Maine Policy Review Fall 2018

Fall 2018 · Vol. 27, No. 2 · $15

Maine Policy Review

S PE C I A L I S S U E:

Leadership

Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

Maine Policy Review

About the Cover: I was delighted to see the article in this issue of MPR promoting a universal basic income. Egregious income disparity has become a worldwide problem, but it is especially critical in the United States because nothing undermines the fundamental idea of democracy and the dignity of all people more than a country’s wealth being held by a small number of people. What’s astonishing to me is that many of the super-rich seem to think that their freedom to have great wealth is more important than the freedom of other people to live full lives. ­—Robert Shetterly

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PUBLISHER MARGARET CHASE SMITH POLICY CENTER Jonathan Rubin, Director

Maine Policy Review (ISSN 1064-2587) publishes independent, peer-reviewed analyses of public policy issues relevant to Maine.

EDITORIAL STAFF EXECUTIVE EDITOR

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.

Linda Silka 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, https://digitalcommons.library .umaine.edu/mpr/.

PRODUCTION Beth Goodnight Goodnight Design

DEVELOPMENT Eva McLaughlin Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

COVER ILLUSTRATION Robert Shetterly

PRINTING

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

University of Maine Printing Services

Current and back issues of the journal are available at: https://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

207-581-4133 • fax: 207-581-1266 http://mcspolicycenter.umaine.edu mpr@maine.edu

The University of Maine is an EEO/AA employer, and does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, transgender status, gender expression, national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information or veteran’s status in employment, education, and all other programs and activities. The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies: Sarah E. Harebo, Director of Equal Opportunity, 101 North Stevens Hall, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5754, 207.581.1226, TTY 711 (Maine Relay System).

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THANKS TO… Major Sponsor

Margaret Chase Smith Foundation Contributors

Sanford Blitz Merton G. Henry Peter and Nancy Mills Mark R. Shibles

Linda Silka and Larry Smith and anonymous Contributors

Peter Bowman Mary R. Cathcart A.N. Caviness John Clark Stanley R. Howe, Ph.D.

H. Paul McGuire James P. Melcher Craig Olson Kenneth Palmer Frances B. Pinney Douglas Rooks

Friends

Howard P. Segal David Vail Elizabeth W. Saxl In Memory Dr. Harold H. Brown (AL) “Brownie” and anonymous Friends

Volume 27 of Maine Policy Review is funded, in part, by the supporters listed above.

Reader support is a critical funding source for Maine Policy Review, and we encourage you to consider making a tax-deductible contribution by check or credit card. Checks should be made payable to the University of Maine Foundation and mailed to Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center 5784 York Complex, Bldg. 4 University of Maine Orono, ME 04469-5784 Donations by credit card may be made through our secure website at https://digitalcommons .library.umaine.edu/mpr/donate.html and by clicking “Donate.” Information regarding corporate, foundation, or individual support is available by contacting the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. If you would like receive email updates about future issues of MPR, please send an email to mpr@maine.edu, and we will add your address to our electronic mailing list.

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Contents

F E AT U R E S Maine’s Public Estate and Conservation Lands: Brief History and Assessment

by Lloyd C. Irland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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How Well Is Maine Doing?

Comparing Well-Being across Maine Counties

by Angela Daley, Andrew Crawley, Muntasir Rahman, Jake Demosthenes, and Erin Lyons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Commentary

Universal Basic Income: Policy Options at National, State, and Local Levels

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY

by Michael W. Howard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Margaret Chase Smith and Me: The Importance of Leadership 6

by Vice Admiral Nora Tyson, Retired . . .

by Jeremy Ravenelle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Improving the Health of Communities through Population Health Assessments

REFLECTIONS MPR and the World: Connections, Conversations, and Outreach

by Ron Deprez and Chloe Manchester . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

by Linda Silka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

THANKS TO OUR REVIEWERS

Cafeteria Waste-Reduction Programs in Three Southern Maine Elementary Schools: A Waste Audit Analysis

Interview with Artist Rob Shetterly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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by Cassidy Lessner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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First Place Essay

Democracy Needs a Free Press

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MARGARET CHASE SMITH LIBRARY HIGH SCHOOL ESSAY CONTEST

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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

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The Margaret Chase Smith Essay

Margaret Chase Smith and Me: The Importance of Leadership

by Vice Admiral Nora Tyson, Retired

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irst, a little about me. I retired from the United States Navy last September after a little over 38 years of service. My last job on active duty was Third Fleet commander headquartered in San Diego. Third Fleet is comprised of all the naval forces on the West Coast of the United States out to the International Date Line, except for the ballistic missile submarines, which belong to the strategic command out of Omaha, Nebraska. Third Fleet is made up of about 110 ships, 400 aircraft, 30 submarines, 5 carrier strike groups, an amphibious strike group, and around 60,000 people.

In preparation this speech, I did some research on Senator Smith and found that I owe her a huge debt of gratitude. I also found many similarities in our respective careers. The most obvious similarity is that we are both women and both served our fellow Americans most of our adult lives. We also both sort of fell into the professions to which we dedicated our lives, professions that, I think, we both felt we had been destined for.

Most likely, I wouldn’t be giving this talk had it not been for the efforts and the “firm determination” of Senator Margaret Chase Smith. Her persistence in seeing the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act passed in 1948 opened the door for me and thousands of other women to serve our country and paved the way for future legislation that opened even more opportunity for women in the military.

Senator Smith was a strong proponent of our Armed Services. She served for many years on the Naval Affairs MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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graduation, I returned home to Memphis, and a few weeks later, I got a call from a Navy recruiter. He asked me in for a chat, and since I didn’t have anything better to do at the time, I went to the recruiting office to see what it was all about.

The recruiter asked me to take an aptitude test, so I took the test and did pretty well. He told me that I could go into cryptology, supply, intelligence, and a few other things, but never said a word about ships or airplanes. This was long before the laws were changed to allow women to serve on ships and aircraft in combat. Ultimately, after a few more discussions, I thought, “Why not? If I don’t, I’ll always wonder what would have happened if I had and what’s four years?”

At the time of my commissioning, not many occupations were open to

Committee and, subsequently, the Senate Armed Services Committee, and throughout her career, Senator Smith espoused “preparedness ensures peace.”

In fact, she reiterated throughout her career the message of her 1938 Navy Day speech that military weakness leads to war and preparedness ensures peace.

She said, “the surest way to prevent war is to be ready to go to war.” I couldn’t agree more.

I wish I had had the opportunity to meet Senator Smith and thank her. In a sense, I feel we are somewhat soul mates.

We both, through no design of our own, found ourselves blazing trails for women. Senator Smith blazed a trail because her husband, Clyde, died while in office. He knew his wife was the most qualified person for the job and asked his friends to support her in her run for Congress. As for me, because the combat aviation exclusion laws were repealed in 1991 and because I had applied myself, I found myself eligible for assignments that previously had not been open to women.

I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and went to Vanderbilt Always a strong proponent of women in the military, University in Nashville, here Margaret Chase Smith is pictured with President Tennessee. I was a decent Harry S. Truman as he signed the Army-Navy Nurses student, an English major Act of 1947. The Women’s Armed Services Integration who was thinking about Act was passed the following year. going to law school. After Photo courtesy of the Margaret Chase Smith Library.

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The Margaret Chase Smith Essay women in the Navy, and I ended up in Washington, D.C., in an administrative job, which I quickly realized wasn’t for me. I worked for a couple of senior male aviators who realized I probably wouldn’t stay in the Navy if I were relegated to administrative jobs, and they steered me toward flight school and a career in naval aviation. That decision eventually opened up opportunities that I had never dreamed of because many of those opportunities had not been an option when I joined the Navy. I had some amazing experiences, and I was thrilled with the level of responsibility I was afforded as a junior officer.

Over the years, I kept making the most of whatever opportunities presented themselves, and the Navy found new and challenging jobs for me. Laws and policies changed, and I was fortunate enough to have command of a squadron, an amphibious assault ship, and to serve with outstanding leaders and be promoted to admiral. And I loved what I did! I believe that it is important for leaders to love what they do.

I found success by being humble and accepting challenges, sometimes turning adversity into opportunity, by staying smart on my craft, and truly valuing the contributions of everyone who worked for me at any time. I learned when to lead from the front, and when to step back and let others step up. Experience is one of the best contributions to being a good leader.

Like Senator Smith, I was fortunate to be the first woman to do several things: the first woman to command an aircraft carrier strike group, our Task Force in Singapore, the largest maritime exercise in the world, and a numbered fleet. Many times in my career, I looked around the room and found that I was the only woman, and many of those times, I was the commander or the senior person. I learned early on that it

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wasn’t about gender. It was about opportunity for those you lead and mission, getting the job done, solving helping them reach their potential. It is the problem. I am proud of all those about communicating and collabofirsts, but I’m even more proud that rating to solve problems. It is about those milestones are now behind us. listening to others, valuing their input, Someone had to be first, and I feel and caring about and respecting them as extraordinarily fortunate that I was in people. It is about putting yourself in the right place at the right time. others’ shoes and looking at things Margaret Chase Smith said, “I truly through their perspectives. That is how believe that one’s sex should not be a to build a cohesive, functional team that determinant in the selection of public can solve complex problems. officials.” Our military has opened I believe the key to being a virtually every occupation to anyone successful leader is understanding two who meets the requirements. There are things: yourself and your team. If you many people—both male and female— don’t have the you part right, it will be who don’t meet the requirements for hard to lead others. I have learned many reasons. That’s why it is critical through personal experience and obserthat we make the effort to understand vation of others that you must be true what is required—mentally, physically, to yourself and not try to be something emotionally—to do a specific job. If we that you are not. From my observadon’t make the effort to understand the tions, many women feel they must be requirements, we may be forfeiting the more masculine, less emotional, less opportunity to have the best person in empathetic to succeed, particularly in the job.

Again, I quote Margaret Chase Smith: “ability and proved performance, rather than sex, are the best standards for political selection.” The way I see it, when a woman is the best qualified candidate, she should get the job; when she isn’t the best qualified, she shouldn’t get the job. But gone are the days of female service members never knowing if they could have qualified.

Leadership isn’t defined by how we look, it is defined by our thoughts and our actions.

Leadership is about Vice Admiral Tyson on the Naval Station Norfolk solving problems and (Virginia) waterfront with several of the US Navy’s making a difference. It is amphibious ships in the background. about opening doors to Photo courtesy of Nora Tyson.

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The Margaret Chase Smith Essay historically male-dominated professions. and at every level, but it isn’t just gender Smith did. Whether it was answering I disagree, however, for two reasons. or ethnic diversity. We need diversity of every piece of mail from her constituOne, it is hard to continually put on a thought, opinions, and perspectives, ents the same day she received it, or show and still be effective in whatever it diversity in how we look at the probputting out her weekly newsletter is you are trying to do. And two, I lems we need to solve. Diversity of “Washington and Me,” or taking the found that being myself and being thought, built from our different backtime to travel the state of Maine to find emotional and empathetic was apprecigrounds and experiences, allows us to out what she could do for the people ated and often admired by the team. view challenges from new angles and she represented, she believed that you Being oneself certainly makes it easier find new solutions. couldn’t communicate enough. to concentrate on the job at hand And once we have a diverse team, it I’ll give you an example from my without having to worry about pretenis imperative that we respect that diverown career. Near the end of my tour as sions. It enables one to be transparent, sity and genuinely listen to and learn the commanding officer of USS Bataan, sincere, and honest, which are all from others on the team. So good one of our amphibious assault ships, we important traits in a leader. communication and honesty are critical. were on the way back to Norfolk, I have other tips for being a good I think that is true anywhere, whether Virginia, after doing an exercise off the leader. Remember your roots and who you are in a combat situation, a training Panama Canal. We had pulled into helped you succeed. Thank those who situation, an office setting, on the Corpus Christi, Texas, to drop off some helped you along the way and seek to playing field, or at home. The team helicopters and equipment. As we were give others what those individuals gave needs to understand the vision, the clearing the channel heading into the you. Be passionate about what you do. mission. The team members want to buy Gulf of Mexico, I got a call from my If you don’t love what you do, be the into that something that is bigger than boss asking me if I could take the helibest at whatever it is you are currently themselves, but they need the leader to copters we had just dropped off back on doing, then figure out what your passion communicate that purpose, that vision. board and, as the seas allowed, make our is and go for it! Passion is infectious. If I would venture to say nobody has way to New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina it is apparent that you love what you do, done that as well as Margaret Chase was bearing down on the Gulf Coast. those around you will feel that passion and want to be on your team.

Now for the team: In most things you do in life, you are part of a team, whether it is a sports team, a project team, a family, a church congregation, a board of directors. And for a team to be successful, there must be mutual respect and diversity.

Let’s talk a little bit about diversity and why it is important to a team. For many years in our military, diversity was somewhat of a buzzword. Our leadership was expected to have a diverse staff, but that diversity at times could be superVice Admiral Tyson reviewing charts with crewmembers in USS Chancellorsville’s Combat ficial. I believe diversity is Information Center. USS Chancellorsville is a US Navy cruiser forward deployed to Japan. critical in every organization Photo courtesy of Nora Tyson.

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The Margaret Chase Smith Essay If you recall, the hurricane passed over New Orleans, and they breathed a sigh of relief. They thought they had weathered the storm and were in the clear when the levees broke.

At that point, we were off the coast of Louisiana, and when asked to respond, we jumped in feet first. I could write a whole book on that experience, but the bottom line is that throughout that entire tour, I communicated continually with the crew. I got on our ship-wide public address system nearly every day and sometimes more often than that. I told them what I knew and what I didn’t know about our mission and our tasks, which could change at a moment’s notice and often did. I told them if they weren’t ready and weren’t flexible, they were in the wrong business. And I have to tell you, they rose to the occasion and performed the mission superbly. They knew what was expected of them, and they gave it their all. As their commanding officer, I learned that successful leadership was about honesty, sincerity, empathy, and communication.

It was about walking around the ship as much as I could, getting to know the ship’s crew and the marines who made up the blue-green team. Visiting them in their workspaces, on the hangar bay, on the flight deck, in the engineering plant. Building relationships and building trust.

I truly believe leadership isn’t about sitting in a big office, having privileges, and giving orders; it is about solving problems and making the world a better place. It’s about inspiring those who will follow in your footsteps. It’s about those followers wanting to grow up to be you.

I want to leave you with one thought. As I prepared for this talk, I thought about what leadership traits were common among the leaders I have admired. I thought long and hard about it, only to arrive at a simple common denominator. Effective leaders define MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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and embrace a set of steadfast principles that guide them in the way they lead.

Those principles are integrity, honor, and courage. Margaret Chase Smith certainly embodied all of those principles; she lived them every day. She might not have been the most popular person among her colleagues every day of her career, but, without question, she always held true to her principles. Nora Tyson served over 38 years on active duty in the US Navy, retiring as a vice admiral.

An aviator by specialty, Tyson’s last active duty assignment was Commander, US Third Fleet, from July 2015 to September 2017, commanding all Naval Forces on the West Coast to the International Date Line. Her military awards include Navy Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, and various unit awards.

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MPR AND THE WORLD

R E F L E C T I O N S

MPR and the World: Connections, Conversations, and Outreach

by Linda Silka

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e are pleased to bring you another information-filled issue of Maine Policy Review. The articles cover a broad range of policy topics: Maine’s public estate and conservation lands, measuring well-being in Maine, cafeteria wastereduction programs, and population health assessments, as well as a commentary on universal basic income. We are excited to have this issue’s Margaret Chase Smith Essay feature an excerpt of a recent speech by Retired Vice Admiral Nora Tyson: “Margaret and Me: The Importance of Leadership.” In addition, this issue includes an interview with Rob Shetterly, who creates the cover art for every MPR issue. We often hear from readers about how engaging they find the covers. The interview explains the creative process Shetterly uses to capture visually the themes covered in an issue. This issue also contains the first-place essay from the Margaret Chase Smith Library’s high school essay contest—this year’s theme was the importance of a free press.

Perhaps you were not aware that all past MPR issues are available online, as well as in paper copy (available at every library in the state). After you read the latest paper copy, you might enjoy going to Maine Policy Review’s Digital Commons site (https://digitalcommons .library.umaine.edu/mpr/). On the site, you will find interesting information about where MPR readers are coming from and which articles are drawing significant attention. At the bottom of the homepage, there is a map of the world. The map is constantly updated with notifications of which articles are being downloaded in real time and from MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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what countries. When I looked one day recently, articles were being downloaded by readers from the United States, of course, but also Australia, Botswana, Cameroon, Canada, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Laos, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Vietnam. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to get into conversations with people about what they hope to learn from the articles they are downloading?

At MPR, we are now doing other things that blend various forms of information dissemination. We have recently established ourselves on Twitter (@MainePolicyRev) and invite you to follow us if you are a Twitter user. We use Twitter to highlight the newest issue, along with articles, commentaries, and essays that seem timely based on the news of the day. MPR is now also available in a flipbook format that makes it easy to read on a tablet or cellphone. Check out this past spring’s special issue on leadership in this new format (https://issuu .com/umaine/docs/mpr_v27n1_issu/).

In other outreach, we have begun encouraging university and high school teachers to use Maine Policy Review articles in their classrooms because the journal provides such a great opportunity for learning. Wouldn’t it be great if there were some way to capture when this usage is happening? I encourage you to write to us if you are using MPR in your classroom and have thoughts on how we can make the process more useful for you.

One of the pleasures of being the executive editor of MPR is having an

opportunity to work with students who are considering submitting manuscripts to MPR for possible publication.

Recently, I sat in on a meeting with a group of undergraduates from multiple disciplines (anthropology, economics, engineering, food security, and nursing) who have been investigating an issue for which we need more interdisciplinary research to ensure effective policy. It was instructive and exciting to see the ways that these future leaders are working together to share research and identify policy implications of this research.

As I talk with other authors who have published in MPR, they tell me that they often hear from readers with questions, interest, concerns, and agreements and disagreements. The authors report that they feel like they are being heard and that they are adding to important policy conversations in the state. We hope to continue to have Maine Policy Review play this important role well into the future, and if you, too, would like MPR to continue playing this role, please consider showing your support through a donation. We’ve made it easy for you; just visit our website (https:// mcspolicycenter.umaine.edu/mpr /donate-maine-policy-review/). Linda Silka is the executive editor of 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 MPR, she is a senior fellow at UMaine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.

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MAINE’S PUBLIC ESTATE AND CONSERVATION LANDS

Maine’s Public Estate and Conservation Lands: Brief History and Assessment

by Lloyd C. Irland

Abstract In contrast to other northeastern states, the first conservation movement at the turn of the twentieth century passed Maine by. New Deal conservation programs likewise had little impact here, though several seeds were sown.

