Maine Policy Review Fall 2016

Fall 2016 · Vol. 25, No. 2 · $15

Maine Policy Review

Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

Maine Policy Review

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

1

PUBLISHER MARGARET CHASE SMITH POLICY CENTER Jonathan Rubin, Director

EDITORIAL STAFF

Maine Policy Review (ISSN 1064-2587) publishes

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

independent, peer-reviewed analyses of public policy issues relevant to Maine.

Linda Silka Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

The journal is published two times per year by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. The material published within does not necessarily reflect the views of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.

EDITOR Barbara Harrity Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

The majority of articles appearing in Maine Policy Review are written by Maine citizens, many of whom are readers of the journal. The journal encourages the submission of manuscripts concerning relevant public policy issues of the day or in response to articles already published in the journal. Prospective authors are urged to contact the journal at the address below for a copy of the guidelines for submission or see the journal’s Website, http://digitalcommons.library .umaine.edu/mpr/.

PRODUCTION Beth Goodnight Goodnight Design

DEVELOPMENT Eva McLaughlin Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

COVER ILLUSTRATION Robert Shetterly

PRINTING Penmor Lithographics

For permission to quote and/or otherwise reproduce articles, please contact the journal at the address below.

Current and back issues of the journal are available at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/ The editorial staff of Maine Policy Review welcome your views about issues presented in this journal.

Please address your letter to the editor to:

Maine Policy Review

5784 York Complex, Bldg. #4 University of Maine Orono, ME 04469-5784

207-581-1567 • fax: 207-581-1266 http://mcspolicycenter.umaine.edu mpr@maine.edu

The University of Maine does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, including transgender status and gender expression, national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information or veteran status in employment, education, and all other programs and activities. The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding nondiscrimination policies: Director, Office of Equal Opportunity, 101 North Stevens Hall, 207.581.1226, Email: equal.opportunity@maine.edu

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

2

THANKS TO… Major Sponsor

Margaret Chase Smith Foundation Benefactor

Maine Community Foundation

Contributors

Merton G. Henry

Elizabeth Ward Saxl and Michael Saxl

H. Paul McGuire

And anonymous Contributors

Mark R. Shibles

Peter Mills

Friends

Hon. Peter Bowman

David Vail

And anonymous Friends

Volume Twenty-five of Maine Policy Review is funded, in part, by the supporters listed above. Tax-deductible contributions to the journal can be directed to the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at: 5784 York Complex, Bldg. 4, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5784.

Donations by credit card may be made through our secure website at digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr and by clicking “Donate.”

Information regarding corporate, foundation, or individual support is available by contacting the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

3

Contents

TO OUR READERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY Maine and Climate Change: The View from Greenland

By Angus King . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

REFLECTIONS Taking the Long View of Maine’s Policy Context

By Linda Silka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

70

THANKS TO OUR REVIEWERS . . . . . . . . 81

8

F E AT U R E S commentary

commentary

Maine’s Journey into the Arctic: Why the Arctic Council Matters to Maine

Why Did No One See this Coming?

How Did It Happen?

The 2016 Presidential Election

by Dave Canarie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Trans-Pacific Partnership: The Economic Implications for Maine

by Catherine Reilly deLutio and Philip A. Trostel . . . . . . . . .

by Travis Wagner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Population Health Improvement: It’s Up to the Community— Not the Healthcare System

by Ron Deprez and Rick Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What Bonds Hold? An Examination of Statewide Bond Referenda in Maine and Other States

by James P. Melcher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

by L. Sandy Maisel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63

commentary

16

Tying the Knot: The Importance of Financial Literacy Education in Maine

by David M. Leach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Municipal Approaches to Reduce Single-Use Consumer Products in Maine

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

14

31

MARGARET CHASE SMITH LIBRARY HIGH SCHOOL ESSAY CONTEST First-Place Essay

The Ideal Prospective President

by Elizabeth Harrington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

44

66

75

Second-Place Essay

Presidential Qualities

by Nick Danby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

77

Third-Place Essay

53

Qualities of the Ideal President

by Liana Dudley Holland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

79

4

Dear Readers,

aine Policy transition in roles at M the : ely lat nd mi my on role, with Linda Transitions have been r, and I take over that ito ed as wn do ps ste and the needs Review, as Ann Acheson transitions in the world of printed journals of the r; tio ministra ns. Periods Silka as executive edito itions in presidential ad ns tra . the ge se, an ur ch co ive of sit of our readers; and, er opportunities for po scary, but they also off transition can be a bit on delivery. From ging world of informati an ch the ng ati vig na enjoy the printed Here at MPR, we are t most of our readers tha ed rn lea the journal we y, rve su icle summaries, or for art to last summer’s reader ess acc ic on ctr ter articles, e increased ele much to consider: shor us ve version, but would lik ga s ult res y rve eractivity. ir phones. Su g people, increased int un to be accessible on the yo by g itin wr re mo Policy Center, graphics, Margaret Chase Smith a broader reach, more the at ip rsh de lea th g history of ether wi Linda Silka and I, tog are proud of MPR’s lon e W s. ue iss se the ess addr evant and useful are looking at ways to to keep the journal rel nt wa d an s ue iss y lic po you will find a remitthoughtful coverage of ur help. In this issue, yo ed ne we t Bu s. on ort for the MPR. in future policy discussi e it to show your supp us ll wi u yo pe ho we tance envelope, and gus King, taken ith Essay by Senator An Sm ase Ch t are arg M of Maine in This issue starts with the gave at the University he t tha ge an ch te ma cli , it is available here from a presentation on the actual presentation tch wa to usly, e lik uld wo u youtu.be). Serendipito November 2016. If yo 8ELt4xagA&feature= pP er ?v= aft s tch ek wa we m/ of .co le be cil a coup (https://www.youtu y on the Arctic Coun tar by en ed mm low co ’s fol rie are na s, Ca ue we received Dave iefly address trade iss s in Maine These pieces, which br e on the potential effect Senator King’s speech. icl art el’s ost Tr ilip Ph tio’s and Catherine Reilly deLu rtnership.

Pa fic aci s-P have of the Tran on, it is fitting that we during the recent electi ue by iss y s tar thi en on mm ng co rki As we were wo erenda, followed by a Smith Library e on statewide bond ref . The Margaret Chase James Melcher’s articl on cti ele ial nt de esi pr top 2016 me, and we present the L. Sandy Maisel on the had an election-year the ipalities have taken to reduce o als est nt co ay ess l high schoo aine munic e on the approaches M tary on state three winners. An articl Wagner and a commen is av Tr by re wa d foo d an nd out the issue. single-use plastic bags racy by David Leach rou lite l cia an fin ’ ers ain efforts to improve M r Linda Silka’s first of Executive Edito the d fin o als ll wi u , yo aine policy leaders: In this transition issue sons learned by four M les on s ion ect refl ng ari . Linda has other columns—this one sh stein, and Evan Richert ck Di rla Ca , rn bu Co Aram Calhoun, Andy s. planned for future issue columns and features Acheson for all sincere thanks to Ann th wi ter let r’s ito ed st fir continuing support I would like to end my naging editor and her ma the s wa I ars ye the she taught me during transition a lot easier. l. Her help made my fal st pa s thi e nc ida gu and



Best,

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

5

ANN’S LOOK BACK

Looking Back, Looking Forward Beginning with this issue, I’ve stepped down as editor of Maine Policy Review. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been with the journal for 14 years, 2002– 2008 as managing editor and 2008– 2016 as editor. When MPR editor Kathy Hunt left the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, I was asked to assume the editorship. I said I’d fill in for a couple of years until a more permanent arrangement could be made. Eight years later (how time flies!) we have now made the transition to a new editorial structure. Barbara Harrity has moved from managing editor to editor. Linda Silka assumes the newly created role of executive editor, with a primary focus on outreach and planning the journal’s content. I am happy to leave the journal in their capable hands.

Maine Policy Review has undergone a number of changes since I’ve been associated with it, including an increased emphasis on special issues devoted to single broad topics and, perhaps most important, since early 2013 making all issues available electronically through the University of Maine Digital Commons site. The latter innovation has introduced MPR to a much broader readership nationally and internationally. Print circulation remains at about 2,600, but more than 3,000 articles monthly are downloaded from Digital Commons.

Over the past 14 years, the content of the journal has evolved as policy concerns changed, but there is also continuity in topics that reflect persistent concerns in the state. Maine’s changing demographics, labor force, and educational attainment have been themes throughout my tenure at MPR. It is not

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

surprising that we have had two special issues devoted to aging, first in 2003 and again in 2015. The loss of natural-resource-based industries and manufacturing and its impact on the economies and well-being of residents in Maine’s rural rim counties has been another persistent theme. In 2007, a special issue was devoted to the future of Maine’s North Woods. With the near-demise of pulp and paper mills now, the wood products, forest land, and rural economies remain as topics of concern.

Tourism, Maine’s largest industry, has received a fair amount of attention, often in discussions of potential economic development in declining rural regions.

Health care and health problems such as substance abuse have been the subject of a number of articles over the years. I would anticipate this to be a growing area of emphasis given what is happening both locally and nationally. Climate change and energy are emerging arenas of urgent policy concern that MPR has covered in the past, including a special issue in 2008. Plans are in the works for more on this in the near future.

While MPR to some degree reflects current policy concerns, we have also tried to introduce topics that aren’t necessarily on the front burner or of immediate legislative concern.

Broadening reader horizons to emergent policy areas or to new ways of looking at old ones can be as important as dealing with the problem of the day. Several of our special issues have had this in mind: early childhood (2009); Maine’s food system (2011); sustainability (2012); libraries and information (2013); innovation (2014); and humanities and policy (2015).

I came to work on MPR by happenstance and with no formal training or background in editing. I have learned so much on so many varied topics. I have met and worked with so many thoughtful and creative people, including the guest editors for our special issues. I feel proud to have played a part in maintaining Maine Policy Review’s reputation as a nonpartisan source of objective information and analysis of policy issues relevant to Maine and its people. Dr. Isabel Gordon, my high school AP English teacher, would be shocked to know what I’ve done; she despaired that I would ever be able to write at the college level.

Maybe making me rewrite all those essays multiple times paid off….

6



My Creed . . .

is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly.

It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned but not bought.

Margaret Chase Smith

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

7

The Margaret Chase Smith Essay

Maine and Climate Change: The View from Greenland1

by Senator Angus King

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

and the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, so I spend a great deal of my time on national security-related issues. There are huge national security issues in the Arctic. In Greenland, we met with the Danish Joint Arctic Command. (Greenland is an interesting country because although it is mostly independent, Denmark handles Greenland’s international affairs and defense.) We spent a day and a half with staff from the Joint Arctic Command talking about challenges in the Arctic, from issues of national security to search and rescue as the Arctic Ocean opens up.

With us on the trip was Robert Corell, who spends part of his time in Weld, Maine. Bob is a world-renowned Figure 1:

CO2 (ppm)

climate scientist, particularly when it comes to the Arctic and Antarctic. In fact, he has a region in Antarctica named for him—the Corell Cirque.

John Englander, who has written an interesting book called High Tide on Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis, was also on the trip.

What I want to present here are some firsthand observations about climate change, its implications, where we’re headed, and why we need to do something about this issue. Figure 1 tells you all you need to know about climate change. The top graph in Figure 1 shows 420,000 years of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere, and

420,000 Years of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Concentrations, Global Temperatures, and Sea Level

400

CO2 Concentration

300 250 200 Global Temperature

+2

Holocene

Eemian

0

Last Ice Age

-4

Adapted from Hansen & Sato

T Anomaly (°F)

et me first begin by discussing why I want to talk about climate change and then I will talk about climate change itself.

I have found from working in public policy now for 20-plus years that it’s relatively easy to find solutions and develop policy if you have a widespread understanding of the facts. If everybody knows the facts, the policy becomes almost self-evident. If you don’t have a shared understanding of the facts, however, getting to a policy resolution is almost impossible. Indeed, one of the problems we face today is that we all get our information from different sources, so we all have different facts. When I was young, we all got our facts from the same person: Walter Cronkite. All Americans learned what they needed to know from Walter Cronkite. Now, we tend to go to the source of information that already confirms what we think, which is called confirmation bias. And the problem with this behavior is that if people have different facts, it’s almost impossible to get to a solution.

Last spring, I met with the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, who wanted to talk to me because, given our coastline, the state of Maine interacts a lot with the Coast Guard. While we were meeting, the commandant mentioned that he was going to visit Greenland later in the summer, and while I honestly can’t remember whether he invited me or I invited myself, I ultimately went with him to Greenland in late August.

It was an extraordinary trip with a twofold focus: (1) what was happening in Greenland in terms of the climate and (2) national security. I serve on the US Senate Committee on Armed Services

Sea Level (ft)

L

-8 Sea Level

0 -200 -400 400

350

300

250

200

150

100

50

0

Time (Thousands of Years Before Present) Source: John Englander, http://www.johnenglander.net/sea-level-rise-blog/420000-years -temp-co2-and-sea-level-what-coincidence/

8

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY Figure 2:

Carbon Emission Estimates, 1750–2010

Million Metric Tons of Carbon per Year

10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1750

1800

1850

1900

1950

2000

Year

Source: Boden, Thomas A., Gregg Marland, and Robert J. Andres. 2010. Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, TN. doi 10.3334/CDIAC/00001_V2010.

as you can see, it varies. Sometimes when I talk to people who are skeptical of climate change science they say, “Yeah, look it varies, it goes up and down. It has always done that.” Well, sort of. Carbon dioxide concentrations vary between 180 and approximately 300 parts per million (ppm), but the average is in the range of 250 to 270 ppm. Now, however, CO2 concentrations are 400 ppm. It hasn’t been at 400 ppm for about 5 million years; 400 ppm is uncharted territory. That’s 25 percent higher than the peaks along the graph and almost 100 percent higher than the average.

Two years ago, we reached 400 ppm for one month. Last year, I believe we were at 400 ppm for 12 months.

You see that graph and say, “Okay, Angus, CO2 it’s going up, who cares? We breathe it all the time. Plants breathe it in. It’s part of our atmosphere. What’s the problem?”

Here’s the problem. The second graph in Figure 1 shows 420,000 years of temperature data. Notice the similarities MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

between the two graphs: there’s a direct relationship between the two lines in the graphs. In other words, there’s a direct correlation between CO2 and temperature. CO2 goes up, temperature goes up.

CO2 goes down, temperature goes down.

One of the most interesting things with the pattern visible in these graphs is that you can see CO2 concentrations and temperatures should be starting to go down. We should have been headed into a long, slow cooling, but instead CO2 and temperatures are going up.

Again, so what? It gets a little warmer; we can take our jackets off a little earlier in April. What difference does rising temperature make? Now look at the third graph in Figure 1: sea level.

Again, notice the correlation: CO2 goes up, temperature goes up, sea level goes up. Put them all together—and that is about all you need to know in terms of the science of climate change.

An argument you hear is that this fluctuation is just a natural cycle. Well, if it is a natural cycle, it is a curious

coincidence that it has happened since we started burning fossil fuels and adding carbon into the atmosphere in a serious way in the last 150 to 200 years.

Here’s a way to think about this issue: When we burn coal, oil, or gas, we’re burning carbon that has been stored underground for millions of years. It’s sequestered; it’s locked; it’s not in the atmosphere. The CO2 in the forest, on the other hand, is in the atmosphere. As trees grow, they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere; when they die and rot, the CO2 goes back into the atmosphere.

Burning fossil fuels, however, releases new CO2 into the atmosphere.

The levels of CO2 vary between 180 and 300 ppm for 800,000 years, and then suddenly, mysteriously, in 1810, the level starts to rise, and it wasn’t because of volcanoes or storms in the Pacific. That was around the time that we started to burn fossil fuel. From 1750 to 2010, global total annual emissions of CO2 have gone from about 2 million metric tons per year to more than 9,000 million metric tons per year (Figure 2).

Figure 3 shows mean annual temperatures (using land and ocean data) from 1880 until present. Although there is year-to-year variation, you can see that the trend is going up. One thing you can’t really see from this figure, however, is the acceleration of temperature change. The mean temperature changes gradually during the 1800s and early 1900s, but it is changing more quickly now. We’re talking about accelerating change, and acceleration is an important concept. There are some interesting animations available on the internet that show this acceleration.2 Now again, the question is, why do we care about accelerating temperature changes? There are many reasons to care, actually, but I’m going to focus on sea level.

This was an important understanding I developed on the trip to 9

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY Figure 3:

Global Annual Mean Temperature Change Based on Land and Ocean Data*

1.0 0.8 Temperature Anomaly (C)

Annual Mean

5-year Mean

0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 -0.2 -0.4 -0.6 1880

1900

1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

* A negative value indicates the temperature was cooler than normal, while a positive value indicates the temperature was warmer than normal.

Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Institute for Space Studies: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ Figure 4:

Sea Level Change over the Last 24,000 Years

100

200

Meltwater Pulse 1A

300 Last Glacial Maximum

400

390 ft

24

22

Sea Level Change (ft)

0

20

18

16

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

0

Thousands of Years Ago

Source: John Englander, http://www.johnenglander.net

Greenland. I always think of the ocean as being a fixed asset. You look out at the ocean in Bar Harbor, it’s there, and it’s the way it has always been. There are certain verities, and one of them is the ocean is at the level it has always MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

been. The trouble is that it has only been at this level during the short span of human history—about 8,000 years.

That’s a millisecond in geological time.

We happened to have settled this country, moved to Maine, and built

bridges, roads, and everything else during one of the relatively stable periods of sea level.

Figure 4 shows something that I found stunning. About 15,000 years ago, the ocean right off of Maine was 300 feet shallower than it is now. I found that an amazing fact: 300 feet, not 3 inches or 30 inches, but 300 feet. Twenty-four thousand years ago, Orono was covered by two miles of ice—10,000 feet of ice.

That’s where all the water was. The water was in the glaciers that covered most of North America, which is why the ocean was shallower then. As the glaciers melted, sea level rose.

In Figure 4, from 8,000 years ago to the present looks quite stable, but if you lived during the years represented by the sharply vertical line, you’d ask, “what’s happening?” During this period between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago, called the meltwater pulse 1A, sea level rose by about 1 foot per decade or about 100 feet in 1,000 years.

The point I am trying to make is that things change. So, let’s get back to Greenland. Greenland is covered by enormous sheets of ice. A huge amount of fresh water is locked up in Greenland’s ice. In fact, about 70 percent of all the fresh water on earth is locked up in glaciers and ice sheets (http://water.usgs. gov/edu/earthwherewater.html). Now for the first time in 100,000 years, the Greenland ice sheet is starting to melt.

There are 20 feet of sea level rise just in the Greenland ice sheet. Melting of the Antarctic ice sheet would lead to about 212 feet of sea level rise, and it is also starting to melt.

In Greenland, we flew over the ice sheet. The helicopter landed, and we got out and walked around. The photograph in Figure 5 shows a feature called a moulin, which is a big hole in the ice.

The one in the photograph is about the size of a football field. Meltwater is flowing into the moulin. The diagram in 10

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY

Figure 4 shows an ice sheet with a moulin. The meltwater stream goes all the way down through two miles of ice to the bottom of the glacier. The water then creates a lubricating layer between the ice sheet and the ground, which accelerates the movement of the ice sheet toward the ocean.

The melting appears to be happening a lot faster than anyone had anticipated.

Figure 5:

I was at an Intelligence Committee meeting and they handed out a sheet of paper with pictures of the extent of the Arctic sea ice in 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and projected 2015 and 2030. While we were looking at this during the hearing, I used my cell phone and searched “Arctic sea ice” and found that the extent of Arctic sea ice today is less than they were projecting for 2030.

Photograph and Diagram of a Moulin

Crevasse

Meltwater Lake

Greenland Ice Sheet Moulin

Bedrock

Figure 6:

Extent of Jakobshavn Glacier from 1850 to 2014

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

Figure 6 shows the Jakobshavn Glacier, the largest one in Greenland.

Think of the ice sheet as a big hunk of ice and a glacier as a river of ice.

Ice is flowing from the ice sheet down the glacier and heading out to the ocean. In this figure, the lines are dates of the glacier’s extent, that is, where the face of the glacier reached in the past. It has retreated as much in the last 12 years as it had in the previous 120 years. The face of the glacier is now actually in the ice sheet. The glacier is retreating 10 times as fast as it has historically.

When the ice leaves Greenland, the sea level goes up. When it leaves Antarctica, the sea level goes up. So I pressed John Englander and Bob Corell on the trip—and I’ve talked to other scientists since—what are we talking about? A couple of inches? Here’s what they said: A foot of sea level rise in the next 10 to 15 years and one foot per decade thereafter for the rest of the century. Has that ever happened before?

Yes. It happened during the meltwater pulse 15,000 years ago.

A foot a decade is a catastrophe. It will be difficult for Maine; it will cost us a lot of money. But there are places where it will go beyond spending money, beyond aggravating: Miami and a good deal of Florida, New Orleans, which is already at or below sea level, all the major cities on the East Coast. Norfolk, Virginia, where we have most of our naval resources, is already seeing the effects of rising sea level.

The point I want to make is that this isn’t a feel good 11

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY Figure 7:

Summer Sea Ice Extent 1870–2011 (July–September)

13 Light blue line is a reduction in extent of about 10% per decade for the past 6 decades.

12

Million Square Kilometers

11 10 9 8 7

Sea ice extent was essentially stable during the summer months at about 11 million sqare kilometers over 8 decades.

How has the extent of sea ice changed since 1979?

6 5 4 1870

1890

1910

1930

1950

1970

1990

2010

Sources: Data for 1870–2008 from the University of Illinois and observational data from NSIDC for 2009–2011. Graphic adapted from http://www.skepticalscience.com

issue. This is practical, nuts-and-bolts protection of our country. If an enemy was coming who was planning to destroy Miami, wouldn’t we do something about it? Would we say, “Oh that’s okay, take it.” No, we would marshal all our resources to do something about it. Now in Miami they have sunny-day flooding, a flood of the streets in Miami and Miami Beach when there is no storm, no storm surge, no clouds, no rain. The water is just coming up through the stormwater drains. Florida is in particularly bad shape because the bedrock in Florida is porous limestone. It looks like swiss cheese. If you build a seawall on top of it, the water will come up from underneath.

There are other serious national security implications of climate change and sea level rise. The Joint Chiefs of Staff several years ago said that climate change was a serious national security issue. Part of the issue is the simple physical risk to our bases all over the world due to sea level rise. The other part of the problem is due to temperature. As MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

temperatures go up around the world, particularly in the equatorial area, there will be regions that are no longer habitable. By the end of this century, we could see between 200 million and 1 billion people displaced. We will see hundreds of millions of people on the move because of a lack of water or the inability to raise food in the places in which they have lived. This displacement is a national security issue.

Figure 7 is a representation of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Sea ice extent was stable from the 1870s until about 1950, and then it starts to decrease dramatically. Another way to think about sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is by volume. From 1979 to 2015, the minimum volume of Arctic sea ice has decreased from 16,885 cubic kilometers to 5,670 cubic kilometers—a reduction of two-thirds of the volume of ice. The Arctic Ocean has been covered by ice throughout all of human history, mostly year round, but now it is melting, and we need to figure out what we’re going to do about it.3

Figure 8 shows a view of the Arctic region with the North Pole in the center. Russia has the largest coastline along the Arctic Ocean, and the Northern Sea Route, the route that is clearest, passes along Russia’s coast. The Northwest Passage is along the coast of Alaska and Canada. It is not as navigable as the Northern Sea Route, but it is opening up.

The opening up of the Northwest Passage is an opportunity for Maine.

Travel from Asia to the East Coast of the United States or Europe via the Arctic is much shorter than the routes through the Suez or Panama Canals. The state of Maine has the first ports on the East Coast for ships coming through the Northwest Passage, so this is important to us economically and strategically. The Arctic is important militarily because Russia is building military bases along its northern coast, and the region is also important for possible tourism (a luxury cruise ship sailed through the Northwest Passage this summer).

To address the issue of climate change, we have to come to some understanding about what is going on. I think you can learn everything you need to know about environmental and ecological policy from what I call the “Maine rototiller rule”: If you borrow your neighbor’s rototiller in the spring to till your garden, you give it back in as good shape as you got it, with a full tank of gas. We have the planet on loan. We don’t own it. We have it for a finite period. We are turning it over to our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren, and we don’t have the right to compromise it to the point where it will make their lives difficult if not impossible. I call it “intergenerational equity.” It’s our ethical and moral obligation to not ignore the results of what we’re doing.

Climate change is creating practical issues right now. It will affect us here in 12

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY Figure 8:

Commercial Routes in the Arctic Ocean

Maine and all over the country. I think we have an obligation to understand the facts and to formulate policies to address these issues. I’m not talking about radical policies that will destroy our quality of life, but rational policies that move us away from the combustion of fossil fuels, which add carbon to our atmosphere. We need to move in the direction of renewable energy sources and to make decisions in our personal lives that will help us deal with the problem of climate change. Unfortunately, scientists say it cannot be stopped. It’s too late.

But we can slow it Source: https://eurasiangeopolitics.com/arctic-maps/ down and perhaps make it less horrendous than it would be otherwise. We also years from now, we will find a way to do have to figure out how to cope with the the right thing. effects of climate change and rising sea ENDNOTES levels. How do we build things that will last for 100 years in the face of the 1 This essay and the accompanying figures are from Sen. King’s effects of climate change? presentation at the Margaret Chase There are no easy answers to the Smith Lectureship on Public Affairs, problem of climate change, but we have November 10, 2016, at the University to continue to talk about it because it is of Maine. one of the most serious issues we have If you would like to watch the actual ever faced. presentation, it is available here (https:// I will end with two quotes: President www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP8ELt4xKennedy once said, “Our problems are agA&feature=youtu.be). man-made, therefore they may be solved 2 This animation of spiraling global by man.” And Winston Churchill: “You temperatures shows the pace of global temperature change in a visually can always count on Americans to do appealing and straightforward way: the right thing — a fter they’ve tried http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/climate-lab everything else.”

-book/files/2016/05/spiral_optimized.gif If we can come to mutual under NASA’s website also has interesting standing of the facts and obligations we animations: https://svs.gsfc.nasa .gov have to the people who will live 100 /cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=4419 MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

3 There are interesting animations that show what’s happening with Arctic sea ice: https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=Vj1G9gqhkYA and https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=H -BbPBg3vj8

Angus King was elected as Maine’s first Independent US senator in 2012.

In the Senate, he serves as a member of the Armed Services, Energy and Natural Resources, Intelligence, Budget, and Rules Committees. He also served as governor of Maine from 1995 to 2003.

13

THE ARCTIC COUNCIL

C O M M E N T A R Y

Maine’s Journey into the Arctic: Why the Arctic Council Matters to Maine

by Dave Canarie1

T

he Arctic Council, whose officials met in Portland in early October of 2016, is relatively young as far as international organizations go. Now in its twentieth year, it faces inevitable growing pains, but it has nevertheless evolved into the preeminent forum for Arctic issues.

At least one reason for its success is a spirit of cooperation among its members, which is influenced by the consensus-based decision-making approach of indigenous Arctic peoples.

One diplomat said Arctic officials work together so well because of their shared recognition that “We are, in fact, all in the same small kayak and we must work together to meet the storms ahead.”

High-level Arctic officials from the United States and seven other nations in the Arctic region, and representatives of indigenous people from the Arctic, gathered in Portland October 4–6, 2016, to discuss issues of importance to the region. But, just what is the Arctic Council? Who are these high-level officials and indigenous people? And why does any of this matter to Maine or to other parts of the world?

In The Arctic Council: Governance within the Far North, Douglas C. Nord of Umeå University in Sweden provides a concise, thoroughly researched, and immensely informative overview of the Arctic Council.

With a coordinating office in Tromsø, Norway, the Arctic Council has three categories of members. First, are eight voting member states that have territory within the Arctic region and who signed the declaration creating MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

the Arctic Council. These Arctic Eight are the United States, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and the Russian Federation. Each of these states designates senior Arctic officials who manage the ongoing operation of the council, and the council’s meetings, such as the recent meeting in Portland.

The second category of members in the Arctic Council is comprised of associations representing six groups of indigenous Arctic people: Aleut, Athabaskan, Gwich’in, Inuit, Russian indigenous peoples, and the Saami. These groups are permanent participants in the council, and they also attended the Arctic Council meeting in Portland. According to Nord, the permanent participants “articulate distinctive indigenous concerns and perspectives that may not be fully represented by the national governments” who are members (Nord 2016: 38). In welcoming participation from indigenous peoples, the Arctic Council has demonstrated inclusiveness that is uncommon among international organizations. Moreover, the council has embraced the consensus model used by indigenous people in the Arctic region, implicitly acknowledging the “wisdom to be gained in following the traditional decision-making practices of the Arctic” (Nord 2016: 71).

The third category of participants is comprised of 32 “observers” including non-Arctic states such as the China, India, the United Kingdom, Spain, as well as a number of nongovernmental organizations ranging from the International Red Cross and the UN

2016

Development Program to the Association of World Reindeer Herders.

Interest in an international forum for Arctic issues can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century, but progress toward any type of governance was disrupted by World War II and the Cold War. In fact, during the early 1980s the United States and the Soviet Union “engaged in renewed military buildups” in the Arctic region (Nord 2016: 13).

Nord points to two events in the late 1980s that accelerated efforts toward Arctic governance. First, dangerous leaks from the Soviet nuclear power plant in Chernobyl spread radioactive material throughout the polar region. This raised “a general alarm among all circumpolar states concerning…transboundary pollution and environmental contamination throughout the Arctic” (2016: 13). Second, in October 1987, new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev gave an influential speech in Murmansk where he proposed countering the buildup of military forces in the Arctic by asking that all states with land in the Arctic region put aside their differences and turn the Arctic into a “general zone of peace and fruitful cooperation”(Nord 2016: 14).

Those two events reignited interest in governance for the Arctic region.

Under Canada’s leadership, these efforts culminated in the 1996 Ottawa Declaration in which the eight Arctic states agreed to establish a highlevel forum to cooperate on Arctic issues, oversee sustainable development and environmental programs, and disseminate information about Arcticrelated issues.

The Arctic Council has a leadership chair that rotates every two years among the eight Arctic states. The United States’ two-year term as chair began on April 24, 2015. As chair, the United States has 14

THE ARCTIC COUNCIL

C O M M E N T A R Y identified three areas of focus for its term: improving economic and living conditions in Arctic communities; Arctic Ocean safety, security, and stewardship; and climate change. These are chief among the issues discussed at the meeting in Portland.

The Arctic Council matters to Maine because Maine is inextricably linked to the Arctic by its proximity to the region.

Maine is the closest state on the East Coast of the United States to the Arctic region. This proximity has in turn facilitated a growing number of connections.

