relocations.
However, governors and state economic development officials routinely work with companies to see what, if anything, the state can do to alleviate job losses, spur growth or stop a potential relocation.
Just last month, LePage took credit for the expansion of St. Croix Tissue in Baileyville. “I traveled twice to China to meet personally with the investors. Our productive meetings and the relationship we developed were an integral part of their decision to invest in Maine,” the governor wrote in a column published by the BDN.
So, for one company — in the forest products industry, a favorite of LePage’s — the governor will travel to China. For another, there’s apparently nothing he can do.
“No governor can do anything to ‘preserve’ jobs or control whether a business stays in the state, moves to another state or packs up and goes to another country,” LePage spokesman Peter Steele said in an April email in response to questions from the BDN about what the governor and other state agencies were doing to try to preserve the 900 jobs.
“Make no mistake, the reason companies leave does not originate in the Governor’s Office. They come from the failed policies and anti-business climate fostered by liberals over the past 40 years,” he added.
As always, the governor and his staff deflect blame to lawmakers for not enacting the governor’s tax cut and energy plans. Lawmakers, though, have passed budgets and bills that included tax cuts and business tax credits. In 2013, the Legislature enacted a comprehensive energy bill that included the governor’s proposal to use $75 million in electricity ratepayer funds to expand natural gas infrastructure in New England, a top LePage priority. But LePage vetoed it. Lawmakers overrode the veto.
Pointing fingers at lawmakers and blaming energy prices and taxes for every negative business decision, even when company officials point to other — more complex — factors, does nothing to create jobs or boost Maine’s economy.
By admitting defeat and by failing to create and rally support around a positive economic vision for Maine, the governor’s office has abdicated leadership on economic development. As a result, it is up to Maine’s legislative and business leaders to focus on the many ways the state can improve its business climate, augment its workforce, and preserve and grow jobs.