In a state where public access to open rural land and North Woods lakes and rivers was extensively available, there was no perceived need for a public land

submerged lands, but I did include estimated municipal lands, as shown in the Maine geographic information system (GIS). As there is no current census available, it is unlikely that I have completely accounted for lands held by local NGOs. Sources

system. In southern Maine by the 1990s, sprawl and No Trespassing signs became more visible. In the North Woods, large sales of former paper company land shook confidence that public access to land would continue. In a historic

Figure 1: Maine Conserved

Lands, 2017

burst of activity, state and federal programs, aided by several nongovernmental organizations, made land and easement acquisitions that in a short time brought 21 percent of Maine’s land into its conservation estate. During this period of activity, a number of baffling policy issues were left largely on autopilot; this article closes with a brief and selective list of them.

F

ew people know that 21 percent of Maine’s land area is now in conservation status and that most of this transfer occurred in the last three decades. Perhaps this information is not widely known because it is not easy to learn the facts about Maine’s public and conservation lands.1 To make this information easier to find, in this article I will review the history of Maine’s public lands, the forces that generated the recent upsurge in conserved land, and some issues we must consider for the future, such as management of public lands, the Land for Maine’s Future Board, and the new (2016) Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument (KWW).

Maine’s public estate, as presented here, includes local, state, and federal landownership and easements.2 Conservation lands include nongovernmental organization (NGO) ownership and easements (Figure 1).

Because of issues with the data, I have not included coastal beaches and inland islands (other than Acadia National Park) and Native American lands. I also did not consider state-owned river and lakebeds and coastal

Maine Conserved Lands, 2017 Fee Public Fee NGO Conservation Easements

Source: Land for Maine’s Future Board.

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MAINE’S PUBLIC ESTATE AND CONSERVATION LANDS

for the data are given in a detailed Appendix available on the MPR Digital Commons site (https:// digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol27/iss2), which discusses sources and limitations of the data and includes a 2017 conservation lands map. At several points in this essay, I rely on personal knowledge from service in state government and as a consultant.

BRIEF HISTORY OF MAINE’S PUBLIC ESTATE

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e can think of the history of Maine’s public land as fitting into three broad eras: an era of disposal, an era of passivity, and an era of acquisition. Maine is unusual in that the disposal of its lands occurred under the sovereignty of four regimes: two successive monarchies, then the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and finally the state of Maine. During the eras of disposal and acquisition, the map of Maine’s public and conservation estate was dramatically redrawn.

Maine is unusual in that the disposal of its lands occurred under the sovereignty of four regimes.…

Era of Disposal: 1600s to 1878 Until the claims made by European monarchs, the land that is now Maine was held in usufruct tenures by a number of Native American tribes. The oldest private land titles in Maine were issued by the King of France to Sieur de Cadillac in 1603. The oldest deed given by Native Americans was issued at Pemaquid in 1625 to John Brown. During the Colonial period, the British Crown and the Council of New England made numerous grants, a total of some 4 million acres by 1783. Maps of Maine from this time were poor to nonexistent. Grants were often given with no clear boundaries, and many were later revoked or lost (Judd, Churchill, and Eastman 1995; Wilkins 1963). This history left a long legacy of litigation over titles and rights, culminating in the Indian Land Claims litigation and settlement of the early 1980s, which remains incomplete in important respects.3 MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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At the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, there was no federal land in Maine, in contrast to the TransAppalachian territories. Instead, the government of Massachusetts succeeded to all remaining ungranted lands, which then accounted for some 81 percent of Maine’s land area. At statehood in 1820, ungranted lands amounted to 60 percent of the state’s present land area.4 Massachusetts retained ownership of a considerable area of the state’s wildland. Maine purchased the Commonwealth’s remaining lands in 1854.5 State ownership was then only 27 percent of Maine’s total land area (Judd, Churchill, and Eastman 1995; Wilkins 1963) (Figure 2).

For most of the nineteenth century, the prevailing view was that Maine had too much public land. Before the Civil War, many people cherished the hope that much of this land would become thriving farming communities. Moses Greenleaf (1829) predicted that lumbering would cease in Maine as the forest was removed. These hopes were dashed by the Erie Canal and the migration to the vast productive lands of the Corn Belt and the prairies. I’ve often observed that Maine’s most successful public lands policy was its decision to get rid of it all. Maine made its last land sale in 1875, after which it held claim to remaining public reserved lands (often termed public lots) of some 400,000 acres, a few odd parcels, and islands on the coast and in Great Ponds. By the end of the 1880s, Maine owned virtually no public land. On its 400,000 acres of public lots, the state had sold the timber and grass rights, leaving the land to lie fallow for another century.6 Era of Passivity: Two Conservation Movements Bypass Maine

During the country’s first conservation movement, around the turn of the twentieth century, nearby northeastern states were establishing large public land systems, often by purchase. This trend bypassed Maine completely.

The state’s longstanding traditions of open access to private lands meant that the outdoor sporting community did not worry about access to favorite hunting grounds, canoe routes, and fishing holes (Acheson and Acheson 2009). Further, over much of the period from 1900 to 1960, Maine’s economy was weak, public revenues were scant, and one-party rule in Augusta was committed to minimizing government expenditures.7 The absence of effective county-level government in Maine meant that a key advocate for, and manager of, local recreation facilities and parks did not exist.

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MAINE’S PUBLIC ESTATE AND CONSERVATION LANDS

History of Public Ownership in Maine to 2016

Figure 2: 20

1600

1700

1800

1603

2000

Era of Disposal 81%

15

Massachusetts Holding Era of Passivity

50%

10 Colonial Grants and Sales

Era of Acquisition

27%

1603

Million acres remaining in public ownership

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Fee 269,472 1,072,801 388,000 1,730,273

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Easements 12,416 429,100 1,857,000 2,298,516

2018

5.4

0.4

1.0 1900

Total 281,888 1,456,901 2,245,000 4,028,789

16

90

65

19

19

19

s

78 18

54

8.8

1800

Federal conservation efforts were limited in Maine up until the 1930s, with the notable exception of Acadia National Park, which was initiated by private land donations. In western Maine, the federal government began acquiring land for the White Mountain National Forest in 1914.8 Maine’s first national wildlife refuge (Moosehorn) was established in 1937. In the 1930s, New Deal programs fostered an awareness of the potential importance of tourism for the economy and of conservation as a broad social policy. In 1935, the Maine Legislature created a parks commission, and the first park was dedicated in 1938. This park, Aroostook State Park, also had its origin in a donation, in this instance by the city of Presque Isle. Many later parks also originated in private donations. Maine acquired its first state wildlife management area in 1937, assisted by the federal Pittman Robertson Act of 1937, which provided funds for land acquisition and wildlife research.

But the Works Progress Administration’s (1937) guide for Maine, while emphasizing the importance of tourism and outdoor activities to Maine, had nothing to report MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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20

18.0

1700

Summary for 2016 Federal State and municipal NGO Total

18

83 17

16

03

0

7%

5%

0%

20

5

30

Million Acres

1900

1.3

2000

Total acres: 19,739,000 Note: KWW NM Included

on game management areas or state parks beyond the first donation for Baxter State Park (about 6,000 acres) (Hakola 1981).

From the late 1920s through the 1940s, many other eastern states acquired the nuclei of state forest and park systems by tax default. But because tax defaults were limited in Maine, this opportunity also bypassed the state.9 Due to other priorities during the Depression and World War II, by the mid-1960s, Maine’s public estate had increased only marginally, having added a few parks, accretion to federal units, and wildlife management areas.10 In the second conservation movement, roughly dating from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, events rapidly gained momentum and engaged more actors. Yet in Maine, apart from completion of the Baxter State Park donations, occasional tiny purchases by federal agencies, and the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, public land acquisition moved slowly. The earliest acquisitions responded to concerns over specific places, such as the Allagash, not to a broad interest in conservation.

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MAINE’S PUBLIC ESTATE AND CONSERVATION LANDS

A sense of threat to natural values and to public access had yet to become a political force in Maine.

Interest in conservation increased in the early 1970s during the administration of Maine Governor Kenneth Curtis, when stories by journalist Bob Cummings unearthed the issue of the ownership and management of the public lots (Schepps 1974). The federal 1972 Clean Water Act spurred, finally, action on water quality.

Growing interest in the outdoors began to register in public discussion and policies. During this time, Governor Curtis reorganized state government, creating a Department of Conservation, and the department’s early leaders became part of the force for conservation.

The era of acquisition, long delayed for Maine compared to other states, began with a vengeance in 1998.…

A citizen-initiated referendum for the Bigelow Preserve (1976) typified the place-based nature of conservation interest.11 Fragmented acquisition programs, serving particular constituencies, diluted efforts to conserve other land. A period of advocacy, legal action, and negotiation began in which the state’s scattered public lots were not only recovered for public uses, but also consolidated into major tracts protecting scenic jewels of the state such as the Bigelow Mountain Range, Squapan Mountain (since renamed Scopan Mountain), Duck Lake, and the Mahoosuc Range.

These lands were committed to the care of a new agency, the Bureau of Public Lands, which operated on its own resource revenues with no support from the general fund.

During the administration of Governor Angus King, the Parks Bureau was merged with Bureau of Public Lands; the state parks continue to receive general fund support.12 Even during this second conservation movement, however, Maine did not expand its public estate significantly. By 1999, the state’s public estate was only slightly larger than it had been in the 1930s. Much of the increase was due to discovering and consolidating the public lots, which had previously been of little use for conservation or public recreation. Maine’s public estate became far more visible, though, because the public MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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lands program had brought the old scattered public lots into manageable units through its trading program.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Maine’s public estate consisted largely of the public lots, donated lands, around two dozen state parks, and two or three dozen wildlife management areas. By 1988, well into the second conservation movement, nearly half of Maine’s public fee lands still consisted of the long-ignored but recently rediscovered public lots.

Development booms in southern Maine in the 1980s accented dwindling public access to rural land. The observation was, “When the For Sale signs come down, the No Trespassing signs go up.” Also during this decade, large land sales in northern Maine began to prompt concern. In 1982, financier James Goldsmith acquired Diamond International Corporation, a major northern Maine landowner that also held lands in scenic areas of northern New Hampshire and New York. In 1988, Diamond International sold the Maine lands, and those new owners further broke up and sold the properties, often to liquidators, as the operators with the most exploitive methods were called (Harper 1990; Irland, Hagan, and Lutz 2011; NFLC 1994). Major national conservation groups made Maine a priority in the fight to protect large swaths of northern wildlands (Irland 2016).

Public concern and political momentum combined to build more conscious, planned expansion of the public estates in several northeastern states during this time.

Era of Acquisition The era of acquisition, long delayed for Maine compared to other states, began with a vengeance in 1998 with The Nature Conservancy’s purchase of 185,000 acres of former International Paper lands along the upper St. John River, followed by the Pingree conservation easement by New England Forestry Foundation (announced in 1999; closed in 2001). The Pingree transaction alone boosted conservation land totals to a new level. In fact, this one easement covered more area than the amount that had been added to the public estate since the 1930s (Figure 3). While there was strong public support of, and involvement in, these projects, the primary funding and initiative for both transactions were from the private sector.

The era of acquisition, with its significant advances in conservation, coincided with a time of extraordinary change in Maine’s wood-using industries and timberland ownership. By the 1990s, a major shift in corporate timberland ownership accompanied a change not only 14

MAINE’S PUBLIC ESTATE AND CONSERVATION LANDS

Thousands

Thousands

Figure 3: Maine Conservation Lands, 1935–2016 in ownership but also in means of sharing land4500 ownership in Maine’s forests. This period saw 4000 the virtual complete liquidation of Maine Federal and State Fee Federal and State Easements 3500 NGO Fee NGO Easements timberland holdings by US-based, publicly held 3000 paper and forest products firms (Hackley 2018; 2500 Irland, Hagan, and Lutz 2011).

2000 If ownership of Maine’s forestland had 1500 continued to turn over at 1000 the pace and in the manner to which we 500 were accustomed before the 1980s, I believe there 0 would have been far less 1935 1965 1988 1999 2016 change in public ownerFor data in this chart, see Appendix Table 1 ship and conservation (https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol27/iss2/). easements would be smaller as well. Following Figure 4: Total Acreage of Maine Timberland Transactions Larger the Great Northern

than 50,000 Acres, 1980–2016 Paper (GNP) easement on the West Branch of 12,000 the Penobscot River in 10,372 1981, only 26,000 acres 10,000 of large forestland easements had been created by 1999 (although many 8,000 small ones were created, 6,144 mostly in southern 6,000 Maine). The underlying causes of these ownership 3,702 4,000 changes have been 2,551 discussed elsewhere and 2,000 do not concern us here (see Hackley 2018; Irland, Hagan, and Lutz 0 1980–89 1990–99 2000–09 2010–16 2011). Between 1980 Decade and 2016, 22.8 million acres of land—an area exceeding the total area of Maine—changed hands, most active years of land transfers were 1990 to 1999, almost all of it in the wildlands.13 This counts only when 10.4 million acres changed hands (Figure 4). An transactions exceeding 50,000 acres.14 Many smaller estimated 6.6 million acres of these transactions transactions, in the 5,000- to 10,000-acre range, were concerned the 2 million acres owned by GNP in 1980, outright sales to subdividers and the liquidators. The as those lands were sold, resold, divided, and sold again.

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Out of that turmoil, however, some 25 percent of the original GNP ownership ended up in conservation ownership or easements.

As Figure 3 shows, conservation easements account for the lion’s share of the increase in conservation lands in Maine since 1980. Provisions of those easements have evolved over the years. The earliest easements were essentially conveyances of development rights, with provisions for following regulations of the time concerning forest practices, roads, gravel pits, and the like. Some easements did not specifically guarantee future rights of public access. Some early easements were linear corridors along streams or around lakes, as such areas were of high conservation concern at the time. An example was the GNP easement, a donation of a land corridor along the West Branch of the Penobscot River where their ownership was 100 percent.

A significant portion of acreage of public fee land is under active management for multiple uses.…

The conservation easements can be grouped into two classes based on size: class 1 consists of easements covering very large parcels of land, and class 2 easements cover smaller plots. Class 1 consists of the five largest conservation easements, which cover areas from 232,000 to 766,000 acres and account for 85 percent of all the easement acreage. Class 2 consists of easements that range in size from 6,500 to 36,000 acres. All of the easements in class 1 date between 2001 and 2009. Those were the busiest years for easements, accounting for 95 percent of all the easements created between 1981 and 2016 (see list in Appendix Table 6 [https:// digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol27/iss2/]).

Investor timberland owners have become more comfortable with conservation easements. Several private tracts with conservation easements have been purchased by other investors. For example, Great Northern Paper owned some 2.3 million acres at its peak. Following the dismemberment of that property, approximately 26 percent of that land had found its way into conservation ownership by the state or into NGO reserves or easements. Not only were large areas covered with easements, MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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but investor-owners entered into long-term timber supply contracts with mills. These easements and wood supply agreements created new patterns of shared ownership (for discussion, see Binko, Chow, and Dunning 2001; Jenkins 2008; Lewis 2001; Pidot 2005).

State Activism in the Acquisition Era In 1987, the Maine Legislature created the Land for Maine’s Future Program (LMF) to consolidate acquisition programs and adopt a more systematic process for land acquisition. Later that year, Maine citizens voted for $35 million in bonds to purchase lands of statewide importance. LMF’s bond issues have regularly been approved by voters, creating a source of funds that enabled many local cooperative projects all across the state and supplied seed money for several large conservation transactions. This was the first time that a large long-term program of acquisition was established that did not identify the locations to be acquired. The program has completed projects in all 16 counties in Maine. Types of land include mountain summits, shorelines, coastal islands, beaches, forests, grasslands, wildlife habitat, farmland, and wetlands (for history, see Barringer et al. 2004; Irland 1999, 2000; LMF 2017; LMFC 2016; Maine SPO 1997; TPL 2014).

As of the end of 2016, the program has protected 591,000 acres from development, 316,000 acres (53 percent) through easements (for current details, see https://www.maine.gov/dacf/lmf/). Easements leave land in private ownership and on the tax rolls, often with public access guaranteed. A significant portion of acreage of public fee land is under active management for multiple uses, often including timber management.

Much of the acreage is in northern and eastern counties because of the important recreational and habitat resources in those areas (Appendix Tables 2, 3, and 4 [https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol27 /iss2/]). Also, land prices are far lower in these areas, and large tracts of land continue to be managed for timber.

Roughly half of all LMF projects were in the state’s eight southernmost counties. Many of these projects meet locally identified needs and protect locally important areas. In these counties, fee ownership exceeded easement acres, since most of the land’s value is for development; though easements are often used on farm properties. These acquisitions account for 10 percent of the total area of the fee acquisitions and 4 percent of the easement lands (Appendix Table 3 [https:// digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol27/iss2/]).

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Much LMF activity has focused on retaining land in multiple-use management and on the tax rolls. In southern Maine, public recreational lands can improve nearby property values, so it is likely that any loss to the tax base is offset by higher values for nearby property. Local governments and citizens, who value these lands for many local benefits, support these acquisition projects. A local legislative body must approve of any acquisition involving more than 1 percent of a community’s tax base.

MAINE’S PUBLIC ESTATE AND CONSERVATION LAND TODAY

W

Maine is nearly twice the area of Baxter State Park.

During the acquisition era, land conservation in Maine was place-based and responsive to threats and opportunities and not guided by an overall plan.

While there is much to be said for such an approach, it is hard to judge what the remaining needs and gaps might be.

By 2016, the nonprofit sector had become the dominant actor on the conservation lands, holding 2.2 million acres in fee and in easements, more than half of the state’s total conservation lands. In 2016 with the creation of the KWW, the largest single federal acquisition in the state’s history, federal ownership in Maine increased by 58 percent (for background, see Austin 2015; Miller 2017). Following a hallowed tradition, it was a private donation, as were Baxter State Park, Acadia National Park, and a number of the flagship state parks.

By 2016, then, the total conservation estate of 4 million acres consisted of NGO easements (46 percent),

hen we add up all the conservation landholdings and easements, public and private, Maine has 4 million acres of protected lands, roughly 21 percent of its land area (Table 1). This, then, leaves 79 percent for potential future development, subject to the land’s natural limitations, access, and land-use regulations.