As Maine’s engagement with the Arctic region increases, there will likely be an expansion of student exchanges with colleges and universities throughout the region. A press release by the University of Southern Maine (August 2, 2016) describes one such connection: a new student exchange program with Reykjavik University in Iceland. According to an article in the Portland Press Herald (October 26, 2016), the University of New England has announced a partnership with two universities in Iceland: the University of Akureyri and Holar University College. Several Maine scientific institutions are already conducting research in the Arctic, and this work is expected to expand over time. Growing connections between Maine and the Arctic are also illustrated by Eimskip’s— an Icelandic shipping company—2013 decision to replace Norfolk, Virginia, with Portland, as a port of call, recognizing the shorter transit time to Reykjavik from Portland. This development connects Portland with shipping routes through Iceland to numerous ports in Europe. Portland’s role in Arcticrelated shipping will only increase as the catastrophic melting of Arctic sea ice opens up new global trade routes.2 In addition to increased trade with the Arctic region, Eimskip’s presence in

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

Portland has heightened Mainers’ awareness of the region. According to Mia Bennett (2016), “Maine is now looking northeast to a market in Europe that it hadn’t really noticed before….Maine is also trying to expand upon business opportunities in the Nordic countries.”

The Arctic Council is important beyond the Arctic region because of its successful model of regional governance and problem solving. As the United Nations continues to grow in size, it develops the attributes of a large bureaucracy. In an article in The Telegraph (June 26, 2015) celebrating the institution’s seventieth anniversary in 2015, former UN Deputy General SecretaryGeneral Mark Malloch-Brown commented on the heavy bureaucracy of the UN and remarked that it could be “labyrinthian, hard to penetrate and often apparently immune to tragedy.” In contrast, the Arctic Council’s effective regional cooperation could be a model for regional governance within the United States or internationally. The United Nations, or other national or transnational organizations, may improve their problem-solving capabilities by studying the relatively new and effective Arctic Council model. This could involve, for example, addressing smaller components of larger problems and involving stakeholders who are directly involved in the issues. Nord concludes “the story of Arctic cooperation has done much to inform policymakers from other affected countries regarding how states can continue to work together despite their disagreements and come away with enhanced commitment to partnership” (2016: 88).

The Arctic Council meeting in Portland last month is another step forward in Arctic governance and in Maine’s continuing journey into the Arctic. -

2016

ENDNOTES 1 For more by Dave Canarie, follow him on Twitter: @DaveCanarie.

2 For more information on Maine’s growing connection to the Arctic, I recommend this article by Tom Bell, “How Maine Is Turning Itself into an Arctic Player,” Alaska Dispatch News, October 6, 2016, https://www.adn.com /arctic/2016/10/06/how-maine-is-turning -itself-into-an-arctic-player/.

REFERENCES Bennett, Mia. 2016. “Eimskip in Maine: A Sage for the 21st-Century Arctic.” Cryopolitics: Arctic News & Analysis (May 5) https://cryopolitics .com/2016/05/05/eimskip-in-maine-a -saga-for-the-21st-century-arctic/ Nord, Douglas C. 2016. The Arctic Council: Governance within the Far North.

Routledge, New York.

Dave Canarie is an attorney in Portland, Maine, and faculty member at the University of Southern Maine and St. Joseph’s College.

15

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

The Trans-Pacific Partnership: The Economic Implications for Maine

by Catherine Reilly deLutio and Philip A. Trostel The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a free-trade agreement (FTA) between 12 Pacific-Rim countries. If passed, it would be the largest FTA in which the United States participates. Catherine Reilly deLutio and Philip Trostel assess the potential impact of the TPP’s tariff reductions and quota increases on Maine’s economy. The results suggest that the TPP would likely generate slight increases in overall measures of Maine’s economy. The benefits would be relatively small and spread across the population.

T

he Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed free-trade agreement (FTA) between 12 Pacific-Rim countries (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam). If passed, it would be one of the world’s largest FTAs. Debate on the TPP has exposed starkly different views of how to secure the position of the United States in the world economy.

Figure 1:

Historical US Tariffs

This article contextualizes the debate and brings it to the state level by illuminating the TPP’s potential economic impact on Maine.

The TPP covers numerous complex topics ranging from typical trade issues such as import duties and customs regulations to less obvious issues such as government procurement, patent laws, and labor and environmental standards. Moreover, the TPP’s unwritten geopolitical implications may be as complex and important as the agreements codified in its text.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF US TRADE POLICY

1929 Great Depression begins

60% 50%

T

1934 RTAA

40%

1945 WWII ends 1948 GATT begins

30%

1994 NAFTA 20%

10%

0

1890

1910

1930

1950

1970

Source: USITC 2011.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

1990

2010

rade has been a central economic and political issue in the United States since the country’s founding.

Before 1789, each state had its own tariffs that protected its favored industries and often restricted imports from neighboring states, an unwieldly protectionist system that hindered commerce. In 1789, the states gave Congress the power to remove barriers to interstate trade and regulate international trade.

Like many governments of its time, the early US government imposed tariffs on select imports to aid domestic producers and generate

16

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

revenue. Over time, those tariffs fell as the country embraced trade and entered into reciprocal trade agreements with other countries. As Figure 1 shows, the average US tariff fell from 52 percent in 1899 to 16 percent in 1920 (USITC 2011). The Great Depression disrupted that decline as Congress passed high tariffs to protect struggling domestic producers. The average tariff peaked at 59 percent in 1932. That strategy backfired when other countries imposed retaliatory tariffs. World trade declined sharply and deepened the Great Depression (Madsen 2001).

In 1934, believing that economic recovery relied in part on reviving international trade, Congress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA), which gave the president the authority to negotiate reciprocal tariff agreements with other countries. World War II gave added urgency to the call for trade liberalization, as many people believed the collapse of world trade had contributed to global unrest. Countries sought to repair their damaged economies and solidify peace through multilateral cooperation.

In 1947, the United States, Canada, India, Australia, and 19 other European, African, Middle Eastern, and South American countries began a new era of international trade by signing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which created the framework of the multilateral trading system that exists today. Over the next few decades, the GATT’s membership grew and trade barriers between GATT countries fell.

The GATT eventually led to formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, which now CONSUMER BENEFITS OF TRADE Today’s average US home is a showcase of foods, clothes, electronics, and household items made in other countries. Fajgelbaum and Khandelwal (2016) estimate that low-priced imports increase US consumers’ purchasing power by 8 percent in aggregate. The savings are even greater (up to 69 percent) for low-income consumers, who spend a higher portion of their income on traded goods.

Aggregated across the entire economy, these gains are dramatic. US consumers spent $6.8 trillion in 2014 (USBLS 2015). An 8 percent savings on that sum is over $543 billion, nearly equivalent to the entire economic output of Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire that year.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

has 162 members representing 90 percent of the world’s population. WTO members agree to treat products imported from all other members equally. In other words, a country cannot lower tariffs for one WTO member without lowering them for all members. The exception is when two members enter into a separately negotiated reciprocal FTA. The WTO’s broad membership makes it challenging to reach consensus on some topics. Many countries have turned to regional agreements such as the TPP to negotiate complex issues such as intellectual property rights, copyright laws, international data flows, debit and credit cards, customs regulations, and environmental and labor practices.

Today, the United States has a relatively liberal trade policy compared to earlier periods. About two-thirds of US imports are duty free, and the average tariff on the remaining one-third is just 4.4 percent. At that level, exchange rates can have a stronger impact on import prices than tariffs. However, select agricultural and manufactured goods such as sugar, dairy products, cotton, sneakers, and automobile parts still have high tariffs.

TODAY’S GLOBAL ECONOMY

G

lobalization refers to the growing integration of economic activities across international borders.

Three components of globalization are particularly relevant to trade: falling transportation costs, advances in telecommunication, and growth in low-income countries.

Transportation Products now traverse the globe faster and more reliably than before. The development of containers in the 1970s revolutionized the shipping industry, greatly reducing the time needed to load, unload, and transfer goods between ships, trucks, and rail cars. The cost of air transport has plummeted and opened entirely new markets for fresh goods that would spoil on long sea voyages. Air transport now accounts for roughly one-quarter of US imports and exports by value.1 Telecommunication Worldwide, over 3 billion people used the internet in 2015, up from 400 million in 2000 (ITU 2015).

Internet access increases productivity by helping businesses communicate better with suppliers, find qualified employees, learn about market developments, and use a greater variety of cost-saving technologies and services.

17

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

Furthermore, the internet creates an unprecedented opportunity to connect with new customers both domestically and around the globe.

Advances in telecommunication, coupled with advances in transportation, allow companies to segment their operations and locate each business activity in the most advantageous location. People, designs, and prototypes can move quickly from one location to another without delaying the flow of business. Companies can now lower their costs by locating low-skilled assembly operations in low-wage countries.

Global Development As low-income countries around the world grow and industrialize, they become larger players in the global economy. Asia’s share of global economic activity doubled from 19 percent in 1980 to 38 percent in 2015.

Goods from China alone have increased from 3.1 percent of US imports in 1990 to 21.5 percent in 2015.

This growth has helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty (Olinto et al. 2013).

However, trade theory predicts that increased imports from low-wage countries will put downward pressure on the value of low-skilled labor in the United States, which has indeed happened.

Globalization is a powerful force that has permanently altered the scale on which people do business.

The economies of hundreds of countries are now complexly intertwined; the consequences of events and developments in each country now ripple farther and faster than ever before.

THE IMPACT OF TRADE ON US WORKERS

D

uring the mid-twentieth century, US trade liberalization coincided with steadily rising employment.

Employment grew even as the share of US workers in manufacturing declined from its peak of 37.9 percent in 1943 to 8.7 percent in 2015 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics). Average hourly earnings increased significantly from 1950 to the late 1970s, peaking at $23.56 in 1978 (measured in 2015 dollars). Since then, real wages have stagnated. There is an active debate about the source of wage stagnation. It appears to be the result of several factors including trade, technological advances, and the distribution of corporate profits. The degree to which trade affects individual workers depends on several variables.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

Import-Competing Versus Nonimport-Competing

Perhaps the simplest factor determining whether trade affects workers is the degree to which their industry competes with foreign imports. Foreign competition has hit US manufacturers particularly hard. US service providers, in contrast, have been somewhat sheltered; a haircut, a hotel room, or an electrical repair cannot be made in one country and used in another.

Trade has helped some service industries by reducing the cost of inputs and increasing consumers’ purchasing power. Technology is beginning to expand trade into formerly nontraded services, for instance accounting, graphic design, and medical transcription, and that trend is likely to continue (Pisani and Ricart 2016).

Exporting Versus Nonexporting Businesses that successfully tap into export markets can hire more workers and often pay better wages. One study of US workers found that a 1 percent increase in exports by their industry led to a 1 percent increase in wages even for individuals in low-skilled occupations (Ebenstein et al. 2014). Export opportunities are not reserved for large-scale operations. The Maine elver fishery is a good example of an economic opportunity that would not exist without international trade.

High-Skilled Versus Low-Skilled In some cases, the skills and occupation of individual US workers can be a stronger determinant of how trade affects their earnings than their industry (Ebenstein et al. 2014). According to Ebenstein et al. (2014), during the 1980s and 1990s, there was a decline of 6 million routine (low-skill) positions in manufacturing, but an increase of 1 million nonroutine (high-skill) positions. Increased trade with low-income countries has put downward pressure on the value of low-skilled labor in the United States while putting upward pressure on the value of high-skilled labor.

Regional Variations Classical economic theory maintained that workers adversely affected by trade would eventually transition to other industries or relocate to areas with stronger economies. Recent research has challenged this thinking.

Empirical evidence shows that areas with concentrations of labor-intense manufacturing industries (which have generally suffered the most from import competition) have persistently higher unemployment, lower wages, and lower labor market participation (Autor et al. 2013).

18

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

Part of that may be lower relocation rates among workers without a college degree; they are less likely to move in search of new job opportunities (Taylor et al.

2008). Falling home prices in depressed areas also raise the cost of moving. In these areas, growth in less affected parts of the economy has not been able to absorb the high number of displaced workers.

MAINE’S ECONOMY POST-NAFTA

A

ssessing the TPP’s potential impact on Maine requires an understanding of how the state’s economy has responded to the global forces described earlier, and where it now stands. This article uses implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 as a benchmark to examine these changes.

Measures of Overall Growth By several key measures, Maine’s overall economy has grown since 1994. On average, median household income rose 0.86 percent per year adjusting for inflation,

Table 1:

Maine’s Top 10 Food Commodity Exports in 2015

Commodity Lobster, live

Value (millions)

Average annual increase 2010–2015

-------- $ --------

-------- % -------

347.0

15

Salmon, fillets

46.2

59

Sea urchins and sea cucumbers

25.2

-3*

Salmon, whole

21.5

-5

Potatoes, prepared and frozen

18.9

-15

Blueberries and cranberries, frozen

17.2

14

Blueberries and cranberries, fresh

11.8

0

Lobster, prepared

11.6

45

Maple sugar and syrup

7.5

13

Chicken eggs

4.6

15

* There are no recorded exports in the sea urchin and sea cucumber commodity category until 2012, so annual increase is based on 2012–2015.

Source: US Census Bureau: Economic Indicators Division USA Trade online.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

surpassing the national rate of 0.31 percent. In all, Maine incomes rose from 94.0 percent of the US median in 1994 to 96.3 percent in 2014. The broadest measure of Maine’s economy, its gross domestic product (GDP), also grew after 1994. Through 2014, real GDP increased 29 percent. However, US real GDP grew 49 percent during that time. The difference seems to be that Maine GDP stagnated after 2004, while US GDP continued to grow.

Exports have been a bright spot for Maine, increasing at over twice the annual rate of the rest of the economy (3.1 percent compared to 1.3 percent). In 2015, Maine’s top five export products were lobster (12.2 percent of total exports), civilian aircraft and parts (8.7 percent), electronic integrated circuits (8.3 percent), coniferous wood (5.7 percent), and chemical wood pulp (4.9 percent). Top export destinations were Canada (46.5 percent), Malaysia (7.7 percent), China (7.6 percent), Germany (3.8 percent), and Japan (3.0 percent).

Before 2007, growth of Maine exports often exceeded US growth; since 2007, it has generally lagged.

Still, Maine food exports have increased significantly in the last decade, more than doubling from $288 million in 2007 to $588 million in 2015 (Table 1) (US Census Bureau: Economic Indicators Division USA Trade online). Exports of live lobster accounted for most of that growth, with additional contributions from farmed salmon, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and elvers.

According to Tom Bell in the Portland Press Herald (January 5, 2015), exports are a growth area for Maine food producers.

Employment measures also show slowing growth in recent years. Maine has gained almost 90,000 jobs since NAFTA (17 percent growth), but gains have been stifled by two national recessions, the continued decline of manufacturing, and slow population growth. For most of the 1990s, Maine’s job growth averaged 2 percent per year, but it has averaged just 0.5 percent annually since the Great Recession technically ended in 2009. Overall job gains mask deep losses in some industries. From 1994 to 2015, the number of Maine workers employed in manufacturing fell 40 percent, from 83,000 to 50,000. That decline was spread across many industries, with concentrations in paper, leather products, transportation equipment, computer and electronic products, and wood products.2 These job losses are part of a sectoral decline in manufacturing that predates NAFTA by 50 years.

During World War II, manufacturing employed nearly 19

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

half (48.8 percent) of all Maine workers and 37.9 percent of US workers. Those percentages gradually merged over the next 60 years. While this transition has not been painless, it does seem to be drawing to a close.

As the Brookings Institution (2006: 6) noted, “The ongoing and still painful shift to a more diversified service-oriented economy means that [Maine] has less to lose in the future and more to gain.” As manufacturing employment has fallen, other sectors have grown.

Since 1990, Maine has gained nearly 70,000 jobs in management, administrative services, and healthcare.

These trends reflect a shift from goods to services that has occurred throughout the country. Technological advances and increased trade have lowered the cost of many goods and given consumers more income to spend on services such as health care, education, and entertainment. The net result is that between 1990 and 2015, the number of jobs created by Maine service providers nearly equaled the entire goods-producing sector in 1990. Roughly two-thirds of service jobs are in business, health, and education professions. In 2015, their average earnings were $48,240, just under the average for goods-producing workers ($50,105). The remaining one-third of service jobs, in retail sales, leisure, and hospitality, averaged less than half that amount, $23,249.

Regional Variations Below the state-level gains, however, are stark regional differences. The decline of manufacturing and natural resource industries has hit some parts of Maine hard. Some remote communities never recover from the loss of a dominant employer. Furthermore, the aging of the population and the lack of in-migration has led to decline in many rural communities. From 1990 to 2015, jobs in the Portland labor market area grew 30 percent, Bangor and Lewiston grew 20 percent and 19 percent, respectively, and the rest of Maine grew just 4 percent.

The Role of Trade The role of international trade in these changes has been debated for years. In 2003, the Maine Legislature authorized, “The Effects of NAFTA on the Maine Economy,” a report that assessed Maine’s economic gains and losses in the first decade of NAFTA’s existence (Planning Decisions 2003). According to the report, during that time, trade with Canada and Mexico grew twice as quickly as the rest of Maine’s economy, and the nature of trade diversified beyond its MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

historic concentration in wood and paper products.

Canadian investment in Maine grew. Furthermore, access to low-cost imports generated widespread consumer savings. The report asserts that Maine both lost and gained manufacturing jobs because of NAFTA, but the overall effect was likely a net loss. However, the report noted increases in broader economic measures including real personal income, gross state product, exports, and imports. It stopped short of saying whether NAFTA’s overall impact on Maine was positive or negative.

Since 2003, those trends have continued.

Manufacturing employment has declined further, and overall economic measures have risen slowly. Maine consumers have continued to benefit from low-priced imports, and the economic impact of those gains remains impossible to quantify. There is no single economic indicator, or econometric calculation, that fully captures trade’s impact on Maine, but various aspects of trade’s effects are revealed by multiple indicators.

Trade-Induced Job Losses Statistics from the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program are the best available measure of workers hurt by foreign competition. (Unfortunately, there is no corresponding measure of workers helped by foreign trade.) From 1996 to 2012, 81,487 Maine workers were involved in mass layoffs, and 27 percent qualified for TAA.3 The other 73 percent did not qualify, meaning the US Department of Labor determined that other forces such as technological advances, changing consumer demand, or domestic competition caused to their layoff (Burnett 2009). While trade has been a contributing factor to layoffs in Maine, it has not been the sole factor.

From 1996 to 2012, 55 percent of Maine workers affected by mass layoffs were in manufacturing. Burnett (2009: 11) observed, “those [manufacturing] firms most likely to be vulnerable to international competition are those using more workers and paying lower wages (and thus probably not investing in productivity enhancing capital equipment) relative to their peers.” On the flip side, MDOL (2012: 1) noted, “manufacturers that have survived and are thriving are those that invested heavily in capital-intensive production systems that tend to have much higher performance requirements than what many of the former production workers possess in terms of education and experience.” Indeed, from 1990 to 2010, Maine’s manufacturing workforce shrank, but became more productive and better educated. The total 20

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP Figure 2:

US and Maine Unemployment Rates and US Imports

imported from Canada have been relatively stable since 1994, aver18% aging 2 percent; Mexican imports 16% have grown from 0.7 percent to 1.6 14% percent; and Chinese imports have 12% grown from 0.5 percent to 2.69 percent.

State import data do not 10% exist, but it is reasonable to assume 8% that national trends reflect circum6% stances at the state level.4 4% The United States has no trade 2% agreement with China other than 0% the rules of the WTO. The United 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 States first granted China “most favored nation” status in 1979 and US ME US Imports (% of GDP) renewed that designation every year Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Bureau of Economic Analysis until 2000, when the United States granted “permanent normal trade value of manufactured goods produced stayed relatively relations,” as part of China’s bid to join the WTO. constant even as employment fell. In discussing Maine’s Under these conditions, without a bilateral trade agreetextile and apparel industry, Burnett (2009: 5) noted, ment, goods from China have increased from less than “workers in the few innovative surviving firms have had 5.8 percent of total US imports in 1994 to 21.5 percent substantial real wage gains.” in 2015. The value of China’s abundant resource— Foreign imports do not appear to have affected the low-skilled workers—has risen and put downward presoverall unemployment rate in Maine and the nation. sure on the economic value of low-skilled workers in the US imports as percentage of GDP have roughly United States and Maine. doubled over the last 40 years, while the unemployment rate has risen and fallen through multiple business Summary cycles (Figure 2).

Maine’s economy has changed in fundamental ways since 1994. It has continued its decades-long Foreign Investment evolution from an economy based on manufacturing Employment by foreign-majority-owned affiliates and natural resources to one based on innovation and in Maine increased 34 percent between 1993 and 2013, services. While it is impossible to quantify trade’s nearly double the growth rate of overall employment myriad impacts on jobs, incomes, and consumer prices, (18 percent) (Table 2). Planning Decisions (2003) noted it is possible to observe that Maine’s economy has increased Canadian investment following the passage of NAFTA. Familiar majority-Canadian-owned companies Table 2: Changes in Employment in Maine, include Circle K, TD Bank, and TransCanada. Belgium 1993 to 2013 based Delhaize Group owns Hannaford Brothers, Maine’s largest private employer with over 7,500 Change employees. Foreign investment typically helps US 1993 2013 % workers through increases in wages, research and develTotal private employment opment, exports, and productivity.

424,000 501,200 18 NAFTA

20%

in Maine

Trade with China It is impossible to discuss NAFTA’s impact on Maine without understanding the unrelated yet simultaneous increase in Chinese imports that occurred after NAFTA became law. As a percentage of US GDP, goods MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

Employment by foreignmajority-owned companies

24,200

32,400

34

Source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis, Foreign Direct Investment in the United States (FDIUS), Table G-8.

21

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

grown. However, growth has occurred unevenly across WTO forum. The TPP is designed to be a living agreethe state, it has often lagged US growth, and it is ment that could add countries over time. slowing. Thousands of individuals have experienced The United States has existing trade agreements painful layoffs, and many communities have suffered with six TPP members: Australia, Canada, Chile, the irreversible loss of a dominant employer. Many Mexico, Peru, and Singapore. Collectively, those counother individuals and communities have benefited from tries plus the United States account for over 80 percent new economic opportunities that did not exist in 1994. of the total economic output of the TPP region. Given If the Maine businesses most vulnerable to internathe large portion of the TPP region with which the tional competition have closed, relocated, or learned United States has already liberalized trade, most of the how to compete, then losses generated by previous agreement’s economic impact will be in liberalizing changes in trade will not be repeated. Moreover, the trade with the other five countries (Brunei, Japan, gains from future trade growth could be greater if Malaysia, New Zealand, and Vietnam). sectors of Maine’s economy that benefit from trade have The TPP would eventually eliminate nearly all grown. Maine exporters may gain better access to tariffs on goods traded between member countries, but foreign markets; Maine consumers may benefit from the phase-out periods vary significantly. For example, lower-cost imports; and Maine service providers may Singapore would eliminate all tariffs on all goods as soon gain if their customers have Table 3: TPP Member Countries greater purchasing power.

Whether Maine gains net jobs will depend on the ability of Percentage Percentage of world Per capita its businesses to capitalize on of world population income Average the new opportunities created TPP member country GDP 2014 2015 2014 tarif by agreement such as the TPP $ % % % and the related increases in Existing US free-trade agreement consumer purchasing power.

Australia

1.87

0.32

61,980

2.7

Canada

2.29

0.49

50,231

4.2

Chile

0.33

0.24

14,528

6.0

Mexico

1.66

1.73

10,326

7.5

Peru

0.26

0.43

6,541

3.4

Singapore

0.39

0.08

56,284

0.2

22.34

4.38

54,629

3.5

Brunei

0.02

0.01

40,980

1.2

Japan

5.90

1.73

36,194

4.2

Malaysia

0.43

0.41

11,307

6.1

New Zealand

0.26

0.06

44,342

2.0

Vietnam

0.24

1.25

2,052

9.5

Total, all TPP members

36.0

11.1

TPP members with existing US trade agreement

29.1

7.7

6.9

3.4

ABOUT THE TRANSPACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

I

f the TPP passed, it would be the largest FTA in which the United States participates.5 The 12 countries in the TPP accounted for 36 percent of world GDP in 2014, although most of that (22 percent) was the United States (Table 3).6 All TPP countries are members of the WTO, meaning they already abide by an extensive set of rules on anticompetitive practices and dispute resolution.

By negotiating the TPP, the parties hope to secure even more favorable terms for their businesses and consumers and to reach agreement on complex issues outside the

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

United States No existing US free-trade agreement

TPP members without existing US trade agreement

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators; and World Trade Organization, member nation tariff profiles. Average tariff is the average rate applied to imports from nations with whom the TPP member does not have an FTA. •

2016

22

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

as the agreement takes effect, whereas the United States would eliminate most tariffs within a decade, with others remaining in place for up to 30 years.

For the United States, the TPP’s most significant new market is Japan, a large, relatively high-income country with protectionist tariffs in several areas. Japan is the United States’ third largest export market in the TPP after Canada and Mexico, importing $62.5 million worth of US goods in 2015. As an article on Bloomberg’s website (June 18, 2013) by Brian Winfield suggests, Japan has begun to loosen its historically high tariffs on some products, motivated partly by its struggling domestic economy.

Japan signed an FTA with Australia in 2014 and is currently negotiating an agreement with the European Union. Some proponents of the TPP argue that without the partnership, US companies will begin to lose market share in Japan (US Department of Agriculture 2016).

Malaysia and Vietnam also stand out among the TPP members without existing US FTAs. They have sizable populations, fast-growing economies, and relatively low wages. From 2010 to 2015, the average annual growth of US imports from Vietnam and Malaysia was 21 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

Furthermore, these countries currently impose relatively high tariffs on US imports, averaging 9.5 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively.

In addition to tariff reductions, the TPP covers numerous complex topics including digital trade, financial services, intellectual property rights, government

procurement, patent laws, and labor and environmental standards. Its chapter on investor-state dispute resolution is perhaps its most controversial. These elements are important to consider when evaluating the agreement’s overall value.

THE TPP’S ESTIMATED ECONOMIC IMPACT Background The US International Trade Commission (USITC) and several independent groups have assessed the TPP’s potential impact on the US economy. There are several points to consider when interpreting the studies’ results.

First, these studies focus on the most quantifiable aspect of the TPP—its effect of tariffs and quotas. They do not attempt to estimate the impacts of less quantifiable elements such as environmental and labor regulations, regulatory coherence, or legal ramifications, nor do they estimate the TPP’s geopolitical impact. The TPP’s economic impact is just one of several important points of consideration.

Second, the impact of an FTA is estimated by generating two projections of future economic conditions, one with the FTA and one without it (often called the “baseline” scenario). The differences in employment, wages, and GDP, for example, are interpreted as the FTA’s economic impact.

Third, the numbers generated by economic models should be interpreted as indicators of the probable

THE TPP’S NOVEL COMPONENTS access to government-controlled infrastructure and resources such as bandwidth;

US FTAs have become more comprehensive over time, and the TPP continues that trend. The following list is drawn from various reports by the Congressional Research Service. The TPP is the first US FTA to

• contain a stand-alone chapter on regulatory coherence, although without an enforcement mechanism;

• include enforcement mechanisms (i.e., trade restrictions) for violating the labor standards of the International Labour Organisation;

• include a specific length of exclusivity rights for biologics (drugs made from living organisms, such as vaccines);

• require criminal penalties for theft of trade secrets, including theft by state-owned enterprises;

• mention agricultural biotechnology (GMOs), although only to establish a working group and share information on laws and regulations;

• address overfishing and specifically prohibit subsidies that harm overfished stocks; • require open access for providers of electronic payment card services (credit and debit cards); • cover wireless telecommunications service providers, ensuring regulatory transparency and

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

• specify that a country’s failure to act in accordance with an investor’s expectations is not enough to constitute a breach of the agreement; and • exempt antismoking measures from dispute settlement.

23

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

magnitude and direction of future impacts, not precise predictions. In fact, it is common not to publicize exact annual estimates to avoid conveying a false sense of precision.

Fourth, the assessments are attempts to isolate the impact that one variable (the FTA) will have on the future economy. In reality, innumerable other variables (unanticipated changes in energy prices, geopolitics, fiscal and monetary policies, consumer preferences.) will also affect the economy.

Table 4 summarizes the major findings of four assessments of the TPP’s potential economic impact: two for the US economy, one for the world economy, and one for a specific sector (agriculture). These studies are methodologically sound and representative of other TPP assessments in terms of methods, scope, and results.

Furthermore, three of the four were conducted after the TPP’s full text became public and therefore contain fewer speculative assumptions about the agreement than earlier studies.

These studies generally find that the TPP would have neutral or slightly positive effects on the US economy as a whole and increase both imports from and exports to the TPP countries without an existing US FTA (Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Vietnam).

The USITC study, which is the basis for the Maine estimates in this article, found that the TPP would have a modest, positive impact on the US economy in 2032.

Compared to a baseline scenario, the TPP would increase Table 4:

US GDP, exports, and imports by 0.15 percent, 1.0 percent, and 1.1 percent, respectively. The largest export gains by percentage would be in agriculture and food (2.6 percent), with smaller gains in manufacturing, natural resources, and energy (0.9 percent), and services (0.6 percent). Import growth of 1.1 percent would be evenly spread across all sectors. Compared to the baseline, the TPP would increase US jobs by 0.07 percent and real wages by 0.19 percent in 2032, with gains spread relatively equally across skilled and unskilled labor.

There are at least two reasons the magnitude of these results may appear small compared to the portion the global economy encompassed by the TPP. First, the estimated impact of any FTA often appears small relative to the large, observable impacts of globalization.

Even retrospective assessments of past FTAs find that most have only a marginal impact on overall US economic growth, primarily due to the sheer size of the US economy (Tyler 2006). Second, one of the most notable differences between the TPP and past FTAs such as NAFTA is the degree to which US companies are now accustomed to competing with international imports. In 1993, just 38.8 percent of US imports were duty free. In 2015, fully 68.6 percent were duty free.

Many of the businesses most vulnerable to foreign imports have closed, relocated, or learned how to compete. Many other businesses are learning how to use the new opportunities created by trade, such as cheaper imports, foreign customer markets, and consumers with greater purchasing power. Having traveled down the

Economic Impacts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Institution (Authors)

Forecast year GDP % Exports/imports

USITC (Signoret et al.)

2032

USDA (Burfisher et al.)

2025

Peterson Institute for International Economics (Petri and Plummer)

2030

World Bank (Lakatos et al.)

2030

+0.15

0.0

+0.5

+0.6*

Exports: +1.0% Imports: +1.1%

Impact on United States Employment

Additional notes Real wages: +0.19%

+0.07%

Ag exports: +5.4% Ag imports: +2.0% No change overall

NA

NA

Exports: +9.1%

No change overall

Skilled real wages: +0.63%

Imports: NA

Additional job “churn”: 0.1%

Annual cost of delay: –0.5% of GDP

NA

NA

Additional job “churn”: 0.1%

Unskilled real wages: +0.37%

Skilled real wages: +0.6% Unskilled real wages: +0.4%

*Combined impact on NAFTA countries.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

24

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

road of globalization for several decades, further expansions of trade may now have a less powerful effect on the US economy than earlier expansions.

