While Gov. Paul LePage is behind schedule on his plan to fill his cabinet by the end of 2010, he is moving quickly on another of his campaign promises: to slash the state regulatory process that he believes hinders the growth of business in Maine.
And it is with good reason, since the LePage administration will largely be judged on its success in eliminating the red tape that has for so long been the bane of Maine business owners and developers.
LePage has been traveling the state in his “Red Tape Removal Workshop” caravan, listening as residents and business owners detail exchanges with state government that could often be described as frustrating, confusing and exhausting.
And just before Christmas, legislative leaders appointed nine Republicans and six Democrats to the Joint Select Committee on Regulatory Fairness and Reform. Dubbed the “red tape committee,” it will be led by Senate Minority Leader Jon Courtney, a York Republican, and Rep. Jonathan McKane, a Republican from Newcastle. Locally, Republican Rep. Michael McClellan of Raymond and Democrats Justin Alfond, a senator from Portland, and Linda Valentino, a representative from Saco, will serve.
As LePage and the legislators move forward with the business of examining the state’s regulatory process, they will certainly find redundancy and an overabundance of paperwork. They will find that the state’s seemingly endless list of agencies, divisions and administrations are difficult to maneuver and slow to make decisions.
These inefficiencies make it uncertain whether a proposed business development or expansion will be approved in a timely fashion, or whether it will be approved at all. In some cases, the uncertainty is one of the chief considerations that keep business from coming to Maine.
As LePage said during his campaign, the relationship that has developed through the years between business developers and the state agencies that review their projects has become in many ways adversarial. It is necessary that this be fixed, perhaps by using state officials to work as advocates, or at least a go-between, for the people working to create private sector jobs. The process could be streamlined, too, with a little common sense, as too many of the state’s regulations are one-size-fits-all, and ignore the basic differences between projects while shoving them down the same pipeline.
However, LePage must tread lightly. While business owners can certainly point to regulations and procedures that are superfluous, many of those hurdles exist to slow down the process for good reason.
The business world has an interest in completing projects swiftly, but government at its best must take a long view and consider the impacts of growth and development 10, 25 and 50 years down the road.
And because Maine’s natural assets will always be more valuable than its financial ones, the state has to take the time to make sure that a particular project would not harm the quality of life that, more than rankings on tax burden or business environment, will always define this state.
This is a fine line that LePage will have to walk, and his actions so far show he is taking it seriously. Solving this conundrum would be very good news for LePage. Thankfully, it would also be very good news for Maine.
Ben Bragdon is the managing editor of Current Publishing. He can be reached at bbragdon@keepmecurrent.com or followed on Twitter at twitter.com/benbragdon.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