Fee ownership by governments is not the Table 1: Maine Public Estate and Conservation Lands Estimates for 2016 entire story. Maine has taken the lead in conservaFee Easements Total tion easements. These easements generally Federal protect large areas and Acadia National Park and Katahdin Woods 122,832 12,416 135,248 prevent future developand Waters National Monument ment on the land, but may 49,980 49,980 White Mountain National Forest not include a guarantee of 32,000 32,000 Appalachian Trail Fee future access for recreation.

In Maine, 2.2 million 64,660 64,660 National Wildlife Refuges acres of land are protected 269,472 12,416 281,888 Federal total by easements, or just over State 11 percent of the state’s 632,851 429,100 1,061,951 Public Lands land area. Private conservation organizations hold 85,306 85,306 Parks about 85 percent of the Inland Fish & Wildlife’s Wildlife easement area.

Management Areas 100,000 100,000 NGOs have also Baxter State Park 209,644 209,644 become major fee owners.

State total 1,027,801 429,100 1,456,901 Private conservation State and federal total 1,297,273 441,516 1,738,789 groups and local land trusts hold nearly Municipal 45,000 45,000 400,000 acres in fee, NGO 388,000 1,857,000 2,245,000 roughly half as much land Grand total 1,730,273 2,298,516 4,028,789 as the state holds. Current Sources: Various (see Appendix [https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol27/iss2/]).

NGO fee ownership in

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NGO fee (10 percent), public fee (33 percent), public easements (11 percent), or in total, 43 percent in fee, and 57 percent in easements (Figure 5).

Maine has adopted a system for classifying protected areas according to general use and management policies (Table 2). About one-fifth of the conservation estate (900,000 acres) is managed as dedicated forever wild protected reserves; virtually all of the remainder is in managed lands and conservation easements, many of which contribute to taxes under one of the use-value tax programs (see Kuehne, Puehlik, and Weisskittel 2018). Given the state’s history, much of this area does not consist of undisturbed pristine ecosystems.

As noted earlier, Maine now has a large and important invisible conservation estate. This estate is the area protected by easements, roughly 16 percent of the state, or one acre in six. These conservation easements do not appear on highway maps in the vivid green often used for federal and state forest and parks.

Further, municipal and small land trust properties, often important for local recreational uses and quality of life, appear on few statewide maps available to visitors. Past dichotomies fail us in today’s world. The distinction between public and private ownership has MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Figure 5:

Maine Public and Conservation Lands, 1965 and 2016

2,000 1,857 1,800

1965

2016

1,600

Thousand Acres

1,400

1,342

1,200 1,000 800 600 442

400

388

270 200 0

5

0 Federal & State Fee

Federal & State Easements

0 NGO easements

NGO Fee

Total in 1965: 275,000 (Public Reserved Lands not included) Total in 2016: 4,029,000 (Public Reserved Lands included)

Table 2:

Maine gap code

Maine Conservation Lands, 2016, by General Management Approach, Maine Gap Codes

Total acres

Percentage of Maine land area

1

Maintained in a natural state (e.g., federal wilderness areas)

325,737

1.7

7.9

2

Maintained in a natural state (e.g., state ecological reserve)

559,400

2.8

13.5

3

Managed forest fee lands & conservation easements

3,182,553

16.1

76.8

39

Farmland easements

26,651

0.1

0.6

4

Municipal land and others with no permanent conservation

45,326

0.2

1.1

9

Leased lots with no permanent protection

8

0.0

0.0

(blank)

Maine gap type

Unassigned

Percentage of conservation land

3,129

0.0

0.1

Total conserved lands

4,142,805

21.0

100.0

Total Maine land acres

19,739,000

Sources: Maine Office of GIS (2018); Andy Cutko, Maine Natural Areas Program (personal communication, May 25, 2017).

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become less meaningful in assessing Maine’s public and conservation lands. How to include the nonprofit sector? How to include easements? How to include the tribal lands?

Drivers of Change Why did Maine’s era of passivity give way to such intense activity so quickly, and why did it occur so much later than in many other states? A full history is not possible, but I can point to certain key factors, most of them hinted at earlier.

Sprawl A proxy for the effect of suburbanization on parcel fragmentation and posting of No Trespassing signs might be the number of communities reaching a certain level of population. According to a release by GrowSmart Maine (n.d.), in 1960, only 80 of Maine’s 489 organized towns had populations exceeding 2,500; by 2000, 131 towns exceeded this level, and by 2015, the Maine State Planning Office expected that nearly 150 would exceed 2,500. GrowSmart Maine (n.d.) projected that by 2015, half of southern Maine municipalities would have populations exceeding 3,500.

Ownership turnover and liquidators The unprecedented pace of ownership turnover and the highly visible activities of the liquidators generated considerable concern among wildland advocates, recreationists, and the public. This created a political atmosphere that for the first time in Maine’s history turned in favor of significant expansion in public and NGO ownership of land. The support shown in opinion polls for the proposed national park (now KWW) certainly owed a great deal to these events, which so many found disturbing.

New actors Key new actors and approaches emerged. A bewildering list of new alphabet-soup acronyms began to appear in the newspapers—Trust for Public Lands, Downeast Land Trust, New England Forestry Foundation, Forest Society of Maine, and more. These groups were local, regional, and national. Nonprofits with fundraising and lobbying muscle began to serve as intermediaries in land conservation acquisitions and in some cases they began to own and manage large areas themselves. Large land transactions became prolonged

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negotiations among a large group of actors, all seeking to pursue private investment and conservation agendas, often with sizable doses of government funds. The new actors did not merely respond to opportunities, they created them and, in many cases, were able to tap substantial philanthropic funds that otherwise would not have been available.

New and augmented funding sources These national actors energetically tapped federal earmarks along with private donations. The new funding sources, together with new opportunities raised by restructured private landownerships, energized a massive increase in Maine’s conservation lands. The speed of this change was extraordinary in the context of the history shown in Figure 3. Three of every four conservation acres were added since the late 1980s. Many were initiated by large private transactions, not by governments, and essentially none were created as part of a comprehensive long-term plan (Irland 2017).

Although there was limited direct federal acquisition of land in Maine, federal money lubricated large land deals and led to state and NGO ownership. The federal Forest Legacy Program assisted in acquiring easements and fee ownership on 34 tracts, totaling 731,000 acres, with $74 million in funding (as of September 30, 2016). In contrast, federal fee ownership by the end 2016 was only 240,000 acres.

A compilation of conservation funding in New England by Highstead Foundation and the Harvard Forest (Buchanan 2016) determined that from 2004 to 2014, Maine expended $70 million in state funds and $104 million in federal funds on land conservation. An additional $11.5 million in local funding was authorized. Total government funding, just during this decade, was $186 million, with federal dollars accounting for 56 percent of the expenditures. Due to the abundance of large conservation opportunities available, federal funding in Maine and New Hampshire exceeded state contribution, in contrast to the other New England states. On a per capita basis, Maine’s federal funding was by far the highest in New England, while its state funding was in the middle of the range. The remote forested areas of northern Maine and New Hampshire constituted important biodiversity, habitat, heritage, and recreational assets on a regional and national scale.

Comparing these funds with private financing is difficult due to different data periods involved. As an

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incomplete summary, I estimate that over the years, private funding for conservation land acquisitions (including the Pingree easement and KWW) from philanthropic sources exceeded $300 million. Additionally, many of these transactions included significant donation elements by the sellers that are not counted in this total. This total does not include smaller land trusts and other NGOs; nor does it include administrative and legal costs incurred by the NGOs. Land posting A tradition of allowing hunting, fishing, collecting fiddleheads (unfurled ferns), and other outdoor activities on Maine rural lands has been withering in many urbanizing areas, although data to support this claim are scant and my effort to uncover data that would reveal trends was unsuccessful. There are two recent sources, however.

First, a statewide survey conducted at the University of Maine polled not only landowners, but also recreational land users (Leahy 2016, 2018). Of responding landowners, 58 percent were considering posting their land to at least some uses in the future. Twenty percent or more cited at least occasional instances of litter, dumping, damage to trails, or erosion. In the user survey, of 300 respondents, 67 percent were full-time Maine residents; 58 percent said that posting is increasing.

Fully 63 percent said that they have seen lands posted where they once recreated. Illustrating the wide variation in posting across the state, 47 percent said they lived in areas they considered lightly posted.

Second, for several years, the USDA Forest Service has conducted a National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) to identify patterns of landownership and landowner attitudes and practices. The sample size is small so substate information within Maine is not available.15 In Maine, the NWOS estimated (2011–2013) that 5.6 million acres are owned as family forests, mostly in southern and central Maine. Almost all (5.3 million acres) are 10 acres or greater in size and are held by 86,000 owners. This is 32 percent of Maine’s forest area (Butler et al. 2016; https://apps.fs.usda.gov/nwos /tablemaker.jsp).

Seventy-seven percent of the family forestland area is held in parcels larger than 50 acres. Because of the skewness in the size distribution of ownerships, the 31 percent of owners who posted their land were removing public access from 42 percent of the family

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forestland (Butler et al. 2016; https://apps.fs.usda.gov /nwos/tablemaker.jsp). Many tracts have multiple owners, complicating decision-making about uses, access, and management. About 60 percent of the tracts were owned jointly, by family partnerships, or trusts or estates.

These bare statistics cannot tell the full story for the heavily settled and subdivided southern Maine, as such surveys cannot gather locational details. In southern Maine, it is quite common for roadside strip sprawl to effectively cut off public access to large areas of undisturbed interior forest, which may not be posted.

In the wildlands, despite changes in ownership and considerable fragmentation of the largest former paper company holdings, landowners permit public uses over a high proportion of the land, with only local exceptions where roads are gated. Over recent years, however, hunters and anglers have reported increasing instances of access being lost due to cutbacks in landowner spending on roads and bridges. Landowners no longer maintain many remote stream crossings and occasionally close logging roads that will not be needed for some time. In many areas, road surface conditions have declined from the late 1990s, when many owners improved roads to carry huge off-highway logging rigs with gross weights as high as 100 tons. This situation is not new. In a 1986 survey by the Maine Department of Conservation, 51 percent of respondents said they had encountered No Trespassing signs in areas where they had previously visited, 45 percent found new development preventing access to traditionally used areas, and 39 percent reported encountering gates on roads they had previously used (Maine DOC 1986). On the fringes of the wildlands, frontage on many remote ponds was subdivided long ago, with gated access roads barring public use.

Snyder and Butler (2012) report on a nationwide survey, with interesting statistical analysis, conducted from 2002 to 2006, which documented declines in willingness of landowners to allow public uses and a significantly lower willingness to allow persons not known to them to use their land.

DOES MAINE HAVE ENOUGH PUBLIC AND CONSERVATION LAND?

A

century ago, many believed that Maine had too much public land. One way to look at this question might

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be to compare Maine to other states. It is often stated that Maine has the lowest percentage of public land of all the forested states. Based on the US Geological Survey Protected Areas Database (PAD) data for 2016, we can compare state and federal fee ownership in Maine to 21 other eastern states (Figure 6). States with less state ownership than Maine are almost all farm states like Ohio, or southern states with histories of hostility to public ownership. Based on state and federal fee ownership, Maine ranks ninth from the bottom among these states.16 It is below several of the densely populated and land-costly states of southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic. The simple average of the states in Figure 6 is 7.9 percent.

How much public land is enough? How much easement land is enough? How much undeveloped rural land in private ownership is enough? These questions have no ready answers. Others have persuasively advocated for retaining large proportions of New England’s extensive forests, farms, and working landscapes (Harris 2006; Harvard Forest 2017; NEFF 2013; NEGC 2009; Wiersma 2009).

As a preservation goal, Maine, despite its achievements, has only 4.5 percent of its total acreage in public or conserved land (see Table 2). This rate is well below the widely cited Brundtland Commission goal of 12 percent of land area in reserves (Cutko 2015; Schlawin and Cutko 2014; WCED 1987). A recent proposal by the Harvard Forest and collaborators argues that 10 percent of the region’s forest should be in the form of unmanaged wildlands (Harvard Forest 2017). Perhaps it is time for a thorough discussion of this question.

The Maine Economic Growth Council in 2001 adopted a goal of 1.8 million acres in conservation. That goal was tracked annually and revised upward twice.

The 2011 report included easements, which means that the 1.8 million acre goal has already been reached. The council’s annual reports no longer mention the issue.

There was no longer any annual tracking of conservation lands after the State Planning Office was shut down.

Trails and trail corridors, often on private land, are important resources for many kinds of recreation.

The Appalachian Trail (AT) and International Appalachian Trail (IAT) are marked and managed trails that cross Maine from the Mahoosucs to the New Brunswick border. Maine Huts & Trails, a private group, manages an 80-mile trail system between Greenville and Carrabassett Valley designed for a MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Figure 6:

Federal and State Fee Ownership, Eastern States, 2016 17.2%

FL NJ

16.7% 16.2%

NH PA

15.4%

VT

12.3% 11.8%

MA WV

10.2% 9.7%

VA DE

9.4% 8.4%

MD NC

8.2%

CT

7.2%

SC

6.8%

ME

5.7% 5.3%

GA MS

5.1% 5.0%

TN NY

4.7% 4.5%

KY AL

3.4%

OH RI 0.0%

3.0% 0.5% 5.0%

10.0%

15.0%

20.0%

Source: US Geological Survey.

variety of nonmotorized activities with four huts for overnight stays. Much of this trail system is on private land. Additionally, Maine has around 7,000 miles of ATV trails, which are also mostly on private land and are managed by local clubs. Some 3,000 property owners permit private ATV groups to manage trails across their land (Falzone 2018). This trail system is important to many residents and visitors and represents an achievement in managing public use on private lands. Several public programs assist in funding these efforts. Originally organized for snowmobiling, the uses of such trails have broadened to horseback riding, mountain biking, and cross-country skiing.

In short, access for recreation is not well measured by acres of public land property owned or under easement because we must account for access (by road or otherwise) and for posting of private property. A 1980 21

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Riverlands State Park offers hiking and canoeing along the Androscoggin River, a short drive from the Lewiston-Auburn area. Photo by Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands.

Acadia National Park became a national monument in 1916, making it the first national park in the East. In 2017, it was the seventh most heavily visited park in the country. Photo by author.

The Katahdin massif is the centerpiece of Baxter State Park, donated by the former governor from 1931 to 1962. The summit is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail and the beginning of the International Appalachian Trail.

Photo by author.

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Mt Agamenticus is the core of a 10,000acre, multi-owner conservation area in southern York County that was assembled in pieces over several decades. The summit, at 961 feet, is visible from the sea.

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Presque Isle

A 282,000-acre working forest conservation easement protects the Penobscot River’s West Branch from subdivision and development. The easement extends watershed-scale coverage from a previous easement protecting portions of the immediate river corridor.

Forest Society of Maine photo.

Bangor

Augusta

Conserved Lands in Maine Pingree Conservation Easement

Portland

Federal State & Municipal Private

Pingree Conservation easement with current Maine conservation lands. Federal, state, and municipal lands are mostly fee; private are a mix of fee and easements.

Chain of Ponds is a Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands unit stretching along a series of ponds near the Quebec border and famous for their coldwater fishery. Photo by author.

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The Bureau of Parks and Lands’ Rocky Lake Unit in Washington County includes a well-known smallmouth bass fishery. This 10,900-acre tract was acquired in a trade from a paper company and includes a 1,550-acre ecological reserve.

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essay on this topic opined: “A data base for assessing the availability of land for outdoor recreation does not exist.

Information on such issues as vandalism, easements, and land posting is scanty” (Irland and Rumpf 1980). This statement remains substantially true almost 40 years later.

The major thrust of the acquisition era has been to protect extensive remote landscapes in the northern Maine. In five less-populated counties, 17 percent or more of the land area of each county is in conserved status. Two-thirds of all Maine’s conservation land is in four northern counties, and this conserved area exceeds the total area of Maine’s six smallest counties. This amount of conservation land is clearly a major achievement. Maine, however, needs to provide better availability of open space and recreation lands closer to where most people live and where the bulk of the state’s tourism business occurs in southern Maine (Figures 7 and 8).

From 2015 to 2018, in areas where tax-exempt ownership has risen rapidly, local groups allied with the governor to challenge the tax-exempt status of NGO conservation lands. Criticism was especially fierce in the

CURRENT ISSUES WITH PUBLIC AND CONSERVATION LANDS

T

he LMF Board has not used bureaucratic planners in a top-down basis to decide which tracts to acquire.

Since the LMF was created, local groups and local governments brought in proposals for land conservation that far exceeded the program’s available funds. Maine citizens regularly approve bonding for parks, wildlife lands, and other conservation purposes. The state’s most important scenic and habitat resources are important to voters. They have seen what unrestrained sprawl has done; they have seen the No Trespassing signs going up (Acheson 2006).

Yet, in southern and central Maine, rapid suburbanization and low-density sprawl are changing the landscape that supports tourism and quality of life for residents. As the Brookings Institution (2006: 7) notes, 77 percent of recent growth has taken place in surrounding towns, newer emerging towns, and rural areas distant from traditional centers. As a result, the state is converting extraordinary quantities of rural fields and woodlots to residential uses. From 1980 to 2000, for example, Mainers altered the character of 869,000 acres, or more than 1,300 square miles, of rural land—a territory roughly the size of Rhode Island. In the 1990s only Virginia lost a greater share of its rural land than Maine as every region consumed rural territory.

Not only is a great deal of landscape being altered to meet demands of a small number of people, but costs of public services for all levels of government are being unnecessarily inflated. Further, the past few decades have created huge numbers of undeveloped but grandfathered lots most of which are beyond the reach of any new regulations. So, there is a great deal of stealth sprawl already on the plat books. The potential for land conservation to play a positive role in smart growth has barely been touched. The Maine Economic Growth Council’s annual Measures of Growth reports regularly emphasize the importance of controlling sprawl (MDF 2013–2018).

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Figure 7:

Percentage of Each County in Conservation, 2015–2016

Androscoggin

2.9%

Kennebec

3.7%

Waldo

4.2%

Lincoln

4.2%

Cumberland Knox

6.5% 7.7%

York

10.1%

Penobscot

10.6%

Sagadahoc

11.3%

Franklin

12.8%

Aroostook

13.3%

Hancock

16.5%

Oxford

19.0%

Washington

28.8%

Somerset

31.3%

Piscataquis 0.0%

38.5% 0.10%

0.20%

0.30%

0.40%

0.50%

Source: Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands (R. Turner, personal communication) and author estimates.