Of the several rigorous studies of the TPP’s potential impact, the USITC is the best suited for generating state-level impacts. It provides the most detail across all industrial sectors and the best documentation of the categories included in each industry. Furthermore, its model is based on methodology that it widely respected within the academic community.

THE TPP’S ESTIMATED ECONOMIC IMPACT ON MAINE

T

his section presents estimates of the TPP’s economic impact on Maine, extrapolated from the USITC estimates of its likely impact on the United States.

The USITC assesses effects in three categories: economy-wide measures (income, gross domestic product, employment, and capital stock), trade (imports and exports), and industrial sectors (three broad sectors and 56 detailed sectors).

The USITC estimates describe the TPP’s expected impact on the entire US economy. To translate that into the likely impact on Maine, we first establish the relationship between recent economic activity in Maine relative to the nation. We calculate the average percentage of US economic activity that occurred in Maine during the last three years. We then apply those ratios to the USITC estimates for national economic impacts. For example, from 2012 to 2014, Maine GDP was 0.32 percent of US GDP. The USITC estimates that the TPP would increase US GDP by $42.7 billion in 2032. If 0.32 percent of that growth occurs in Maine, then we estimate that Maine GDP would increase $138 million in 2032.

This approach assumes that the relationship between the Maine and US economies remains constant through 2032. In reality, differing levels of public and private investment and demographic change may cause some states to grow faster than others. Population projections suggest that Maine’s economy may account for a smaller portion of the nation’s future economic growth than it does today. However, quantifying the likely effects of those changes would require substantial analysis with additional assumptions, little data, and considerable imprecision. Furthermore, it would probably affect the results only minimally. Thus, we use a simple extrapolation with maximum transparency and minimum assumptions. Assuming Maine’s economy constitutes an

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

equal or smaller percentage of the US economy in 2032 than it does today, the following estimates can be viewed as upper-bounds of the TPP’s potential impact.

Where the USITC estimates the TPP’s potential impact on the level of overall US employment, it is possible to extrapolate the potential impact on Maine employment by calculating a ratio as described above.

Where the USITC presents the TPP’s impact as a percentage change in US employment, as it does for sectors and industries, no further extrapolations are necessary. Since this methodology assumes that the TPP’s Maine impacts are proportional to its US impacts, the USITC’s percentage estimates for changes to employment are the de facto projections of Maine.

Where that occurs, we present the Maine–US employment ratio for context only.

Economy-wide Effects The USITC estimates that the TPP would have slight, positive effects on overall measures of US economic growth. In 2032, it would increase real income, real GDP, and employment by 0.23 percent, 0.15 percent, and 0.07 percent, respectively. These changes would come from higher earnings due to increased exports and reduced costs due to cheaper imports. Savings from reduced costs would give consumers and businesses additional money to spend or invest elsewhere in the economy.

Maine’s share of these gains also would be small: in 2032 there would be about 554 additional FTE jobs, real GDP would increase by approximately $106 per capita, and real income would increase by approximately $163 per capita. That means the TPP’s value to Maine residents in 2032 would be equivalent to about $163 per person (Table 5).

Trade Effects Trade among TPP countries would increase if the agreement went into effect, with the largest increases occurring where current trade barriers are highest. The USITC estimates that overall US exports to TPP countries would increase $57.2 billion in 2032. The highest percentage increases would be with countries without an existing US FTA (Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Vietnam). Some of those sales would be diverted from non-TPP countries, so the overall impact would be a $27.2 billion increase in US exports. Imports would rise by approximately $48.9 billion (Table 6).

Therefore, the overall result would be a deepening of the US trade deficit by about $21.7 billion.

25

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

Maine has a slightly higher percentage of exports to TPP countries than the rest of the country due to concentrations of sales to Malaysia (semiconductors) and Canada (lobster, wood, and paper). Malaysia is in the new-FTA-partners category and Canada is an existing FTA partner. Total Maine exports to TPP countries would increase by about $143 million. Accounting for sales diverted from non-TPP countries, total Maine exports would increase by about $47 million. There are no data on state imports due to the difficulty of tracking

goods once they enter the country. Therefore, it is not possible to generate an estimate of the TPP’s impact on Maine imports.

Sector Effects The TPP would generate overall economic gains, but its effect on various sectors and industries would differ. The USITC estimates impacts in three broad sectors (agriculture and food; manufacturing, natural resources, and energy; and services) and 56 industries.

In some cases, the USITC categories do not align with industry Table 5: Estimated Economy-wide Effects of TPP on the United data available at the state level. In

States and Maine: Changes Relative to Baseline in 2032 other cases, there is no Maine production in small industrial United States (USITC) Maine categories or there is insufficient Percentage data to generate meaningful estiof Maine’s mates.

This was especially true in share of US agriculture.

Furthermore, there Level economic Level Per Effect (billion) Percentage activity (million) capita are no statistics on state imports or state service exports. In Real income $57.3 0.23 0.37 $212 $163 general, there is better state-level Real GDP $42.7 0.15 0.32 $138 $106 information on employment and Employment 128,200 0.07 0.43 554 — exports, which must be reported, (full-time equivalents) than on output, which is often proprietary. The following sections discuss the calculations Table 6: Estimated Trade Effects of TPP on the United States and that were possible given those

Maine: Changes Relative to Baseline in 2032 limitations.

United States (USITC)

Agriculture and Food

Maine

Level (billion)

Percentage

Percentage of Maine’s share of US economic activity

Exports to TPP partners

$57.2

5.6

0.25

$143

$110

New FTA partners

$34.6

18.7

0.29

$100

$77

Existing FTA partners

$22.6

2.7

0.24

$55

$43

Total worldwide exports

$27.2

1.0

0.17

$47

$36

Imports from TPP partners

$47.5

3.5

—

—

—

New FTA partners

$23.4

10.4

—

—

—

Existing FTA partners

$24.2

2.1

—

—

—

Total worldwide imports

$48.9

1.1

—

—

—

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

Level (million)

Per capita

Agriculture and food is by far the smallest of the USITC sectors in both Maine and the nation. However, it would have the largest percentage gains because many countries have high tariffs in this sector. US agriculture and food exports and imports would both increase, but exports would rise more. The net gain would be $4.5 billion in 2032 (Table 7). There is no corresponding import data for Maine, but it is reasonable to assume that Maine consumers have spending habits similar to their US peers, so Maine also would likely experience a net 26

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

gain in this sector. The size of the gain would depend on the ability of Maine farmers and food processors to leverage the new market opportunities created by tariff reductions in other countries.

The USITC estimates that the TPP would slightly increase output in all US agriculture and food industries except rice, soybeans, and seafood. However, it is difficult to extrapolate from those results for Maine because of the small size of the state’s agricultural industries. In many cases, there is no or little Maine production or data are not disclosable due to privacy protections. Two industries for which it is possible to extrapolate results are seafood and dairy.

In seafood, US output would likely decline by about 0.2 percent in 2032. Exports would increase about 2.2 percent, with exports to Japan and Vietnam increasing 18 percent and 45 percent, respectively.

Seafood imports would increase about 0.9 percent and would exceed the value of exports by more than three to one ($231.9 billion compared to $74.1 billion). Most of the import growth would be from TPP members without an existing FTA. How these changes would affect Maine fisheries would depend on the degree to which domestic consumers find seafood imported from TPP countries to be a substitute for Maine fish and shellfish and on the ability of Maine businesses to exploit new market opportunities. US tariffs on most seafood are already low, and Maine consumers can already access a wide variety of foreign seafood.

The proven ability of Maine’s lobster industry to access foreign markets suggests that it would gain under the TPP. Current tariffs on Maine lobsters are as high as 34 percent in Vietnam, 8 percent in Malaysia, and 5

percent in Japan and New Zealand, depending on how it is processed and shipped. Increased exports to South Korea following the implementation of a trade agreement with that country have led some people within Maine’s seafood industry to be optimistic that the TPP would further increase demand from Asia.7 The USITC expects that the TPP would increase US dairy output by 1.3 percent in 2032. An increase in US dairy exports translates to an increased in Maine dairy exports of about $2.7 million in 2032, based on Maine’s small percentage of US dairy exports (0.15 percent).

Maine has a slightly larger percentage of US processed food exports (0.35 percent). Growth in that sector would translate to about $5.4 million in additional exports in 2032 and output growth of 0.8 percent.

Two crops of particular interest, potatoes and blueberries, are included in the large USITC categories of “processed foods” and “fresh fruit, vegetables, and nuts.”

Without further detail, it is impossible to calculate appropriate ratios and extrapolate state impacts from the national estimates. However, it is noteworthy that Japan, Malaysia, and Vietnam would eliminate their tariffs on fresh, frozen, and prepared potatoes, which range from about 8.5 percent in Japan to as much as 34 percent in Vietnam (USDA 2016). Those countries would also eliminate tariffs on categories that include blueberries, which range from as high as 17 percent in Japan to 30 percent in Malaysia and Vietnam (USDA 2016).

Services International trade barriers in services are already relatively low, so percentage changes in this sector are generally smaller than in agriculture and food. However, because it is such a large sector, the absolute gains are large. According to the USITC, the increased demand for services Table 7: Agriculture and Food Sector: Estimated Effects of TPP would exceed the US supply,

Relative to Baseline in 2032 thereby increasing demand for imported services (Table 8). This United States (USITC) Maine would presumably occur as Percentage cheaper imports gave US of Maine’s consumers and businesses more share of US Level economic Level Per money to spend on services. (billion) Percentage activity (million) capita The USITC estimates that Output $10.0 0.5 0.36 $36 $28 the TPP would slightly increase output and employment in all Exports $7.2 2.6 0.38 $27 $21 service sectors except transportaImports $2.7 1.5 — — — tion, logistics, travel, and tourism Employment — 0.5 0.40 — — (those industries are combined MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

27

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

into one subsector). They suggest two reasons for reduced growth in that subsector. First, trade barriers in these areas are already low and the TPP would not liberalize them significantly. The model assumes that economic resources would shift to areas where trade liberalization creates new opportunities and away from less dynamic sectors. Second, this subsector includes international tourism. If income gains allow more US residents to travel abroad, that would appear in the model as higher tourism imports. However, a loss for the United States may be a gain for Maine. Greater travel by US residents would likely benefit all tourism destinations, both domestic and foreign.

amount ($39.2 billion), resulting in an overall drop in output (Table 9). These results reflect a continuation of recent trends. In Maine, these results suggest that export-oriented manufacturers would fare better than those who are not export oriented.

The USITC’s estimates suggest that the TPP would have a neutral or slightly positive impact on output for 11 of 25 industries in energy, natural resources, and manufacturing (including apparel, footwear, and passenger vehicles). It would reduce output growth in the remaining 14 industries (including textiles, leather, forestry, and electrical equipment). The USITC notes that all industries within this sector are expected to grow in 2032 in absolute terms. Therefore, the negative Manufacturing, Natural Resources, and Energy results are reductions in growth, not absolute declines.

According to the USITC estimates, the US manuThe USITC predicts slight increases in output of facturing, natural resources, and energy sector would fare US apparel and footwear. Indeed, the American Apparel the worst from increased competition from foreign and Footwear Association and the Footwear Distributors imports. Exports would increase by about $15.2 billion, and Retailers of America have endorsed the TPP. Many but imports would grow by nearly three times that US companies in this industry have factories in Vietnam and Malaysia, so tariff reductions Table 8: Services: Estimated Effects of TPP Relative to Baseline would lower their costs.

in 2032 New Balance, an athletic-shoe maker with approximately 900 employees at operations in United States (USITC) Maine Norridgewock, Skowhegan, and Percentage Norway, Maine, is unique in of Maine’s share of US opposing the TPP (http:// Level economic Level Per newbalance.newsmarket.com/). (billion) Percentage activity (million) capita Although it imports some shoes Output $42.3 0.1 0.34 $144 $111 and shoe components, a large part Exports $4.8 0.6 0.34 $16 $13 of its business is US-made shoes that currently benefit from a tariff Imports $7.0 1.2 — — — on lower-cost imported shoes. The Employment — 0.1 0.43 — — TPP would lower and eventually eliminate that tariff. That would Table 9: Manufacturing, Natural Resources, and Energy: lower prices for US athletic-shoe

Estimated Effects of TPP Relative to Baseline in 2032 buyers, but potentially make New Balance’s domestic operations United States (USITC) Maine unviable. According Jon Chesto Percentage (Boston Globe, June 25, 2016), of Maine’s separate bills approved by both the share of US US House of Representatives and Level economic Level Per (billion) Percentage activity (million) capita US Senate would require the Department of Defense to Output $-10.8 -0.1 0.22 $-24 $-18 purchase only US-made athletic Exports $15.2 0.9 0.15 $23 $18 shoes for military recruits. Since Imports $39.2 1.1 — — — New Balance and Wolverine Employment — -0.2 0.44 — — Worldwide, a Michigan shoemaker, MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

28

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

are the only companies that could currently satisfy that order, passage of the bill could offset some of the potential negative impact of the tariff reduction. However, as of this publication, the bills are not yet law.

The USITC estimates a 2.1 percent increase in wood product imports primarily from TPP members without an existing FTA. There would be a smaller increase in US exports, but the overall result would be a 0.5 percent output reduction in 2032. In Maine, that corresponds to a decrease in wood products of about $18 million in 2032.

CONCLUSION

T

he TPP would likely have a neutral or slightly positive impact on overall measures of Maine’s economy in the long run. The benefits would be relatively small and spread across the population. The real income gains for Maine residents, in terms of increased earnings and greater purchasing power from lower-cost products, would equal about $163 per person in 2032.

Underlying those overall gains, some sectors would experience a slight reduction in growth in terms of jobs, output, and exports.

The TPP’s estimated economic impact is smaller than the public fervor about it would suggest. There are at least three reasons for that. First, the estimated impact of any FTA often appears small relative to the large, observable impacts of globalization. Second, the United States has already liberalized trade with six of eleven TPP countries, so the agreement’s marginal impact is smaller than it would appear at first. Third, Maine’s economy has experienced irreversible structural changes in the last few decades and will now react to changes in trade differently than in the past. ENDNOTES

1 https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press -Release/2015pr/12/ft920/index.html 2 Data in this paragraph come from the following sources: Income statistics: US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements. Table H-8. Median Household Income

by State: 1984 to 2014. GDP: US Bureau of Economic Analysis, Real Gross Domestic Product in Chained Dollars. Exports: US Census Bureau, Economic Indicators Division, USA Trade Online: State commodity exports by Harmonized System Code (HS). https:// usatrade.census.gov/

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

3 Data from US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mass Layoff Statistics, Series ID: MLUMS23NN0001005. https://www .bls.gov/mls/ and US Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Trade Adjustment Assistance for Workers Program Petition Data. https:// www.doleta.gov/tradeact/taa_reports/petitions.cfm 4 Data in this section are from the US Census Bureau, Country and Product Trade Data, Exports, Imports and Trade Balance by Country, Monthly Totals, 1985–Present. https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/country /index.html 5 If the TPP became law, NAFTA and other FTAs would remain in effect. Where TPP and other FTAs differ (in terms of tariff rates or rules of origin) firms could choose which agreement to use.

6 (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD) 7 According to an article in the Bangor Daily News (November 25, 2016), Emily Lane of Calendar Island Lobster Co. in Portland said, “We’ve already seen this with the free trade agreement with South Korea. That caused a significant increase in lobster consumption over the last couple years.”

REFERENCES Acemoglu, Daron, David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, and Brendan Price. 2016. “Import Competition and the Great U.S. Employment Sag of the 2000s.”

Journal of Labor Economics 34(1): S141–S198.

Autor, David H., David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson. 2013.

“The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States.” American Economic Review 103(6): 2121–2168.

Brookings Institution. 2006. Charting Maine’s Future: An Action Plan for Promoting Sustainable Prosperity and Quality of Place. Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. Burfisher, Mary E., John Dyck, Birgit Meade, Lorraine Mitchell, John Wainio, Steven Zahniser, Shawn Arita, and Jayson Beckman. 2014. Agriculture in the TransPacific Partnership. ERR 176, USDA, Economic Research Service. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs /publications/err176/49379_err176.pdf?v=41942 Burnett, Michael. 2009. The Impact of International Trade on Maine Manufacturing Workers. Maine Department of Labor, Center for Workforce Research and Information, Augusta. http://www.maine.gov/labor/cwri/publications /Word/InternationalTradeReport.doc Ebenstein, Avraham, Ann Harrison, Margaret McMillan, and Shannon Phillips. 2014. “Estimating the Impact of Trade and Offshoring on American Workers Using the Current Population Surveys.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 96(4) 581–595.

29

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

Fajgelbaum, Pablo D., and Amit K. Khandelwal. 2016.

“Measuring the Unequal Gains from Trade.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 131(3): 1113–1180. doi:10.1093/ qje/qjw013 1113-1180 ITU (International Telecommunications Union). 2015. ICT Facts & Figures: The World in 2015. ITU, Geneva. http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts /ICTFactsFigures2015.pdf Lakatos, Csilla, Maryla Maliszewska, Franziska Ohnsorge, Peter Petri, and Michael Plummer. 2016. “Potential Macroeconomic Implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.” Global Economic Prospects (January): 219–255.

Madsen, Jakob K. 2001. “Trade Barriers and the Collapse of World Trade during the Great Depression.” Southern Economic Journal 67(4): 848–868.

MDOL (Maine Department of Labor). 2012. Manufacturing Jobs: Trends, Issues, and Outlook. Center for Workforce Research and Information Research Brief, MDOL, Augusta.

Olinto, Pedro, Kathleen Beegle, Carlos Sobrado, and Hiroki Uematsu. 2013. The State of the Poor: Where Are the Poor, Where Is Extreme Poverty Harder to End, and What Is the Current Profile of the World’s Poor?

Economic Premise 125. World Bank, Washington, DC. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTPREMNET /Resources/EP125.pdf Petri, Peter A., and Michael G. Plummer. 2012. The TransPacific Partnership and Asia-Pacific Integration: Policy Implications, Policy Brief PB12-16, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC. https:// piie.com/publications/policy-briefs/trans-pacific -partnership-and-asia-pacific-integration-policy Pisani, Niccolo, and Joan Enric Ricart. 2016. “Offshoring of Services: A Review of the Literature and Organizing Framework.” Management International Review 56(3)1–40.

Planning Decisions, Inc. 2003. The Effects of NAFTA on the Maine Economy. Planning Decisions, Inc., South Portland, ME. http://www.nmdc.org/reportsstudies /Maine/NAFTAImpactonME.pdf Taylor, Paul, Rich Morin, D’Vera Cohn, and Wendy Wang.

2008. American Mobility: Who Moves? Who Stays Put? Where’s Home? Pew Research Center, Social and Demographic Trends Reports, Washington, DC. http:// www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/Movers-and -Stayers.pdf

USBLS (US Bureau of Labor Statistics). 2015. Consumer Expenditure Survey. https://www.bls.gov/cex/2014 /aggregate/cusize.pdf USDA (US Department of Agriculture). 2016. Trans-Pacific Partnership: Benefits to U.S. Agriculture. USDA, Foreign Agricultural Service. https://www.fas.usda.gov/sites /default/files/2016-05/tpp_ag_overview_-_short_05-09 -16.pdfa USITC (US International Trade Commission). 2011. Value of U.S. Imports for Consumption, Duties Collected, and Ratio of Duties to Values: 1891–2010. USITC, Statistical Services Division, Washington, DC. USITC (US International Trade Commission). 2016a.

Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (2016).

USITC Publication 4588, Washington, DC. https:// hts.usitc.gov/view/release?release=chapter98 USITC (US International Trade Commission). 2016. TransPacific Partnership Agreement: Likely Impact on the U.S. Economy and on Specific Industry Sectors. USITC Publication 4607, Washington, DC. https://www.usitc. gov/publications/332/pub4607.pdf

Catherine Reilly deLutio is senior research associate at the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. She was Maine state economist from 2004 to 2009 and has served on the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s New England Public Policy Center Advisory Board and the Maine Consensus Economic Forecasting Commission.

Philip Trostel is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Maine Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center and the School of Economics. He is an applied microeconomist specializing in public finance. Most of his research focuses on education policy, human capital, and fiscal policy.

Tyler, William. 2006. “Trade Integration for the Americas: What Can Economic Analysis Tell Us?” Universidade do Estado do Rio Janeiro. http://www.ie.ufrj.br/aparte /pdfs/tylerintegration.pdf

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

30

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS

Municipal Approaches to Reduce Single-Use Consumer Products in Maine

by Travis Wagner Maine’s solid waste management hierarchy prioritizes reduction and reuse over recycling. While most municipalities in Maine have focused on increasing recycling, they have undertaken minimal efforts to specifically foster source reduction and reuse. In this paper, Travis Wagner examines the approaches adopted in Maine by the state and by municipalities to reduce the consumption of single-use consumer products including bans, fees, consumer education, choice architecture, and retail take back.

INTRODUCTION

I

n 1989, Maine adopted a goal of 50 percent diversion (recycling) for municipal solid waste (MSW) to be achieved by 2009. To help achieve this goal, Maine also adopted its waste management hierarchy (38 MRSA §2101), which prioritizes source reduction followed by reuse, recycling, and composting, which all are preferred over disposal.1 Nonetheless, the state has never been able to meet the 50 percent goal (Isenhour et al. 2016) and has yet to meet a 40 percent diversion rate. Maine’s approach to MSW management is to rely on its municipalities to provide services (38 MRSA §1305). This responsibility often includes some or all of the costs of managing MSW generated within a jurisdiction, which can be a significant component of a municipality’s budget (Criner 1991). To reduce costs and foster environmentally sound management, municipalities have adopted a number of initiatives including pay as you throw, curbside collection of trash and recycling, free recycling, education, organics collection, and yard waste collection. These initiatives focus on increasing diversion primarily through increased recycling and composting, but do not explicitly seek to increase reduction or reuse.

Maine has been a pioneer in adopting product stewardship and extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws, which are designed to shift some of the economic burden away from municipalities while promoting environmentally sound management at end of life (EOL).

Whereas EPR identifies EOL management as the primary responsibility of producers, product steward-

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

ship promotes the sharing of responsibility among various stakeholders (designers, producers, sellers, users) involved throughout the life cycle of a product (Nicol and Thompson 2007). Maine’s EPR and product stewardship laws have focused on a shared-responsibility approach (Wagner 2009). These shared-responsibility laws have covered mercury automobile switches, compact fluorescent lamps, electronics, cell phones, wall-mounted mercury thermostats, architectural paint, and beverage containers. Maine’s shared-responsibility approach can foster source reduction while improving EOL management while shifting some economic obligations away from municipalities. The state’s focus on shared responsibility has resulted in a significant shift in costs away from municipalities while recovering hazardous materials that otherwise would have been buried or burned (Wagner 2009). However, the enactment of shared responsibility is available only at the state level as Maine’s municipalities, like most municipalities in the United States, do not have the requisite legal authority to adopt explicit EPR or product stewardship ordinances. Although limited in the ability to legislate source reduction or reuse, most municipalities have options for certain consumer products. Such products are problematic as MSW because they are generated constantly and in significant volumes, are difficult or too expensive to recycle, cause local environmental problems, and are replaceable by less problematic products. Two consumer products that municipalities have focused on are single-use shopping bags and single-use expanded polystyrene (EPS) food service items.

31

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS

This article provides background information on the consumption of and problems caused by single-use shopping bags and single-use EPS food service items. I also discuss the various approaches undertaken by the state and municipalities in Maine to reduce consumption and to increase recovery through recycling.

As local governments seek to reduce costs and environmental impacts of specific products… some states have adopted laws to explicitly restrict the ability of local governments to act.

MUNICIPAL ROLE IN SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS MANAGEMENT

A

n important question in sustainable materials management is, To what degree are local governments able to engage in significant policy making regarding source reduction and reuse—reduced consumption—of specific consumer products within their jurisdiction?

The answer varies by state. The superiority of the federal government over states, and by extension, local governments, is contained in the US Constitution. The ability of state governments to ban or restrict products resides in the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). This clause expressly grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. As noted by Hodge and Scanlon et al. (2014), the dormant Commerce Clause, which is the negative converse of the Commerce Clause, prohibits regulations that improperly burden or discriminate against interstate commerce.

For example, a regulation that favors in-state (or local) interests over out-of-state interests would restrict articles of commerce and thus violate the Commerce Clause unless explicitly authorized by Congress. Under intrastate preemption, individual states establish the degree to which local governments are able to engage in such policy making within their jurisdiction (Diller 2007).

Provided states allow localities to restrict or ban specific products, and the ban or restriction does not favor or

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

discriminate against out-of-state or nonlocal interests, the bans or restrictions are generally acceptable (Hodge and Scanlon 2014).

Because municipalities exist as a subordinate unit of a state, their authority is limited. States can allow municipalities to enact ordinances of purely municipal-level concern, known as municipal home rule (Vanlandingham 1968). Home rule is the permanent degree of autonomy and law-making ability for municipal governments within their own legal framework (Diller 2007). As noted by Vanlandingham (1968), municipal home rule does not provide blanket autonomy for municipal governments; states expressly limit or prohibit municipal authority in certain matters including municipal boundaries, criminal codes, education, and taxation. Municipal home rule can be conferred through the legislature or through the state constitution. In Maine, Article VIII-A, Section 1, of the state constitution was amended by ballot in 1969 with the Maine Municipal Home Rule Referendum, which added municipal home rule.

Due primarily to public health and safety concerns, the United States has a history of local-level product restrictions or bans. Local gun restrictions in the United States existed in the nineteenth century (Blocher 2013).

More recently, in one of the first local-level product restrictions for public health reasons, New York City restricted the use of lead-based paint in 1959 (Hodge and Scanlon 2014). Other examples of public health-related bans and restrictions include smoking restrictions in restaurants and other public places (1977, Berkeley, California) and bans on aerial application of certain herbicides (1979, Mendocino County, California), the sale of genetically modified crops and seeds (2004, Arcata, California), partially hydrogenated oils (2007, Montgomery County, Maryland), and toys in fast-food children’s meals (2010, Santa Clara County, California).

There have been fewer local restrictions or bans on products based on their adverse impact to the environment.

The converse of broad home rule is express preemption, where states specifically prohibit or restrict certain municipal actions. As local governments seek to reduce costs and environmental impacts of specific products through levying fees, restrictions, or bans, some states have adopted laws to explicitly restrict the ability of local governments to act. For example, 43 states have some level of preemption regarding local government’s authority to control pesticides, including 29 states that explicitly prohibit stricter regulation at the local level 32

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS Figure 1:

Local US Ordinances Covering Single-Use Bags and EPS Food Service Items, Tracked by Effective Date, 2008–2017*

No. of Ordinances

as the estimated mean life span of a single-use bag is 12 minutes 60 (NSWEPA 2016). Shopping bags Bags EPS are also an important way to adver50 tise (Prendergast, Ng, and Lee 2001).

Single-use plastic bags are commonly 40 used at grocery, general merchandise, convenience, liquor, hardware, and 30 home improvement stores, pharmacies, restaurants, and dry cleaners.

20 High-density polypropylene (HDPE #2) is the primary material for thin10 film, single-use bags, which generally are 2.4 mils or less in thickness and 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 include handles and weigh 7.5–12.6 grams. Handles differentiate shopping

* Figure depicts ordinances by their effective date as opposed bags from other single-use plastic bags to their adoption date. used for dry cleaning, home-delivered newspapers, and produce bags, which (Beyond Pesticides 2010). In response to the growing are designed to carry produce, meat, fish, and bulk foods number of local governments seeking to reduce the to the checkout. Low-density polypropylene (LDPE #4) consumption of single-use shopping bags and EPS food bags, generally imprinted and with handles, are provided service items, there has been an increase in state express by retailers selling higher-value or specialty goods. These preemption laws including in Arizona, Florida, Idaho, bags are thicker, weighing 27.5–42.5 grams, and usually Indiana, Michigan, Texas, and Wisconsin. There are also more expensive for the retailer. Paper bags are made partial preemptions. For example, a 2006 California of kraft paper and weigh about 55 grams. Standard state law, which expired in 2014, preempted local paper bags have 50 percent more carrying capacity than governments from levying a fee for plastic bags at standard carryout plastic bags (Sapphos 2010). For the checkout, but did not prohibit them from banning retailer, paper bags cost significantly more than plastic plastic bags or levying fees on paper shopping bags. bags. For example, the average per bag cost for HDPE Maine has not enacted an express preemption law that plastic in October 2016 was approximately $0.035 would affect local government actions in reducing compared to paper at $0.19. consumption of shopping bags or EPS products.

A major problem with single-use plastic bags is the In spite of the rise in express preemption laws, local low recycling rate. An accurate, precise national recycling governments are implementing ordinances focused on rate is not readily available. According to the US reducing the consumption of single-use shopping bags Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA 2016), the and single-use EPS food service items. As shown in 2014 EOL recovery rate for all (HDPE and LDPE) Figure 1, as of January 2017, there were 242 local ordiplastic bags, sacks, and wraps combined was 12.3 percent, nances in the United States that focus on single-use which represents a decrease of 1.2 percent from 2013 shopping bags (affecting 11.7 percent of the US popula(USEPA 2015). Although the USEPA provides national tion) and 148 local ordinances that ban EPS food service annual data, their MSW data are based on predictive items (affecting 6.8 percent of the US population). modeling and are not measured, making the information prone to errors. For example, in 2014, based on models, SINGLE-USE SHOPPING BAGS the USEPA estimated the content of metal in MSW was 57 percent higher than 19 state-level waste characterizahin-film, single-use plastic shopping bags are ubiqtion studies (Wagner and Raymond 2015). USEPA data, uitous because of their low cost, high strength-towhich are cited often and used as a surrogate for missing weight ratio, and convenience (Lewis, Verghese, and state or municipal-level data, are known to underestiFitzpatrick 2010). They have a short utility, however, mate generation rates and overestimate recovery rates

T

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

33

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS

(Chowdhury 2009; Van Haaren, Themelis, and Goldstein 2010). Setting aside uncertainties in the USEPA data, the amalgamation of bags and sacks with film and wraps furthers the difficulty in identifying an accurate national recycling rate specifically for plastic bags. There is no current accurate state-level recycling rate for plastic or paper shopping bags in Maine. Based on limited statelevel waste characterization studies, the recycling rate for plastic shopping bags in 2009 was 1.5 percent in Illinois (IDCEO 2009) and 3 percent in California (http://www .calrecycle.ca.gov/plastics/AtStore/AnnualRate/2009Rate .htm). For paper bags and sacks, the USEPA (2015) estimated the 2009 (most recent data available) national recycling rate at 49.4 percent.

The vast majority of plastic shopping bags are discarded, intentionally or unintentionally….

There are numerous reasons for the low recycling rate for plastic bags. First, for stores that collect bags, although large or chain stores may have sufficient volume for recycling, small- or medium-sized stores and independent stores may have insufficient volume (MSPO 2010). Second, household-generated plastic bags not collected at specific drop-off locations must be segregated at the curb or at a material recovery facility (MRF) to maximize their economic value. However, plastic bags are not easily segregated at MRFs and become snagged or trapped in automated sorting equipment, reducing the effectiveness of the equipment and causing breakdowns (Brendle Group 2012; Staley 2014).

Third, the driver in recycling is the net economic value of plastic bags taking into account the costs of collecting, segregating, recovering, baling, and transporting the bags compared to revenue from their sale. High separation and processing costs limit their economic viability for the recycled commodity market. For example, the average cost to process a ton of recyclables (i.e., all materials combined) at ecomaine is $65 (Lisa Wolff, personal communication, November 23, 2016). While most Maine municipalities discourage or do not accept plastic bags for recycling, when they are received at an MRF, MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

the bags are often included with #3–#7 commingled plastics—the lowest-grade plastic—which has minimal positive or even negative value. At ecomaine, which serves a third of Maine’s population, segregated and baled mixed #3–#7 plastics were sold at a price of $0–$10 per ton since the first market downturn in 2009. A more aggressive market downturn in 2016, however, has resulted in a cost of up to $60 per ton to ecomaine for selling these mixed plastics for recycling.

Because of the problems single-use plastic bags cause in the sorting equipment, and to align with a movement by member communities to adopt shopping bag ordinances, ecomaine began phasing out acceptance of single-use plastic bags in October 2016 (Wolff, personal communication, November 9, 2016).

The converse of the recycling rate is the discard rate.

The vast majority of plastic shopping bags are discarded, intentionally or unintentionally, which is a problem because they then contribute to litter and subsequently marine litter. (For a discussion of the impacts of plastic litter in the marine environment, see Dye 2014.)

Because their aerodynamic and ballooning features allow them to become airborne, plastic bags escape easily. Escaped plastic bags often are the number one litter issue at landfills (Brendle Group 2012; FDEP 2010). Portable litter fences are typically installed near the working face of landfills to trap blowing litter, but they need to be cleaned daily to remove trapped litter to reduce wind damage to the fences (Christensen 2011; Martel and Helm 2004). Litter cleanup can be a significant expense for local and state government. Based on a study of litter generated from recycling collection in Portland, Maine, the estimated cost to collect each piece of litter ranged from $0.17 to $0.79 (Wagner and Broaddus 2016). In San Francisco, the cost to clean up each littered plastic bag was estimated at $0.052 (Burnett 2013; Pender 2005).

Paper bags (about 2.4 ounces) weigh substantially more than plastic bags (about 0.24 ounce), which makes the transportation costs and associated generation of greenhouse gasses much higher for paper compared to plastic bags. Furthermore, the environmental impacts from the manufacture, use, and post-EOL management of paper bags is significantly higher than HDPE and LDPE plastic bags and is exacerbated by the limitations on reusing paper bags (UK Environmental Agency 2011). Thus, while paper bags have a significantly higher recycling rate and are compostable, they cost more for retailers; cost more to collect, haul, and recycle; and 34

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS

their overall environmental impacts are greater than those of plastic bags. Consequently, merely substituting paper bags for plastic bags will result in a net increase in retailer and municipal costs and a net increase in environmental impacts.

specialty retail, discount stores, and restaurants. The USITC report notes that since 2009, there has been a 6.8 percent increase in consumption of plastic bags although the annual per capita consumption rate has steadily decreased since 2010. As observed by USITC (2016), the demand for plastic shopping bags is expected Consumption of Single-Use Shopping Bags to continue to decline primarily because of the increased Data on the estimated per capita consumption rate use of reusable bags and the increased imposition of of shopping bags are sparse partly because many busibans and fees. nesses treat this data as confidential or do not track bag Seven municipalities in the United States have esticonsumption per customer. Grocery stores are the mated (for varying years) the annual per capita consumplargest provider of single-use bags, as grocery shoppers tion of plastic shopping bags before adopting an make 1.6 trips per week in the United States (FMI ordinance (see Table 1). Based on a two-year study 2016). The US International Trade Commission conducted in Tucson, Arizona, retailers reported the (USITC 2016) estimated the national annual per capita mean number of plastic shopping bags provided per consumption of single-use plastic shopping bags in shopper per transaction was 2.61 (https://www.tucsonaz 2015 to be 319.5. This figure includes shopping bags .gov/es/tucsons-plastic-bag-ordinance). The Tucson consumed at grocery, drug, convenience, department, study only included retailers classified as chains with two or more locations within the city limits, with over 10,000 square Table 1: Municipal-Level, Annual per Capita Consumption Rates feet of space dedicated to retail and

of Shopping Bags 25 percent of retail sales dedicated to food products.

Annual Using the USITC’s mean per per capita capita-based consumption rate of consumption Municipality Coverage Source 319.5 and the 2015 US Census 335 Austin, TX Plastic bags only Waters 2015 estimated state population of Plastic and paper 1,329,328, I conservatively esti342 Boulder, CO Brendle Group 2012 bags mated total plastic shopping bag Plastic and paper distribution in Maine in 2015 at 398 Aspen, CO Brendle Group 2012 bags 424.7 million (see Table 2).2 This is 428 plastic bags + a conservative estimate because 471 Evanston, IL Evanston 2011 43 paper it does not include bag consump552 Santa Monica, CA Plastic bags only R3 2010 tion by the approximately 34 million tourists who visited in Los Angeles County, 600 Plastic bags only LA County 2007 2015 (DPA 2016). For single-use CA paper shopping bags, the Maine 511 plastic bags + 630 Seattle, WA HEC 2008 Merchants Association conserva119 paper tively estimated Maine’s annual per capita consumption between 1989 Table 2: Estimated Consumption of Single-Use Shopping Bags and 1990 to be 122 (MWMA

in Maine, 2015 1991). Although plastic bags are more commonly distributed by Plastic Paper Total retailers, the precise ratio of plastic to paper in Maine is not known.

Annual per capita mean 319.5 122.0 441.5 For paper bags, using the 122 per Annual per household mean (2.34) 747.6 285.5 1,033 capita figure, consumption for Annual total consumption state* 424,720,000 162,440,000 586,898,000 2015 was estimated at 162 million *Figures were rounded. (consumption by tourists was not MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

35

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS

included). Thus, the estimated total consumption of single-use shopping bags in Maine in 2015 was 586.9 million equaling a per capita consumption of 441.5 bags, or 1,033 single-use shopping bags per average household of 2.3 persons in 2015 according to the US Census (2016).

Reducing Single-Use Shopping Bags in Maine

Since 1989, the legislature has proposed 13 bills aimed at reducing the use of single-use shopping bags in Maine. These bills have resulted in three laws, one joint resolution, and a creation of a working group in Maine.

In 1989, legislators proposed LD 1102, which required retail establishments to use only paper shopping bags at the point of sale unless the customer specifically requested plastic bags. The bill also prohibited the use of plastic bags unless there was a minimum 50 percent recycling rate for the bags and the bags were constructed of only one type of plastic and identified as such. The bill did not pass, but it was incorporated into LD 1431 (An Act to Promote Reduction, Recycling and Integrated Management of Solid Waste and Sound Environmental Regulation), which was passed and became law (PL 1989). Starting on January 1, 1990, the law required retailers to provide only paper shopping bags at the point of sale unless the customer specifically requested plastic bags. The mandatory recycling rate contained in LD 1102 was removed. This law was based on defaultchoice architecture (see Thaler and Sunstein 2008), which seeks to alter consumer behavior, without banning certain behaviors, by encouraging a preferential selection. The law was successful in reducing the consumption of plastic bags. However, based on a survey by the Maine Merchants Association, while the law resulted in a decrease of 267 million plastic bags, there was a corresponding increase of 254 million paper bags consumed (MWMA 1991). The state estimated the recycling rate for plastic bags in 1989–1990 was 18 percent. The result of the law was an unintended, significant cost increase to retailers because of the higher price of paper bags coupled with the increased demand for them.

In 1991, the legislature repealed the “paper default choice” law with the enactment of LD 116 (38 MRS §1608). This law allowed retailers to distribute plastic shopping bags at the point of retail sale if they provided a receptacle for collecting used plastic bags within 20 feet of the main entrance to the store and ensured that collected plastic bags were recycled. This retailer take-back program was designed to promote MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

recycling rather than source reduction. Interestingly, this practice may inadvertently increase consumption through the moral-licensing effect (Catlin and Wang 2013), thus undermining source reduction. Although the law remains in effect, there is no statewide data on the recycling rate of plastic bags collected through Maine’s retailer take-back program.

In 1993, the legislature (LD 963) proposed a $0.20 fee on all paper and plastic grocery bags. Retailers would keep $0.10 of the fee with the other $0.10 going to fund a voucher program for reusable bags and the Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling within the Maine Waste Management Agency. This bill did not pass.

In 2009, LD 367 proposed a $0.10 fee on all plastic shopping bags with the funds earmarked for the Waste Reduction and Recycling Loan Fund. The bill was replaced by a resolve (Resolve, to Convene a Work Group to Design and Implement a Statewide Disposable Checkout Bag Reduction Campaign, with Benchmarks), which was passed. The work group was to report by January 15, 2010, on approaches to reduce the distribution of disposable checkout bags. The goal was to reduce consumption of single-use shopping bags by 33 percent by 2013. The work group’s report proposed a statewide education campaign. This Got Your Bags? education program was a partnership between Maine retailers, the State Planning Office, and the Natural Resources Council of Maine, but the program became dormant by 2012 (MacDonald 2010). Also in 2009, LD 622 proposed that retailers with 30,000 square feet of retail floor space must distribute free cloth reusable bags at least twice a year. This bill did not pass.

In 2011, LD 745 proposed an income tax credit up to $75,000 to retailers that provided compensation to customers for the use of reusable bags, but it was not passed. In 2013, LD 1292 proposed a $0.10 fee on single-use plastic shopping bags, which did not pass. In 2015, LD 325 and LD 396 both proposed a $0.05 fee on single-use plastic shopping bags, and LD 680 proposed a $0.05 fee on plastic and paper single-use shopping bags. Neither LD 396 nor LD 680 passed. LD 325 was amended to ban single-use plastic shopping bags effective 2020, but it also did not pass. Finally, LD 590, an emergency bill was proposed in April 2015 to exempt any single-use bag fee from state sales tax.

Although only Portland was affected, Maine’s Revenue Forecasting Committee had budgeted $70,000 in revenue over the two-year budget cycle. This, in part, led to a veto of the bill by the governor, but the veto was 36

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS Table 3:

Overview of Approaches to Reduce Consumption of Single-Use Shopping Bags

Approach

Ban

Fee

Specified bag design

Consumer education

Overview

Benefits

Negatives

Full Ban: Retailers prohibited from providing single-use shopping bags.

Most effective approach to reduce consumption and litter

With targeted ban, increased consumption of nonbanned bag likely, which increases retailer costs

Targeted Ban: Retailers prohibited Easy to from providing enforce specific types of shopping bags (i.e., plastic).

Eliminates consumer choice

Levies visible and separate per bag fee on single-use paper or plastic bags, or reusable bags.

Increased initial cost to consumer (purchase of reusable bags) or subsequent costs (purchase of single-use bags from retailer)

Politically least popular

Reduces consumption and litter Fees kept by retailers can compensate for compliance costs

Increased administrative cost at the regulator and retailer levels

Relatively easy to enforce

Retains consumer choice

Specification of minimum thickness, minimum postconsumer recycled content, use of sustainability harvested fibers, must be compostable, or include pro-environmental message.

Can reduce upstream environmental impacts

Difficult to enforce;

Educate consumers on how to reduce consumption or increase recycling

Low or no cost to consumers

Can increase composting opportunity at EOL

Imposes no restrictions on consumers

Politically less popular Response can be offering thicker plastic bags for free Increased costs to retailers depending on bag cost Does not reduce consumption or increase recycling

Difficult to enforce Education is expensive to implement and maintain Not likely to have appreciable impact on consumption or recycling If retailer required, costs apply

Mandated retailer take back

Requires retailers to provide for convenient options for consumers to return used plastic bags for recycling.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Relies on voluntary actions of consumer to return bags

Easy to enforce if only containers need to be provided Could increase consumption of bags due to morallicensing effect

Low or no direct cost to consumers

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

Increased cost to retailers to collect, store, ship, and recycle

overridden and the bill became law on June 9, 2015.

Municipal Approaches to Reducing Single-Use Shopping Bags

In the United States, 242 local governments, covering more than 37 million people, have adopted ordinances designed to reduce the consumption of single-use shopping bags.3 These ordinances have used a variety of approaches (Table 3). As of January 2017, the focus of the 242 ordinances is categorized as follows: • 95 percent of all ordinances banned plastic bags • 57.6 percent of ordinances banning plastic bags also included a fee on paper bags • 5 percent of all ordinances levied a fee on all single-use bags • $0.10 per bag for paper and plastic bags was the most common fee in all the ordinances levying a bag fee As Table 4 illustrates, seven municipalities in Maine, covering 11 percent of the state’s population, have adopted single-use bag ordinances. There are two common approaches: (1) the Portland model, no ban, but a mandatory $0.05 fee on all single-use bags and (2) the York model, a ban only on single-use plastic bags with no fee and no restrictions on paper bags. The Portland model has been adopted by Topsham, South Portland, Falmouth, and Freeport. The ordinances in Portland, South Portland, and Topsham are similar and focus on any store where food represents at least 2 percent of the gross sales, which includes grocery and convenience stores and pharmacies, but restaurants are exempt. Falmouth adopted a more 37

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS Table 4:

Approaches to Reduce or Eliminate Single-Use (SU) Shopping Bags in Maine

Municipality

Approach

Overview

Effective date

Portland

No ban, mandatory fee on all SU bags

$0.05 fee for all SU bags at stores where food constitutes at least 2 percent of gross sales. (Dry cleaners, restaurants, and farmers markets exempt.)

April 15, 2015

South Portland

No ban, mandatory fee on all SU bags

$0.05 fee for all SU bags at stores where food constitutes at least 2 percent of gross sales. (Dry cleaners, restaurants, and farmers markets exempt.)

March 1, 2016

Partial ban, plastic bags only

Bans distribution of SU plastic bags at all retail establishments. Plastic bags without handles (e.g., dry cleaning, newspapers, meat, seafood, bulk foods, and produce) excluded. Nonprofit and religious organizations not considered retail establishment. No restriction on paper bags.

March 3, 2016

No ban, mandatory fee on all SU bags

$0.05 fee for all SU bags at stores where food constitutes at least 2 percent of gross sales. (Restaurants are exempt and reusable bags as defined exempt.)

September 12, 2016

Partial ban, plastic bags only

Bans distribution of SU plastic bags at all retail establishments. Plastic bags without handles (e.g., dry cleaning, newspapers, meat, seafood, bulk foods, and produce) are excluded. Nonprofit and religious organizations not considered retail establishment. No restriction on paper bags.

No ban, mandatory fee on all SU bags

$0.05 fee for all SU bags at stores where food constitutes at least 2 percent of gross sales. (Dry cleaners, restaurants, and used bags distributed by antique and secondhand stores are exempt.)

York

Freeport

Kennebunk

Topsham

narrow definition of retail establishments by using a minimum floor area of 10,000 square feet regardless of food sales, thus including department stores, office supply stores, and pharmacies, but exempting horticultural nurseries. The York model has been adopted by Kennebunk, which banned plastic shopping bags, but did not restrict the distribution of paper bags or reusable plastic bags. Both towns define a reusable bag as any bag with handles made to withstand repeated uses, which can be cleaned and disinfected. If made of plastic, the bag must be at least 3 mils thick. In contrast, Topsham adopted a stricter requirement that reusable plastic bags must be at least 4 mils thick.

Falmouth has collected data on single-use shopping bags distributed at the six stores covered by its ordinance.

Based on the data collected during the first six months of the program, a total of $35,134.30 was collected by the stores in mandatory bag fees, which equates to 702,686 bags or 1,405,372 per year (Kimberly Darling, personal communication, January 5, 2017), which corresponds to an annual per capita consumption rate of 117.2. In Falmouth, the two stand-alone grocery stores accounted for 70.6 percent of all shopping bags distributed during the first six month, while the third largest distributor of shopping bags was a combined department and grocery store, which distributed 24.6 percent.

The remaining three retailers, a pharmacy, an office supply store, and a secondhand store, collectively MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

October 14, 2016

May 7, 2017

accounted for the remaining 4.8 percent of shopping bags distributed. Although these six stores represent the majority of retail transactions in Falmouth, they represent less than 5 percent of retailers. Thus, the rate of 117.2 bags per person per year slightly underestimates the actual consumption rate. Using the national estimated annual per consumption rate of 441.5 bags for comparison, Falmouth’s data clearly indicate that the distribution of bags has decreased following the implementation of its fee.

While neither Portland nor South Portland have collected any postordinance data the use of reusable bags at the Portland Hannaford store increased from around 15 percent before Portland’s ordinance to more than 80 percent immediately after. However, these results are not representative because Hannaford gave away more than 140,000 reusable shopping bags two weeks before the ordinance and conducted community outreach targeting low-income people and immigrants (Eric Bloom, personal communication, December 8, 2016).

Based on experiences in Maine and in other communities around the country, one of the likely impacts of the York model is the unintended increase in consumption of single-use paper bags. If consumption of single-use paper bags correspondingly increases, the cost to retailers increases due to higher purchase costs.

At the wholesale level, paper bags cost about 440 percent more than plastic bags. Costs also can increase for the 38

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS

municipality because the increased weight of paper bags affects the cost of collecting and processing recyclables, which are charged on a per ton basis. For recycling, these increased costs can be offset by revenues from sold materials. Based on USEPA’s (2015) data, about 50 percent of paper bags will be recycled, meaning 50 percent will be disposed of as trash, which costs municipalities more than recycling. The life-cycle environmental impacts of single-use paper bags are significantly greater than for single-use HDPE and LDPE plastic bags. The York model does have benefits, however. If the goal is to eliminate single-use plastic bags from the waste stream, bans are generally the most effective. In addition, retailers that no longer offer plastic bags also no longer have to comply with the provisions of the retailer take-back program. Avoiding this requirement reduces the administrative, labor, and waste management costs of an in-store recycling program specifically for bags.

EXPANDED POLYSTYRENE FOOD SERVICE ITEMS

P

olystyrene (resin identification code #6) is a polymer made from the monomer styrene, which can be in a solid or foamed form. Expanded polystyrene (EPS), also known under its trade name, Styrofoam, has a beadlike form and is used for take-out food and beverage items including cups, bowls, plates, platters, clamshell hinged-containers, and cafeteria trays. Extruded polystyrene is a smoother material used primarily for packaging such as trays for meat, poultry, fish, deli products, produce, bakery items and egg cartons. Molded polystyrene is used in the food and beverage industry to produce a variety of products including lids for disposable cups, disposable cups, cutlery, and containers for salad bars, produce, and dairy products.

The recycling rate for EPS is low. In California in 2001, the recycling rate of EPS food service items packaging was 0.2 percent (IWMB 2004). The recycling rate for EPS is so low because of the products’ weight, segregation challenges, low market value, and contamination issues. EPS is extremely lightweight, which means its transportation costs are comparatively high. It is inefficient to transport it without significantly compacting it, which requires additional equipment and labor.4 Because EPS breaks easily into tiny pieces, it cannot be collected effectively and then segregated in a singlestream collection system. Furthermore, the postconsumer market is low for EPS because when EPS is

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

recycled, the recycled material is lower quality than the original, and EPS food and beverage containers are often contaminated with food.

Like single-use plastic bags, EPS can be blown away by wind as it is being collected or transported and becomes litter. Since EPS breaks into smaller pieces easily but does not biodegrade, it is even more of a problem as litter. EPS is extremely buoyant, easily moving from land to surface water, through stormwater drains, and into marine environments. EPS was a significant component of trash collected in stormwater drains in San Jose, California, ranging from 7.8 percent to 10.8 percent of trash (Romanow 2012).

Consumption of EPS Food Service Items There are few estimates of total or per capita consumption of single-use EPS food service items.

Based on industry-provided data for 2004 and 2008, the mean annual consumption of selected EPS food service items was approximately 58 billion units or 193.2 items per person per year (Keybridge Research 2009). Annual mean per capita consumption rates, which also incorporate California state-level data, allow for the estimated per person annual consumption of each EPS category: cups (110.6), plates, bowls, and platters (36.5), clamshells (36.5), and trays (9.8). Using these data, the total and annual per capita consumption of each category of EPS food service items can be estimated for Maine using 2015 state population data (Table 5). This is a conservative estimate because it does not include consumption from the additional 34 million tourist visitations in 2015 (DPA 2016).

Reducing EPS Food Service Items in Maine

In 1987, Maine banned the distribution of food and beverages in EPS containers at state and political subdivision facilities and functions starting on January 1, 1990 (LD 2178), which is the strongest state-level action in the United States.5 The ban included schools that are not satellite schools served by a central kitchen, but it did not apply to food-delivery programs for seniors (e.g., Meals on Wheels) served by a central kitchen. In 1989, legislators proposed LD 1307 to ban retail use of EPS, but it did not pass. In 1993, the legislature passed LD 1067, which amended 38 MRS §1651, and allowed EPS food service items at state facilities provided the facility had an EPS-recycling program. In 1997, LD 1019 amended 38 MRS §1652 and allowed schools to request a three-year waiver from the EPS ban 39

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS Table 5:

Estimated Consumption of Selected EPS Food Service Items in Maine in 2015

Cups

Plates, bowls and platters

Clamshells

Annual per capita mean

110.6

36.5

Annual per household mean (2.34)

258.9

86.5

146,943,000

48,515,000

Annual total consumption state*

Trays

Total

36.5

9.8

193.4

85.3

22.8

452.5

48,439,000

12,971,000

256,868,000

*Figures were rounded.

based on demonstrated financial hardship. No school district has formally requested a waiver from the EPS food service ban (Kevin Martin, personal communication, December 27, 2016). Finally, in 2015, LD 468 proposed another statewide ban on the sale or distribution of EPS food service items, but it did not pass.

Municipal Approaches to Reducing EPS Food Service Items

As of January 2017, there were 148 local-level ordinances in the United States designed to reduce the consumption of EPS food service items. All the EPS ordinances in the United States are variations of bans because it is not feasible to expect customers to bring their own containers (or not use one at all). Table 6 categorizes these bans as narrow, limited, full, and expanded bans.

Of the 148 local ordinances in the United States that have adopted bans • 5.4 percent are narrow bans in which EPS is restricted primarily at governmental facilities and public areas, • 81.1 percent are limited bans that include a ban on EPS food service items at restaurants and retailers selling prepared food, • 2.7 percent are full bans that include polystyrene food packages (i.e., egg cartons and produce, meat, fish trays), and • 10.8 percent are expanded bans that include the retail sale of EPS food service items, sale and use of disposable polystyrene coolers, or any food service items made of polystyrene or polyvinyl chloride.

Six municipalities in Maine, covering 11 percent of the state’s population, are reducing consumption of EPS through bans (Table 7). Freeport enacted the first

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

Table 6:

Ban type

Summary of Approaches to Reduce Consumption of Single-Use EPS Food Service Items Overview

Narrow ban

Applies only to local government buildings, facilities, or events or use or sale on public property such as parks and beaches.

Limited ban

Applies to EPS containers provided by retailers that sell or provide food including restaurants, grocery stores, and food trucks. Bans in this category can include EPS containers for take-out food and EPS containers for leftovers.

Full ban

Includes the items in a limited ban and also polystyrene packaging for meat, poultry, fish, produce, deli, and bakery products, and egg containers.

Expanded ban

Includes the items in both full and limited bans and can also include a ban on retail sale of new EPS food service items; disposable EPS coolers; use or selling of plastic utensils, cup lids, and straws; and selling polystyrene foam “peanut” packing material.

municipal-level ban on EPS food service items in Maine in 1990 (it was also one of the first in the country). The Portland School District banned the use of EPS trays in 2012.

CONCLUSION

M

aine municipalities are adopting ordinances to address consumer products that cause economic challenges as MSW because of limited recyclability, costs of litter clean up, and costs related to protecting and cleaning stormwater management systems. Because municipalities are not able to shift their MSW costs back to the producers through an EPR scheme, their only option has been to encourage or require source reduction through bans and fees. As noted by Rogoff

40

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS Table 7:

Approaches in Maine to Reduce EPS Food Service Items

Municipality

Approach

Overview

Effective date

Freeport

Full ban

Food service items and polystyrene packaging at grocery stores (e.g., egg cartons and meat trays)

January 1, 1990

Portland

Limited ban

Prepared food and beverages including from food trucks

South Portland

Limited ban

Prepared food and beverages including from food trucks

Brunswick

Limited ban

Prepared food and beverages

October 1, 2016

Saco

Full ban

Food service items and polystyrene packaging at grocery stores (e.g., egg cartons and meat trays)

October 19, 2016

Topsham

Full ban

Food service items and polystyrene packaging at grocery stores (e.g., egg cartons, meat trays, and bakery products)

May 7, 2017

and Ross (2016), the removal of difficult-to-recycle items has the added benefit of reducing a municipality’s overall recycling costs because of increased sorting efficiency and of increasing the value of the end product because of reduced contamination.

Maine has enacted laws to reduce consumption of single-use plastic shopping bags and EPS food service items. The state’s attempt to make paper shopping bags the default consumer choice resulted in a dramatic increase in consumption of paper bags, which increased costs to retailers and was quickly repealed. The shift to paper bags also increases the overall environmental impact and municipalities’ MSW costs. State law then established a retailer take-back program and required retailers that distribute plastic bags to offer postconsumer recycling. This law, however, does not foster source reduction. In fact, research has shown that offering recycling near consumption can actually increase consumption through moral licensure. There are now seven Maine municipalities with local ordinances that either ban plastic shopping bags or mandate a fee for all single-use shopping bags.

For EPS food service items, Maine has adopted the most stringent statewide restriction on their use at state and local government and quasigovernment facilities and functions. Six municipalities have adopted local ordinances incorporating bans; three municipalities banned the use of EPS food service items at retail establishments, and three municipalities also banned the use of polystyrene packaging at grocery stores.

Given the precedent the ordinances have set for reducing consumption of products that are not readily recycled and cause local environmental impacts, the obvious question is, what other similar consumer products are ripe for local control? Local governments outside

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

April 15, 2015 March 1, 2016

of Maine have enacted bans on disposable EPS coolers, foam packaging peanuts, and nonrecycled plastic utensils. While all of these restrictions or bans are based on the lack of recycling for the products, France recently enacted a ban on plastic single-use bags and plastic utensils as a component of its climate action plan. This action signals a new critical assessment of the type of materials used for disposable consumer products given increased concern for reducing carbon emissions. ENDNOTES 1 Also in 1989, Maine enacted a statewide ban (38 MRSA §1652, sub-§l-A) on the use of plastic beverage stirrers at food servicers at state and political subdivision facilities or functions.

2 A survey conducted by the Maine Merchants Association estimated the annual per capita consumption of plastic shopping bags in 1989 and 1990 to be 268.8. According to the Maine Waste Management Agency (1991: 3), this figure should be viewed as conservative with a “healthy margin of error.”

3 In November 2016, California became the first state to adopt a statewide law banning the distribution of plastic single-use shopping bags and levying a $0.10 fee on paper bags.

4 Report of the Majority of the Green Packaging Working Group Recommending a Ban on the Sale of Polystyrene Foam Food Packaging in Portland, 2013. From meeting agenda for the City of Portland, Transportation, Sustainability, and Energy Committee, March 13, 2014. http://www.portlandmaine.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile /Agenda/03192014-272?packet=true 5 Political subdivisions are defined in 14 MRSA §8102 to include any local government (city, town, plantation, or county) and any officially authorized water district, sanitary district, hospital district, school district, or airport authority.

41

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS

REFERENCES Beyond Pesticides. 2010. State Preemption Law: The Battle for Local Control of Democracy. Beyond Pesticides, Washington, DC. http://www.beyondpesticides.org /assets/media/documents/lawn/activist/documents /StatePreemption.pdf Blocher, Joseph. 2013. “Firearm Localism.” The Yale Law Journal 123: 82–146.

Brendle Group. 2012. Triple Bottom Line Evaluation: Plastic Bag Policy Options. Prepared for City of Fort Collins by the Brendle Group, Inc. http://www.fcgov.com/recycling /pdf/triple-bottom-line-evaluation-plastic-bag-policy -options-10-2012.pdf Burnett, H. Sterling. 2013. “Do Bans on Plastic Grocery Bags Save Cities Money?” National Center for Policy Analysis, Policy Report 353, NCPA, Washington, DC. http://www. ncpa.org/pdfs/st353.pdf Catlin, Jesse R., and Yitong Wang. 2013. “Recycling Gone Bad: When the Option to Recycle Increases Resource Consumption.” Journal of Consumer Psychology 23(1): 122–127.

Chowdhury, Moe. 2009. “Searching Quality Data for Municipal Solid Waste Planning.” Waste Management 29(8): 2240–2247.

Christensen, Thomas H., ed. 2011. Solid Waste Technology & Management, vol. 2. Wiley, Chichester, UK. Criner, George K. 1991. “Solid Waste Management in Local Municipalities.” Maine Policy Review 1(1): 93–96.

Diller, Paul A. 2007. “Intrastate Preemption.” Boston University Law Review 87(5): 1113–1176.

DPA. 2016. Maine Office of Tourism Visitor Tracking Research 2015 Calendar Year, Annual Report. Prepared for the Maine Office of Tourism, Augusta. http:// visitmaine.com/assets/downloads/2015AnnualReport .pdf.

Dye, Ciera. 2014. “The Pelagic Plastic Problem.” Ocean & Coastal Law Journal 19:117–144.

Evanston. 2011. An Overview of Shopping Bags in Evanston.

City of Evanston, Office of Sustainability, Evanston, IL. http://www.cityofevanston.org /sustainability/waste_reduction_recycling/White %20Paper%206.6.11.pdf FDEP (Florida Department of Environmental Protection).

2010. Retail Bags Report to the Legislature. FDEP, Tallahassee. http://www.dep.state.fl.us/waste /quick_topics/publications/shw/recycling/retailbags /Retail-Bag-Report_01Feb10.pdf FMI (Food Marketing Institute). 2016. U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2016. FMI, Arlington, VA.

HEC (Herrera Environmental Consultants, Inc.). 2008.

Alternatives to Disposable Shopping Bags and Food Service Items, vol. 1. Prepared for Seattle Public Utilities. http://www. seattlebagtax.org/herrera1.pdf IDCEO (Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity). 2009. Illinois Commodity/Waste Generation and Characterization Study. IDCEO. https:// www.illinois.gov/gov/green/documents/waste%20study .pdf Isenhour, Cindy, Travis Blackmer, Travis Wagner, Linda Silka, John Peckenham, David Hart, and Jean MacRae. 2016. “Moving up the Waste Hierarchy in Maine: Learning from ‘Best Practice’ State-Level Policy for Waste Reduction and Recovery.” Maine Policy Review 25(1): 15–29.