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MAINE’S PUBLIC ESTATE AND CONSERVATION LANDS

Figure 8:

Southern Maine Conserved Lands

Bangor

Bethel Augusta

Portland Southern Maine Conserved Lands, 2017 Fee Public

to raise funds for ongoing property management and maintenance. Property owners wishing to donate land are stunned to learn that it will cost them—they need to offer, in addition the value of the land, endowment funds to pay for administration and long-term care of the property. We will eventually have to face the issue of cost recovery from the actual users of the land.

Finally, a new emphasis is emerging on protecting and restoring rivers in the state. Every year the benefits of these actions become more evident. A planned role for easements and ownership to enhance these programs and prevent the benefits from being entirely privatized— as has occurred on many lakes—is badly needed.

During recent dam-relicensing actions, significant improvements in recreation facilities were provided by dam owners. Still, it may be that the projects have been more successful in providing access for boats than for anadromous fish. Access to beaches and coastal views is beyond the scope of this article, but it is highly restricted due to past subdividing and development (Duff 2016; Maine SPO 1986 ).

Fee NGO

SUMMARY AND REFLECTIONS

Conservation Easements

M

Source: Maine Natural Areas Program.

fringes of the wildlands where local governments are already under stress from weak tax bases due to Maine’s Tree Growth Tax Law, rising costs of government, and declining employment (Lansky 2014). A series of bills were debated in the legislature, which often, unfortunately, confused the effects of NGO conservation lands with other use-value tax programs and even public and charitable property of other kinds. The legislature has repeatedly declined to limit the tax exemptions for NGO conservation lands, and courts have upheld such policies. Discussing the merits of this policy is outside the scope of this article, but the issues will persist.17 The cost of maintaining quality access for recreation users can be significant, but it has not received much discussion in recent years. It is clear that the volunteer model used successfully on the AT and the snowmobile program is overstressed in many areas. Shrinking access in the more remote private lands is partly cost-based.

Expenses specific to trail and access management and cleanup are often buried in public agency budgets and difficult to identify (for a rough initial sketch, see Irland 1980, 1993). Local land trusts and other NGOs struggle MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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aine’s conservation lands can hardly be thought of as a system, as that would imply conscious design. Rather, they are an extraordinary collection of areas, which, on the basis of incremental decisions, have conserved and retained for public use many of Maine’s scenic and environmental jewels. Extensive areas of backland are also protected from development.

Examining this history yields a few interesting general observations.

1. Though well behind peer Northern Forest states in land acquisition until the 1980s, since then Maine has seen a rapid increase in its conservation estate, driven heavily by federal and NGO funding, but with active state involvement.

2. This substantial outsourcing of planning and funding of what would normally be thought of as a government function is noteworthy in its own right, and its implications may not be immediately evident.

3. Maine plainly prefers state and municipal (37.3 percent in 2016) and NGO ownership (55.7 percent) to federal (7.0 percent), and prefers easements (57 percent) to fee ownership (43 percent).

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4. In many instances, specific areas were identified for conservation based on perceived place-specific threats, either imminent or long term, and not on technocratic long-term plans. Also, and importantly, the geographic extent and practical details of many acquisitions were often constrained by the terms that private owners were willing to accept. Monday-morning quarterbacking on the easements often assumes that all of these transactions could be planned on a blank slate, which was rarely the case. The buyers could only obtain what was on offer, despite considerable negotiating on details.

5. Until the creation of the LMF Program, Maine chose to spend little of its own general fund money on either acquiring or managing conservation lands.

6. Maine and the interested NGOs have displayed a strong preference for maintaining large areas free of subdividing and development. NGOs retain considerable areas in multiple-use categories.

Ironically, a much larger proportion of the NGO estate is in multiple use today than is true of the Maine portion of the White Mountain National Forest—the “land of many uses.”

7.

Compared to many benchmarks for true protected reserves (e.g., Brundtland, 12 percent), the overall percentage of Maine conserved land remains on the low side.

8. Despite the gains of the past few decades, there has not been enough land conserved in southern Maine, nor, arguably, along important rivers and lakefronts. A succession of state comprehensive outdoor recreation plans (SCORP) documents this beyond dispute.

9. The expansions in Maine’s conservation estate in the northern wildlands have left recreation interests exceptionally well served in that region, especially in contrast to southern Maine. It is questionable whether recreation needs can supply a persuasive case for additional conservation ownership in the north.

10. The period since the 2010 elections has seen strong pushback against many environmental causes from the governor and a significant minority of the legislature. The bipartisan support that conservation long enjoyed has frayed. Significantly, those prominent in this pushback have paid no political penalty. This MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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fact, together with the outsourcing noted earlier, leads to the question of, Just how deep is general public support for land conservation today? DEDICATION This article is dedicated to the memory of Alan Hutchinson, 1947 to 2017, wildlife biologist, NGO administrator, and negotiator of exemplary patience and skill, whose work with the Forest Society of Maine played a key role in developing many of the working forest conservation easements during the era of acquisition. In this paper, these are converted to bloodless numbers. They will live on, though, as working forests for generations to come.

ENDNOTES 1 I have been aided by Dave Publicover of the Appalachian Mountain Club, Tom Rumpf of The Nature Conservancy, Rex Turner at the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, staff at the Land for Maine’s Future Board, Alison Truesdale, and many others. Andy Cutko prepared the maps. Suggestions by anonymous reviewers prompted additional work and strengthened the paper.

2 A conservation easement is a legal instrument that conveys certain rights to prohibit subdivision, development, and other specifically identified uses—often including public access—to a third party.

3 See Rolde (2004). See also Appendix (https:// digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol27/iss2) on data. At present, the tribes hold approximately 268,000 acres, partly in fee simple and partly as federal trust lands. These cannot be considered public lands in the same sense as used here, though in some senses they may be considered conservation lands.

4 Until the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, the boundaries, and hence land area, of the state were not determined.

5 When Thoreau first visited Maine in 1854, his map of the public lands was the only map he could find. His personal copy resides in the Concord Free Library. A little-known heritage of the Maine era of disposal was that the system of 6-square-mile townships with 640-acre sections was used in the Northwest Ordinance of 1785 and became the basis for land surveys and titles over much of the rest of the nation (Irland 1986). Maps of the lands retained by Massachusetts in 1820 can be found in Morris and Kelly (1976), plate 10, and in the pocket part maps in Wilkins (1963). A similar map from Greenleaf’s Atlas is also found in Thompson (2010: 107). A brief search located no map of the lands conveyed in 1854.

6 See Wilkins (1963), which contains a valuable pocket map showing the public lots as of 1963.

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7 Forest Commissioner Forrest Colby, in his 1919 annual report, proposed a large increase in public ownership (Colby 1919), but the recommendation vanished without a trace.

8 A purchase unit was authorized in the late 1930s for a large national forest in northern Washington and southern Aroostook Counties. This unit appeared on US Forest Service maps in the early 1950s; nothing further has been heard of this idea since. A Maine State Planning Board Report (Maine SPB 1936) offered a vision of a series of large parks connected by a scenic highway. This idea, too, was forgotten.

9 A number of Maine towns acquired forestlands by tax default, and a few retain them as town forests to this day.

10 As far as I can tell, the history of the wildlife management areas remains to be written.

11 Journalist Bob Cummings often remarked, “Maine has no environmentalists—only environmentalists when their own ox is gored.” His important role in the public lands controversy of the early 1970s is recounted in Bangor Daily News, December 5, 2015, “How One Man Helped Maine Win Back Its Public Lands” (https:// bangordailynews.com/2015/12/05/outdoors/). A book on the history of the public reserved lands is in preparation

by Thomas Urquhart.

12 A map showing public land ownerships for 1993 is found in Judd, Churchill, and Eastman (1995: 536).

13 From Irland Group research based on interviews with appraisers.

14 We use the term transaction as ownerships changed in a variety of ways. Some were sales of entire ownerships; others were sales of portions of ownerships.

Some were due to corporate mergers, and others involved technical legal changes that did not change who managed the land. Lumping these diverse situations into a single basket and calling them “sales” conceals numerous motives and effects of the transactions.

15 For technical details on the NWOS, see Butler et al.

(2016). An effort to work through relevant literature, planning documents such as SCORPs, and unpublished reports from the 1960s to the present might yield unexpectedly useful information.

16 The low ranking of New York, with its extensive holdings in the Adirondacks, results from its large total land area, which is 50 percent greater than Maine.

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17 For details on this issue, see the following blogs (https:// fountainsland.com/becoming-a-neighbor-to-public -lands.html; http://www.mltn.org/homenews/post.php ?s=2017-10-27-land-trusts-work-for-maine-report; https://pinetreewatch.org/the-public-cost-of-private -conservation/), or this Portland Press Herald article (https://www.pressherald.com/2018/02/20/maine-land -trusts-object-to-data-used-by-governor-to-justify-latest -attack/), or (Maine Legislature 2018; Maine OG 2018).

REFERENCES Acheson, James M. 2006. “Public Access to Privately Owned Land in Maine.” Maine Policy Review 15(1): 18–30. http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr /vol15/iss1/5 Acheson, James M., and Julianna Acheson. 2009. “Maine Land: Private Property and Hunting Commons.”

International Journal of the Commons 4(1): 552–570. doi:10.18352/ijc.202/ Austin, Phyllis. 2015. Queen Bee: Roxanne Quimby, Burt’s Bees, & Her Quest for a New National Park. Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House.

Barringer, Richard, Hugh Coxe, Jack Kartez, Catherine Reilly, and Jonathan Rubin. 2004. The Land for Maine’s Future Program: Increasing the Return on a Sound Public Investment. Orono: Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, University of Maine. https://www.maine.gov/dacf/lmf /docs/execsumm_forweb.pdf Binko, Heidi, Victoria Chow, and Gary Dunning. 2001.

“Conservation Easements on Working Forests: A Summary of a Forum Examining the Country’s Largest Easement on the Pingree Family Forest in Maine, USA.” Yale Forest Forum Series 4(2). New Haven, CT: Yale School of Foresty and Environmental Studies.

Brookings Institution. 2006. Charting Maine’s Future: An Action Plan for Promoting Sustainable Prosperity and Quality Places. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/research /charting-maines-future Buchanan, Mary. 2016. Public Conservation Funding in New England: Recent Trends in Government Spending on Land Protection. Petersham, MA: Highstead. http:// www.wildlandsandwoodlands.org/public-funding-report Butler, Brett J., Jaketon H. Hewes, Brenton J. Dickinson, Kyle Andrejczyk, Sarah M. Butler, and Marla MarkowskiLindsay. 2016. USDA Forest Service National Woodland Owner Survey: National, Regional, and State Statistics for Family Forest and Woodland Ownerships with 10+ acres, 2011-2013, Resource Bulletin NRS-99. Newtown Square, PA: USDA, Forest Service, Northern Research Station.

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Colby, Forrest H. 1919. Forest Protection and Conservation in Maine, 1919. Augusta: Maine Forest Service. https:// digitalmaine.com/for_docs/99/ Cutko, Andy 2015. Have We Saved All the Parts? The Role of Ecological Reserves Maine’s Conserved Lands.

Augusta: Maine Natural Areas Program.

Duff, John. 2016. Public Shoreline Access in Maine: A Citizen’s Guide to Ocean and Coastal Law, 3rd ed.

Orono: Maine Sea Grant College Program.

Falzone, J.P. 2018. “Law Enforcement, Clubs and Riders Work Together to Maintain ATV Access to Private Property.” Maine Sportsman (July 2018).

Greenleaf, Moses. 1829. Survey of the State of Maine.

Augusta: Maine State Museum reprint.

GrowSmart Maine. n.d. The Creeping Costs of Sprawl.

Gardiner, ME: GrowSmart Maine. https:// growsmartmaine.org/wp-content/uploads/2015 /08/Creeping-Costs-of-Sprawl.pdf Hackley, Patrick. 2018. “Dynamics of Large Forest Ownerships in the Northeast.” Presentation at New England Society of American Foresters Meeting.

Irland, Lloyd C. 2016. “Daydreams and Nightmares in the Northern Forest: A Quarter Century of Change.”

In Proceedings of the 8th Eastern CANUSA Forest Science Conference, edited by J. Pontius, P. Schaberg, and J. Duncan, 51–57. Burlington, VT: Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative. doi:10.18125/D2MW2X Irland, Lloyd C. 2017. “Singing Waters: Unplanned Conservation on Four Northern Maine Rivers.”

Appalachia (Summer/Fall): 68–81.

Irland, Lloyd C., John Hagan, and Jack Lutz. 2011. Large Timberland Transactions in the Northern Forest 1980– 2006. Yale GISF Private Forests Working Paper No. 11.

Irland, Lloyd C., and Thomas Rumpf. 1980. “Trends in Land and Water Available for Outdoor Recreation.” In Proceedings 1980 National Outdoor Recreation Trends Symposium, Gen. Tech. Rep. NE-57. Vols. I and II, edited

by Wilbur F. LaPage, 77–87. Broomall, PA: US Forest Service, Northeastern Forest Experimental Station.

Jenkins, Jerry. 2008. Conservation Easements and Biodiversity in the Northern Forest. New York: Open Space Institute and The Wildlife Society.

Hakola, John W. 1981. Legacy of a Lifetime: The Story of Baxter State Park. Woolwich, ME: TBW Books.

Judd, Richard W., Edwin A. Churchill, and Joel W. Eastman. (eds.) 1995. Maine: The Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present. Orono: University of Maine Press.

Harris, Jody, ed. 2006. Sustaining Maine’s Green Infrastructure. Augusta: Maine State Planning Office. https://acadianinternship.files.wordpress.com/2011 /06/2006-sustaining-maines-green-infrastructure.pdf

Kuehne, Christian, Joshua J. Puhlick, and Aaron Robert Weiskittel. 2018. Ecological Reserves in Maine: Initial Results of Long-Term Monitoring. General Technical Report. doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.25665.86882

Harvard Forest. 2017. Wildlands and Woodlands, Farmlands and Communities: Broadening the Vision for New England Landscape. Petersham, MA: Harvard Forest. http://wildlandsandwoodlands.org/vision /ww-vision-reports

LMF (Land for Maine’s Future Program). 2017. Biennial Report. Augusta: Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. https://www.maine.gov /dacf/lmf/docs/2017BiennialReport.pdf

Irland, Lloyd C. 1986. “Rufus Putnam’s Ghost: An Essay on Maine’s Public Lands: 1783–1820.” Journal of Forest History (April): 60–69.

Irland, Lloyd C. 1993. “Outdoor Recreation Supply in the Maine Woods: Issues for the Future.” In Proceedings, First Munsungan Conference. College of Forest Resources, University of Maine. Reprinted under same title in Renewable Resource Journal 11(3): 6–15.

Irland, Lloyd C. 1999. “Policies for Maine’s Public Lands: A Long-Term View.” In Maine Choices, 7–21. Augusta: Center on Economic Policy.

Irland, Lloyd C. 2000. “Maine’s Forests: A Century of Change, 1900–2000.” Maine Policy Review 9(1): 66–77. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol9 /iss1/9/

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LMFC (Land for Maine’s Future Coalition). 2016. Land for Maine’s Future: Stronger Than Ever. https://www .landformainesfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11 /LMF-Companion-Report.pdf Lansky, Mitch. 2014. “Challenges of Managing a Small Town.” Maine Townsman (April 2014): 7–11.

Leahy, Jessica. 2016. “Public Access to Private Land: Research Summary.” Presentation to the Maine Landowner Sportsmen Advisory Board to the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, Augusta. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/sfr_facpub/1/ Leahy, Jessica. 2018. “Declining Public Access to Private Land Is a Key Issue in 2018.” Piscataquis Observer (February 23, 2018).

Lewis, David J. 2001. “Easements and Conservation Policy in the North Maine Woods.” Maine Policy Review 10(1): 24–36. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr /vol10/iss1/5/

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Maine DOC (Department of Conservation). 1986. The Forest of Maine: A Survey of Public Opinion. Augusta: Forests for Maine’s Future Program.

Maine Legislature. 2018. Study of Conserved Lands Owned

by Nonprofit Organizations. 128th Legislature, 2nd Regular Session.

Maine Office of GIS. 2018. “Conserved Lands.” Augusta: GeoLibrary. https://geolibrary-maine.opendata.arcgis .com/datasets/maine-conserved-lands/ Maine OG (Office of the Governor). 2018. “Letter to Maine Legislature Concerning Tax Burdens Created by Tax Exempt Property in Maine.” February 13, 2018.

Maine SPB (State Planning Board). 1936. Maine State Planning Board Report 1934–1935. Augusta: State House.

Schlawin, Justin, and Andy Cutko. 2014. A Conservation Vision for Maine Using Ecological Systems. Augusta: Maine Natural Areas Program. https://www.maine.gov /dacf/mnap/about/publications/ra.htm Snyder, Stephanie A., and Brett J. Butler 2012. “A National Assessment of Public Recreational Access on Family Forestlands in the US.” Journal of Forestry 110(6): 318–327.

Thompson, Edward. 2010. Printed Maps of the District and State of Maine 1793–1860. Bangor: Nimue Books and Prints.

TPL (Trust for Public Lands). 2014. Return on the Investment in Land for Maine’s Future. Portland, ME: TPL. https://www.tpl.org/return-investment-land-maines -future-executive-summary

Maine SPO (State Planning Office). 1997. Final Report and Recommendations of the Land Acquisition Priorities Advisory Committee. Augusta: Maine SPO.

Harper, Stephen C. 1990. The Northern Forest Lands Study of New England and New York: A Report to the Congress of the United States on the Recent Changes in Landownership and Land Use in the Northern Forest of Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont.

Rutland, VT: Forest Service, US Dept. of Agriculture.

Miller, Char. 2017. “The Maine Chance: Private-Public Partnership and the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.” Forest History Today 23(1): 10–56. https://foresthistory.org/periodicals/spring-2017/

WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development). 1987. Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.un-documents.net/ our-common-future.pdf

MDF (Maine Development Foundation). 2013–2018.

Measures of Growth Reports. Augusta: Maine Development Foundation.

Wiersma, G. Bruce 2009. Keeping Maine’s Forests: A Study of the Future of Maine’s Forests. Orono: University of Maine, School of Forest Resources.

Morris, Gerald, and Richard Kelly 1976. Maine Bicentennial Atlas: An Historical Survey. Portland: Maine Historical Society.

Wilkins, Austin H. 1963. Report on the Public Reserved Lots. Augusta: State Forestry Department. (Pocket part contains several valuable maps, with a detailed map of the reserved lands as of 1963, including unlocated lots).

Maine SPO (State Planning Office). 1986. Public Access to the Maine Coast. Augusta: Maine SPO.

NEFF (New England Forestry Foundation). 2013. New England Forests: The Path to Sustainability. Littleton, MA: NEFF. https://newenglandforestry.org/connect/publications/ NEGC (New England Governor’s Conference). 2009. Report of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Land Conservation.