IWMB (Integrated Waste Management Board). 2004. Use and Disposal of Polystyrene in California: A Report to the California Legislature. IWMB, Sacramento. http:// www.calrecycle.ca.gov/publications/Documents /Plastics/43204003.pdf Keybridge Research. 2009. Quantifying the Potential Economic Impacts of a Ban on Polystyrene Foam Foodservice Products in California. Prepared for Pactiv Corporation and the American Chemistry Council.

Keybridge Research, Washington, DC. LA County (Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors).

2007. An Overview of Carryout Bags in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles County Plastic Bag Working Group. http://ladpw.org/epd/pdf/PlasticBagReport.pdf Lewis, Helen, Karli Verghese, and Leanne Fitzpatrick. 2010.

“Evaluating the Sustainability Impacts of Packaging: The Plastic Carry Bag Dilemma.” Packaging Technology and Science 23(3): 145–160.

MacDonald, George. 2010. Resolve, to Convene a Work Group to Design and Implement a Statewide Disposable Checkout Bag Reduction Campaign, with Benchmarks.

Memorandum to the Joint Standing Committee on Natural Resources, January 25, 2010. Maine State Planning Office, Augusta.

Martel, Christopher M., and Robert J. Helm. 2004.

“Prevention, Control and Collection: Techniques for Managing Landfill Litter.” Waste Management World (June 12): 57–62.

MSPO (Maine State Planning Office). 2010. Report to the Maine Legislature by the Work Group to Design and Implement a Statewide Bag Reduction Campaign. MSPO, Augusta.

MWMA (Maine Waste Management Agency). 1991. Study on the Impact of Optional Plastic Bags, Title 38, Section 1605. Report to the Maine State Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee of Energy and Natural Resources.

Hodge Jr., James G., and Megan Scanlon. 2014. “Legal Anatomy of Product Bans to Protect the Public’s Health.”

Annals of Health Law 23:20–41.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

42

REDUCING SINGLE-USE CONSUMER PRODUCTS

Nicol, Scott, and Shirley Thompson. 2007. “Policy Options to Reduce Consumer Waste to Zero: Comparing Product Stewardship and Extended Producer Responsibility for Refrigerator Waste.” Waste Management & Research 25(3): 227–233.

NSWEPA (New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority). 2016. Plastic Shopping Bags Options Paper: Practical Actions for Plastic Shopping Bags. NSW EPA, Sydney. http://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/resources/ waste/160143-plastic-shopping-bags-options.pdf

USEPA (US Environmental Protection Agency). 2016.

Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures 2014. USEPA, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery EPA530-R-15-002. https:// www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-11 /documents/2014_smm_tablesfigures_508.pdf USITC (US International Trade Commission). 2016.

Polyethylene Retail Carrier Bags from China, Malaysia, and Thailand. Publication 4605. USITC, Washington, DC. https://www.usitc.gov/publications/701_731/pub4605.pdf

Pender, Kathleen. 2005. “Adding Up the Cost of Bags.” SF Gate (January 25) http://www.sfgate.com/business /networth/article/Adding-up-the-cost-of-bags-2703028.php

Van Haaren, Rob, Nickolas Themelis, and Nora Goldstein.

2010 “The State of Garbage in America.” BioCycle 51(10): 16–23.

Prendergast, Gerard, Shuk Wai Ng, and Lee Lee Leung.

2001. “Consumer Perceptions of Shopping Bags.”

Marketing Intelligence & Planning 19(7): 475–482.

Vanlandingham, Kenneth E. 1968. “Municipal Home Rule in the United States.” William & Mary Law Review 10:269–314.

R3 Consulting Group. 2010. City of Santa Monica Nexus Study. Prepared by R3 Consulting Group. http://plasticbaglaws.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/04 /FINAL-Santa-Monica-Nexus-Study-Report-1-18-10.pdf

Wagner, Travis P. 2009. “Shared Responsibility for Managing Electronic Waste: A Case Study of Maine, USA.” Waste Management 29(12): 3014–3021.

Rogoff, Marc J., and David E. Ross. 2016. “The Future of Recycling in the United States.” Waste Management & Research 34(3): 181–183.

Romanow, Kerrie. 2012. “Bring Your Own Bag Ordinace [sic] Implementation Results and Actions to Reduce EPS Foam Food Ware.” Memorandum to the City of San Jose, CA, Transportation and Environment Committee.

November 20. http://www3.sanjoseca.gov/clerk /CommitteeAgenda/TE/20121203/TE20121203_d5.pdf Sapphos. 2010. Ordinances to Ban Plastic Carryout Bags in Los Angeles County: Bag Usage Data Collection Study.

Prepared for the County of Los Angeles Public Works

by Sapphos Environmental, Pasadena, CA. Staley, Bryan. 2014. “Recycling’s Challenge: Plastic Bags.”

Waste360. http://www.waste360.com/blog/recycling -s-challenge-plastic-bags Thaler, Richard H., and Cass R. Sunstein. 2008. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. Penguin Books, New York.

UK Environmental Agency. 2011. Life Cycle Assessment of Supermarket Carrier Bags: A Review of the Bags Available in 2006. Report: SC030148, Bristol, UK. https:// www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads /attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan-e-e.pdf

Wagner, Travis P., and Nathan Broaddus. 2016. “The Generation and Cost of Litter Resulting from the Curbside Collection of Recycling.” Waste Management 50:3–9.

Wagner, Travis P., and Tom Raymond. 2015. “Landfill Mining: Case Study of a Successful Metals Recovery Project.” Waste Management 45:448–457.

Waters, Aaron. 2015. Environmental Effects of the Single Use Bag Ordinance in Austin, Texas. Prepared for the Austin Resource Recovery and the Zero Waste Advisory Commission. https://www.austintexas.gov/edims /document.cfm?id=232679

Travis Wagner is a professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Southern Maine and is an affiliated faculty member at the Muskie School of Public Service. He has over 33 years of professional and academic research experience in the assessment and implementation of sustainable materials management.

USEPA (US Environmental Protection Agency). 2015.

Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures 2013. USEPA, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery EPA530-R-15-002. https:// www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-09 /documents/2013_advncng_smm_rpt.pdf

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

43

POPULATION HEALTH IMPROVEMENT

Population Health Improvement: It’s Up to the Community—Not the Healthcare System

by Ron Deprez and Rick Thomas Despite the growing interest in population health on the part of health professionals, policy analysts, and government agencies, there is no widely accepted definition of the term nor agreement on how to apply the concept in healthimprovement planning. In this article, Ron Deprez and Rick Thomas clarify the definition, attributes, and applications of population health, tracing its history and evolution to its current form and assess the roles of communities and health systems in advancing a population health approach.

INTRODUCTION

A

growing interest in the concept of population health exists among health professionals, policy analysts, nd government agencies. The premise of population health is that assessing health from a population perspective rather than a patient perspective provides an opportunity for better understanding and improving the health status of populations whether or not they are patients. Policy analysts and other observers of healthcare trends agree that the health system cannot continue doing the same things as in the past and expect to be effective (Luft 2006). While there is no consensus on what approach best addresses the deficiencies in the existing system, a population health approach can address a number of persistent and growing health problems in communities such as obesity, diabetes, food security, behavioral health, and drug addiction.

A number of factors confound the discussion of population health, particularly the lack of clarity in its definition and confusion over what is meant by a population health approach to improving health status. In this article, we discuss these issues, clarifying key concepts relative to population health, address the opportunities for (and limitations to) applying this approach to health status improvement, and focus on the roles of the health system and the community in implementing a population health-improvement model. Additionally, we touch upon the potential value of this approach for formulating health policy, planning health services, and changing goal-based programs and local infrastructure.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

As with most new concepts in health care, there are several definitions that vary widely in both interpretation and application. Kindig and Stoddart’s (2003) definition of population health is the most commonly cited, but seems somewhat lacking today. They define it as “the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group” (Kindig and Stoddart 2003: 381). Kindig (2007) subsequently expanded the scope of this definition to consider factors that have an impact on population health (e.g., social determinants). Jacobson and Teutsch (2013) suggest that the term total population health might be employed to distinguish between what is considered population health in contrast to more restricted views espoused (if inadvertently) by healthcare organizations.

Many analysts find fault with these definitions; others define the term in different ways depending on their role in health care—for example, clinician, planner, or community agency. Healthcare providers generally use the term as a replacement for patient health and have difficulty getting past the notion of improving health one patient at a time (Raths 2015). Managers of accountable care organizations (ACOs) see population health in terms of the status of their patient panels— especially Medicare patients—while public health officials often view population health in geographical terms or by racial and ethnic population subgroups (Tompkins et al. 2013). Even federally qualified health centers, which ought to be closer to this issue than most healthcare providers, view providing a medical home

44

POPULATION HEALTH IMPROVEMENT

for the medically underserved as their contribution to population health (Hagland 2013). Healthcare organizations tend to think in terms of their populations rather than the total population when referring to population health.

Our approach to clarifying the definition involves making a distinction between the term used as a noun and as an adjective—then describing how to integrate them as an approach. As a noun, population health refers to the status of the population’s health and well-being in terms of several relevant population-based measures. For example, we use a four-tiered measure of health ranging from well to not well to describe the health of adult population in our community health assessment process.1 Others use a five-tiered measure ranging from poor to very good based on self-reported responses to surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey) and the National Center for Health Services (NCHS, National Health Interview Survey).2 Another approach to conceptualizing population health is represented by data compiled for the County Health Rankings (http://www.countyhealthrankings. org). This approach attempts to measure population health using a limited number of factors such as education, obesity, smoking, unemployment, air quality, poverty, and teen birth rates since all influence health status directly or indirectly. The intent of County Health Rankings is to inform communities about selected health indicators to stimulate discussion, planning, and local solutions to improve health. While the rankings provide data for a number of different types of indicators, their limitations are the limited scope of indicators and lack of rigor in analysis for planning innovations. Just using comparisons to state or national data falls short of a comprehensive population health assessment for change.

A set of standardized indicators is essential for an assessment to be useful in understanding both health status and factors that influence health status.

However, the indicators need to be organized to paint a picture of these issues in a community including the types and quality of care available to the population.

This requires analysis and an understanding of the health system and the community. We recommend starting with a set of health and health-related measures broken out by population groupings, health service, and health conditions. We developed an assessment tool for this purpose in 1989 and have used it in our MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

DEFINITIONS Population health, noun: an assessment of the health status of a population that uses aggregate data on health and health-related indicators to measure the totality of health and well-being of the total population and medical subgroups.

Population health, adjective: describes an approach or process to improving community health status that focuses on populations (or subsets of a geographic population) and addresses the root causes and structural impediments of ill health rather than exclusively focusing on treating symptoms or conditions of individuals.

community health needs assessment work all over the United States.

As an adjective, population health describes a process for improving health status that operates at the population level rather than the individual (or patient) level. The approach focuses more on social pathology than biological pathology and involves treating conditions within the environment and policy realms in addition to providing clinical services to individual patients. An underlying assumption is that a population health approach improves health status by focusing on the healthcare needs and resources of populations not individuals. It does not rule out, however, specific patient-based medical treatment. Rather, it views the improvements in the health services sector as only one limited component of an initiative.

We believe that a population health approach should be viewed as it relates to both descriptors and an understanding of what drives the levels of these descriptors in a population. Indeed, we ascribe the following attributes to a population health approach: • an emphasis on understanding the determinants of health be they family genetics, environment, economic factors, education, or any number of other factors (Kindig and Stoddart 2003), recognizing the importance of social pathology over biological pathology • a focus on measuring health and health outcomes in a population rather than only intermediate clinical outcomes such as reduction of blood glucose levels, blood pressure, or improvements in lung function

45

POPULATION HEALTH IMPROVEMENT

• a community-based (participatory) understanding of the critical health issues in a population and what changes in resources, policies, organization, and incentives in the healthcare delivery and transportation and educational, social, environmental, or economic opportunities are necessary to improve community health • an acceptance of the limited role that each sector (medical, community, physical environment, culture) can play in improving health status • a recognition that changing personal health status often needs to be addressed in the context of the social or community environment • a recognition of the role (and responsibility) that the public and its representatives have in improving population health in their communities Kindig, Asada, and Booske (2008) proposed a population health framework for planning and implementing goals, policies, and interventions aimed at improving or reducing health outcomes. Their framework views determinants from both structural (social environment, genetics, health system) and individual behavioral factors.

Outcomes are broken out by disparities (for example, socioeconomic status, race or ethnicity, and geography) and health metrics (limited to mortality and quality-of-life measures). Goals and policies to address most of these disparities, however, may involve decades-long struggles and are difficult to sustain over time.3 Additionally, improving healthcare systems does not necessarily lead to better population (or patient) health outcomes. It certainly does not appear to reduce risk factors for chronic diseases or disease prevalence, as is reflected in the limited impact (an estimated 10 percent) that the healthcare system has on health status outcomes (McGinnis, Williams-Russo, and Knickman 2002).

A major challenge facing a population health approach involves shifting from the patient to the community as the context for health improvement.

While various parties offer guidance on how to implement a population health approach, these guidelines seldom get past the first few paragraphs before referring to “patients” and “market opportunities.”4 While it is not surprising for health professionals to default to familiar territory, this underscores their lack of understanding of the population health approach. They attempt to force square pegs into round holes by talking

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

about more efficient management of patient data, expanded case management activities, personalized patient experiences, wrap-around services, and a variety of other spinoff activities reflecting a system built on the care of individual patients.

It is not surprising that clinicians struggle to connect social conditions and health status. Most do not understand that the environment—social, economic, or physical—has more influence on health status than the armamentarium that health professionals can bring to bear (Ellaway 2014). For example, there is growing evidence that the best predictor of even clinical outcomes are nonmedical factors—the patient’s history, lifestyle, social circumstances, and demographic traits. Indeed, recent research has identified the individual’s home zip code as the best predictor of health status.5 Even physicians who understand the role patients’ social context may play in their health rarely take the context into consideration in either planning treatments or in their expectations of the patients. Thus, patients with the same or similar treatment plans from the same institution often exhibit quite different outcomes as the result of disparities and barriers that have virtually nothing to do with the care proposed or received (Hopper 2011).

While evidence-based treatment for chronic conditions is constantly advanced, the population continues to get sicker and community health status declines (Hagland 2015a).6 In response to these factors, we need a systemic population health approach that targets things that can be changed in a limited amount of time and with limited resources. In short, we need to focus on strategies to overcome current structural and functional barriers that negatively affect health status and access to care-seeking and health-promoting behaviors.

To accomplish this, we clearly need a better understanding of the drivers of health in a specific population or area and knowledge of how to overcome the barriers to improving health behaviors. Providers, community organizations, consumers, and government agencies can focus on specific factors within their purview that affect the health of the populations they serve.

In addition to understanding the epidemiology, access, quality, and healthcare delivery issues in a population, a population health approach requires an understanding of community attributes, the physical and social environment, the relevant culture and subcultures, and the existing policies that have implications for health (McGinnis, Williams-Russo, and Knickman 2002). Figure 1 represents our attempt to expand on 46

POPULATION HEALTH IMPROVEMENT Figure 1:

Overview of a Population Health Approach to Improving Health Status

Planning Goals

Planning Goals

Structural Determinants of Health

Health Status of Populations (subpopulation)

Access (availability of health services)

Overall: • Well • At risk • Some Conditions (chronic) • Not well

SES Physical Environment Race/Ethnicity*

Focused Interventions Community Health System Government Health-related Outputs: • Policies • Services • Resources • Education

Specific Conditions: • Prevalence of diabetes, chronic health conditions, risk factors, etc.

Culture Genetics

Direct Impact

Mediated Impact * Less prone to change.

Kindig’s earlier model depicting the various components that interact to determine population health.

On the left, we list structural determinants of health. Generally, these conditions require long lead times and substantial resources to change or cannot be changed. On the right, we list the areas of focus for a population health approach for improving health status.

These factors include community-initiated actions such as planned infrastructure changes, a built environment that is sensitive to health impacts, health education programs, and efforts to increase food security. Our approach assumes community participation in defining health issues and solutions based in part on collected data and from the community members’ experiences.

Outputs from a population health initiative include policy, service, resource, and education innovations that are in accord with the culture, education level, income, and contextual realities of the community. In the center, we list the type of population health measures to be followed over time. By including both global and condition-specific measures, we will develop a fuller understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in the health status of a population.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

THE ROLE OF THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN POPULATION HEALTH IMPROVEMENT

2016

T

he healthcare system alone cannot drive improvement in population health.

Healthcare providers are not trained for, and often have little capacity to address, their patients’ nonmedical health issues. The focus of clinical providers should be on diagnosis, treatment or management, and cures (both clinical and behavioral) of patients’ medical conditions.

While it is essential to have healthcare providers as part of a team approach to patient care, their role in population health should be limited to improving clinical decision making and patient adherence and only then if the patient’s life circumstances are taken into consideration.

Public policy is an area where a population health approach can substantially affect health, yet the role of the healthcare system in policy making is currently limited. Providers are typically not aware of the implications of public health policies and regulations as they affect patient and population health. This leaves most policy discussions unaffected by the healthcare system, except for, for example, lobbying for higher cigarette taxes and expanding public insurance programs. While national-level policies that focus on economic development, housing, nutrition, physical activity, and education have relevance for population health, the most effective policy changes will have to take place at the state or local level and are essentially beyond the control of the healthcare system.

While there is a role for the healthcare system as part of a community consortium, the most effective approach would be for the system to focus on the things that are under its control. Healthcare providers should also support efforts by those outside the healthcare system to address the issues that are difficult for healthcare services to address.

THE ROLE OF THE COMMUNITY IN POPULATION HEALTH IMPROVEMENT

I

t is increasingly recognized that contemporary health problems and their solutions have their roots in the community (http://www.scotpho.org.uk/life -circumstances/community-wellbeing/key-points).

47

POPULATION HEALTH IMPROVEMENT

Kindig, Asada, and Booske (2008) note the importance of this perspective, and Kindig and Isham (2014) further advance this notion by describing a “community health business model.”

Representatives of the community, however defined, may not be aware of the epidemiological profile of their population, but they typically are aware of many of the sources of its health-related problems. Community agencies know about toxic environmental sites, unsafe housing, concentrations of poverty, defects in the educational system, food deserts, deteriorating infrastructure, and the factors limiting educational achievement in children.

Communities have the ability to contribute to all three dimensions of population health—clinical care, environmental improvement, and policy development.

If policy changes are critical to improving health status, the community must orchestrate the changes.

Recent local efforts to increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments at farmers’ markets, increase use of food pantries and mobile produce markets, and develop community gardens are examples of policy changes that contribute to the improvement of health status via better access to healthy foods (CDC n.d.). The initial action of the community should involve establishing priority health issues based on accurate data and critical analyses. Community representatives will have fairly clear-cut notions about their community’s health problems. The public health community including local stakeholders should be leading the charge for population health.

What Communities Can Do Communities have the ability to contribute to all three dimensions of population health—clinical care, environmental improvement, and policy development.

For clinical care, in many communities, the public or nonprofit hospital or clinic plays a critical role in providing care for many in the community, and MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

communities (including governments) support the provision of such services. More important, however, is the community’s role in assuring a smooth interface between services provided publicly and those offered by private providers. In addition, communities often support other organizations involved in addressing the healthcare needs of the population—medical schools, research institutes, and healthcare coalitions.

Communities also play a significant role in assessing their populations’ current health status and establishing the criteria by which health status improvement will be measured. Whether through community circles, town meetings, or community focus groups, communities need to influence resource allocation and policy decisions. Indeed, as one of the requirements for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), not-for-profit hospitals need documented community input into the community health needs assessment. This input is critical because the community’s perception of health issues will differ from that of health professionals.

Communities have a leading role to play in the other two dimensions—environment and policy. Since community agencies field the complaints from citizens concerning the environmental factors that contribute to ill health, they should be aware of the effect the physical and social environment has on the health and well-being of their citizens. Additionally, various community agencies are aware of child abuse and domestic violence, mental illness and substance abuse, toxic materials, homelessness and housing insecurity, school dropout rates, lack of job opportunities, food deserts, and myriad other factors that ultimately contribute to the health status of the population. Issues related to housing quality and security, educational attainment, food security, and job development and training must occur at the grassroots, and they are important points of attack in addressing the social roots of ill health in a population.

Although resources always seem to be scarce, committed communities can often obtain the resources necessary for addressing population health issues.7 The bang-for-the-buck from these efforts is likely to exceed the benefits of expenditures for clinical care. For example, how far could the $500,000 spent keeping a premature newborn alive go in providing prenatal care for high-risk pregnant women? Although the medical community is uncomfortable with such issues, communities can approach them with relative impunity. The intent is not to deny care to anyone, but to proactively address reproductive health issues, thereby eliminating 48

POPULATION HEALTH IMPROVEMENT

HEALTHY MAINE PARTNERSHIPS For the past 10 years, Maine has done what many other states have been unable to do— build a (largely nongovernmental) local public health infrastructure through the Healthy Maine Partnerships (HMP). Established in 2007

by Maine statute, HMPs are community-based organizations that have played an important role improving population health. The HMP have worked to improve the community’s health through diabetes prevention, health promotion for adults and children, school lunch improvement, substance and tobacco use prevention, and food security programs.

The HMPs are unique because many of these community-based organizations, with little state seed funding, developed private- and public-sector collaborations and have attained significant private and federal grant dollars.

Unfortunately, Maine’s government has decided to defund and de-name the HMPs without legislative approval. In March 2016, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC), announced it would shift resources previously granted to the HMPs to four statewide vendors that would then subcontract prevention work as part of the district public health and district coordinating council (DCC) structure. While public health district coordinating councils are expected to play a more prominent role in programs, they are not designed nor staffed for this (Bangor Daily News, September 30, 2016). As of October 1, 2016, HMPs no longer exist in the eyes of the state; agencies have been informed that they are no longer able to use this brand in future activities. The elimination of the HMPs leaves Maine with a vacuum of local public health presence and programs and no clear direction from the Maine CDC.

the need for expensive neonatal care and reallocating those savings to other initiatives.

It has become increasingly clear that health conditions are often symptoms of underlying problems. In fact, it would not be surprising for citizens to note poor

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

housing, lack of food, or unsafe streets as health problems. Given that the conditions of the individual before and after her healthcare encounter may be more important for outcomes than the healthcare encounter itself, the social circumstances of community members should be a major concern of community leaders.

The third area—policy making—is almost exclusively the domain of the community. Although certain policies related to healthcare are developed at the state or national level, communities have the ability to address many important policy issues, issues that may ultimately have a greater impact on health status than policies directly related to healthcare. Although progress has been slow, there appears to be growing momentum nationwide for addressing the impact of public policy on health status.

An important step forward has been emergence of the health impact studies, which involve the community in the assessment of the impact that any policy, program, or project will have on health status. Health impact studies have long been a requirement in many Western European counties, and now many US communities are also requiring them when assessing major policy or infrastructure changes. Until recently, most policies, programs, and projects have been implemented with little concern for the direct or indirect implications for health status.

A valid question is, how realistic is it to ask communities to take a lead role in population health improvement? Relevant organizations do not always have a history of working together, and indeed, we often find that the key representatives from various agencies (for example, housing, economic development, education, environmental safety) have never been in the same room on key policy issues. Is there likely to be community resistance to this responsibility or committing community resources? Are there other barriers to the community’s taking a lead role?

We suggest that communities take the following steps to develop a population health approach: • Acknowledge the interconnection of social, environmental, and policy factors with the health status of the community. Through an approach to local governance and community development that includes health in all policies, communities are in a unique position to view health issues within a comprehensive framework. Given that all aspects of community life fall within the

49

POPULATION HEALTH IMPROVEMENT

purview of local government, community leaders are the appropriate party for identifying and clarifying these interconnections (PHI 2013).

• Recognize the limitations of the healthcare system in addressing population health issues.

We have had a tendency to leave health issues to the healthcare system since a combination of public health measures and patient care has worked to address health issues and improve overall health status in the past. Now, however, we need a different approach as public health and clinical care affects a dwindling proportion of health issues.

• Identify the true health issues in the community, not ones based on clinical metrics. The healthcare system representatives form their opinions based on what they see within their walls, a perception that typically does not reflect the true nature of morbidity or its drivers within the population. Since the roots of community health problems will be found beyond the frontlines of medical care, communities themselves should take on the responsibility of identifying health issues. Communities must connect the dots between housing conditions or crime or unemployment and health issues.

• In conjunction with the medical community, identify priorities for action. This is an area in which the healthcare system and nonhealth entities can jointly generate data that offer a view of health issues and priorities from the perspective of the community. Indeed, such an effort will be required for ACA-mandated community health needs assessments in the future.

• Inventory community health assets, applying the broadest possible definition to the term asset and match these with the identified needs.

The community is in a position to identify the assets that might be leveraged toward improved community health. (An asset map is particularly useful for addressing a particular set of health issues and identifying specific resources and gaps.) A key step in this process is determining shortfalls in resources that need to be addressed, which may involve physical and financial resources along with human capital, policies, and other less tangible assets.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

• Assess existing policies in relevant areas for their impact on population health. While most communities commonly assess their policies, they are not necessarily sensitive to the impacts that policies in nonhealth areas may have on the health of the community. The health-in-all-policies guidelines that are being developed should be useful in this regard (PHI 2013).

• Establish or reinforce umbrella entities that can coordinate service and programs. These coalitions take various forms and have a variety of goals and different types and levels of funding.

It is hard to imagine communities making any progress toward health improvement without such an organization. A challenge in many communities will be the ability to share data between organizations, a process that is particularly delicate when personal health and social services data are involved.

• Mandate a health-in-all-policies approach that assures impact assessments are performed before any policy or project implementation. Although potentially more costly up front, there is an opportunity with the health-in-all-policies approach to introduce efficiencies in the health-improvement effort. For example, communities may find that an investment in safe housing prevents later illnesses.

• Provide oversight and evaluation for the healthcare community’s impact on the health status of the population. Just as the healthcare community may be unaware of health status metrics beyond its walls, it may not be in a position to assess the impact of its efforts. The community has a responsibility to work with health professionals to establish goals related to health status improvement, set benchmarks for these efforts, and generate the data needed for evaluation and surveillance.

An ongoing challenge to implementing a population health approach is the weakness of the data infrastructure supporting the population health movement (Hagland 2015b). While health data are abundant, it is difficult to obtain health data from disparate sources and integrate them to support efficient analysis. The population health approach calls for even more robust

50

POPULATION HEALTH IMPROVEMENT

resource- and data-management capabilities and for the ability to incorporate nonhealth data with health data to conduct appropriate analyses. We are a long way from being able to effectively profile the full range of attributes of a community’s health status, so we must be well aware of the shortcomings in data management and the subsequent barriers that may hinder such efforts.

CONCLUSIONS

A

s the movement gains momentum, there is a need for greater clarity with regard to the nature of population health and the process involved in implementing a population health approach to community health improvement. We need better measures and methods for assessing population health that go beyond the standard metrics of morbidity and mortality, and we must develop meaningful indicators of community health that consider social and environmental factors and identify the impact of current policies. Effective implementation of the population health model must target the social roots of ill health and addresses the well-being of groups of people and not just existing patients. We need to treat the factors that contribute to the health and illness of the population and the policies that either abet or deter community health improvement.

We contend that the implementation of a population health model is ultimately the responsibility of the community and not the healthcare system. A number of factors limit the ability of the healthcare system to mount an effective population health initiative, leaving the community—however defined—as the primary driver for population health improvement. Every community is different, of course, and population health initiatives will play out differently in different locations.

Regardless of the form the initiative takes, it will require the combined resources of various community entities to generate the collective impact necessary for meaningful community health status improvement. ENDNOTES

1 UNE Center for Community and Public Health.

Statewide Community Health Needs Assessment 2010— OneMaineHealth Collaborative. Using a multifactor algorithm overall health of the population is classified as (1) well, (2) at risk for future medical problems, (3) some health problems, and (4) not well. See page 39 and the Appendix for a more complete description of this measure.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

2 More information about these surveys may be found at the following websites: http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/ and http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis.htm 3 For example, over 20 states started their own health insurance plans prior to the Affordable Care Act. Only a few were able to sustain them beyond a few years.

4 For example, the Governance Institute’s agenda on implementing a population health approach focuses in part on identifying the key indicators that can help determine the pace of evolution towards population health in an organization’s local market and potential market opportunities.

5 See, for example, http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news /features/zip-code-better-predictor-of-health-than -genetic-code 6 See also http://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/about /multiple-chronic.htm, http://mpkb.org/home /pathogenesis/epidemiology#historical_increases_in _the_prevalence_of_certain_chronic_diseases, and http:// www.fightchronicdisease.org/sites/fightchronicdisease .org/files/docs/GrowingCrisisofChronicDiseaseintheUS factsheet_81009.pdf 7 See https://nccd.cdc.gov/DCHSuccessStories /searchstories.aspx for examples from the US CDC Community Transformation Grant Projects.

REFERENCES CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) n.d.

State Initiatives Supporting Healthier Food Retail: An Overview of the National Landscape. CDC, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity. http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/downloads /Healthier_Food_Retail.pdf Ellaway, Anne. 2014. “The Impact of the Local Social and Physical Local Environment on Wellbeing.” In Wellbeing and the Environment, vol. 2, ed. Rachel Cooper and Elizabeth Burton, 1–18. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford.

Hagland, Mark. 2013. “What Federally Qualified Health Centers Can Teach Their Provider Peers about Data and Population Health.” Health Informatics (May 17). http:// www.healthcare-informatics.com/article/what-federally -qualified-health-centers-can-teach-their-provider-peers -about-data-and-popula Hagland, Mark. 2015a. “Chronic Care World: What a New California Report Tells Us about the Future of U.S. Healthcare.” Healthcare Informatics (May 1) http:// www.healthcare-informatics.com/blogs/mark-hagland /chronic-care-world-what-new-california-report-tells-us -about-future-us-healthcare

51

POPULATION HEALTH IMPROVEMENT

Hagland, Mark. 2015b. “Leveraging Data for Public Health: One Health Plan Leader’s Perspective.” Healthcare Informatics (June 22). http://www.healthcare-informatics .com/article/leveraging-data-population-health-one -health-plan-leader-s-perspective-0 Hopper, K. 2011. “Disparities in Cardiac Rehab.”

Unpublished presentation.

Jacobson, Dawn Marie, and Steven Teutsch. 2013.

An Environmental Scan of Integrated Approaches for Defining and Measuring Total Population Health by the Clinical Care System, the Government Public Health System, and Stakeholder Organizations.

National Quality Forum Washington, DC. http://www.improvingpopulationhealth.org /PopHealthPhaseIICommissionedPaper.pdf Kindig, David A. 2007. “Understanding Population Health Terminology.” The Milbank Quarterly 85(1): 139–161.

Ron Deprez is president of the Public Health Research Institute (Deer Isle, Maine) and an associate research professor at the University of New England.

Rick Thomas is associate professor of preventative medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

Kindig, David A., Yukiko Asada, and Bridget Booske. 2008.

“A Population Health Framework for Setting National and State Health Goals.” Journal of the American Medical Association 299:2081–2083.