Boston: NECG. NFLC (Northern Forest Lands Council). 1994. Finding Common Ground: Conserving the Northern Forest.

Concord, NH: NFLC. Pidot, Jeff. 2005. Reinventing Conservation Easements: A Critical Examination and Ideas for Reform. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Rolde, Neil. 2004. Unsettled Past, Unsettled Future: The Story of Maine Indians. Gardiner: Tilbury House.

Schepps, Lee M. 1974. “Maine’s Public Lots: The Emergence of a Public Trust.” Maine Law Review 26:217 ff.

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Works Progress Administration. 1937. Maine: A Guide ‘Down East.’ Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. https://archive.org/details/maineguidedownea00federich

Growing up in Chicago, Lloyd Irland spent summers in Wisconsin as a scout camp staffer. He first hiked the Maine woods in the 1960s. He served in the Department of Conservation and as state economist and now works as a consultant. Irland participated in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the National Assessment on Climate Change. He is author of five books and is a Fellow of the Society of American Foresters.

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COMPARING WELL-BEING ACROSS MAINE COUNTIES

How Well Is Maine Doing?

Comparing Well-Being across Maine Counties

by Angela Daley, Andrew Crawley, Muntasir Rahman, Jake Demosthenes, and Erin Lyons

the national average (https://www . k f f. o r g / o t h e r / s t a t e - i n d i c a t o r Maine has experienced major challenges over the last decade including /opioid-overdose-death-rates). recession, stagnant recovery, and industrial and population decline. But by Perhaps related, the percentage of Maine children living in deep some measures, Maine is still seen as one of the best in the United States poverty—defined as less than for well-being. In this paper, we critique the notion of what well-being is and $10,000 per year for a family of how it is measured. Based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and three—has increased at a rate that is Development’s Better Life Initiative, we then propose and construct an index eight times greater than the national to compare well-being across Maine counties. Our work gives new insights on average (Myall 2017). the types of challenges counties are facing and provides policymakers a new How do we reconcile these way of empirically understanding these problems. issues with the favorable ranking by Gallup Healthways? In this paper, we do so by arguing that (1) wellINTRODUCTION being is multidimensional and (2) there is considerable variation in well-being across the state. When considrecent report by Gallup Healthways found that ering well-being in one dimension, such as economic Maine ranked fourth in the United States for growth, we ignore the reasons that led to that particular well-being, not far behind Hawaii, Alaska, and South outcome and how that outcome affects various aspects Dakota (Gallup Healthways 2016). This ranking of people’s lives. To fully understand well-being, we appears to be at odds with certain facts. For example, must move beyond one dimension and consider it as a Maine was the last state to return to prerecessionary composite of different characteristics—things that levels of economic growth. Indeed, since the Great matter to people and shape their lives. Indeed, this has Recession of 2008–2009, Maine has experienced been the tendency in recent work, such as that by considerable economic turbulence, including a sharp Gallup Healthways and the Organisation for Economic decline in extractive and processing industries (e.g., Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Better Life logging, pulp and paper). Demographic challenges Initiative.1 For example, the Gallup Healthways ranking also abound; Maine has the highest median age in is based on five dimensions: purpose in life; supportive the United States at 44.6 (US Census Bureau 2017). social relationships; minimal economic stress; safe, As such, the state is dealing with a shrinking workstrong communities; and good physical health. Likewise, force (i.e., retirement of the older population with the OECD uses 11 dimensions to compare well-being insufficient replacement by new, younger workers) across member countries: housing; income and wealth; and growing healthcare costs, which are persistently jobs; community; education; environment; civic engagehigher than the national average (MSCOC, MDF, ment; health; life satisfaction; safety; and work-life and Education Maine 2018). In addition to an aging balance (http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/). Both population, healthcare costs are affected by high rates initiatives advance our understanding of well-being by of obesity, smoking, and drug use. For example, the embracing multidimensionality; however, they do not opioid overdose death rate in Maine is almost twice consider differences below the state or country levels.2 Abstract

A

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COMPARING WELL-BEING ACROSS MAINE COUNTIES

Indeed, most well-being rankings mask disparities that for which suitable proxies were available). We also exist at lower levels of spatial aggregation. referred to the literature on self-reported well-being In this paper, we compare well-being across Maine and housing (see Diaz-Serrano 2009; Grzeskowiak et counties using the multidimensional approach develal. 2006; Hu 2013). oped by the OECD, which is widely recognized in the Unfortunately, we lack county-level data for all developed world. In doing so, we provide a tool that dimensions and indicators included in the OECD policymakers and community organizations can use to approach. Thus, we focus on eight of the eleven dimentarget resources in counties that need them most and in sions; we do not consider community, life satisfaction, dimensions of well-being that have the potential to and work-life balance.3 Moreover, we use proxies for, or significantly affect people’s lives. While policymakers omit, some indicators. For example, in the OECD and community organizations tend to focus on specifics approach, the environment dimension consists of water (e.g., education, environment), presumably their intent quality and air pollution. However, we only have inforis to improve overall well-being, and they use the policy mation on air pollution. Table 1 summarizes the levers available to them. In this sense, this tool can be dimensions and indicators that we used to compare used in two ways: (1) to understand county-level differwell-being across Maine counties, as well as our data ences in specific dimensions of well-being, which fits the tradiTable 1: Dimensions and Indicators of Well-Being for Maine Counties tional approach to policy making; and (2) to understand how different dimensions affect relaDimensions Indicators tive well-being across counties, Percentage of dwellings without complete plumbing optimization of which is presumPercentage of dwellings without complete kitchens ably the main goal of policya Housing Number of habitable dwellings per capita makers and community organizations.

Percentage of dwellings with more than one occupant per room Median monthly housing expenditure

DATA AND METHODOLOGY

T

he OECD Better Life Initiative was launched in 2011 and comprises 11 dimensions of well-being that are deemed important in member countries and cultures. Each dimension is defined by several indicators, which were selected based on policy relevance and data quality (e.g., comparability across countries). For example, the housing dimension is made up of housing expenditure, dwellings with basic facilities, and rooms per person. We used the OECD approach to determine the ideal dimensions and indicators and then included only those dimensions and indicators that were available at the county level in Maine (or

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Mean annual income per capita (before taxes, after transfers)

Income and Wealtha

Percentage of population below the poverty level Percentage of owner-occupied dwellings Unemployment rate

Jobsa

Mean annual earnings (before taxes) Percentage of population with less than a high school diploma

Educationa

Percentage of population with a bachelor’s degree or more

Environment

Air pollution based on PM2.5 emissions

Civic Engagementc

Voter turnout in 2016 presidential election

b

Healthd Safetyc

Life expectancy Mortality rate Non-violent burglary rate Aggravated assault rate

a Source: https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml ?refresh=t#none b Source: http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/app/maine/2018/measure/factors/125/data c Source: https://www.policymap.com/maps d Source: https://vizhub.healthdata.org/subnational/usa

2018

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sources. Most data come from 2016; however, indicators related to environment and health come from 2012 and 2014, respectively.

Our goal is to calculate county-level scores for each dimension of well-being using the relevant indicators, which allows us to understand how each dimension varies across counties and to compare overall well-being by combining the eight dimensions. Of course, this calculation is made difficult because our indicators are measured in different units. For example, the jobs dimension is based on unemployment (percentage) and earnings (dollars). In the next sections, we explain how we combine indicators into a meaningful score for each dimension. We then explain how we combine the eight dimensions to compare overall well-being across counties.

Comparing Dimensions of Well-Being across Counties

Following the OECD approach, we normalized our indicators before combining them into a county-level score for each dimension. To normalize positive indicators (e.g., percentage of population with a bachelor’s degree or more, life expectancy), we used the following formula: value for the county – minimum value across counties maximum – minimum value across counties Similarly, we normalized negative indicators (e.g., unemployment rate, aggravated assault rate) using the following formula: 1–

value for the county – minimum value across counties maximum – minimum value across counties As a result, we made all indicators unit free, ranging from zero to one. We then constructed a county-level score for each dimension by averaging across the indicators within it (e.g., unemployment and earnings for the jobs dimension). As the indicators did, our dimension scores ranged from zero to one, with higher scores indicating a more favorable position relative to other counties. It is important to note these scores are not absolute measures of well-being, but are relative to the best and worst counties under consideration. That is, a county’s low score in a particular dimension of well-being may not be because it is intrinsically bad, but because it

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performs worse than other counties in that respect. This is an important contribution of this work; we make comparisons within Maine rather than using national or international benchmarks.

Comparing Overall Well-Being across Counties

After calculating a county-level score for each dimension, we combined them to assess overall wellbeing. As a starting point, we took a simple average across dimensions. This would imply that all dimensions were similarly important to overall well-being, which, of course, is not necessarily true. For example, do housing and environment matter equally in shaping people’s lives? How about education and safety? The relative importance of these and other dimensions depends on personal perspective. Indeed, an advantage of the OECD approach is that, through an interactive online tool, it allows end-users to determine the relative importance of the dimensions. Perhaps not surprisingly, the relative importance of dimensions can have a considerable impact on overall well-being. Therefore, for this paper, we explored how well-being scores changed across Maine counties under different scenarios. In addition to taking a simple average across dimensions (implying that all were similarly important to overall well-being), we explored how the ranking changed when certain dimensions were more heavily favored. We did so using weighted averages. For example, in one scenario, we assigned housing a weight of five and all other dimensions a weight of one. Combining the eight dimensions into an overall well-being score, housing received a weight of 125 , while all other dimensions received a weight of 121 . We similarly considered scenarios in which income and wealth, jobs, and health were more heavily weighted.

RESULTS

F

igure 1 depicts overall well-being by county when the dimensions were equally weighted (i.e., simple average across dimensions). The highest-ranked county was Sagadahoc, followed by Cumberland. Their overall scores were 0.74 and 0.69, respectively. It is interesting to note that these counties and others at the top of the list, such as Lincoln and Knox, are located in southern Maine. On the other hand, the lowest ranked counties are in the northwest; Somerset and Piscataquis had scores of 0.22 and 0.35, respectively.

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Figure 1:

Sagadahoc Cumberland Lincoln Knox Hancock Waldo York Franklin Penobscot Kennebec Aroostook Oxford Washington Androscoggin Piscataquis Somerset 0.0

Figure 2:

We further examined differences in overall well-being across counties by mapping the scores.

Again, the dimensions were equally weighted. Figure 2 shows that coastal counties fared best, with the exception of Washington. It ranked near the bottom, along with most western counties. Moreover, counties located in the middle of the state tended to be in the middle of the ranking. Taken together, these findings suggest a well-being gradient that declines from southeast to northwest.

Of course, counties have strengths and weaknesses in 0.6 0.7 0.8 different dimensions, which are not reflected in the composite score. Thus, Table 2 shows counties with the highest and lowest scores, respectively, in each dimension of well-being.

We found that Sagadahoc County ranked first in income and safety, while Cumberland County ranked first in jobs and education. Moreover, Lincoln and Knox Counties ranked first in civic engagement and health, respectively. This is not surprising as these four counties had the highest overall well-being scores. Likewise, counties with the lowest overall scores ranked last in several dimensions (i.e., Somerset in housing, education and civic engagement; Piscataquis in income and jobs).

Overall Well-Being by County, Dimensions Equally Weighted

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Map of Overall Well-Being by County, Dimensions Equally Weighted

Table 2:

Highest and Lowest Scores

by Dimension of Well-Being High

0.219221364

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Aroostook (0.74)

Somerset (0.24)

Income

Sagadahoc (0.86)

Piscataquis (0.21)

Jobs

Cumberland (0.92)

Piscataquis (0.00)

Education

Cumberland (1.00)

Somerset (0.04)

Environment

Washington (1.00)

Cumberland, York (0.00)

Safety

Sagadahoc (0.95)

Kennebec (0.23)

Health

Knox (0.99)

Washington (0.00)

Civic Engagement Lincoln (1.00)

Value

•

Low

Housing

Somerset (0.00)

0.742713814

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Figure 3: Overall Well-Being by County, Dimensions Weighted There were, however, a few Differently surprises. First, Aroostook County ranked eleventh overall but first in housing. It is also Dimensions Equally Weighted Housing Heavily Weighted interesting to note the highest Income Heavily Weighted Jobs Heavily Weighted and lowest scores in the environHealth Heavily Weighted ment dimension. Washington County, which was near the Androscoggin bottom of the overall ranking, had the highest environment Aroostook score. Cumberland County, which was near the top of the overall ranking, had the lowest Cumberland environment score. This likely reflects differences in population Franklin and economic activity; Washington County is more Hancock sparsely populated and reliant on resource-based industries (e.g., Kennebec fishing), while Cumberland County is more densely popuKnox lated and reliant on jobs in management and administrative Lincoln activities.

Given these differences by dimension of well-being, we Oxford considered how the overall ranking changed when some Penobscot dimensions were more heavily weighted. For example, what Piscataquis happens when housing is more heavily weighted than other Sagadahoc dimensions? We might expect Aroostook to move up in the Somerset ranking. Similarly, how does overall well-being change when Waldo income and wealth, jobs, and health are more heavily weighted, respectively? Results are summaWashington rized in Figure 3.

As expected, Aroostook York County fared better when housing was more heavily 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 weighted. The same was true for Oxford, Piscataquis, and Washington Counties. When housing was more heavily fifteenth to eleventh place. We also found improvements weighted, Aroostook and Piscataquis Counties moved for Hancock, Knox, Lincoln, and York Counties when up in the ranking, with Aroostook moving from elevhealth was more heavily weighted. This scenario is assoenth to seventh place and Piscataquis moving from ciated with a better ranking for Knox and York Counties,

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0.8

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which moved from fourth to third and seventh to sixth, respectively. Regardless of weighting, there was little change in overall well-being for Androscoggin, Kennebec, Penobscot, Sagadahoc, Somerset, and Waldo Counties.

Of course, these were arbitrary scenarios. Weights used to assess overall well-being should reflect the priorities of policymakers and their constituents.

CONCLUSION

W

e started by discussing the favorable ranking by Gallup Healthways, which appears to be at odds with recent economic, demographic, and health-related challenges in Maine. We argued that to reconcile these findings, we must recognize the multidimensional nature of well-being. That is, well-being should be measured as a composite of different characteristics— things that matter to people and shape their lives. We must also recognize that considerable differences exist within the state, and these differences are generally not addressed in well-being rankings such as those by Gallup Healthways. Indeed, we often hear talk of two Maines. In this paper, we show that while there is a north-south dichotomy, there are also differences from east to west. In fact, there appears to be a well-being gradient that declines from southeast to northwest. Of course, this depends on how well-being is measured.

Considering the multidimensional nature of well-being, counties have different strengths and weaknesses. Not surprisingly, counties with the highest overall well-being ranked first in several dimensions, while those with the lowest overall scores often ranked last. However, this was not a steadfast result. For example, Aroostook County ranked eleventh overall but was first in housing.

Similarly, Washington County was near the bottom of the overall ranking, but had the highest environment score. These findings suggest that in addition to looking at overall well-being, it is important to consider how counties fared in different dimensions; a county can rank relatively low overall, but this ranking may mask areas in which it is excelling. Relatedly, we must consider which dimensions of well-being matter most to people and how changing their weight in the composite score can affect our understanding of well-being across the state.

Policy Implications and Future Work We have provided a tool that policymakers and community organizations can use to better understand

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well-being in Maine. While policymakers and community organizations tend to focus on specifics (e.g., education, environment), presumably, their intent is to improve overall well-being, and they use the policy levers available to them. In this sense, the importance of our tool is twofold: (1) it can be used to understand county-level differences in specific dimensions of wellbeing, which fits the traditional approach to policy making; and (2) it can be used to understand how different dimensions affect well-being across counties, optimization of which is presumably the main goal of policymakers and community organizations. In this sense, our tool is complementary to other resources that embrace the multidimensionality of well-being, but are not available below the state-level (e.g., Annie E. Casey Foundation 2018; MDF 2017). It also complements resources that examine differences at lower levels of spatial aggregation, but only focus on one indicator or dimension of well-being (e.g. MaineHousing 2017; Acheson 2010).

…there appears to be a well-being gradient that declines from southeast to northwest.

It is important to note that our work is merely a starting point. The index can be enhanced, for example, by exploring how well-being varies at lower spatial scales, such as the community level. It would also be useful to expand this tool to include other dimensions or indicators of well-being. For example, we could add measures that reflect policy priorities in the state (e.g., broadband access) or other aspects of well-being beyond those included in the OECD approach (e.g., income inequality, labor-force participation, smoking and obesity rates, demographic indicators). Of course, these expansions would require data on these topics at the county level or lower levels of spatial aggregation.4 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a next step is to develop our index into an interactive online tool through which end-users can modify the relative weight of the dimensions (http:// www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/). For example, if end-users perceive housing to be more important than environment, they can adjust the weights to see how this affects overall well-being across counties. Instead of simply 35

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telling people which dimensions are most important and how the counties rank, the online tool would allow end-users to choose which dimensions are most important to them, then to see the effect on well-being.

However, even in absence of an online tool, our work gives new insights on the types of challenges counties are facing and provides policymakers a new way of empirically understanding these problems. This work may be used to target resources in counties that need them most and in dimensions of well-being that have the potential to significantly affect people’s lives. ENDNOTES 1 These efforts build on Sen (1985), which focuses on functioning (things that people want to do and be) and capabilities (the ability of people to choose the functioning they value most). This moves beyond the traditional welfarist approach, which only considers outcomes regardless of how they were achieved (Boarini and D’Ercole 2013; Durand 2015).

2 Similarly, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2018 Kids Count Data Book (2018) measures child well-being via material situation, education, health, family, community, and other indicators. Moreover, the Maine Development Foundation’s Measures of Growth 2017 measures quality of life using economic, community, and environmental indicators, with comparisons to past performance, New England, and the United States more broadly (MDF 2017). Neither report considers well-being below the state level.

3 Differences in these dimensions are not usually pronounced across narrow geographical boundaries (Kasparian and Rolland 2012). Thus their exclusion, while inevitable, may be justifiable.

4 Some of these data are available at the county level or lower levels of spatial aggregation, but they are not included in the current index to remain consistent with the OECD approach.

REFERENCES Acheson, Ann. 2010. Poverty in Maine 2010. Orono, ME: Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. https:// digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mcspc_poverty/9 Annie E. Casey Foundation. 2018. 2018 Kids Count Data Book State Trends in Child Well-Being. Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation. https://www.aecf.org /resources/2018-kids-count-data-book/ Boarini, Romina, and Marco Mira D’Ercole. 2013. “Going beyond GDP: An OECD Perspective.” Fiscal Studies 34(3): 289–314.