Kindig, David A., and George Isham. 2014. “Population Health Improvement: A Community Health Business Model That Engages Partners in All Sectors.” Frontiers of Health Services Management 30(4): 3–20.

Kindig, David, and Gregg Stoddart. 2003. “What is Population Health?” American Journal of Public Health 93:366–389.

Luft, Harold S. 2006. “What Works and What Doesn’t Work Well in the US Healthcare System.”

Pharmacoeconomics 24(Suppl 2): 15–28.

McGinnis, J. Michael, Pamela Williams-Russo, and James R. Knickman. 2002. “The Case for More Active Attention to Health Promotion.” Health Affairs 21(2): 78–93.

PHI (Public Health Institute). 2013. Health in All Policies: A Guide for State and Local Government. PHI, Washington, DC. Raths, David. 2015. “Getting Beyond Encounter-Based Care to Include Social Determinants.” Healthcare Informatics (June 2). http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/blogs /david-raths/getting-beyond-encounter-based-care -include-social-determinants Tompkins, Christopher, Aparna Higgins, Jennifer Perloff, and German Veselovskiy. 2013. “Population Health Management in Medicare Advantage.” Health Affairs (April 2). http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2013/04/02 /population-health-management-in-medicare-advantage/

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

52

BOND REFERENDA IN MAINE AND OTHER STATES

What Bonds Hold?

An Examination of Statewide Bond Referenda in Maine and Other States

by James P. Melcher Since 1990, Maine has held votes on statewide bond referenda than any other state. In this article, James Melcher tackles three main questions: (1) How often do voters approve bond proposals in Maine, and how does this compare to other states? (2) Are some types of bond referenda more likely to pass than others? (3) Does a bond’s placement on the ballot make it more, or less, likely to pass?

Several times a decade, Maine and other states hold a variety of votes on statewide issues. Typically, the initiatives and referenda that draw the most attention are votes on controversial issues such as bear hunting, same-sex marriage, and gun control. But another type of statewide referendum vote, while usually less controversial and little publicized, can have great importance for a state’s finances and its ability to fund a variety of long-range projects: statewide bond referenda. There is no better opportunity for voters to shape how their states spend their tax dollars. These elections have received relatively little attention from the media and from scholars alike.

So, this article will address the following questions: 1. How often do voters approve bond proposals in Maine, and how does this compare to other states?

2. Are some types of bond referenda—say, transportation bonds—more likely to pass than are others?

3. Does the spot on the ballot in which a particular bond appears make it more, or less, likely to pass?

PREVIOUS RESEARCH

T

here has not been much research on statewide bond elections, but related issues have been studied extensively. For instance, there has been extensive research over the past 50 years on local bond elections, especially school bond elections. Edward Muir and Krista Schneider published the most widely cited scholarly

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

article on statewide bond referenda in 1999, which examined statewide bond referenda from 1980 to 1990.

They found that 75 percent of the bonds in that period passed and there appeared to be a trend of increased support for such referenda, which received an average of 56 percent of the vote. Their other findings included decreased support for any given initiative the more such issues appeared on the ballot and that certain types of referenda outperformed others. Bonds supporting health and human services, followed by transportation bonds, received the highest share of the vote, with a whopping 97 percent of health and human services bonds passing. In contrast, bonds for parks and historic preservation, along with bonds for judicial and correctional facilities, fared the worst, with passage rates close to 50 percent. Another study by Leslie McGranahan (1998) covering statewide bond referenda from 1968 to 1998 offers similar findings, both on the overall success rate of bond passage and on the types of bonds that are more likely to win.

Importance of Ballot Order There has not been much research on ballot order and bond elections. The order in which candidates, parties, or issues appear on a ballot may seem trivial to the casual observer. However, fears of being disadvantaged by an unfavorable spot on the ballot, or concerns that election officials did not act properly, have led to many lawsuits in recent years in several states. Although the public might pay little attention to the controversy of ballot order, political scientists have been studying it since the 1920s. Many studies argue that first place on the ballot has a small positive effect on vote share in a 53

BOND REFERENDA IN MAINE AND OTHER STATES

variety of elections, especially in races with large fields, nonpartisan races, or races with high turnout (Chen et al. 2014; Meredith and Salant 2011). Other research claims that the candidates listed last on the ballot may have an advantage similar to that enjoyed by the candidates who are listed first (Koppell and Steen 2004).

Although research on ballot order has not been conducted for statewide bond referenda, research offers some clues about what we might expect. The effects of ballot order are more likely to appear in primary elections than in general elections, in part because voters do not get to separate candidates out by party label in these races (Koppell and Steen 2004). Similarly, nonpartisan races are also more likely to see ballot-order effects (Alvarez, Sinclair, and Hasen 2006). In both primary elections and nonpartisan races, voters are responding to electoral choices in which they lack the information and partisan cues that are available in a more visible race with candidates for president or governor on the ballot. Since bond referenda often do not provide much information for voters and are always nonpartisan, they are exactly the type of race in which ballot-order effects would be relatively likely. Unlike a crowded primary field where voters usually are asked to choose one candidate from a list of many, in state bond referenda voters are usually asked to make one choice after another to approve spending money on a series of bond packages. Just as a parent might finally say “no” to the fourth request by a child for a favor, voters may do likewise and be more likely to say “no” to the bond referenda lower on the ballot.

…bonds already enjoy a broad level of support even before they get on the ballot.

In Maine, initiatives are given higher numbers (e.g., “Issue 1”) than referenda, so bond referenda are always listed on the ballot after initiatives. According to a press release by the Maine Secretary of State’s Office (August 30, 2013), “Maine law…requires the questions to be organized on the ballot by category as follows: people’s veto questions first, then citizen initiatives, followed by bond questions, referendum questions proposed by the Legislature, and finally, resolutions to amend the state Constitution.”

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

Expectations about Maine What should we expect to find about state bond elections in Maine? We would expect, above all, that most bonds would pass. Furthermore, the research on other types of elections would suggest that ballot-order effects would be relatively likely to appear in statewide bond elections. In most cases, these elections are low-visibility races, overshadowed by campaigns up the ticket, and like most nonpartisan elections, they are lower-information races than partisan ones.

Additionally, transportation bonds in Maine have had a reputation as hard to beat (Russell 2013; Goble 2013), so we can expect that will be the case in this study. As a Bangor Daily News (December 18, 2009) editorial noted, “people intuitively understand that commerce relies on strong transportation links; that’s why transportation bond requests almost always win approval at the polls.”

Timing of Bond Referenda Research shows that school bond votes do better when major election choices (president, governor, US senator) are not on the ballot because motivated school supporters turn out even when the big races are not on the ballot. One study found that school bond referenda passed at a rate almost 20 percentage points higher in odd years (when major elections are not on the ballot) than in even years (when major races are more likely on the ballot) (Meredith 2009).

Why Do Bonds Tend to Pass?

Unlike ballot initiatives, which may reflect the position of a vocal minority, Maine state bonds must be approved by a supermajority of both legislative houses, with further authorization needed by the governor in some cases. This suggests that bonds already enjoy a broad level of support even before they get on the ballot. Another key reason for bond success is that backers of a particular bond referendum typically organize and campaign to publicize their cause.

Unlike nearly all other types of elections, however, statewide bond referenda seldom spur organized opposition.

Maine Compared to Other States In the period from 1990 through 2014, Maine held more votes on statewide bonds than any other state.

Why? First, most other states have constitutional hurdles in place as a check on state borrowing and bonding.

54

BOND REFERENDA IN MAINE AND OTHER STATES

These have been common since the Panic of 1837, which left many states unable to pay off bonds that they had issued in large numbers following New York’s success with its bond-supported Erie Canal project. In 1842, Rhode Island became the first state to put limits on state bonding in its constitution (McGranahan 1998).

Additionally, many states use other means besides public approval to limit bonding such as limiting guaranteed debt to a percentage of a certain dollar amount (for example, a percentage of state tax revenue). While current data are difficult to find, as of 1996, only 20 other states featured statewide bond referenda (Kiewiet and Szakaly 1996). Maine has long been a leader in offering a relatively high number of bond referenda.

McGranahan (1998) found that Maine accounted for 20.1 percent of all statewide bond referenda between 1968 and 1988; Maine was a part of a group of five states in that era (which includes California and Rhode Island, two states discuss later in this article) that accounted for almost 80 percent of all state bond referenda.

Another reason for Maine’s large share of statewide bond referenda is that the Maine Constitution sets a relatively low threshold for requiring voter approval for bonds. Maine general obligation bonds that borrow more than $2 million require public approval (except under unusual circumstances). The constitutional limit on Maine state borrowing was raised to $2 million in 1934, and until 1950, the only way Maine could borrow more than that was to amend its Constitution. Several measures that passed in Maine during the first half of the twentieth century that look like modern bond referenda were actually state constitutional amendments.

(Some states—Alabama, for example—still pass bonds by passing a constitutional amendment for each one.)

Concerns about constitutional clutter led to an amendment of Article IX, Section 14 of the Maine State Constitution in 1950. Now, to borrow more than $2 million, a supermajority (two-thirds of both houses) of the legislature (after negotiating the details of the bond packages with the governor) must pass the package, which then goes to approval by voters. A simple majority is required for passage by the voters (Tinkle 2013).

THE STUDY

T

he best state for comparing bond referenda to Maine is Rhode Island, partly because Rhode Island has among the highest number of statewide bond referenda in recent years and because it is the only other

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

New England state that holds bond referenda. I have identified all 379 cases of bond referenda in the United States between 1990 and 2014 and compared the winning percentages of the nation as a whole to Maine and Rhode Island. The question, then, is, Will these two states be typical of the rest of the nation, or will they be outliers not just in how often they vote on bond referenda, but on how they vote on them, too?

This article presents information on bond referenda elections that authorized new spending in Rhode Island and Maine from 1990 to 2014 and basic data about the outcomes of statewide bond elections nationally from that same period. The article also examines the proposition that ballot position may play a role in victory (in particular that being listed first may be advantageous).

Finally, the paper examines whether certain types of bond referenda (particularly transportation bonds) experience greater success than other types of bonds.

Maine has long been a leader in offering a relatively high number of bond referenda.

THE NATIONAL PICTURE

I

compiled every statewide referendum issuing specific bonds from 1990 to 2014, as listed on National Council of State Legislatures’ Ballot Measures Database.1 During that period, 25 states held a total of 379 statewide bond referenda (Table 1).

This average of 79.2 percent represents a slightly higher percentage of victory than in the Muir and Schneider (1999) research, which found that 76 percent of the 319 statewide bond votes passed between 1978 and 1990. (However, they also predicted that based on recent bond referendum success, the rate of bond victory was likely to go up in the future).

Maine and Rhode Island held more bond referenda over this period than any other states (with California in third place). Both Maine and Rhode Island have low thresholds for issuing statewide bonds without voter approval ($2 million and $4 million, respectively), so in 55

BOND REFERENDA IN MAINE AND OTHER STATES Table 1

Success or Failure of Statewide Bond Referenda by State, 1990–2014

State

Win

Lose

Percentage passing

Maine

84

19

81.6

Rhode Island

54

14

79.4

Alabama

7

0

100.0

Alaska

7

0

100.0

Arizona

1

0

100.0

Arkansas

6

0

100.0

California

41

26

61.2

Colorado

1

2

33.3

Hawaii

7

1

87.5

Louisiana

1

0

100.0

Michigan

2

0

100.0

Missouri

3

1

75.0

Nevada New Jersey New York New Mexico

3

0

100.0

12

2

85.7

3

1

75.0

29

5

85.3

North Carolina

5

0

100.0

Ohio

8

2

80.0

Oregon

0

1

0

Pennsylvania

2

0

100.0

Texas

19

2

90.5

Utah

0

1

0

Virginia

2

0

100.0

Washington

1

1

50.0

West Virginia

2

1

66.7

ME/RI

139

32

81.3

Others

162

46

77.9

TOTAL

300

77

79.2

(N=379)

other states a bond may not require a referendum.

Maine and Rhode Island are not necessarily borrowing more money than other states or even more money per capita; rather, they are seeking voter approval more often because they have to do so. In fact, Kiewiet and Szakaly (1996) found that states that require state bond approval take on a smaller percentage of debt than states that borrow money with other procedures.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

California: The Big Outlier in Bond Elections

While Maine and Rhode Island have held more bond referenda over the past 24 years than other states, the percentages of the bonds approved in these two states are close to both each other and the average of the other states, with all three figures clustering around 80 percent. By contrast, the chief outlier among the states with enough cases from which to make inferences is California, which has passed bond referenda at a rate about 20 percentage points lower than the other 25 states. Why? The biggest reason is California’s bond elections commonly have two features not common in other states: bonds that come attached to major policy changes and counterinitiatives, a practice in which “business groups and issue activists increasingly propose alternative initiatives to counter those they oppose” including bonds (Kruse 2001: 142). A good example featuring both phenomena was “Big Green,” a major environmental bond and policy change which gained only 35.7 percent of the vote in a heated, expensive contest in 1990 (Skelton 1990).

Like most states, Maine and Rhode Island place bonds with a limited focus on the ballot. The bonds do not introduce new policies; they simply request money for a particular category of projects. As such, there is relatively little incentive for groups to oppose these votes because they offer either incremental change or money to maintain the status quo. It is unlikely that the California trend of mixing bonds with other policy proposals will be seen in Maine and Rhode Island.

BOND ELECTIONS IN RHODE ISLAND

S

ince 1990, Rhode Island has held elections to authorize 68 different bond proposals for new spending.

Unlike Maine, Rhode Island’s bond referenda are only held during November general elections in even-numbered years, ensuring a relatively high turnout compared to elections held at other times. Like other states, Rhode Island has passed the most proposed bonds: 54 of the 68 bonds in this period passed (79.4 percent). Although this percentage is high, it may understate the current probability of bond passage in the Ocean State because it includes a period in which numerous bonds were defeated. These defeats were most pronounced in 1992 when four of the five bonds on the ballot were defeated; three of those four did not even reach 40 percent support. Across the elections of 1992, 1994, and 1996, eight bonds won and nine were defeated. Since then, 56

BOND REFERENDA IN MAINE AND OTHER STATES

only five statewide bond votes have lost in Rhode Island, with a bond passage record of 39 (wins) to 4 (losses) (90.5 percent). Only one statewide bond has been defeated in Rhode Island since 2006, and that one defeated bond—a $4 million bond to “restore, improve and expand recreational facilities at the Fort Adams State Park in Newport” (Winograd 2006)—received 49.4 percent of the vote.

Why did Rhode Island have such a tough period for bond votes in the early 1990s? First, the national economy soured after 1991. Second, at that time Rhode Island voters had extra cause to be skeptical of new government spending for three reasons: recent government corruption and abuse of power; Rhode Island’s high level of per capita debt; and criticism of bond spending by a prominent business group (Donovan 1994; Jones 1992). Also, in 1990, Rhode Island voters passed the highest amount of debt in bond referenda in the state’s history ($197 million), which may have made voters in the next two elections hesitant to add more (Garland 1996).

BOND ELECTIONS IN MAINE

F

rom 1990 to 2014, Maine held statewide referenda on 103 proposed bonds. Of these, 84 bonds (81.6 percent) won. Unlike Rhode Island, Maine can hold bond elections at any time of year. While many of Maine’s bond referenda are held in November of even-numbered years, they are more common in November general elections in odd-numbered years.

The timing of these elections matters because referendum supporters—who are particularly motivated to show up—are advantaged when elections are held when other voters are less likely to vote. Examples include non-November elections, when primary elections are being held, and in odd-numbered years, when candidates for president and governor are not on the ballot (Anzia 2011).

Presidential election years in Maine, as elsewhere, draw the most voters, followed by gubernatorial general election years, with other election years well behind.

The people who vote in these nongeneral elections differ from those who turn out for more publicized races, which might help bond referenda do better in such races. Following this theory, we would expect that bond referenda in Maine do best in elections without a general election, followed by in November elections when there is no general election for president or

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

governor, then by gubernatorial general elections, and finally presidential election years. Table 2 shows that this tends to be in the case.

Since 1989, Rhode Island has only held statewide bond referenda in November general elections in even-numbered years (Garland 1996), but the pattern is similar to Maine’s: a slightly higher level of success for gubernatorial year votes (27–5, 84.4 percent) than for presidential year votes (28–8, 77.8 percent). Table 3 adds Rhode Island bond numbers to Table 2.

So while bond elections held at any time are likely to succeed, they win more often as turnout goes down from higher-participation elections to lower ones.

Winning Bond Issues Maine shows similar patterns in its statewide bond elections to Rhode Island. In both states, most types of bonds have a high winning percentage and a high average percentage of the vote. Table 4 presents bonds divided into several basic types and listed in descending Success of Maine Bond Referenda

by Month and Type of Election Year, 1990–2014 Table 2:

Won–lost

Percentage winning

November, presidential election year

10–5 (N=15)

66.7

November, gubernatorial election year

20–8 (N=28)

71.4

November, neither

39–7 (N=46)

84.8

January or June

15–0 (N=15)

100.0

Month

Table 3:

Success of Bond Referenda in Maine and Rhode Island by Month and Type of Election Year

Won–lost

Percentage winning

November, presidential election year

38–13 (N=51)

74.5

November, gubernatorial election year

47–13 (N=60)

78.3

November, neither

39–7 (N=46)

84.8

January or June

15–0 (N=15)

100.0

Month

57

BOND REFERENDA IN MAINE AND OTHER STATES

Maine and Rhode Island Statewide

Bond Referenda Outcomes by Type, 1990–2014 Table 4:

Bond type

Number

Mean percentage of vote

Won–lost (%)

Natural resources Maine

34

28–6

(82.4)

58.4

Rhode Island

15

13–2

(86.7)

64.6

Total

49

41–8 (83.7)

60.3

18

15–3

63.3

Transportation Maine

(80.0)

Rhode Island

13

13–0 (100.0)

64.6

Total

31

28–3 (90.3)

63.9

Maine

20

16–4

(80.0)

55.4

Rhode Island

15

15–0 (100.0)

59.6

Total

35

31–4

(88.6)

57.2

Education

Economic development Maine Rhode Island Total

18

16–2

(88.9)

55.3

5

3–2

(60.0)

52.4

23

19–4

(82.6)

54.9

8

3–5

(37.5)

46.8

5

1–4

(20.0)

41.1

8

3–5

(37.5)

49.8

11

4–9

(30.8)

47.5

Arts/historical Rhode Island State facilities Maine Rhode Island Total Health Maine

6

6–0 (100.0)

57.8

Rhode Island

1

1–0 (100.0)

66.0

Total

7

7–0 (100.0)

58.1

3

3–0 (100.0)

56.3

2

2–0 (100.0)

59.1

Public housing* Rhode Island Agriculture Maine

* The public housing category includes one bond referendum in Rhode Island, which would have supported funding for both public housing and state land acquisition.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

order of frequency: natural resources (purchase of public lands, environmental protection, water quality); transportation; education; economic development; arts and history (such as historic preservation projects for historic buildings); state facilities (such as rehabbing current state office buildings, prison construction, personnel training); health (such as state support for construction at medical research facilities); public housing; and agriculture.

Table 4 shows just how well most types of bond referenda did at the polls, but at the same time confirms Muir and Schneider’s (1999) observation that voters are sensitive to the type of bond they are approving. Work on state buildings, for example, proved unpopular in both states. In the 1990s, each state soundly rejected bonds that would have renovated state buildings to bring them into compliance with Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) regulations.

Additionally, votes for building at correctional facilities also fared badly.

Transportation Bonds Transportation bonds have a reputation as being the most bulletproof bonds in Maine. Transportation bonds in Maine and Rhode Island were victorious 90 percent of the time and had the highest average percentage of the vote (63.9 percent). Yet, Table 4 shows that other categories of bonds also perform well (education, natural resources, economic development, and health).

Why is this? First, nearly all bonds perform well under normal circumstances, so it is hard for one type to appear distinctively successful when the overall average success rate hovers around 80 percent. The case of the three failed transportation bonds, however, is a good example of the proposition that voters support bonds in which they can see a personal benefit and may not support them if they do not see a personal benefit.

An editorial in the Westerly Sun (October 30, 2014) written just before the election noted this tendency in Rhode Island:

However, even though the last zoo bond easily passed eight years ago, the record has shown that standalone projects are more vulnerable to voter rejection than bonds that cast a wider net. In the last 10 general elections since 1994, the voters have approved 41 of the 52 bond issues….Those that have failed were most often individual buildings or projects like the 2000 election’s Heritage Harbor Museum bonds for Providence. The last 58

BOND REFERENDA IN MAINE AND OTHER STATES

bond to be voted down in Rhode Island was in 2006, $4 million for renovations at Fort Adams State Park.

Presumably, what most voters want out of transportation bonds is better roads that they can use. Voters may not see transportation projects intended chiefly for business use or facilities for the state transportation department as directly beneficial to them. All three transportation bonds that failed in Maine since 1990 were these sorts of bonds. The losing bonds (in November 1992 and 1994) dealt with matters such as port facilities (rejected twice), removing oil tanks and building salt and sand facilities for the Maine Department of Transportation, and restoring freight rail service in three Maine counties. Some of these bonds also had other obstacles. The failed 1994 bond, at $21.3 million, was the most expensive on the ballot. The two transportation bonds that failed in 1992, however, were the two cheapest bonds on the ballot out of six, while the most expensive (a $42 million bond issue “to create and protect jobs through capital improvements in transportation facilities”) passed. The single worst bond issue performance at the ballot box in either state was the 1992 transportation bond to repair and improve municipal port facilities, with barely one voter in four (25.4 percent) backing it. Of course, the early 1990s were an exceptionally difficult time to get any bonds passed in Rhode Island or Maine. Transportation bonds normally win, but particularly if they offer motorists the promise of better roads.

Even with roads, however, when voters perceive a measure as benefitting only one relatively sparsely populated part of the state, the bond can fail. An example from the late 1960s and early 1970s is instructive. Two measures designed to improve Maine Route 6, a two-lane state highway that stretches across Maine from Vanceboro to the Quebec border north of Jackman, failed. According to the Milo Town Crier (August 31, 1967), supporters hoped that an upgraded Route 6 would attract international through-traffic from Canada and spur economic development along its corridor. In a letter to the editor of the same paper, Ronald “Tinker” Richards (Town Crier, August 31, 1967) anticipated the opposition a project directly benefitting only part of the state can receive. His directed his critique at the Maine State Jaycees, who voted to support all of the 1967 bond referenda except the one for Route 6, which travels through Milo, but his plea is one that could be echoed by many other referenda with a local benefit: MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

As an ex-President of the Milo Jaycees, I would like to apologize for the action of the State Jaycees who voted to support all questions on the up-coming referendum except the one concerning the repair of Route 6. The majority of the State Jaycee membership is consolidated in Southern and urban areas of the state…. It would seem that they are not interested in the improvement of any part of the state other than their own.…It is a shame if the Maine Jaycees begrudge the central area of the state $3,000,000 for “improving hazardous conditions on Route 6” which cuts from east to west right through the center of the state….This particular area needs the boost that a good highway would provide. In this state we have got to learn to share. If only those with children in school voted for money for education, if only those who fly voted for airport money, if only Bangor residents voted money for the retarded center and only Lewiston-Auburn voted for their bridge, it is highly unlikely that anybody would get anything. I wonder if the Maine Jaycees have thought about that.

The 1967 referendum, which would have spent $3 million on improvements to Route 6, failed, getting The November 2016 election brought many changes to Maine—legalization of marijuana, ranked-choice voting, Maine’s first electoral vote split since it adopted the district plan in 1969, and the first Republican electoral vote from the Pine Tree state since 1988. One thing did not change, however: a transportation bond referendum won in a landslide. Issue 6 was the only bond issue on Maine’s 2016 ballot, and it called for $100 million to support transportation in the state. As usual, no major organized opposition arose for the transportation bond, unlike most initiative proposals on the ballot. The bond referendum outperformed all five initiatives, receiving 61.2 percent of the vote and carrying all 16 Maine counties. Even Piscataquis County, which voted “no” on all five initiatives, gave Issue 6 a slender victory with 51 percent of the vote. Looking down the road, there’s no reason to expect that Maine voters will put up a stop sign anytime soon in transportation bond votes.3

59

BOND REFERENDA IN MAINE AND OTHER STATES

only 44.1 percent of the vote. Three years later, backers of a $30 million proposal for Route 6 experienced one of the worst electoral defeats in Maine bond history when the bond garnered only 28.5 percent of the vote.2 In the same era, bonds for other narrowly defined transportation projects also failed: bridge and causeways for Chebeague Island (1963), dock facilities on Matinicus Island (1969), airport improvements at the AuburnLewiston and Oxford County airports (1972), and a proposed toll bridge between Waterville and Winslow (1972). A bridge project connecting Lewiston and Auburn lost in both 1951 and 1967, before finally passing in 1968 (http://legislature.maine.gov/9198/).

Since 1972, most transportation bonds have funded projects statewide and have had a high degree of success.

be known as Issue 4, but, it is coded here as position “1” because that is where it is on the bond list. Table 5 examines the won–lost record and winning percentage of bond referenda by ballot position in both states.

The first three ballot positions are relatively similar in voter support. Additional choices generally and gradually lose a small amount of success and vote share as voters go down the ballot. However, these data do not show a clear cut-off point after which voter support drops sharply. Muir and Schneider (1999) argued that the more statewide bonds voters have to choose from, the lower the chance that any of them would win, and the findings from my analysis are consistent with that.

However, it is possible for bonds to win from any position on the ballot relative to other bonds, even in a crowded field. In 2004, when Rhode Island voters faced choices on 12 bonds, they approved all but two of them.

On the other hand, there were cases in which the lone bond referendum on the ballot lost. It is not clear that voters are more cautious about voting for referenda simply because there are a high number of them.

Effect of Ballot Positions I coded each bond according to where it appeared on the list of bonds—which is not necessarily the number it appeared under on the ballot. For example, the first bond listed on the ballot might come after three initiatives and

Narrowly Focused Bonds Table 5:

Position among bonds

Bond Ballot Position in Maine and Rhode Island, 1990–2014, with Winning Percentage and Average Vote Share

Won–lost and winning percentage (%)

Average percentage of vote

Maine

Rhode Island

Total

Maine

Rhode Island

1

25–3 (89.3)

13–0 (100.0)

38–3 (92.7)

58.4

63.4

2

22–2 (91.7)

11–2

(84.7)

33–4 (89.2)

57.4

61.5

3

15–3 (83.3)

10–2

(83.3)

25–5 (83.3)

60.5

58.6

4

12–2 (85.7)

4–5

(44.4)

16–7 (69.6)

57.3

53.3

5

4–5 (44.4)

6–2 (750.0)

10–7 (58.8)

54.9

56.6

6

4–2 (66.7)

3–1 (750.0)

7–3 (70.0)

49.6

59.1

7

2–1 (66.7)

2–1 (100.0)

4–2 (66.7)

55.5

48.6

8

0–1

(0.0)

2–0

(66.7)

2–1 (66.7)

48.9

57.0

No cases

3–1

(75.0)

3–1 (75.0)

—

52.8

9–12*

*There was only one year in the data set in which either state had a bond election with more than eight bond issues on the ballot: Rhode Island (November 2004), which had 12. As all of these come from one year, and the number of cases is so small, I have combined 9–12 in this table.

Two-state average, positions 1–5: 58.3 percent of the vote Two -state average, positions 6–12: 52.8 percent of the vote

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

As we have seen, voters look skeptically on bonds that seem to benefit only one narrow place or interest. The story of Issue 4 in Maine’s 2014 election (which won 62.7 percent of the vote) shows, however, that it is possible to win a statewide bond referendum that directly benefits only one location if the backers of the referendum can show how it will benefit others.

Issue 4 asked the following: “Do you favor a $10,000,000 bond issue, to be awarded through a competitive process and to be matched by $11,000,000 in private and other funds, to build a research center and to discover genetic solutions for cancer and the diseases of aging, to promote job growth and private sector investment in this State, to attract and retain young professionals and make the State a 60

BOND REFERENDA IN MAINE AND OTHER STATES

global leader in genomic medicine?” As Issue 4 shows, bond proponents in Maine have become more aware of the politics of wording proposals more persuasively.

Compare the Issue 4 of 2014 to the dry (typical for the era) wording of the ill-fated Maine Route 6 bond in 1970: “Shall a bond issue be ratified for the purposes set forth in ‘An Act Providing for a Bond Issue in the Amount of Thirty Million Dollars to Reconstruct Route 6,’ passed by the 104th Legislature?”

The key point is that the direct beneficiary of the 2014 referendum was a single entity in a single location.

While the language of the bond mentioned a “competitive process,” it was widely understood that only one facility had the ability to compete for this funding: the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor (Bell 2014).

Commentary on the issue generally assumed or explicitly stated this (see, for example, Bell 2014; Connors 2014; Levin 2014). In fact, the chief website advocating for Issue 4 was hosted by Jackson Laboratory, featured pictures of Jackson Laboratory, and under the category of “About Us,” discussed exclusively the work of Jackson Laboratory.

At $10 million, Issue 4 was tied for the most expensive with a bond for protection of drinking water that year. Yet, only the drinking water bond did better at the polls, with both getting well over 60 percent of the vote.

The success of Issue 4 shows a path to victory for bonds directly benefitting only one location: emphasize how the bond will help on matters that voters statewide care about (cancer and jobs) more than the specific mechanics of the proposal.

CONCLUSIONS

S

tatewide bond referenda around the country succeed the vast majority of the time. Maine’s rate fits broadly into the national figures and is similar to Rhode Island’s, with about four out of five bonds passing. Since the mid-1990s, Maine and Rhode Island bond referenda have enjoyed an even higher rate of success. The era of relatively high rates of failure in the early 1990s seems to suggest that voter mood and the condition of a state’s economy could be as significant as other factors (such as the type of project under consideration) in bond success.

Certain types of bonds, including transportation bonds, perform better than bonds for other subjects. More often than not, the bonds pass at the polls, and we can often tell when they are likely not to do so. -

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

ENDNOTES 1 National Council of State Legislatures’ Ballot Measures Database is available at http://www.ncsl.org/research /elections-and-campaigns/ballot-measures-database .aspx 2 Information about the Route 6 referenda can be found on the Ballotpedia website: “Maine State Route 6 Reconstruction, Referendum Question No. 1 (1967).” https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_State_Route_6 _Reconstruction,_Referendum_Question_No._1_(1967) 3 “Maine State Route 6 Reconstruction, Referendum Question No. 1 (1970).” https://ballotpedia.org/Maine _State_Route_6_Reconstruction,_Referendum_Question _No._1_(1970) 4 Election results for 2016 drawn from “November 8, 2016—Referendum Election”, spreadsheet of election results from the Maine Department of State.

REFERENCES Alvarez, R. Michael, Betsy Sinclair, and Richard L. Hasen.

2006. “How Much Is Enough? The ‘Ballot Order Effect’ and the Use of Social Science Research in Election Law Disputes.” Election Law Journal 5(1): 40–56.

Anzia, Sarah F. 2011. “Election Timing and the Electoral Influence of Interest Groups.” The Journal of Politics 73(2): 412–427.