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Diaz-Serrano, Luis. 2009. “Disentangling the Housing Satisfaction Puzzle: Does Homeownership Really Matter?” Journal of Economic Psychology 30(5): 745–755.

Durand, Martine. 2015. “The OECD Better Life Initiative: How’s Life and the Measurement of Well-Being.”

The Review of Income and Wealth 61(1): 4–17.

Gallup Healthways. 2016. State of American Well-Being: 2016 State Well-Being Rankings. Gallup Healthways. https://www.sharecare.com/static/well-being-index Grzeskowiak, Stephan, M. Joseph Sirgy, Dong-Jin Lee, and C.B. Claiborne. 2006. “Housing Well-Being: Developing and Validating a Measure.” Social Indicators Research 79(3): 503.

Hu, Feng. 2013. “Homeownership and Subjective Wellbeing in Urban China: Does Owning a House Make You Happier?” Social Indicators Research 110(3): 951–971.

Kasparian, Jérôme, and Antoine Rolland. 2012. “OECD’s ‘Better Life Index’: Can Any Country Be Well Ranked?”

Journal of Applied Statistics 39(10): 2223–2230.

MDF (Maine Development Foundation). 2017. Measures of Growth 2017: Performance Measures and Benchmarks to Achieve a Vibrant and Sustainable Economy for Maine. Augusta: MDF. MSCOC (Maine State Chamber of Commerce), MDF (Maine Development Foundation), and Educate Maine. 2018.

Making Maine Work: Critical Investments for the Maine Economy. Augusta: MSCOC. http://www.mainebiz.biz /assets/pdf/MA14160727.PDF MSHA (Maine State Housing Authority). 2017. Housing Facts and Affordability Index for Maine 2017.

Augusta: MSHA. https://www.mainehousing.org /policy-research/policy Myall, James. 2017. “DHHS Denies the Facts, Misappropriates Funds Congress Authorized to Fight Maine’s Soaring Child Poverty.” Augusta: Maine Center for Economic Policy. https://www.mecep.org/dhhs -denies-the-facts-misappropriates-funds-congress -authorized-to-fight-maines-soaring-child-poverty/ Sen, Amartya. 1985. Commodities and Capabilities.

Amsterdam: North-Holland.

US Census Bureau. 2017. “The Nation’s Older Population Is Still Growing, Census Bureau Reports.” US Census Bureau Release Number CB17-100. https://www.census .gov/newsroom/press-releases.2017.html ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Angela Daley and Andrew Crawley recognize support from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch projects 1011974 and 1012010, respectively. We are also grateful to the editors and anonymous referees of this journal for helpful suggestions.

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Angela Daley is an assistant professor in the School of Economics at the University of Maine. She specializes in health and labor economics, with emphasis on social policy.

Andrew Crawley is an assistant professor of regional economic development in the School of Economics at the University of Maine. He specializes in regional economic policy and economic modelling.

Muntasir Rahman is a graduate student and research assistant in the University of Maine’s School of Economics. With a degree in economics from East West University, Bangladesh, Muntasir became interested in public health policy research, especially focusing on under-represented populations. His research interests include public health policy assessments and analysis of risky health behaviors.

Jake Demosthenes has a bachelor of arts with a major in economics and minor in political science from the University of Maine.

Erin Lyons has a bachelor of arts with a major in economics from the University of Maine.

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UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME

C O M M E N T A R Y

Universal Basic Income: Policy Options at National, State, and Local Levels

by Michael W. Howard

O

n September 11, 2018, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the formation of a task force “to pursue the exploration of Universal Basic Income in the city.” Emanuel was responding to a resolution proposed by Alderman Ameya Pawar and supported by others on the city council (Byrne 2018; Coelho 2018; McFarland 2018).

Pawar was inspired by the pilot project being launched in Stockton, California, which will give 100 people $500 per month for 18 months. This project was motivated by worries about automation and the desire to provide more opportunity for people in poor communities (Crane 2018). Pilot projects with various kinds of minimum-income schemes have been completed, announced, or begun in Oakland, California; Barcelona, Spain; Ontario, Canada; Finland; Scotland; India; Kenya; Uganda; Namibia; and the Netherlands (https://basicincome.org/topic/pilot -experiments/; Haarmann and Haarmann 2014; Kotecki 2018; McFarland 2017a, 2017c; Standing et al. 2015). In 2016, Swiss citizens initiated and voted on a referendum to give every Swiss citizen an unconditional basic income adequate for basic needs and a life of dignity (Martin 2016), and a European-wide initiative for basic income, with the support of 300,000 EU citizens, was presented to the European Parliament in 2013–2014 , but was voted down in 2017 (McFarland 2017b). There is worldwide interest in basic income, and the concept has been considered favorably, if not yet embraced, by some

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American politicians at the national level (Clinton 2017; Obama 2018).

Supporters of basic income include Silicon Valley tycoons and others who worry that artificial intelligence and automation will displace more jobs than they will create, necessitating new forms of income security for those who are displaced. The concept is also supported by many people who recognize that current welfare policies are not effective at eliminating poverty or moving people into work. Other supporters see basic income as a way to address rising inequality, while some supporters see it as a way to partially decouple income from paid employment, as a way to recognize and encourage care work, volunteering, or more sustainable living (Van Parijs and Vanderborght 2017).

DEFINITION OF A BASIC INCOME

W

hat is a basic income? Is it a desirable and feasible policy? And could such a policy be implemented on a state or local level?

Although press coverage is rather vague, most researchers use the term basic income to refer to an income that is given to all, periodically rather than in a lump sum, individually rather than to households, and not conditional on need, willingness to work, or other behavioral requirements. Some add that a basic income is sufficient for basic needs, but exactly what this level is, is subject to much debate. We can distinguish roughly between a full basic income that would satisfy some such

requirement, and a partial basic income that would fall short of that level. A basic income is distinct from other forms of guaranteed minimum income including a negative income tax (unconditional, but means tested), a participation income (conditional on making some form of meaningful contribution to society, but not necessarily paid employment), universal child allowances (going unconditionally to all children, regardless of means), and capital grants (universal, but given in a lump sum, for example, at age 18).

ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR

I

have already hinted at the arguments for basic income. If automation displaces more jobs than it creates—a proposition that is debated even among supporters of basic income—then decoupling income from labor may be necessary to avoid growing poverty. An Oxford University study predicted that nearly half of all jobs in America will likely be eliminated by automation in the next few decades (Frey and Osborne 2013). Think of drivers displaced by selfdriving vehicles, food-service workers displaced by robot waiters, and retail sales clerks displaced by automatic checkout machines. This conclusion has been challenged by critics noting that, although tasks within jobs may be eliminated, the jobs may remain and be redefined (Arntz, Gregory, and Zierahn 2016; Chui, Manyika, and Miremadi 2016;). Still, if 60 percent of a job can be taken over by a computer, then there

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C O M M E N T A R Y may be a need for only 40 percent of the workers in that occupation. Actual job loss might be closer to 9 percent, according to Arntz, Gregory, and Zierahn (2016).

Related to, but distinct from, the automation argument is the argument from precarity—an insecure or unpredictable existence, which may affect a person’s psychological well-being— (Standing 2014). Although the American economy has been creating jobs steadily, many of these jobs are part-time, temporary, and poorly paid. Thus a second argument for basic income is that it is needed to ensure that workers have adequate income and do not need to work two full-time jobs, or several parttime jobs, to make ends meet. A basic income, which at first glance appears to be anti-work by giving people income not conditional on willingness to work, is in fact more work friendly than the current system, which creates a poverty trap: people do not seek employment for fear of losing their means-tested and conditional benefits. Because people keep their basic income when they find employment, this disincentive to a job is completely eliminated.

A third argument for basic income challenges what we mean by work. Much of the necessary work in our society is not counted as part of GDP (gross domestic product), and is done without remuneration, and often in conditions of economic dependency. This fact is especially true for household care of children and the elderly, which is done disproportionately by women. A basic income would give recognition to this work, afford women some measure of economic independence, and at an adequate level, lift them and their children out of poverty. Moreover, it would do so without the bureaucratic difficulties that

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would arise from trying to administer wages for housework. In addition, a basic income would facilitate other kinds of meaningful, but unremunerated, contributions to society, such as volunteering for nonprofit organizations.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST

A

mong objections to basic income, the two most prominent are financial and moral. The gross cost of a basic income appears quite large. If every legal US resident were given an annual basic income of, say, $12,000 per adult, and $6,000 per child, the gross cost would be $3.415 trillion (Widerquist 2017).

But the gross cost is not very meaningful. Everyone would receive a basic income, but the more affluent would be net contributors: they would pay more in taxes than they would receive in basic income. The poor would be net beneficiaries. And some people would break even.

The more interesting question is the net cost for the net contributors. The answer varies depending on how a basic income is integrated with the tax system.

But with a 50 percent tax surcharge on earned income, the net cost would be less than one-sixth of the gross cost, $539 billion. And that is without considering the potential elimination of other programs, such as food stamps or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, which might be redundant with a basic income. Furthermore, this net cost also does not take into account the savings that would likely result from improved health and lower crime rates. Although $539 billion is still expensive, it is feasible. Especially if we consider that it would completely eliminate poverty for 43 million people, including 14.5 million children. More

modest proposals of about half this level, such as that of Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes (2018), who favors a means-tested negative income tax with a work requirement—but broadening the definition of work to include care work and other socially useful activities— could be funded with moderate tax increases on those making more than $250,000 per year.

There are other ways of funding a basic income besides income tax. Andrew Yang (2018), who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, favors a basic income of $1,000 per month, funded by a value-added tax (cf. Walker 2016). Peter Barnes (2014) favors taxing common resources, such as natural resources, electromagnetic spectrum, the use of the atmosphere as a carbon sink, and the right to create money, which could support a basic income of around $5,000 per year, rather than being given away to private companies. Barnes’s model is Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, around $1,400 per year paid to every Alaskan, including children, from the annual interest earned by Alaska’s sovereign wealth fund, which has been capitalized with royalties paid by oil companies drilling on the North Slope since the 1970s. The dividend has contributed to Alaska’s relatively low rates of poverty and inequality (Widerquist and Howard 2012a, 2012b).

Hillary Clinton (2017) considered proposing something similar, “Alaska for America,” during her presidential campaign. There are pros and cons to these different funding schemes, but the main point is that a basic income is affordable.

The bigger hurdle may well be the moral objection, that it is wrong to give people “something for nothing.”

Wouldn’t this be taxing hard-working

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C O M M E N T A R Y people to give income to able-bodied free-riders? Isn’t it better to stick with our current system of benefits, conditional on a willingness to work? Doesn’t the social contract include a principle of reciprocity—that those who receive from society should, if they are able, give back by contributing to society?

Responses to this objection are of two sorts. The first concedes the principle of reciprocity, but argues, pragmatically, that conditionality is not worth the cost. Most people, if given a modest basic income, will use it to enable themselves to participate in society. Most will seek employment in order to have more than a poverty-level income. Some will elect to stay at home with children or aging parents. There is evidence to support these claims from numerous experiments with minimum income. A few may choose to live very simply—in itself an environmental boon—while focusing their time on volunteering, further education, or artistic creativity. If fears about automation materialize, a basic income will facilitate work-time reduction and work sharing (whether or not these are legislated), so that people can enjoy greater leisure, rather than suffer greater insecurity, as the productivity of labor rises. If there are a few loafers who decide to do nothing or to take drugs—and let’s face it, the current system does not prevent this—the resulting harm is outweighed by the social benefits of unconditional income for all.

The second response challenges the principle of reciprocity by noting that much of the income in modern capitalist societies is already decoupled from labor.

Many people inherit wealth and can live entirely on interest and dividends, without doing a day’s work in their lives.

(That many of these people do work is a further answer to those who think

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unconditional income will promote laziness.) Whether you are fortunate enough to inherit wealth, or have family connections or other advantages of affluence, is a matter of luck—something that Chris Hughes (2018) lucidly illustrates from his own experience.

All that basic income does is distribute this luck—the unearned income—more equally, so that everyone starts out on a more level playing field.

Reciprocity is not rejected; it just comes into play on the foundation of a more fundamental principle of guaranteeing everyone a fair share of assets. Above the basic income, earned income is distributed in proportion to work (Van Parijs and Vanderborght 2017).

POSSIBLE NATIONAL, STATE, AND LOCAL BASIC-INCOME POLICIES

I

t is not too difficult to imagine a basic income being adopted at a national level. After all, in the 1960s and early1970s, there was support across the political spectrum for a guaranteed minimum income. Martin Luther King (1967) endorsed the idea. George McGovern ran as the Democratic candidate for president favoring a demogrant (Mound 2016), a kind of guaranteed minimum income. Libertarian economist Milton Friedman (1962) favored a negative income tax, a means-tested, but otherwise unconditional minimum income. Richard Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan was a modified version of Friedman’s proposal, and it passed the House, but failed to pass in the Senate (Steensland 2017). Poverty is still with us, inequality is rising, and we face new threats from technological change. Among political parties, the Green Parties around the world are the strongest supporters of basic income

(Van Parijs and Vanderborght 2017).

But the idea is also favored by social movements, such as the Movement for Black Lives (https://policy.m4bl.org /reparations/). The social conditions are certainly favorable for a national debate about basic income.

Are basic-income policy proposals relevant at the state or local level? Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend illustrates how states can create dividends from sovereign wealth funds, or more directly from taxation of the use of common assets. But what about resource-poor states like Maine? Gary Flomenhaft (2012) calculated that even Vermont, also a resource-poor state, has enough resources that, if all the rents were taxed, and the revenue distributed as dividends, every citizen could receive between $1,900 and over $10,000 annually. Of course, clawing back these resources after having turned them over to private companies would face major political challenges.

A more modest, partial basic income could be created at the state level in several ways. A state-level carbon tax, desirable as a way to reduce fossil-fuel emissions, could yield a significant universal dividend, and the dividend would rectify an otherwise regressive and unpopular consumption tax. A carbon tax with progressive tax reductions has been implemented successfully in British Columbia (Durning and Bauman 2014).

The earned income tax credit, which exists at the state as well as the federal level, could be made refundable. That is, those without earned income would receive a credit, increasing their income when it falls below a minimum. It is unlikely that refundable tax credits or carbon taxes at the state level could be large enough to adequately address either the environmental requirements or the income needs, but policies at the

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C O M M E N T A R Y state level can pave the way for more adequate policies at the federal level, when the political environment there becomes more favorable.

Other policies that could be introduced at the state level are a universal child allowance or a refundable child tax credit. Universal child allowances are minimum incomes that go to all children regardless of means or behavioral conditions.

Lastly, at the municipal or state level, pilot projects such as those discussed earlier can generate public discussion of minimum-income policies and empirical evidence to inform policy making. Any Maine city, particularly with grant support, could launch similar experiments. REFERENCES Arntz, Melanie, Terry Gregory, and Ulrich Zierahn. 2016. “The Risk of Automation for Jobs in OECD Countries: A Comparative Analysis.” OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 189. Paris: OECD Publishing. doi.org/10.1787 /5jlz9h56dvq7-en

Byrne, John. 2018. “Task Force Will Study Whether Chicago Should Impose a Universal Basic Income to Help Struggling Families.” Chicago Tribune (September 11, 2018). http://www. chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics /ct-met-rahm-emanuel-universal-basic -income-pawar-20180911-story.html

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Crane, Rachel. 2018. “This California Town Will Give a $500 Monthly Stipend to Residents.” CNNtech (July 9, 2018). https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/09 /technology/stockton-california-basic -income-experiment/ Durning, Alan, and Yoram Bauman.

2014. “All You Need to Know about BC’s Carbon Tax Shift in Five Charts.”

Sightline (March 11, 2014). https:// www.sightline.org/2014/03/11/ Flomenhaft, Gary. 2012. “Applying the Alaska Model in a Resource-Poor State: The Example of Vermont.” In Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World, edited by Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard, 85–108. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Friedman, Milton. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Haarmann, Claudia, and Dirk Haarmann.

2014. “Pilot Project.” Basic Income Grant Coalition (South Africa). http:// www.bignam.org/

Chui, Michael, James Manyika, and Mehdi Miremadi. 2016. “Where Machines Could Replace Humans and Where They Can’t (Yet).” McKinsey Quarterly (July, 2016). https://www.mckinsey .com/business-functions/digital -mckinsey/our-insights/where-machines -could-replace-humans-and-where -they-cant-yet

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Coelho, Andre. 2018. “Chicago, US: Chicago Moves Forward with UBI Proposal.”

Basic Income News (September 15, 2018). https://basicincome.org /news/2018/09/chicago-us-chicago -moves-forward-with-ubi-proposal/

Frey, Carl Benedikt, and Michael A. Osborne. 2013. The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerization? Oxford: Oxford Martin School. https://www .oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads /academic/The_Future_of_Employment .pdf

Barnes, Peter. 2014. With Liberty and Dividends for All. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

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Clinton, Hilary. 2017. What Happened. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Hughes, Chris. 2018. Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

King Jr., Martin Luther. 1967. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Boston: Beacon Press.

2018

Kotecki, Peter. 2018. “Chicago Could Be the Largest US City to Launch a Basic Income Pilot—Here Are the Other Major Experiments around the World.”

Business Insider (July 23, 2018). https://www.businessinsider.com /chicago-basic-income-other -experiments-around-world-2018-7 Martin, Josh. 2016. “Switzerland: Swiss Vote ‘No’ on Basic Income Referendum.” Basic Income News (June 28, 2016). https://basicincome .org/news/2016/06/ McFarland, Kate. 2017a. “Current Basic Income Experiments (and Those So Called): An Overview.” Basic Income News (May 23, 2017). https:// basicincome.org/news/2017/05/page/2/ McFarland, Kate. 2017b. “European Parliament Rejects Proposal to Encourage Consideration of Basic Income.” Basic Income News (February 25, 2017). https:// basicincome.org/news/2017/02/ McFarland, Kate. 2017c. “Overview of Current Basic Income Related Experiments (October 2017).” Basic Income News (October 19, 2017). https://basicincome.org/news/2017/10 /page/2/ McFarland, Kate. 2018. “Chicago, US: City Considers Resolution to Investigate Basic Income Pilot.” Basic Income News (July 24, 2018). https:// basicincome.org/news/2018/07/ Mound, Joshua. 2016. “What Democrats Still Don’t Get about George McGovern.” New Republic (February 29, 2016). https://newrepublic.com /article/130737/ Obama, Barack. 2018. “Nelson Mandela Lecture.” National Public Radio (July 17, 2018). https://www.npr .org/2018/07/17/629862434/ Standing, Guy. 2014. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Standing, Guy, Sarath Davala, Renana Jhabvala, and Soumya Kapoor Mehta.

2015. Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

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C O M M E N T A R Y Steensland, Brian. 2017. The Failed Welfare Revolution: America’s Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Parijs, Phillipe, and Yannick Vanderborght. 2017. Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Walker, Mark. 2016. Free Money for All: A Basic Income Solution for the TwentyFirst Century. New York: Palgrave.

Widerquist, Karl. 2017. “The Cost of Basic Income: Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations.” Basic Income Studies 12(2): 107. Available at https://works .bepress.com/widerquist/75/ Widerquist, Karl, and Michael W. Howard.

2012a. Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining Its Suitability as a Model. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Widerquist, Karl, and Michael W. Howard.

2012b. Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World.

New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Yang, Andrew. 2018. The War on Normal People: The Truth about America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future. New York: Hachette Books.

Michael W. Howard is a professor of philosophy at the University of Maine. His research interests are in theories of justice, including global justice, economic justice, and climate justice. He has coedited two books on Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend. He is the national coordinator for the US Basic Income Guarantee Network and coeditor of the journal Basic Income Studies.

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Cafeteria Waste-Reduction Programs in Three Southern Maine Elementary Schools: A Waste Audit Analysis

by Jeremy Ravenelle

and reduce landfilled waste not only benefits the environment in the Solid waste is a serious environmental problem in the modern world. School cafeterias form of reduced waste, but also are one source of food and packaging waste that must be dealt with. Reducing the helps teach students environmenamount of cafeteria waste disposed of as trash through source reduction, recycling, and tally friendly habits and can reduce trash-hauling costs for schools composting will not only improve environmental outcomes, but will also teach students (Evans et al. 2012; Skumatz, BeMent, about sustainability and save schools money. Waste audits at three elementary schools and D’Souza 2014). in southern Maine reveal that there are major differences in how effectively waste is sortA waste audit sorts the waste ed and the types and quantity of waste generated per student. Overall waste diversion generated in a particular facility over was measured at 67 percent or greater at all three schools, with an average of 69 percent a specified period of time. It categoamong the two schools where organics were measured. While there is still work to be rizes and quantifies the waste stream done at all three schools, the programs have a major impact even in their current state. to produce data that can be used for education, program implementation, or program assessment. A 2001 olid waste is a serious environmental concern in the study of all waste generated on the campus of the modern world (Rootes 2009). In the United States, University of British Columbia assessed materials gener164 million metric tons of municipal solid waste is ated and their quantity across space and time on the deposited in landfills or disposed of via other non-reuse campus. This audit led the researchers to conclude that systems such as waste-to-energy every year (UNEP about 70 percent of the easily divertible waste was 2016). Another 87 million tons is diverted annually organic material, and they recommended assessing the through recycling and composting (UNEP 2016). This feasibility of a composting program (Felder, Petrell, and implies a solid-waste-generation rate of approximately Duff 2001). A similar audit at University of Northern 4.4 pounds per person per day and a diversion rate of British Columbia found that 70 percent of total waste 34 percent. could be diverted (Smyth, Fredeen, and Booth 2010).

Schools produce large quantities of solid waste.

These studies characterize waste at higher education One major source of waste in schools is cafeterias, where institutions, but there are few published examples in students eat lunch (and often breakfast) daily. Wilkie, public K–12 schools such as the audits conducted by Graunke, and Cornejo (2015) measured mean cafeteria Wilkie, Graunke, and Cornejo (2015). waste in three Florida schools in 2012 and found This study assesses the existing waste-reduction between 50 grams (1.8 ounces) and 137 grams (4.8 programs at three public elementary schools in southern ounces) per student per day. This waste includes both Maine using one-day waste audits to analyze the packaging or serving materials and uneaten food. Food programs as advocated by McKenzie and Smith (1999). waste is compostable, and much of the remaining waste It attempts to answer three questions: is made up of paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, and other • How is waste sorted in each school’s cafeteria? recyclable materials (Wilkie, Graunke, and Cornejo • What waste and how much is being generated in 2015). Implementing a system to capture those materials each cafeteria?

Abstract

S

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• Are there differences between schools in either waste-sorting practices or waste-generation rates?

METHODS

I

conducted waste audits at three elementary schools in southern Maine: Falmouth, Longfellow, and Reiche elementary schools (Figure 1). These schools represent urban versus suburban locations and larger versus smaller school districts. They also include a range of socioeconomic conditions and levels of funding (Table 1). These variations mean that the results can both be compared to a wider variety of schools around the country (rural schools are not included in this sample, which makes it a closer match for southern Maine conditions than for the state as a whole). However, readers should carefully consider when differing contexts contribute to how waste-reduction programs function and that some parameters may be overridden by these contextual differences. Considering these limitations, these case studies do allow for a comparison of three programs using a similar method to reduce waste within a relatively small geographic area (Figure 1) and the differences between the schools mean that the study has the potential to show more methods of running waste-reduction programs under different conditions.

In each school, the basic setup is similar: a set of bins placed side by side for trash, recycling, food, and liquid wastes, where students sort their waste after eating. Recyclable waste consists of all paper, rigid plastic, cardboard, glass, and metal material mixed in one bin (see https://www.ecomaine.org/ for more information on recycling in southern Maine). Food waste is organic material including uneaten food and inedible parts like fruit peels and bones. All three programs began between 2012 and 2014, and students were introduced to the program through educational assemblies and demonstrations in the lunchroom.

system. Longfellow Elementary School is in a more residential area, and Reiche Elementary School is closer to the downtown. Neither school has a dedicated cafeteria, so students eat in the gymnasium at Longfellow and the great room at Reiche. Food is delivered to both schools from a central kitchen in individual packages.

See Table 1 for more information on each school.

Waste disposal in Greater Portland, where all three schools are located, is generally accomplished by either municipal or private haulers delivering trash and recyclables to Ecomaine, a regional nonprofit waste-management organization. Trash is burned in a waste-to-energy plant to generate electricity, with the ash landfilled nearby. Single-stream recyclables are sorted in an automated plant and sold in bulk. Ecomaine’s website contains promotional materials demonstrating recyclable and nonrecyclable wastes, with the goal of zero contamination (Ecomaine 2017). The recycling plant operates Figure 1:

Locations of Case Study Schools

Study Locations Falmouth Elementary School is the only public elementary school serving the suburban town of Falmouth, Maine. The school was recently built to LEED standards and is the only school in this study with a dedicated cafeteria space and its own kitchen to prepare lunches. Longfellow and Reiche elementary schools are in the Portland Public Schools MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Table 1:

Summary of Maine Elementary Schools in Study Falmouth

Longfellow

Reiche

Falmouth

Portland

Portland

Grades

K–5

K–5

Pre-K–5

Number of students at school

925

340

404

Approximate percentage who eat hot lunch

49

26

70

Percentage of students receiving free/reduced price school lunch

7

25

77

$18,690

$16,580

$16,580

Yes

No

No

Location

District spending per student in 2017 Kitchen on site

gram and converted to pounds or ounces for reporting purposes. I also separated the two most common items in the recycling bin and the two most common recyclable items in the trash bin and weighed each.

Finally, I weighed the material in the compost bin at Longfellow and Reiche without sorting it due to logistical constraints and cleanliness concerns. Falmouth uses a different compost procedure that includes mixing their liquid waste (milk and juice) with the compost, so it was not possible to remove from the tote and would not have been comparable to the other schools’ numbers.

RESULTS

best with 7 percent or less contamination by volume in ll three schools diverted waste from the regular incoming recyclable materials. The plant can handle trash that would otherwise have been burned in slightly more than that, however, and 15 percent to 23 Ecomaine’s waste–to-energy plant (Table 2). A breakpercent is the industry standard (K. Venhuizen, personal down of the raw quantities of waste in each bin by communication). In this analysis, all totals are presented school is shown in Table 3. as weight, not volume, so the percentage of contamination is not directly comparable to the 7 percent standard.

Ecomaine rejects loads of recycling that are too heavily contaminated, sending them to Table 2: Actual Percentages of Waste Diverted from

the Trash Stream, after Accounting for Recycling the waste-to-energy plant (K. Venhuizen, Contamination personal communication). Smaller private composting companies that pick up directly Falmouth Longfellow Reiche from the schools handle the food waste. (%) (%) (%) Interested school employees and custoReduction in waste not including dians working in the lunchrooms helped 53 35 33 organics bin organized the audits. Based on the availability of space and collection logistics, I Reduction in waste including not 67 70 organics bin measured selected grades to audit at each school. I ensured a balance of ages by making sure that for every grade K–2 audited, one grade 3–5 Table 3: Summary of Total Waste Generated was also audited.

by Audited Lunches I sorted the waste from the recycling and trash bins into three categories: recyclable (all Falmouth Longfellow Reiche three schools use single-stream recycling Grades audited 1,2,3,5 k,1,3,4 2,5 through Ecomaine, and Ecomaine’s published Date of audit Jan. 24, recycling list was used to determine recyclable Jan. 8, 2018 Feb. 6, 2018 2018 material [Ecomaine 2017]), trash (nonrecyTotal trash bin in pounds clable and nonfood), and food waste. Any 8.7 (3956.5) 5.4 (2429.5) 9.2 (4155.0) (grams) liquid remaining in containers was poured off, Total recycle bin in pounds and the difference in starting weight and the 12.4 (5627.0) 20.4 (9250.0) 8.1 (3657.0) (grams) cumulative weight of the sorted components Total food bin in pounds was assumed to be liquid. All waste was not measured 25.0 (11323.5) 22.2 (10086.0) (grams) weighed in plastic trash bags to the nearest 0.5

A

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Percentage of Trash, Recyclable, Food, or Liquid Waste in Each Bin

Figure 2:

9%

Trash Bins

30%

21%

21%

Trash

49%

56%

Recyclable Food

10%

Liquid

Longfellow

Falmouth

7%

29%

Recyclable

44%

Food Liquid

3%

20%

Trash

Figure 3:

13%

Reiche

6%

7%

Recycle Bins

33%

21%

3%

33%

70%

21%

93%

Measured Quantity of Waste by Type in Each Bin in Ounces per Student

3.0 Trash and Recycle Bin Waste Per Student 2.5

Trash

Food

Recyle

Liquid

2.5

1.5 2.0

1.0 0.5 e ch Re i

llo fe

lm ou

th

w

0 Lo ng

1.5

Fa

Waste Per Student Per Day (oz)

2.0

1.0

0.5

0

Recycle Bin

Trash Bin

Food* Bin

Recycle Bin

Falmouth

Trash Bin

Food Bin

Longfellow

Insert shows total waste per student in the trash and recycle bins only. *Not measured.

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Recycle Bin

Trash Bin

Reiche

Food Bin

Sorting Accuracy The quantity of recyclable material compared with nonrecyclable material present in the recycling bins at each school varied widely. The same was true of the trash bins (Figure 2).

Overall, Falmouth had the most accurate sorting, with only 10 percent contamination by weight in the recycle bin (and no food in that bin, although some milk) (Figure 2). Falmouth’s trash was also the most accurately sorted, with 56 percent of the material in the trash bin actually being trash and 44 percent being recyclable or compostable. Longfellow had the least accurate overall recycling, with 56 percent contamination by weight. Almost one-third of the recycle bin weight (29 percent) was liquid contamination, and another 21 percent was made up of compostable organics.

Longfellow’s trash was similar to Falmouth’s, with 49 percent accurate material and 51 percent recyclable or compostable material. At Reiche, the situation was the reverse of Longfellow, with more accurate recycling (only 30 percent contamination), and a trash bin with trash as only 33 percent of its contents, the rest being recyclable or compostable.

Most of the recycling contamination at Reiche (20 percent of the bin weight) was compostable food waste, with relatively less liquid and trash (Figure 3). At both schools where organic waste in the compost bin was measured (Longfellow and Reiche), approximately equal proportions of the total organic waste was captured (82 percent at Longfellow and 83 percent at Reiche).

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CAFETERIA WASTE-REDUCTION PROGRAMS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

At Falmouth, the most common recyclable item to be misplaced in the trash was plastic yogurt containers, and the most common correctly placed item in the recycle bin was milk cartons. In fact, no milk cartons were found in the trash at Falmouth. At Longfellow, the recyclable item most frequently placed in the trash was cardboard serving boxes, and the most commonly recycled item was milk cartons.

Table 4: At Reiche the reverse of Longfellow was true,

with milk cartons being the most frequently misplaced and serving boxes the most commonly recycled (Table 4).

Waste Generation

DISCUSSION

Longfellow

Reiche

Most commonly incorrectly placed in trash bin

Plastic yogurt cups

Paper serving boxes

Cardboard milk cartons

Most commonly correctly placed in recycle bin

Cardboard milk cartons

Cardboard milk cartons

Paper serving boxes

Figure 4:

1.4

Milk Cartons

1.2

Other Recyclables

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Cardboard Food Boxes Contamination

1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2

A

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Breakdown of Recyclable Material Produced and Placed in Recycling Bin

1.6

0

ll three schools are sending less waste to be burned in the Ecomaine waste-to-energy plant than they would have sent without the programs. They are moving material up the waste hierarchy and the food recovery hierarchy.1 By that measure, the programs are successful in improving the environmental outcome. The results indicate, however, that more could be done and that there are major differences between schools.

Items Most Commonly Correctly and Incorrectly Placed in Trash and Recycle Bins (by Weight) Falmouth

Amount Per Student (oz)

Quantities and types of waste generated per student varied widely among the three schools. For this section, all reported quantities are per student unless otherwise specified.

Falmouth had by far the lowest total nonfood waste generation (Figure 3 insert). The two other schools have a major source of waste not present at Falmouth in the cardboard serving boxes used to transport the meals. At Longfellow, these accounted for 12 percent of total waste and 14 percent of the recycle bin (Figure 4), while at Reiche they were 21 percent of the total waste and 39 percent of the (less contaminated than Longfellow) recycle bin (Figure 4). Food-waste generation, at the two schools measured, showed wide variation. Longfellow produced 61 grams of food waste across all bins compared to Reiche’s 91 grams per student. In both cases, this food waste accounted for over half the total waste produced per student (Table 5).

Overall reductions in trash sent to the waste-to-energy plant (after accounting for contamination, which will presumably be sorted out at the recycling center) was in line with numbers reported in various articles.

Block (2000) reported that the Wichita Kansas school district reduced their waste 70 percent, closely matching

All Material

Recycle Bin

Falmouth

Table 5:

All Material

Recycle Bin

All Material

Longfellow

Recycle Bin

Reiche

Total Waste per Student in Ounces

Total waste per student not including food (grams) Total waste per student (grams)

Falmouth

Longfellow

Reiche

0.6 (16)

1.8 (52)

2.0 (58)

*not measured

4.0 (113)

5.3 (149)

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CAFETERIA WASTE-REDUCTION PROGRAMS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

the 67 percent and 70 percent (respectively) achieved by Longfellow and Reiche in this study. While Falmouth’s organic waste was not measured, its overall diversion was likely even higher than the other two schools because of a higher rate of nonfood diversion and much smaller amount of food in both the trash and recycling bins. This diversion rate would be in line with reports such as BioCycle (2018), where waste was reduced approximately 80 percent, and Kadleck (2015), where waste was reduced 90 percent.

Sorting This study’s sorting results are based on weight rather than volume, making them not directly comparable to Ecomaine’s maximum contamination level for recyclables. However, it is possible to estimate the contamination rate by volume based on the types of material present. The contamination rate at Falmouth almost certainly falls under the threshold of 7 percent by volume since the school had only 10 percent contamination by weight and 7 percent was made up of liquids, which are the densest type of contamination. At Longfellow, since less than half the weight in the recycle bin was recyclable material, it is unlikely the load would meet the 7 percent threshold, given that trash, which likely has similar volume to recycling, makes up 6 percent of the bin before accounting for substantial amounts of food and liquid. This does not necessarily mean Ecomaine rejects Longfellow’s recycling, as cafeteria waste is mixed with paper and other recyclables from classrooms and offices. Reiche’s cafeteria waste likely also goes above the 7 percent threshold, but may be under the 15 percent to 23 percent operational maximum for contamination depending on the exact density of the food and recycling waste.

Longfellow and Reiche’s opposite issues (Longfellow has more contamination in the recycling bin, Reiche has more recyclables in the trash) are not exactly equivalent. Due to the possibility of recyclables being rejected for too much contamination, Reiche’s situation with more recyclables in the trash is probably the more desirable of the two scenarios. Considering the quantity of food and liquid waste in the recycling bin at Longfellow, it may be helpful to emphasize that containers need to be empty before they are recycled. If students are going to dispose of all their waste in one bin, it is better for that to be the trash bin, so those who sort accurately can be sure they are contributing to real reductions through recycling.

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One factor to consider in the sorting accuracy between Falmouth and the two Portland schools is the variety of materials students are presented with.

Falmouth students with school lunch (almost half of students) receive their food directly on a washable tray with metal utensils, meaning they only need to recycle their milk carton and dump any remaining food in the compost bin. By contrast, both Portland schools serve hot lunch in packaging. So Portland students must place the plastic utensils and box lid in the trash, any extra food in the compost, and the box itself, along with the milk carton, in the recycling bin. In my observation, the sorting process took longer in both Portland schools than it did in Falmouth. There is a possibility this packaging and subsequent sorting could decrease in the future as renovation plans at Longfellow tentatively include an on-site kitchen.

Again relating to materials, most material in the recycling bin was hot-lunch related (milk cartons and [in Portland] food boxes). While hot-lunch-related items are the most common material, the relative lack of cold-lunch recyclables being accurately sorted may reflect waste-sorting systems that rely more on individual items like milk cartons rather than students’ knowledge of recyclable materials more broadly (e.g., all rigid plastic, paper, cardboard, etc.).

Waste Generation Considering all waste generated per student, regardless of whether it was sorted correctly, the schools display some interesting similarities and differences.

Total quantities of waste generated are similar to those identified by Wilkie, Graunke, and Cornejo (2015), who found mean waste-generation rates from 50 grams (1.8 ounces) to 137 grams (4.8 ounces) per student per day. Reiche’s total is slightly higher, while Longfellow’s is within the range on the upper end. Food-waste generation at rates similar to Longfellow or Reiche would put Falmouth in the lower to middle of the figures found by Wilkie, Graunke, and Cornejo (2015). Food waste at the two schools measured was, as in that study, the largest source of waste by weight. At Longfellow, food waste fell within the range that Wilkie, Graunke, and Cornejo (2015) found of 47 percent to 58 percent of waste. However, food accounted for an even higher proportion of total waste (61 percent) at Reiche.