Bell, Tom. 2014. “Jackson Lab Expansion Plan Gets Boost from Question 4.” Portland Press Herald (November 5). http://www.pressherald.com/2014/11/05/jackson-labs -expansion-plan-gets-big-boost-from-question-4/ Chen, Eric, Gábor Simonovits, Jon A. Krosnick, and Josh Pasek. 2014. “The Impact of Candidate Name Order on Election Outcomes in North Dakota.” Electoral Studies 35(September): 115–122.

Connors, Dana. 2014. “Vote Yes on 4—Fight Cancer and Create Jobs.” Press Release Maine Chamber of Commerce. http://www.mainechamber.org/documents /pressreleases/2014-10-06_Press_Release_OpEd_14 _Bonds_Jackson_Lab.pdf Donovan, William J. 1994. “State Largely Ignores Voter Disquiet Over Big Projects.” Providence Journal (April 24): F-1.

Garland, Russell. 1996. “Voters to Decide $254 Million in Bond Issues.” Providence Journal–Bulletin (October 3): A-01.

Goble, Keith. 2013. “Election 2013: Maine Voters Approve $100 Million Transportation Bond.” Land Line Mag. com: The Business Magazine for Professional Truckers (November 6). http://www.landlinemag.com/Election /Story.aspx?StoryID=26153

61

BOND REFERENDA IN MAINE AND OTHER STATES

Jones, Brian. 1992. “Business Group Asks for Prudence on Referenda Votes.” Providence Journal (October 26): A-3.

Kiewiet, D. Roderick, and Kristin Szakaly. 1996.

“Constitutional Limitations on Borrowing: An Analysis of State Bonded Indebtedness.” Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 12(1): 62–97.

Koppell, Jonathan G.S., and Jennifer A. Steen. 2004.

“The Effects of Ballot Position on Election Outcomes.”

Journal of Politics 66(1): 267–281.

Kruse, Becky. 2001. “The Truth in Masquerade: Regulating False Ballot Proposition Ads through State Anti-False Speech Statutes.” California Law Review 89(1): 129–181. http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/californialawreview /vol89/iss1/3 Levin, Robert. 2014. “Bonds Would Aid Area Labs.” Mount Desert Islander (October 30). http://www.mdislander. com/maine-news/health-news/bonds-aid-area-labs

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to acknowledge the assistance of my student and research assistant Joseph Pepin. All errors and omissions are solely my responsibility. An earlier version of this article was presented as an unpublished paper at the 2015 New England Political Science Association Convention.

James P. Melcher is a professor of political science at the University of Maine at Farmington, where he has won awards for teaching and advising and taught courses in American politics since 1999. He has presented his scholarship in national and regional journals and conferences.

McGranahan, Leslie. 1998. “Voter Preferences for Capital and Debt Spending: Evidence from State Debt Referenda.” Proceedings of the Annual Conference on Taxation and Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the National Tax Association 91:115–124.

Meredith, Marc. 2009. “The Strategic Timing of Direct Democracy.” Economics and Politics 21(1): 159–177.

Meredith, Marc, and Yuval Salant. 2011. “On the Causes and Consequences of Ballot Order Effects.” Political Behavior 35(1): 175–197.

Muir, Edward, and Krista Schneider. 1999. “State Initiatives and Referenda on Bonds: A Comparative Analysis of One Solution for the School Infrastructure Crisis.”

Journal of Education Finance 24(4): 415–433.

Russell, Eric. 2013. “Large Maine Transportation Bond Has History on Its Side.” Portland Press Herald (October 29). http://www.pressherald.com/2013/10/29/_100_million _transportation_bond_the_largest_of_five_bond _questions_on_ballot_/ Skelton, George. 1990. “The Times Poll: Voters Split Evenly Over ‘Big Green’.” Los Angeles Times (October 27). http://articles.latimes.com/1990-10-27/news/mn-2869 _1_times-poll Tinkle, Marshall J. 2013. The Maine State Constitution, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, New York.

Winograd, Max. 2006. “Rhode Islanders to Vote on Nine Ballot Questions Today.” The Brown Daily Herald (December 6) (updated version). http://www .browndailyherald.com/2006/12/08/rhode-islanders-to -vote-on-nine-ballot-questions-today/

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

62

THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

C O M M E N T A R Y

Why Did No One See this Coming? How Did It Happen? The 2016 Presidential Election

by L. Sandy Maisel

T

he 2016 presidential election was humbling for everyone—except for Donald J. Trump. Nearly everyone had it wrong. Most pollsters had it wrong.

The pundits had it wrong. The media had it wrong. Hillary Clinton’s vaunted analytical team had it wrong. Donald Trump’s advisors had it wrong. No one— except for Donald Trump—thought that Donald Trump would emerge early in the morning of November 9 as president-elect.1 In this commentary, I will explore why Donald Trump won, why so few analysts predicted that victory, and what the Trump presidency might mean for policy in the years ahead. But I start with a caveat. I was one of those people who had it wrong. I underestimated Donald Trump during the Republican primaries.

I underestimated him in the general election. I did not see his appeal. I think I know why—but—caveat lector.

HOW DID EVERYONE GET IT WRONG?

T

he nation’s pollsters are all reassessing their craft. For some time, pollsters have been concerned about nonresponse rates. Who answers pollsters’ questions? Who does not? Are the two groups systematically different?

Pollsters know that response rates are different on telephone polls that are directly dialed from those on robo calls. They know that internet polls have well-understood strengths and weaknesses. Pollsters have not missed election predictions this badly in the

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

era of modern, scientific polling, so the profession is concerned about whether their respondents represent the electorate accurately.

Part of that concern deals with how they weight their samples. Every pollster knows that, given those who answer their questions, they still must judge who will vote and who will not. They ask filtering questions, to be sure, but they also make assumptions about the final turnout. Donald Trump objected to these assumptions when he questioned pollsters’ choosing which respondents to count. He may have been right.

At one point during the campaign Nate Cohn of the New York Times gave the raw data from a Times poll to four reputable professional pollsters, asking them to interpret the results. The pollsters’ predictions based on the same data differed, and they differed by more than a percentage point or two. The difference was in assumptions about how many African Americans, Latinos, or women, for example, would turn out to vote. Cohn and other poll aggregators made their judgments based on examining all the polls (and their own opinions of the quality of individual polls).

They were concerned because of the variation in the polls, variation based on differing assumptions about turnout.

Near the end, however, the polls came together, and that gave everyone confidence.

Wrong. The coalescence of the polls may well have been due to groupthink.

Pollsters found a common ground, none wanting to be too far away from the

average, but, in fact, they were all off. To be sure, they were within the margin of error of the national popular vote. But we elect our president on the basis of electoral votes won in the states. Pollsters were far off in key states because they all misjudged the turnout among working class white males who took their anger and frustration with governmental policies and turned them into votes for the outsider, Donald Trump.

Groupthink, the need for conformity with a group’s consensus that can lead to irrational decisions, has long been a problem in politics (as in other fields). In 2016, the malady reached new proportions. Pollsters may have succumbed to it. Journalists and pundits almost certainly succumbed to it. The Clinton victory seemed inevitable, so it must be inevitable. The pollsters said so, and thus the aggregators said so. Even though Nate Silver of 538 said that there was a 30 percent chance of a Trump victory, that still meant that Hillary was a two to one favorite to win; Upshot had her odds at 84 percent; Huffpollster at 98 percent. Who wouldn’t bet on those odds? And if the aggregators had her that likely to win, why should the media question that conclusion?

Media groupthink was exacerbated by groupthink among the electorate.

Those who favored Secretary Clinton, who thought Mr. Trump did not have the qualifications to be president, who were repulsed by what they saw as divisive appeals during his campaign talked only to those who agreed with their views. They did not know the people who were flocking to the Trump rallies.

They did not read the same newspapers, watch the same television news (or television shows), or go to the same movies.

They lived in another reality—and nothing in their world told them to reassess what they believed. That is classic

63

THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

C O M M E N T A R Y groupthink—stereotyping the opposition as inferior and not reassessing assumptions—and it led to so many of us being wrong.

So on Tuesday, November 8, we waited for the inevitable—for the first woman to be elected president—except for Donald Trump who heard a different beat.

WHY DID TRUMP WIN?

N

ow we get to the blame game. At least for the Clinton camp.

Here is what we know. First, Hillary Clinton did not hold the Obama coalition together strongly enough. African Americans supported her, but by 5 percentage points less (88 percent as opposed to 93 percent) than they had President Obama. In addition, fewer African Americans turned out, especially in urban centers of the Rust Belt. No surprise really. President Obama was the first African American candidate with a major party nomination for president; while he and the First Lady Michelle Obama passionately urged their backers to support his chosen successor, Clinton was not Obama. Similarly, Latinos supported Clinton in about the same percentage as they had Obama—and their turnout was about the same. But these numbers also did not meet expectations. Given candidate Trump’s rhetoric and the growth in the Latino population, the thought was that Clinton would win a higher percentage of these voters, and the absolute number, in places like Florida, would be higher. Wrong again.

Second, college-educated women did not turn out to vote for Hillary Clinton in the numbers that had been anticipated. In fact, she won the women’s vote by only 1 percent more than Obama had four years earlier, hardly a resounding win over a candidate dubbed

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

misogynistic. Why was this the case?

Most of us refused to face the fact that Hillary Clinton was a very unpopular candidate. In early polling, college-educated women were supporting her over Donald Trump, not because they were ardent Clinton supporters, but because they deemed him worse. We heard repeatedly that these were the two least popular candidates ever to run against each other for president. We knew that some people liked Trump, some liked Clinton, and many liked neither. We did not hear much about how those who disliked both were making their decisions. The assumption was that women (and Latinos) would vote for Clinton— and that Trump could not overcome those losses.

Why did this result not eventuate?

Two reasons. First, Secretary Clinton came to this campaign with baggage, and she never dealt with it. The email scandal never went away. The sense that she felt she should be treated differently never went away. Her campaign was blind to the optics of the Goldman Sachs speeches, of Bill Clinton’s airport visit with Attorney General Lynch, of how much she was viewed as part of the establishment elite that placed itself above every day citizens. Second, I believe that FBI Director James Comey’s October surprise—his announcement nine days before the election that the FBI was looking into emails found on Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s computer— reminded many of the women on whom Clinton was counting about all of these factors, about what they disliked about her. And these college-educated, suburban voters returned to their normal preference, voting for the Republican they did not like more than the Democrat they did not like. To be sure, Clinton still won among these voters, but not by as much as was predicted.

Third, working-class white males (an inexact term used to describe male voters in the exurbs of Midwestern cities) voted in higher numbers and against the Democrat in higher numbers than anyone predicted. Why? I think the reasons are complex. We cannot ignore a certain amount of basic sexism. It is hard to deny that Secretary Clinton was treated differently as a candidate because she is a woman. For some, the historic nature of her candidacy was a plus. But clearly for some, maybe especially those who work in a male-dominated environment and who have not been used to women in positions of authority, her gender was a problem—and they responded to questions about her stamina, her health, her ability to lead in a forceful way.

More specifically, these are citizens who have not benefited from globalization, whose jobs were put in jeopardy by NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) (which they associate with Clinton), but most importantly, who did not feel that the Democratic Party or Secretary Clinton cared about them. The Democratic Party took them for granted, and Donald Trump did not. Party leaders assumed that these voters knew that the Democrats were the party of working people, but the voters’ experiences were different. Donald Trump campaigned in their small towns and neighborhoods. Secretary Clinton and the news media flew right over them, never stopping to hear what they were thinking. Worst of all, Secretary Clinton lumped them with extremist Trump supporters as “deplorables.” In these voters’ minds, they are not deplorable; they are hardworking people trying to make ends meet in a difficult time who saw the party they had supported ignore them. If an inclusive Democratic Party ignored them, they were willing to be

64

THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

C O M M E N T A R Y excluded. Bernie Sanders understood this feeling of dissatisfaction during the primary season, but the Clinton campaign never crafted a message that included those who were suffering economically as well as those who suffered because of years of systemic exclusion.

We also know that Secretary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes. Wow! More than many Electoral College winners, including John Kennedy. But we also know that she won California and New York by a combined 5 million votes—and lost the rest of the country by about 2.1 million.

If nothing else, that should tell us something about how different those two states—the headquarters of every major media outlet in the nation—are from the rest of the country. When one adds that Secretary Clinton won over 92 percent of the vote in the District of Columbia, the division becomes clearer.

For citizens living in a wide swath of the country, Secretary Clinton was a very bad candidate, the wrong person for the wrong time.

WHAT DOES THIS ELECTION MEAN FOR THE FUTURE?

R

emember, reader beware! Many ardent liberals feel that the end is near. Everything that they have fought for—rights for minorities, peace, or the environment, for example—is lost. They are protesting (“Not my president”), signing petitions, and bemoaning every signal (for example, the appointment of Steve Bannon as chief strategist) that the Trump presidency will be as bad as they anticipated.

I understand those feelings and share many of them. To be sure, the years ahead will be ones in which we who share those feelings must look out

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

for each other, speak clearly when rights are being violated, and continue to fight battles we have fought for many years.

But in American politics, battles that have been won must always be re-won, no victory is forever, and vigilance is always needed.

I also am the ultimate believer in the American system of government. For the last eight years, liberals have been restrained and have had to accept partial victories because the system favors moving slowly and gives those who favor the status quo many opportunities to oppose change. Now those seeking to roll back the progress on civil rights, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) rights, the environment, and other issues will be thwarted in their efforts. That is not a positive sign for liberals, but it signals a strategy moving forward. As President Obama said after his initial meeting in the Oval Office with President-elect Trump, Donald Trump is a pragmatist, not an ideologue. To be sure, his rhetoric flamed the worst passions of ideologues of the far right, and I think we have a legitimate concern about the image of America portrayed in off-the-cuff comments by our elected president. But that does not mean all of his supporters share those views—they do not—nor does it mean that he will govern from that perspective. In the years ahead, the job of those who opposed his candidacy is to support him when he moves to the center and oppose him when he leans in the direction of those supporters. The system is designed to help in that strategy.

Finally, we must learn the right lessons from this campaign. In my mind, the key lesson is to listen to voters throughout the nation, to understand the impact of economic inequality on voters everywhere in America, and to find common ground where we are now

divided. To me, patriots are those who believe in American progress and the American promise for all people, not just those with whom we are immediately concerned. Defining greatness in those inclusive terms, not in retrogressive, divisive terms, is the challenge of the coming years. ENDNOTES 1 To be fair, political scientists who based their predictions on factors known before the two parties’ nominations— and who did not change their prediction—foresaw a Republican win. Also American University historian Allan Lichtman made his ninth straight accurate prediction based on 13 true/false questions answered months before the election. See https://www .washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix /wp/2016/10/28/professor-whos -predicted-30-years-of-presidential -elections-correctly-is-doubling -down-on-a-trump-win/?utm _term=.5ed2b92263b9

L. Sandy Maisel is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Colby College, where he has taught since 1971. He was the founding director of Colby’s Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement, chaired the Government Department for more than two decades, and is the author or editor of more than 20 books and scores of articles on American electoral politics, including the recently published American Political Parties and Elections: A Very Short Introduction

(Oxford University Press 2016).

65

FINANCIAL LITERACY EDUCATION

C O M M E N T A R Y

Tying the Knot: The Importance of Financial Literacy Education in Maine

by David M. Leach

D

id your parents announce that you could not go to kindergarten until you learned to tie your shoes? Mine certainly did. I remember it vividly because I could not tie my shoes, and the first day of school was only about a month away.

I grew up in a subdivision in the central Maine city of Hallowell, filled with modest homes, well-kept yards, and teeming with (baby boomer) kids. Being born in 1959, I was on the tail end of the baby boom, and most of the neighborhood kids were already attending the local elementary school. I certainly did not want to spend an extra year at home, missing all the excitement happening at that single-story brick school.

The shoe-tying lessons intensified: first my mother, then my father, then both of them. Frustration. Then sometime in the late summer of 1964, I was finally able to tie my shoes independently, earning the right to get on that yellow school bus and head off to kindergarten in September.

EARLY LESSONS

B

ecause my parents grew up during the Great Depression and World War II, the shoe-tying tribulations were only the beginning of the trial-anderror lessons they patiently taught me.

Throughout elementary and junior high school, my parents helped me with my spelling, reading, mathematics, science, and writing assignments and were always there to answer my numerous questions.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

At the age of 16, I got my first fulltime summer job at a local wholesale distribution warehouse. At 40 hours a week and $2.50 an hour, I felt like a millionaire when I got my first paycheck.

Now life’s lessons went from math and science to personal money management.

I suddenly had money in my bank account, and my parents were not going to let me spend it as fast as I made it. My parents led by example and by words in the area of personal finance.

To say I was fortunate to be the son of Phillip and Patricia Leach is a great understatement. They had carved out a successful middle-class existence in central Maine. Shortly after completing four years with the US Coast Guard in WWII, my father was hired by New England Telephone He worked there and rose through the ranks until he was able to retire at the age of 52. My mother created and ran her own successful business. They never had, nor wanted, any loans. My mother would say, “The object is to earn interest on your money, not pay it out!”

My father built our family home in Hallowell stick by stick, one lumber truck delivery at a time, and with no credit. “Cash on the barrelhead,” he explained. We had a new car every four years or so, which was also paid for in cash. Dad would say to me, “Well, you have to pay for the car anyway. Why take out a loan and pay more in interest?

Save up until you can afford to own it free and clear, and you’ll be further ahead in the long run.”

JOB OPPORTUNITY

I

had been working in a bank handling credit and collections for two years when I spotted a job opening with the Maine Bureau of Banking for a consumer outreach position. The job sounded interesting. I could take what I had learned from parents, my four years at the University of Maine, and my banking background, and create a dynamic consumer outreach program for Maine’s citizens. And I could do it from scratch because it was a brand-new position, one that the Maine Legislature felt was important based on changes to the banking industry that were occurring in the mid-1980s.

Banking Superintendent H. Donald DeMatteis, still the longest-serving bank superintendent in the 189-year history of bank regulation in Maine, was my first boss. Fortunately, he shared my vision about the importance of consumer outreach and education. Current US Senator Susan M. Collins was our commissioner at the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, and John McKernan was the governor.

All three of those individuals understood the importance of a well-run financial literacy program offered by Maine’s banking regulatory agency.

ESTABLISHING THE OUTREACH PROGRAM

D

uring my time with the bureau (now called the Bureau of Financial Institutions), I had the opportunity to write two booklets—one about home mortgages and the other designed to help Maine merchants better understand commercial banking products. By far the most important publication I worked on during my bank regulatory

66

FINANCIAL LITERACY EDUCATION

C O M M E N T A R Y years, however, was A Student’s Guide to Banking and Personal Money Management, released in 1989. The guide was a how-to manual for Maine high school and college students on a variety of topics including checking and savings accounts, bank CDs, credit, and loans, along with personal money management and budgeting tips.

The booklet won a national award from the American Library Association, and we supplemented its release with several videos produced with the help of the Maine Photographic Services, as well as a statewide high school–speaking tour each year. The bureau also formed an effective, low-cost financial literacy program, and we spoke to students all over Maine. Over 90 percent of Maine high schools were using the free booklet and our financial literacy outreach program in the early 1990s. It was satisfying to see the recognition in the students’ eyes when I told them my reallife stories about buying a car, using credit cards, and saving and investing for

the future. But like many good things, this program came to an end as administrations changed in the early 1990s.

CONTINUING THE PROGRAM

I

was working on a master of public administration degree at the UMaine when I was offered a job in the Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection—the regulator of mortgage companies and other nonbank consumer financial services. I knew the superintendent, Will Lund, and believed that he, like Don DeMatteis, was a strong supporter of state-based consumer literacy education. In addition, I knew the agency had published many consumer information pamphlets in the late 1980s on topics such as debt collection, repossession, and credit reporting, and that those booklets were due for major makeovers.

For the past 15 years, I have been working to improve financial literacy on the topics of consumer credit and other areas of financial protection and to

create a new library of credit-related consumer guides. One of our primary jobs at the bureau is to disseminate information on credit matters to help Mainers make responsible borrowing decisions. To accomplish that mission over the past eight years, we have written 11 entirely new Downeaster Consumer Guides on a wide variety of topics: credit cards, debt collection, auto buying and financing, credit reports and scores, home buying and financing, consumer scams, student loans, consumer credit, elder financial protection, and high-interest loans. All publications are available free of charge to Maine consumers.1 I have coauthored these booklets with a series of summer interns from the Maine Government Summer Internship Program, administered by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. All other employees of the bureau assist in the effort, from editing to producing the graphs and charts, which results in substantive, professional content and style. We

Maine Government Summer Internship Program

Recent Interns and Their Projects

Established in 1967 by the 103rd Legislature, the Maine Government Summer Internship Program places talented college students in internship positions where they can contribute to state and local government and gain meaningful work experience.

2016: Kyrie Johnson, Farmingdale, ME, Wheaton College — Created and managed two new consumer booklets: Downeaster Common Sense Guide to High Interest/High Cost Loans, and Downeaster Common Sense Guide: On the Money, a Young Person’s Guide to Financial Success.

The program is a full-time, paid work experience, and interns are considered temporary unclassified state employees. Most interns are placed in the Augusta area though some positions require travel.

2015: Arianna Castonguay, Augusta, ME, University of Maine, Economics — Cowrote a consumer’s booklet about debt collection and the laws relating to it.

To be eligible for the Maine Government Summer Internship Program, a student must currently be enrolled in a Maine college, or be a Maine resident enrolled elsewhere, and have successfully completed a minimum of two years of college. Students currently graduating from undergraduate and graduate programs also are eligible.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

2014: Abigail Pratico, Falmouth, ME, University of Maine, Political Science and Psychology — Coauthored two booklets: Downeaster Guide to Credit Bureaus and Credit Reports and Downeaster Common Sense Guide to Auto Buying and Financing.

67

FINANCIAL LITERACY EDUCATION

C O M M E N T A R Y publish the volumes in-house, permitting us to update information in response to developing trends or changes to state and federal law.

Our goal with these factual and unbiased booklets is to create a heightened sense of economic situational awareness the next time a consumer steps onto a car lot, shops for a mortgage loan, or receives a call from someone promising a loan consolidation or other financial opportunity that sounds too good to be true.

OUR LATEST AND BEST— ON THE MONEY

W

e’d like to think our newest publication, the Downeaster Common Sense Guide: On the Money, A Guide to Personal Finance, will help raise Maine consumers’ financial literacy to levels exceeding those of residents in other states. The new On the Money guide is not just a reprint of 1989’s A Student’s Guide to Banking and Personal Money Management, and that’s good!

In its compact format, the Student’s Guide explained checking and savings accounts, bank CDs, shopping for consumer loans, responsible borrowing, and money management. Times were simpler in 1989—student loan and credit card debt had not exploded, and the costs of big-ticket items like autos and homes have increased substantially since then (higher than inflation).

Today’s young people are faced with staggering student debt, ballooning new home prices, the easy availability of credit cards, and maybe the next big bubble—new and used auto loans written with less-than-conservative credit-underwriting standards.

On the Money features sections on banking, securities, personal money

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

management and budgeting, consumer credit, recognizing and fighting back against financial scams, and evaluating insurance products. On the Money, along with the other Downeaster Guides, increases Maine consumers’ (of all ages) economic situational awareness and helps them to make reasoned, educated choices in a variety of big-ticket or big-life-moment scenarios: • Financing and purchasing a first home or first new car or truck • Saving and investing (responsibly and knowledgeably) for the future • Investing basics (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, exchange traded funds, bank CDs and savings accounts) • Shopping (lowest APRs) for credit and remembering to think before borrowing • Establishing and maintaining credit • Understanding how credit scores work and can work for or against you • Choosing a college you can afford, remembering that student loans must be paid back on the salary of the career you have chosen • Understanding the basics of insurance (life, health, auto, and homeowners) • Recognizing financial scams and knowing when to hang up On the Money is an internet-age, multimedia publication as well. We are planning to add video links to each of the chapters, with experts in each area providing seasoned advice on the topic covered in that chapter.

Our goal is to incorporate On the Money into Maine’s educational systems and to help increase young people’s financial literacy, so they are comfortable discussing finances, confident in their abilities, and competent in their skills.

We began drafting On the Money after reading compelling statistics. For example, a Biz Kid$ survey (2008) found • 52 percent of high school seniors did not know that paying off a credit card more slowly will result in higher finance charges; • only 5 percent of adults learned about the vital life skill of money management in high school, middle/junior high school, or elementary school; • over 80 percent of public school teachers think it’s important to teach financial literacy in US classrooms; and • 83 percent of high school seniors do not know that over the last century, stocks have yielded higher returns than savings bonds or bank savings accounts.

A survey by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC 2015) found • 60 percent of all adults do not have a budget and do not track their monthly expenses; • nearly 30 percent of US adults do not set aside any portion of their household’s annual income for retirement; • 34 percent of adults do not have nonretirement savings on hand; • 52 percent of adults have not reviewed their credit reports; • 11 percent of adults carry credit 68

FINANCIAL LITERACY EDUCATION

C O M M E N T A R Y card balances of $2,500 or more each month; and

debt and beginning to pay down that accumulated debt for the benefit of future generations. -

• 70 percent of adults report having “some sort of financial worry” (e.g., retirement or lack of emergency funds).

ENDNOTES

NEED FOR FINANCIAL LITERACY

I

n my opinion, we need improved financial literacy both in our households and in Washington, DC. The national debt is fast approaching $20 trillion—a portion of which each of us owes and owns. This figure has doubled in size in the past decade, rising sharply since the financial crisis of 2007–2008. I believe that not only does the debt need to stop growing, it needs to shrink. We owe it to future generations of Americans to stop the growth of this national albatross and begin to pay it down.

It is my personal belief that the better we handle our personal and local finances, the more situationally aware we will become to mobilize against national fiscal mismanagement, to which both major parties have contributed. Left unchecked, the yearly federal deficit and cumulative debt could soon become so large that it will result in deep cuts to essential programs such as Social Security, defense, health care and education, programs we have counted on for decades.

We believe the principles found in the Downeaster Guide: On the Money constitute an important first step in improving Mainers’ financial literacy to a level that will help make us more financially secure. Armed with that knowledge, we will be ready to reduce improvident borrowing and spending in our homes. Then, we can extend those standards to Washington, DC, and work on stopping the growth of the national

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

1 Copies of the Downeaster Common Sense Guides may be downloaded from the Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection’s website (http://www.maine .gov/pfr/consumercredit/publications .htm) or printed copies may be ordered from Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection, 35 State House Station, Augusta, Maine 04333-0035; Tel: 800.332.8529 (in-state) or 207.624.8527.

REFERENCES Biz Kid$. n.d. Is Financial Education Necessary? See the Statistics! http:// wxxi.org/tv/bizkids/whyfinancialed _stats.pdf NFCC (National Foundation for Credit Counseling). 2015. The 2015 Consumer Financial Literacy Survey. NFCC, Washington, DC. https://www.nfcc.org /wp-content/uploads/2015/04 /NFCC_2015_Financial_Literacy _Survey_FINAL.pdf

David Leach is a principal examiner with the Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection. In his 29-year career in Maine state government, he has authored or coauthored 16 consumer protection publications and presented over 1,000 seminars statewide on personal finance issues. Leach is entering his fifteenth year as an adjunct professor at the University of Maine in Augusta, teaching banking, investment, and marketing courses and has taught at the University of Maine Graduate School.

69

THE LONG VIEW OF MAINE’S POLICY CONTEXT

R E F L E C T I O N S

Where Has Maine Been? Where is Maine Going?

Taking the Long View of Maine’s Policy Context

by Linda Silka

I

n this issue, we initiate what we hope will become a regular MPR column, which will look forward and look back at policy issues in Maine.

The mission of MPR has always been to bring research to bear on emerging policy challenges. But it is possible to become myopic when the focus is too much on the present, too much about what is currently most pressing, with no regard for what has been tried in the past. Looking across long periods can be an important way to see what we have gained or lost in past policy efforts.

A dynamic way to start a conversation about past policy is to seek out leaders who have participated in policy work in Maine for extended periods and across different contexts, who have contributed through different roles, and who have made an impact. This inaugural column draws on interviews with four such leaders: Aram Calhoun, Andy Coburn, Carla Dickstein, and Evan Richert. Their work covers a range of topics on which they have had significant impacts. All have made important contributions in the face of difficult

challenges. As we shall see, central to their work has been an increasing understanding of the complex dynamics by which research affects policy and the complicated means by which policy is enacted so that it can make a difference to the lives of Mainers.

DISCUSSION FORMAT

I

interviewed the leaders individually and asked them to reflect on their experiences with the ebbs and flows of Maine’s policy context. I asked

THE POLICY LEADERS Aram Calhoun is professor of wetland ecology in the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology at the University of Maine, with research interests in vernal pool ecology and conservation and wetland ecology. She teaches courses in wetland mapping and delineation, wetland ecology and conservation, field studies in ecology, and environmental solutions. Calhoun received a bachelor’s degree from Brown University; a master’s in education from Rhode Island College, a master’s in natural resources science from University of Rhode Island; and a Ph.D. from the University of Maine.

Andrew Coburn is a research professor in public health at University of Southern Maine. He has a long-standing commitment to the application of health services research in policy making. His areas of expertise include health insurance, rural health, patient safety and quality, and Medicaid policy. Coburn is the founding director of the Maine Rural Health Research Center, one of seven national centers funded by the federal Office of Rural Health Policy. He holds a bachelor’s from Brown University; a master’s of education from Harvard University; and a Ph.D. from Brandeis University.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

Carla Dickstein is senior vice president for research and policy development at Coastal Enterprises Inc., where she oversees CEI’s state policy work and develops new initiatives. She currently focuses on the health care sector, challenges and opportunities for Maine’s older adults, and improving opportunities for young adults and new Americans. Previously, she was on the faculty of West Virginia University’s Regional Research Institute and WVU Extension Service. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Smith College; a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota; and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Evan Richert has filled many policy leadership roles in Maine. He served as director of the Maine State Planning Office under Governor Angus King Jr. Richert has also served as associate research professor in the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine. He was lead principal investigator for Gulf of Maine Census in the global Census of Marine Life Project and lead principal investigator for forming the Northeast Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems. He now has his own planning consulting practice. Richert holds a master’s of regional planning from Syracuse University.

70

THE LONG VIEW OF MAINE’S POLICY CONTEXT

R E F L E C T I O N S questions about how they got started in policy work and how their policy work changed over time. I also asked them to reflect on the challenges they encountered and how they achieved their successes. We focused on policy topics that were important at particular times, but also discussed the processes by which new policies are enacted in Maine.

They reflected on lessons they learned and what these lessons suggest about preparing students for a future in policy making and policy research.

The depth of knowledge of these four leaders is impressive, and their reflections are reminders of the importance of retaining the knowledge accrued by such leaders.

MAKING SLOW PROGRESS IN THE FACE OF INSTABILITY

W

e might assume that these policy leaders, who have worked for decades in their respective fields, had settled into a stable and predictable policy landscape and were making regular, if incremental, progress. Indeed, people new to a policy arena often begin with the assumption that all of the elements—the players, topics, and the approaches—will be predictable once familiarity has been achieved. But these experienced leaders offered many examples of how they found stability to be elusive. Those who hold elected policy positions might not be there after the next election or the most urgent policy problem may change rapidly, which can make it hard to achieve progress. Yet these leaders also saw that the shifting array of players could represent opportunities. While there can be a loss of knowledge about what was previously attempted, new people can bring an infusion of fresh ideas. The challenge is how to maintain knowledge of past

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

policy attempts while staying open to rapid shifts and attendant opportunities.

Andy Coburn talked about what he has learned from working in rural health policy for over 25 years. Although we might expect that the challenges of rural healthcare delivery and costs of care would be fully addressed by now, given the significant policy effort expended on these problems, old problems, such as health workforce, remain and new ones, such as rural hospital closures, have emerged. As part of the Maine Health Access Foundation’s efforts to support rural communities as they envision the future of their rural health systems, Andy and his colleagues have recently used their historical knowledge of Maine health policy to develop analyses and reports on rural health in Maine.

BRINGING DISCORDANT VOICES TOGETHER

T

he need to bring together different perspectives was a recurring theme throughout the conversations. Regardless of the topic, there are generally divergent points of view. Success in the policy field depends on developing adroit ways to help people with differing views find common ground. Aram Calhoun offered examples of taking the long view (decades long) in her collaborative work on vernal pools. As a conservation biologist, she has worked for decades on how to preserve the temporary pools on private lands that are crucial for amphibians. There was the need to bring together private landowners, developers, municipal officials, scientists, and conservationists to develop an effective, fair, and implementable policy.

Aram pointed to the decades of efforts that were needed to develop the policies.

It took time for all participants to begin to trust each other enough to enable

them to be completely open with each other. She also talked about how all the participants were changed through the process. One developer teased Aram that he “hated” her because he had come to care about vernal pools.

ORGANIZATIONS THAT SERVE AS INTERMEDIARIES

T

he interviewees all pointed to the unexpected importance that intermediary organizations—called boundary organizations—play in Maine’s success in policy making. These organizations bring together policymakers and researchers who might not otherwise find each other. They help create conditions for finding common ground. Such organizations are themselves highly varied and include, for example, the Maine Health Access Foundation, Maine Rural Health Research Center, and Maine Lakes Environmental Association. Some of the interviewees currently work in intermediary organizations; some have in the past. Frequently, boundary organizations act as the memory keepers. When politicians change, there are still boundary organizations. Maine, as recent studies suggest, may be especially replete with effective boundary organizations.

MAINE’S ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

I

n reflecting on what they have observed over time, all the leaders pondered the question of why many of Maine’s indicators (e.g., median income, graduation rates, health status) continue to show limited improvement. Maine continues to underachieve relative to other New England states despite various policy interventions. Programs have been developed, for example, aimed at

71

THE LONG VIEW OF MAINE’S POLICY CONTEXT

R E F L E C T I O N S increasing the college graduation rate and increasing resources available for those pursuing new business opportunities. The leaders noted that much of what has been enacted in Maine has been based on the best available research for policies that have longterm economic impacts. Yet large-scale improvement has continued to elude us.

The question is, are we doing too little to have the needed impact? Or perhaps, are we not doing as much as other similar states are doing?

The leaders also reflected on Maine’s competitive advantages and how policy efforts might be directed at strengthening those areas where we could be most competitive. If Maine cannot do everything, perhaps as policymakers and citizens, we need to make choices about what we should do. Carla Dickstein pointed to work indicating that the Gulf of Maine is one of Maine’s competitive advantages. The question then becomes, how can we build around the state’s competitive advantages such as the Gulf of Maine? Can limited funds be used in ways most likely to make a policy difference?

Some of the leaders also pointed out that capitalizing on competitive advantages becomes even more challenging when dramatic and unexpected changes occur such as the loss of Maine’s legacy manufacturing industries resulting from the rapid closure of many mills. The loss is huge; it has ripple effects. One policy avenue is to look at whether we could have done a better job predicting these closures and thus have prepared better. It is also becoming clearer, they noted, that people from different policy arenas need to come together in these situations. For example, people studying legacy industries need to be in contact with those who are experimenting with new industries.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

The leaders also discussed the importance of innovation. It may be important to innovate out of the troubles of Maine’s rural economy, for example. Yet the literature indicates that rural areas are at a disadvantage when it comes to innovation. Innovation is associated with urban areas rather than rural areas. The leaders pointed to ways that Maine might use rural advantages (the heightened opportunities to communicate) while trying to erase disadvantages (innovation is often stymied if groups that take different approaches to the same problem are not brought together because this union stimulates innovation).

FOCUSING ON INFRASTRUCTURE

A

ccording to these policy leaders, Maine’s infrastructure is an important overarching future focus for policy. They discussed the challenges of the infrastructure Maine does not have enough of—universally available highspeed broadband, for example. But they also noted the challenges of what we have too much of—too many maintained roads given the decline in our rural population. And they pointed out that the need for infrastructure can take many forms. Higher education facilities such as research labs can be important infrastructure as universities strengthen their capacity to serve as anchor institutions.

The need to update and strengthen infrastructure—and have policies in place that can contribute to doing so— can also take many forms in a marine state like Maine. Evan Richert pointed out that as the Gulf of Maine is increasingly recognized as a key part of the state’s economy, it is increasingly important to have infrastructure that provides immediate information about ocean conditions. This infrastructure did not exist. Evan coordinated work

with multiple groups to install state-ofthe-art data-collection buoys. This project provides the information needed to advance work in the Gulf of Maine and thereby contributes to Maine’s economy in an area where the state may have a competitive advantage. The project serves as a model for other New England states.

INTERLINKED PROBLEMS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY MAKING

A

ll the leaders were concerned about how the challenges are often intertwined. The interviewees frequently made this point by discussing the interlinked challenges that Maine’s rural counties now face: outmigration of young people, disappearance of traditional industries, and attracting new jobs to rural areas that often lack high-speed internet access. Small rural towns face the challenges of maintaining schools, health care, and infrastructure designed for much larger populations.

The leaders repeatedly commented on how interlinked these problems are: jobs, education, health care, economic development, land use planning, and regulation. When we develop policies, we must take into account all of the interlinkages, for example, considering policies on education and jobs together.

Evan Richert noted that much attention in earlier decades focused on the interlinked problems associated with suburbanization: sprawl, loss of virgin land to development, congestion, and mismatches between where services are located and where they are needed.

These continue to be problems, but, in parts of the state, their relative importance has declined in the face of the tsunami of loss taking place in Maine’s rural communities. What is challenging,

72

THE LONG VIEW OF MAINE’S POLICY CONTEXT

R E F L E C T I O N S Evan noted, is how a state prepares for problems that it cannot fully anticipate: the loss of industries, for example, when Maine is buffeted by shifts in international economy outside of its control.

Being prepared for the unknown requires an ongoing commitment to innovation, using research and development as both a means of discovery and a driver of economic growth.

SCALE AND ITS IMPORTANCE

T

hese leaders reflected on the challenges of policy work at different scales, such as community, watershed, and state scales. Through their diverse experiences, they have become repositories of knowledge about working at different scales. For example, Evan Richert served as state planning office director, but also as town planner in communities in southern and central Maine. Aram Calhoun has collaborated with the state legislature, but has also brought her research knowledge to collaborations at the town level. These leaders reflected on the pros and cons of pursuing policy impacts at each scale.

At the local level, policymakers and those affected by the policy can get to know each other, deliberate together, potentially work out their differences, and customize the policy. The levers for change, however, may be outside that local level. Policies enacted by one community may have little impact on the regional economy or overall health of a watershed. At the state level, the reach is broader and the impact potentially greater, but it may be harder to achieve the changes, and the unintended consequences may also be greater.

Enacting a one-size-fits-all policy on school reform may work for densely populated parts of Maine, but have unexpected consequences for areas of

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

declining enrollment where the student population is dispersed. In the health arena, according to Andy Coburn, scale is also an ongoing policy issue. Past policies encouraged the development of rural hospitals, which makes health care more accessible in rural areas, but healthcare infrastructure can be increasingly expensive to maintain when populations decline. Policymakers and researchers are currently wrestling with the question of how to decide the optimal scale for various health services and what policies would help this happen.

STUDENTS AS FUTURE CONTRIBUTORS TO MAINE’S POLICY ENVIRONMENT

A

capacity to work with them. She helps her students see how the research rarely speaks for itself, but must be communicated in ways that work for diverse groups engaged in policy development.

She familiarizes students with concepts such as coupled natural–human systems that demonstrate the interlinked nature of the problems and policy challenges.

Andy Coburn talked about how we need to move beyond teaching students that the only focus for research should be publication. We must encourage students to look at the problems in the contexts in which they occur and consider what research is needed to inform policy decisions. Evan Richert pointed to how esoteric training of students can become, especially when we judge student success largely in terms of mastery of the details of theory within their discipline. He suggested using Pasteur’s Quadrant (Figure 1), an analysis that highlights the value of research that has application potential in a policy domain, as one way to move beyond this narrow focus in our training of students.

The world current students will face is likely to differ markedly from the past.

As legacy industries disappear, there may be a premium on innovation and flexibility, and students who have been trained to work in this complex environment may have better chances of thriving.

n important theme we kept returning to was how best to prepare students to contribute to policy as future leaders.

The interviewees pointed to many challenges previously discussed: the length of time to enact policy, the differing perspectives needed to produce effective policy, the instability of the policy environment, and the rapid shifts that can occur in what most urgently requires attention. Policy leaders need a variety of soft skills for working in conflict-ridden situations and with people with different perspectives. They also often need broad interdisciplinary knowledge. The question is, how can we teach these soft skills in addition to the technical and research skills that are so crucial?

Figure 1: Pasteur’s Quadrant Aram Calhoun described the ways she Considerations of use involves her students in No Yes experiences beyond the Pure basic Use-inspired classroom. The students Yes Quest for research basic research receive rigorous research in fundamental Pure applied a context that allows them understanding?

No — research to understand the difficult challenges and develop a

73

THE LONG VIEW OF MAINE’S POLICY CONTEXT

R E F L E C T I O N S based on lessons of the past. On the contrary, the leaders stressed the importance of adaptability, the merit of not insisting on doing the exact same thing each time. They talked about learning to be flexible in approaching how to solve the problem and at what scale to work. With this flexibility, they argued, it becomes possible to make progress in the face of changing conditions and problems.

CONCLUSION

W

hat have we learned? As noted at the outset, people often express frustration that we are making insufficient progress in policy areas. We enact a new policy. It does not work the way we thought it would, so we try something else. It can seem that we are going around in circles, trying one thing and then another, or even the same things repeatedly without much knowledge of what worked or didn’t work in the past. Additionally, the available policy tools may seem paltry in the face of the magnitude of the problems. New problems keep emerging. The problems seemingly keep multiplying.

But is all of this the case? Should we, in effect, throw up our hands? These interviewed leaders would seem to suggest otherwise. They offered many examples of how we are getting better at policy and how better-constructed policies are making a difference. But their insights also suggest that we need to think about what we are learning and how we can continue to improve. We need to think about how we convey this knowledge to each other and ensure that we transmit this knowledge to new leaders and new generations. In sum, we need to keep in mind the overarching insights these leaders offered: • Progress can be made, but it will depend on flexibility. It is important to remember lessons from the past, but it is equally important to be astute about applying lessons from different times and different contexts.

The leaders continually returned to this theme of arriving at appropriate levels of flexibility.

Policy making might seem like it is about rightness, about the correct generalizable solution

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

• We need to do a better job of aligning and incorporating research and evaluation. We must be look for new ways to use emerging research to craft effective policies and allow sufficient time for the policies to achieve their impact. Furthermore, if we develop new polices based on research, the available research must become better aligned with policy needs. We also need research to track the impacts of policies. After a policy has been enacted, we should conduct evaluations to assess whether the policy had the intended effects or had unintended consequences.

The leaders stress that we need to learn from the past, but not overlearn, and we need to figure out how face the future in innovative ways. The experiences and recommendations from these policy leaders offer lots of food for thought. Linda Silka is the executive editor of the Maine Policy Review. A social

and community psychologist by training, Silka was formerly director of the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. In addition to her role with the MPR, she is a senior fellow at UMaine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.

• New problems will emerge that will call for policy innovations.

All the leaders emphasized that it is hard to know what new problems or opportunities might be on the horizon. Aquaculture is an opportunity not fully expected. The opioid crisis is a problem whose full-blown nature was unanticipated. How do we prepare for the unexpected? Part of the goal should be finding the overarching lessons that transcend particular problems or specific contexts.

74

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Margaret Chase Smith Library 2016 Essay Contest First-Place Essay

The Ideal Prospective President

Each year the Margaret Chase Smith Library spon-

by Elizabeth Harrington

sors an essay contest for

W

ith the upcoming presidential election, it is impossible for me to avoid thinking of my own political views and of what I am looking for in a prospective president. As I ponder my vote, I search for a candidate who possesses diplomacy, honesty, fairness, dignity, rationality, respect, and optimism. I search for a candidate who shares my values: a belief in the importance of education, personal and universal liberty, and charity. I believe that the gender, race, ethnicity, and religion of a president do not matter. I want a president who will be remembered for more than just breaking race or gender barriers; I want a president who will be remembered for her words, actions, and accomplishments.

I believe it is essential for a president to be a good diplomat and able to speak to people from all walks of life with ease. This diplomacy should be accompanied by respect. I do not want someone in such a powerful position who cannot respect others because people in other countries will inevitably make judgments about Americans based on our president. I want a president who treats others equally, no matter their financial or social status, ethnicity, race, religion, or culture. I do not want a president who resorts to petty insults or offensive slurs; I want a president who is eloquent and respectful. Human interaction is an art form, and the president should be a master of this art.

Honesty is also paramount for the next president. The people of the United States should be able to trust

high school seniors. As it was a presidential election year, the 2016 essay prompt asked students to reflect on their ideal candidate for president.

We are pleased to feature here the top three 2016 prize-winning essays.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

their president. I want a president who will confess his mistakes and admit defeat, instead of lying to save his pride.

I want a president who knows that the citizens of the country are more important than his legacy, a president who would rather lose his position because of something he did than hide his mistakes from the people. President Abraham Lincoln is sometimes referred to as “Honest Abe,” and I believe all presidents should aspire to nicknames that place their names and the word honest in the same set of quotation marks. I want a president who strives to keep his word, but also admits when he fails to do so.

I believe that a president should be fair and just in how she treats others. I want a president who does not feel that she has to garner support dishonestly and who will allow herself to be judged on her own merits. For example, I would not want a prospective president to participate in the act of patronage, bribing the people into voting for her. I also would not want a president who feels she has to insult the other candidates, behavior that only demonstrates insecurity and immaturity. It is important for a prospective president to be fair and just when dealing with the people of the United States. A president should not allow any person unfair advantages. A president should not let personal biases or prejudices influence how she runs the country or how she treats other people.

With such an important position and strong influence, it is essential that a 75

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

president is dignified. I want a president who will remain humble in times of victory and proud in adversity. I want a president who, when insulted by another, will simply move on. A president must be calm and composed at all times because the people look up to him for wisdom and guidance. If the people saw the president in a panic, order would be lost and chaos would ensue.

It is extremely important for a president to be able to make rational decisions. I do not want a president who makes a big decision without reflection or lets emotion spur him to do something rash. If a president rushed a decision, it could put the country in danger.

I want a president who will consider every option and understand the gravity of the issue before drawing a conclusion. I do not want a president who allows his emotions, whether positive or negative, to drive him to say or do something he, and the whole country, might regret. A president must remember that he is standing in front of an entire nation; he should be able to put his emotions aside for the sake of the country.

In times of great despair such as the Great Depression of the 1930s, the people of the United States look to their president for hope. I believe it is necessary for a president to be able to give the people hope when they need it most. A president should try to remain optimistic, keeping the spirits of the nation high because the nation can never move forward if it is stuck in a state of depression. A president should seek to keep the morale of the country as high as possible as she works to conquer whatever issue the nation is facing.

I want a president who recognizes the role that education plays in the success of the country and strives to improve it, whether through funding, implementing new programs, or supporting students. I want a president MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

who shares my belief that education is one of the most important aspects of life.

I want a president who will encourage education for everyone.

It is important to me that the next president is a supporter of liberty, both personal and universal. I want a president who will seek to improve personal liberty and not hinder it. A president should not allow laws to pass that would limit people of any gender, race, ethnicity, religion, culture, or sexuality. A president should remember that the United States is supposed to be a haven of equality and freedom for everyone, and he should strive to help those who have been denied full liberty in the past. A president should value and encourage every citizen of the nation and recognize the significance and potential that each person holds.

It is important that a president also recognize the power she has to help ensure the liberty of people from other nations. A president should seek to promote liberty around world, whether by sending aid to other countries or welcoming refugees into the safety of the United States. I want a president who will help others, not only because it is kind, but also because it would ensure faithful allies for the country. Liberty is embedded in the foundation of America, so a president should dedicate herself to continuing the tradition of freedom.

However, a president should also respect the validity of other cultures.

A president should care about the wellbeing of the people of the nation, so I believe it is important that a president seek to help the less fortunate. A president should make sure that no one has to live on the streets, and he should strive to keep the unemployment rate as low as possible. I want a president who will create programs to help those in need to improve their situation, so they can eventually be independent once again. I want a president who sincerely and genuinely

cares about the people of the United States because if the individuals of a nation are strong, then the country as a whole will be a formidable force.

An election is an opportunity for change and improvement. With a new president, the United States could potentially reach new heights and achieve great things. I hope the next president will bring a new era of positivity, acceptance, and justice to the United States and will make the nation a safe and happy place for all types of people. The next president has the opportunity to continue fundamental and valued traditions in the nation and start new traditions that will make the country a better place for future generations. A president must recognize the gravity of the task and proceed with both caution and confidence. The fate of the nation is in the president’s hands. Elizabeth Harrington attended Dexter High School and entered the University of Maine at Farmington in the fall, majoring in secondary English education. She sang with the high school chorus and was instrumental in the production of Seussical the Musical.

76

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Margaret Chase Smith Library 2016 Essay Contest Second-Place Essay

Presidential Qualities

Each year the Margaret Chase Smith Library spon-

by Nick Danby

sors an essay contest for

W

hen I was four years old, my father brought home a massive poster of all of the American presidents with their pictures and information about their time in office. Just a few weeks later, I had memorized them all. The benefits of this feat were twofold: not only did it impress my friends and their parents, it also sparked my interest in public service and a career in politics. As long as I can remember, I have loved politics, but more specifically, I have loved improving my understanding of our nation’s presidents.

My favorite president has changed over the years. I have gone from preferring Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson. I have always applied, however, the same set of standards, characteristics, and qualities when judging a great president. As the number of candidates vying for nomination in the fifty-eighth presidential election dwindles, many Americans are searching for a candidate who reminds them of Washington, Lincoln, or Roosevelt. Unfortunately, they are consistently turning up duds. The problem is simple: they are searching for exact replicas, not candidates who mirror the qualities of our illustrious leaders. When The New York Times asked Senator Margaret Chase Smith what she looked for in a president, she said the obvious qualities were “integrity, intelligence and fairness.” More than 55 years later, the qualities that Senator Smith looked for in a president hold true. As an aspiring politician and young voter, however, I have my own standards for a president.

high school seniors. As it was a presidential election year, the 2016 essay prompt asked students to reflect on their ideal candidate for president.

We are pleased to feature here the top three 2016 prize-winning essays.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

The president that I would support is someone who welcomes counsel and encourages advice and sticks to his principles to avoid political pandering. I have employed John Adams and Abraham Lincoln—two of my favorite presidents— to highlight these qualities.

The decision-making process in the White House may seem extremely singular, as if the president is the one who makes all of the decisions. However, when referencing the Plum Book, the register of the more than 7,000 federal civil service leadership and support positions in both the legislative and executive branches, most people realize that the commander-in-chief is far from alone in making decisions that affect the entire nation. Anyone from the chief of staff to the deputy political liaison adviser for the House of Representatives plays a large part in an effective executive branch. John Adams was a great example of a president who sought a trusted adviser and confidant; he constantly sought the opinion of his wife Abigail. Abigail was his mentor, his confidant, his love, the person he could rely on the most, and he shared all of his successes and failures with her. According to the Adams Family Papers archive ( w w w. m a s s h i s t . o r g / d i g i t a l a d a m s /archive/), John and Abigail exchanged more than 1,100 letters from the beginning of their courtship in 1762 to end Adams’s presidency in 1801. The letters were filled with intellectual discussions ranging from government to politics to philosophy while providing an account of the Revolutionary War. Margaret Hogan, managing editor of the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society, explained the power of Abigail’s counsel when she wrote, 77

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Abigail had never received a formal education, but her access to some of the finest libraries in Massachusetts and her voracious love of reading gave her a wideranging knowledge that allowed her easily to serve as John’s equal in any intellectual debate. Her place as John’s primary political advisor was merely a logical extension of her role as wife and manager of their household in a partnership of equals.1 Adams sought counsel and advice from others too—he saw his shortcomings and employed other people to work for him. When the Continental Congress turned to him to write the Declaration of Independence, he quietly deferred and gave the assignment to Jefferson, arguably a much better choice.

Abraham Lincoln also acknowledged that he was not always the right person for a specific task. Lincoln surrounded himself with knowledgeable and intelligent people. Lincoln listened to a range of opinions and made decisions based on his own beliefs and preferences in conjunction with what he heard. Lincoln also fully trusted his selected team to carry out the military assignments he gave them. Lincoln’s appointment of Ulysses S. Grant as the leader of the Union troops is a good example of this behavior. Lincoln knew that he could not carry out a successful war strategy while leading a divided nation, so he appointed Grant as head of the army because he trusted Grant.

Even on matters not pertaining to the survival of the Union, Lincoln took advice. One of the best-known stories about Lincoln involved an 11-year-old girl named Grace Bedell who “sent him a letter from Westfield, New York, urging him to grow a beard to improve his appearance.” Lincoln responded that he would think about it, but thought it may look “silly.” Lincoln, on MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

his inaugural train ride to Washington, DC, stopped in Westfield and met with the girl and her father and showed off his newly grown beard.2 Presidents also need unwavering integrity and the ability to stick to their principles regardless of the political climate. Neither Adams nor Lincoln were very popular during their presidencies. Lincoln was faced with the Civil War, and Adams never saved himself from Jefferson’s bashing of the Alien and Sedition Acts. After years of historical reflection, however, the two have earned wide praise. Adams was well known for his stubbornness, which his opponents gleefully touted during elections.

Stubbornness, however, can also be a devotion to a core set of principles, which seems to be the case for Adams.

Adams always seemed to know right from wrong. Even when his cousin Samuel Adams and countless Bostonians were furious at the British troops for firing on an open crowd during the Boston Massacre, Adams knew the right thing to do was to save British men who he believed were innocent. Adams prepared “a complicated defense, and six of the soldiers [were] found not guilty; two others [were] found guilty of manslaughter but escape[d] the death penalty.”3 It is astonishing that Adams, knowing his reputation was on the line, did not back down when the right thing was in question.

Lincoln shows a similar devotion to principles. Lincoln is so well known for his integrity that he garnered the nickname “Honest Abe.” Lincoln’s own wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, once commented, “Mr. Lincoln…is almost monomaniac on the subject of honesty.” Such integrity started at a young age when, if he had shortchanged a customer, Lincoln would shut down the store he worked at and walk as many miles as it took to deliver the correct amount of money. In The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln,

2016

Michael Burlingame (1997) contends that all people (friend or foe) knew where they stood with Lincoln and that Lincoln’s ability to convey sincerity allowed him to devote his integrity to fighting for noble causes—like preserving the Union. This honesty served him well as commander-in-chief when the Union needed a thoughtful, but moralistic, commander to unite the country.

Lincoln was an honest man, but his honesty did not just score him political points, it led to his unwavering resolve and keen judgment.

Although people may disagree on the qualities we most prize in a president, I think we can all agree that someone who recognizes personal strengths and shortcomings makes for the best type of leader. ENDNOTES 1 http://harvardpress.typepad.com/off _the_page/2008/02/the-romance-of.html 2 http://theweek.com/articles/470072 /girl-who-grew-lincolns-beard 3 http://thelearningprofessor.wikispaces .com/Boston+Massacre REFERENCES Burlingame, Michael. 1997. The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln. University of Illinois Press, Champaign.

Nick Danby graduated from Bangor High School and is attending Harvard University, majoring in government and history. During his high school years, he was active on the debate team and was a national champion. He was also president of the high school Democrats. He was the class council president and served as a US Senate page in the office of Senator Susan Collins.

78

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Margaret Chase Smith Library 2016 Essay Contest Third-Place Essay

Qualities of the Ideal President

Each year the Margaret Chase Smith Library spon-

by Liana Dudley Holland

sors an essay contest for

T

his November, for the fifty-eighth time in the life of our country, the citizens of America must make a choice.

Like the many generations before us, we must choose who shall lead and represent this nation for the next four years.

Standing together, we must study our beliefs and the beliefs of the presidential candidates, we must weigh our needs against our desires, we must decide where we will stand strong as individuals and where we will compromise for the good of all. Some of the things we must consider are the basic qualities that constitute the ideal president. As one who has studied past presidents extensively, it is clear that the most fundamental elements a president must have are integrity and honesty, the ability to unite and reassure the people in times of hardship, a steadfast devotion to world peace, and an eye that can perceive the consequences of every action. Building from these criteria, we must choose our forty-fifth president.

The key role of the president is to reflect and represent the people, to serve as the figurehead of a nation, both to the citizens of the nation and to the outside world. It is a popular belief in society today that what others think does not matter; while it is true we cannot allow others to hold us back, it does not give anyone free license to offend, disrespect, or otherwise abuse whomsoever they wish. The reputation of the country can be directly correlated to the reputation of its leader. It is imperative to the function of the United States as a world power that we maintain a good rapport

high school seniors. As it was a presidential election year, the 2016 essay prompt asked students to reflect on their ideal candidate for president.

We are pleased to feature here the top three 2016 prize-winning essays.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

with other countries. It is therefore essential that the presidents of our country conduct themselves with honesty and integrity. This is well exemplified in the life and presidency of John Adams, a member of the Federalist party and a “man of principle,” who believed that “honesty, sincerity, and openness… [were] essential marks of a good mind (McCullough 2001: 42).” Throughout his life, Adams presented himself to others with an unbending sense of morality and courtesy, and should be viewed as an example to us all.

While it is critical that a president be a credit to the ideals of her country, she must also have the ability to unite and reassure the people in times of hardship. Without the clear surety of a leader they trust the people, like sheep under the watch of an incompetent shepherd, will panic and plunge into chaos. When Franklin D. Roosevelt came to office during the height of the Great Depression, he saw the plight of his fellow citizens and took action immediately. Just days after his inauguration on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt declared a “bank holiday” to delay the run on banks that was quickly dissolving the Federal Reserve. In an attempt to balance this grim and desperate act, the president made a radio broadcast to reassure the people that the bank holiday was a decision made out of confidence, not of confusion. ‘’My friends,” he began, dropping all formalities, ‘’I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking” (Latson 2015). Roosevelt went on to explain his 79

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

reasoning behind the holiday in simple terms the average citizen could understand. Throughout the Depression he would make 30 more broadcasts, addressing the people in a concise, consoling manner, as though he were an old friend seated comfortably in their own kitchens. This was how Roosevelt guided the nation through one of the most difficult periods in its history.

The quest for world peace has been in the hearts and minds of many around the world for centuries. But the idea has been repeatedly spoiled by selfish individuals, cruel leaders, and frantic populations. Many of the wars that have torn the world apart were needless. Yet many people believe that the search for global amity is a vain one. This belief is far from correct, as proved by the actions of John F. Kennedy throughout his presidency President Kennedy was a devout believer in the movement towards world peace and encouraged his people to do the same. He founded the Peace Corps for men and women to assist developing countries, supported the civil rights movement, and sought to strengthen relations with Latin America. In an address at the American University in June of 1963, Kennedy said, “What kind of peace am I talking about? What kind of peace do we seek? Not Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living...not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” It is this conviction that we should seek when choosing our next president in November.

There is a story told among those in business called “The Three Stonecutters.”

In the story, a traveler comes across three stonecutters and, curious, asks the first one what he is doing. “Can’t you see?” the man replies, “I’m cutting a stone.”

The second one, when asked the same MAINE POLICY REVIEW

•

Vol. 25, No. 2

•

2016

question answers, “I am being the best stonecutter in the whole county.” Still not satisfied, the traveler asks the third man what he is doing, to which he replies, “I am building a cathedral.” The moral of this story is simple: true leaders have a vision for their work and know that they do it for a purpose, a greater good. This is a quality inherent to all commanders, and it is particularly clear in President Obama, who has worked hard over his two terms in office to reform the US healthcare system.

President Obama began the program with a vision, not expecting it to be perfect at the start. Just as the founders of our country foresaw greatness in the small, fledgling country that they had set free, so the best leaders will always see beyond their constituents.

It is said that if one wishes to know the mind of a person, we must listen to her words. It is also said that actions speak louder than words. In the coming presidential election, we, the people of America, must listen carefully to both the candidates’ words and actions, using our minds and our hearts to choose what we feel is right for our country. As a democratic republic, we have the obligation as well as the right to vote for the man or woman who will define us for the next four years. It is not a casual choice: the world can change drastically in four years, nations can be raised or razed, and we must choose wisely. We must watch the manner in which they present themselves to the public, know the values by which they live their lives; we must listen to their opinions and their hopes for all lands and all people, not just our own. And when the time comes to cast our votes, we must not have doubt. -

REFERENCES Latson, Jennifer. 2015. “How FDR’s Radio Voice Solved a Banking Crisis.” Time Magazine (12 March).

McCullough, David G. 2001. John Adams.

Simon & Schuster, New York.

Liana Dudley Holland graduated from Mattanawcook Academy in Lincoln. She has matriculated at Bennington College to study creative writing and how it is affected by religion, culture, politics, and moral philosophy. She was a participant in All-State Music Festivals during her four years of high school.

80

Thanks to Our Reviewers‌

We would like to extend our sincere thanks and appreciation to all those who took time to review articles submitted for consideration to Maine Policy Review. Their insights and recommendations assist us in our editorial decision-making, and provide valuable feedback to authors in revising their articles to be suitable for publication in the journal.

The following individuals reviewed articles for Volume 25 (2016):

Daniel Acheson James Acheson Kathleen Bell Travis Blackmer Erik Blomberg James Breece Jim Guerra Cindy Isenhour Sandy Maisel Lisa Miller Dora Anne Mills Peter Mills Charles Morris Sam Morris Caroline Noblet Kenneth Palmer Linda Silka Dana Polojarvi David Vail Ryan Wallace

5784 York Complex, Bldg. #4 Orono, ME 04469-5784

Maine Policy Review