There is a major (2.2 ounces [61 grams] vs. 3.2 ounces [91 grams]) difference in food waste per student between Longfellow and Reiche. Note that this was a 48

CAFETERIA WASTE-REDUCTION PROGRAMS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

one-day study and that more data points are necessary to fully determine if this difference is as large as it appears. A possible contributing factor is that on the day of the audit at Reiche some students were served frozen vegetables that had not been property reheated (they were still frozen), leading many students to throw them away. Another possible explanation for the difference in food waste is that approximately 70 percent of students at Reiche eat school lunch daily compared to only 26 percent at Longfellow. Studies have found that between 20 percent and 50 percent of items served in school lunches may go to waste (Marlette, Templeton, and Panemangalore 2005; Smith and Cunningham-Sabo 2014), which is likely more food than is wasted from lunches brought from home. This would support the notion that the almost three times higher consumption of school lunch at Reiche would increase average food waste per student compared to Longfellow.

Longfellow and Reiche produced around 3.5 times as much nonfood waste per student as Falmouth. As mentioned earlier, this likely has to do with the larger amount of packaging that Portland school meals require and that more liquid was retained in the waste at the Portland schools. Falmouth also uses washable cutlery, compared to the disposable cutlery at the other two schools, which may also be a factor.

An interesting, if inconclusive, comparison between hot and cold lunch at Reiche and Longfellow can be made if one assumes that similar proportions of food are wasted (regardless of which bin it is sorted into) at each school. Solving the difference between total waste generation and proportion of hot-lunch students as a system of equations yields a waste-generation rate of 6.1 ounces (173 grams) per student for hot lunch and 3.2 ounces (91 grams) per student for cold lunch. As noted earlier, this difference could have been affected by the day the data were collected. This comparison implies, however, that the schools could reduce waste at the source by reducing packaging and wasted food in hot lunches.

Berry and Acheson (2017) include a variety of ways to reduce food waste in school lunches including allowing students more choice and setting up share tables to avoid wasting unwanted food.

It is also likely that differences in program design and leadership played a role in the results seen in this waste audit. The program at Falmouth was instigated primarily by a teacher at that school who convinced the school board that it was not only the right thing to do but could also save money. In the two Portland schools, MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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although there are champions at each school (vice principal at Longfellow and lunch aid at Reiche), the initial push to begin the program came from a group of parents and administrators at the district level.

Additionally, Longfellow has much more signage than the other two schools including photo examples of what goes in each bin. Falmouth has no signs, but does have a lunch aid who stands by the bins and helps students, and Reiche has neither (except lunch aids who occasionally try to monitor when they have time).

Considering that this study is a snapshot in time, its comparisons are not statistically testable. This fact leaves open the possibility of variation due to the specific days chosen, such as the kinds of food served, as well as random variation. Both sorting and waste production may have also been influenced by factors beyond the scope of this study, such as the financial resources available to each school and its students’ prior exposure to concepts like recycling and composting. Analyzing schools with similar socioeconomic and surrounding contexts could show more clearly how programs differ independently of those conditions. Future studies could conduct audits on multiple days of the week over a period of time and involving all grade levels. Another limitation of this study is the inability to capture material in Falmouth’s compost bin, which could be solved with better study design to avoid mixing food waste from the sample lunches with food from unsampled lunches. It would also benefit the completeness of the results to directly measure the liquid found in all locations, trash, recycling, and the liquids bucket. In this study, trash and recycling liquid was measured only indirectly and the liquid bucket not at all.

The most important takeaway from this waste audit is that all three schools have managed to divert waste that would have otherwise been sent to the waste-toenergy plant, moving their disposal practices up the waste hierarchy. Falmouth is achieving a high rate of sorting accuracy, leaving their options to further improve the program mostly in the realm of source reduction and keeping recyclables and food out of the trash. The two Portland schools both have the possibility to improve sorting in a relatively significant way, but are still diverting well over half their waste. Anything that simplifies the waste stream (such as kitchen facilities that reduce the need for packaging) would likely help improve sorting as well.

More broadly, this study confirms the value of source reduction and suggests that schools can both 49

CAFETERIA WASTE-REDUCTION PROGRAMS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

drastically reduce waste and improve the efficiency of students’ sorting of waste by simplifying the waste stream and eliminating packaging whenever possible.

This could connect with efforts already underway in Maine to serve more local and whole foods in school cafeterias. Both that movement and waste reduction would benefit from efforts to support food preparation within individual schools where it is consumed. Repeated education, in the form of adults who reinforce where things go and assist students, also may help although this represents an added cost of having more staff.

This audit confirmed that the sometimes drastic waste-reduction numbers cited in the literature (e.g., BioCycle 2018; Block 2000) can be achieved by schools in Maine using existing programs and that food waste is a huge and divertible portion of the cafeteria waste stream. While sorting may not be perfect, it appears to be enough to result in reductions. The studied programs are already providing environmental benefits and have the potential to continue improving. ENDNOTES 1 See these US EPA websites for more information on the food recovery hierarchy (https://www.epa.gov/sustainable -management-food/food-recovery-hierarchy) and sustainable materials management (https://www.epa.gov/smm /sustainable-materials-management-non-hazardous -materials-and-waste-management-hierarchy).

REFERENCES Berry, Brieanne, and Ann Acheson. 2017. “Sharing Isn’t Easy: Food Waste and Food Redistribution in Maine K–12 Schools.” Maine Policy Review 26(1): 47–58.

BioCycle. 2018. “Composting Roundup: Franklin County, Massachusetts: Source Separating Organics Soars in Schools.” BioCycle 59(7): 14.

Block, Dave. 2000. “School District Supplies Organics to Commercial Composter.” BioCycle.

Ecomaine. 2017. Ecomaine Recycling Guidelines. Portland, ME: ecomaine. http://www.ecomaine.org/wp-content /uploads/2017/11/Printable-DO_DONT_Nov2_2017.pdf Evans, Laurel, Gregory R. Maio, Adam Corner, Carl J. Hodgetts, Sameera Ahmed, and Ulrike Hahn. 2012.

“Self-Interest and Pro-Environmental Behavior.”

Nature Climate Change 3(2): 122–125. doi.org/10.1038 /nclimate1662 Felder, Melissa. A.J., Royann J. Petrell, and Sheldon J.B. Duff. 2001. “A Solid Waste Audit and Directions for Waste Reduction at the University of British Columbia, Canada.” Waste Management & Research 19(4): 354–365. doi.org/10.1177/0734242X0101900412

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Kadleck, Chrissy. 2015. “Nebraska School Succeeds in Composting Most of Its Food Waste.” Waste 360 (April 9). https://www.waste360.com/organics/nebraska -school-succeeds-composting-most-its-food-waste Marlette, Martha A., Susan B. Templeton, and Myna Panemangalore. 2005. “Food Type, Food Preparation, and Competitive Food Purchases Impact School Lunch Plate Waste by Sixth-Grade Students.” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 105(11): 1779–1782. doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2005.08.033 McKenzie, Doug, and William Smith. 1999. “Design and Evaluation: Building Effective Programs.” In Fostering Sustainable Behavior, pp. 122–135. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers.

Rootes, Christopher. 2009. “Environmental Movements, Waste and Waste Infrastructure: An Introduction.”

Environmental Politics 18(6): 817–834. doi.org/10.1080/09644010903345587 Skumatz, Lisa A., Dawn BeMent, and Dana D’Souza. 2014.

The Costs and Benefits of Minnesota K-12 School Waste Management Programs. Superior, CO: Skumatz Economic Research Associates Inc. Smith, Stephanie L., and Leslie Cunningham-Sabo.

2014. “Food Choice, Plate Waste and Nutrient Intake of Elementary- and Middle-School Students Participating in the US National School Lunch Program.” Public Health Nutrition 17(6): 1255–1263. doi.org/10.1017/S1368980013001894 Smyth, Danielle P., Arthur L. Fredeen, and Annie L. Booth.

2010. “Reducing Solid Waste in Higher Education: The First Step towards ‘Greening’ a University Campus.”

Resources, Conservation and Recycling 54(11): 1007– 1016. doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2010.02.008 UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). 2016.

GEO-6 Regional Assessment for North America.

Nairobi, Kenya: UNEP. http://uneplive.unep.org/media /docs/assessments/GEO_ASSESSMENT_NORTH _AMERICA_Final_C6.pdf Wilkie, Ann, Ryan Graunke, and Camilo Cornejo. 2015. “Food Waste Auditing at Three Florida Schools.” Sustainability 7(2): 1370–1387. doi.org/10.3390/su7021370

Jeremy Ravenelle is a recent graduate of Colby College where he studied environmental policy.

He grew up in Portland and was involved in the implementation of the waste-reduction program at Portland High School. He is in the process of beginning a career somewhere in the environmental or energy fields.

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Improving the Health of Communities through Population Health Assessments

by Ron Deprez and Chloe Manchester

be major programs or involve expensive medical technologies. Changes This paper describes a comprehensive, science-based approach for conducting a popuare intended to leverage existing capacities and resources. Delaying lation health assessment (PHA), a process for identifying upstream nonmedical, social school start times to improve and economic determinants of health in a community, including risk factors associated student participation or restocking with poor health status. A PHA focuses on diagnosing and improving population health vending machines with healthier disparities using public, private, and community-based strategies and resources. The options are examples of such paper traces the evolution of PHAs from community health needs assessments and approaches. Investments like these community benefits planning. It describes the PHA process, methods, data, and analytare more likely to be sustainable and ical techniques that permit the identification of specific underlying factors in a commuable to adapt to changing trends. nity that adversely affect health. It also suggests criteria to prioritize health issues Many signs suggest that investand strategies that help communities implement sustainable policy, infrastructure, or ments in public health, especially services improvements. preventive health, are needed to address the decline in health status in the United States. Compared to INTRODUCTION our counterparts in other nations of similar economic status, US residents experience, on average, poorer his paper describes a comprehensive, science-based health and outcomes. When it comes to life expectancy, approach for conducting a population health a metric for general health, the United States ranks 25th assessment (PHA). A PHA is a process for identifying for males and 26th for females (OECD 2015)— both apparent and underlying nonmedical determinants of health in a community, including risk factors WHAT IS POPULATION HEALTH? associated with poor health outcomes (Deprez and Thomas 2016). The PHA process described in this paper Population health describes the health status of a will help state and local decision-makers identify the population based on health-related data and indispecific factors in a community that affect health and cators. It is focused on the overall health and wellthe targeted policies and resources needed to improve being of a population or geographic area (Deprez health status. The goal of a PHA is to diagnose and and Thomas 2016) rather than medical diagnoses improve health status using public, private, and commuor treatments for individuals. Population health nity-based strategies. A PHA is different from a commuincludes both governmental and private infrastrucnity health needs assessment (CHNA), which focuses ture, activities, policies, and services that address on deficits in the health system rather than underlying health. Population health can be assessed for the drivers of, and solutions to, population ill health. whole population or for a subgroup (race, ethnicity, The value of a comprehensive PHA goes beyond gender, geography, workplace). Approaches to understanding and identifying strategies to improve improving community health focus on populations policy, infrastructure, or services. The process is also a and address the root causes of ill health. The solutool to organize and engage community stakeholders, tions can be systemic and far-reaching—and oftencultivate essential leadership, and help communities times beyond the scope of a health system or facility. secure resources to improve the health and well-being of their populations. Strategies do not necessarily need to Abstract

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an average of 1.7 years less than other developed countries—despite proportionally higher (2.5 times higher) per capita spending on health care compared to healthier nations (Bezruchka 2012). Although many in the United States benefit from groundbreaking medical advancements and high-quality care, the country falls behind other developed nations on numerous health indicators: adverse birth outcomes, injuries and homicides, HIV/AIDS, drug-related mortality, obesity and diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease, and disability (NRC and Institute of Medicine 2013). This inconsistency is predominantly associated with a high level of socioeconomic disparity and a fragmented health system, along with poor health-related behaviors such as alcohol consumption and obesity, for which the United States ranks significantly higher than similar countries. These trends raise serious concerns about long-term mortality and morbidity for those living in the United States, as well as about the impact of health outcomes on economic and social progress. While there is no single (or simple) solution, many underlying causes can be traced back to social, economic, environmental, and behavioral factors.

A simple ecological model can be used to explain why a population health approach is necessary and how a range of factors or determinants affect health outcomes (Figure 1). Biological or genetic determinants, as well as some behaviors, are the traditional focus of the healthcare system because they are considered almost entirely dependent upon the individual. A population health approach recognizes that social and communitylevel influences, as well as physical environment and policies, have direct implications for population and individual health.

COMMUNITY BENEFITS PLANNING AND NEEDS ASSESSMENTS

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ccording to the Centers for Disease Control, public health “is the science of protecting and improving the health of people and their communities. This work is achieved by promoting healthy lifestyles, researching disease and injury prevention, and detecting, preventing, and responding to infectious diseases” (https://www .cdcfoundation.org/what-public-health). Public health practice focuses on prevention and follow-up of health outcomes, such as disease outbreaks, for example, food contamination. Public health agencies, however, do not generally address social determinants.

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Figure 1:

Drivers of Population Health Status Policy

Infrastructure

Physical Environment

Social/Community

Behavior

Biology/ Genetics Individual

Adapted from the Centers for Disease Control’s “Social-Ecological Model: A Framework for Prevention.” The model illustrates how factors at one level influence factors at another level while at the same time contributing independently to health. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/overview/social -ecologicalmodel.html

The definition of public health has evolved over time. Since 1959 (IRS Ruling 56-185), nonprofit hospitals have been required to provide free or discounted care to those eligible (usually the uninsured or underinsured). The scope of nonprofit hospitals was further expanded in 1969 (IRS Ruling 69-545) to include a community benefit component.

This ruling acknowledged that hospitals needed to provide services outside the facility, leading many hospitals to implement education and research activities for the first time.

In the late 1980s, the concept of CHNA appeared (Allen et al. 2003). Firms such as the Public Health Resource Group (PHRG) in Maine, the Lewin Group in Washington, D.C., and Professional Research Consultants of Omaha, Nebraska, developed planning models with the use of robust population-based epidemiological data that was becoming available. As the scope and reach of health systems expanded, the gap between the health needs of the community and the activities designed for community benefit became clear. Several states began mandating that nonprofit hospitals conduct and publish 52

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the results of CHNAs; this mandate was later adopted by the federal government as part of the Affordable Care Act. The migration from CHNAs to PHAs was the result of several realizations by community health MAINE SHARED CHNA Maine is one of a few states that conduct statewide, county, and regional community health needs assessments (CHNA), which now include data on social determinants. The Maine Shared CHNA began in 2010 when the University of New England’s Center for Community and Population Health was contracted to collaborate with the major health systems in the state (Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, MaineGeneral Health, and MaineHealth) and the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention to produce the first shared health status profile and report.

The Maine Shared CHNA process consists of three stages: • Health data profiles consisting of almost 200 indicators describing health outcomes, health behaviors, healthcare access and quality, and the social, community, and physical environments that affect health.

• Community forums and other outreach events scheduled by the hospitals. Forums are often followed by interviews with key informants and a community health survey. Outreach events obtain feedback on the data and identify health priorities and community assets.

• CHNA reports that include the health profiles, along with summaries from forums, interviews, and surveys are produced for the state, each county, and each public health district.

Missing from this process are analysis connecting the social determinants to specific health issues, multisector collaborations to design and implement change at the policy and infrastructure levels, and resources for these efforts. As we argue in this paper, the changes needed to affect health are rarely improvements to the health system. See https:// www.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/phdata/MaineCHNA /about-Maine-CHNA.shtml for more information.

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leaders and policy experts. One realization was that most CHNAs only identify the needs of health systems that by themselves do not address the underlying upstream health drivers. Another realization was that the health system alone cannot address sustainable and impactful population health improvements without involving other community-based organizations and institutions.

A POPULATION HEALTH ASSESSMENT APPROACH

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PHA approach (Figure 2) uses population-based indicators to describe, prioritize, and address specific health-related issues within economic, social, racial, environmental, or individual domains. PHAs focus on community-based solutions and include changes to the health system, environment and infrastructure, education, or policy. Health behaviors (such as smoking or driving without a seatbelt), biology (such as genetic disorders), environment (anything from tainted drinking water to cultural practices), socioeconomic factors (such as, poverty or unemployment), and education may all be part of the scope of a PHA. Thus, improvements may fall under the jurisdiction of a community or service organization or require governmental policy changes. For this reason, PHAs require a certain level of multisectoral collaboration to be effective. Conducting a PHA is an important and necessary first step in connecting healthcare and community partners to address health issues.

Solutions derived from a PHA may have a direct impact on health; for example, a PHA may recommend creating a prevention program to reduce obesity in a population by changing personal nutrition habits. Or the PHA may have an indirect impact as in a community that builds walking or biking trails to promote increased physical activity.

The process discussed in this article places significant emphasis on the role of public and private stakeholders (i.e., health departments, hospitals, health systems, and community organizations). However to address population health issues, it is important to make use of a community’s full range of assets, not just its healthcare organizations. Representatives from government, education systems, civic leadership, community-based cultural and social organizations, student groups, nonprofit agencies, and private businesses all have a responsibility and critical roles to play in a successful change process.

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Figure 2:

Overview of Population Health Approach to Change

Structural Determinants, Genetics, Physical Environment, SES

health-seeking behaviors or outcomes require behavior change (Syme 2004), which calls upon interventions from outside the health system. Determinants broadly fall into five categories, all of which are crosscutting and interrelated:

• Individual behaviors: These can be health-seeking behaviors such as Health Behaviors and regular exercise or eating a balanced MEDIATED Social Determinants diet, or detrimental or high-risk IMPACT of Health behaviors such as smoking, alcohol and drug use, or unprotected sex.

• Social environment: Socioeconomic factors such as income DIRECT (poverty), social class, culture, reliData and Analyses IMPACT gion, and gender impose many limitations upon health because they shape the ways in which communities interact. In general, communities with less disparity fare better because individuals have access to POLICIES the same services.

SERVICES • Physical environment: The condiINFRASTRUCTURE tions in which people live, work, or study contribute to health status.

Exposure to harmful toxins or chemicals such as lead and asbestos, the ADDRESSING DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH lack of clean air or water, poor infrastructure, and the spread of zoonotic diseases are examples of eterminants of health are a set of often interrelated risk factors in our physical environment. factors causally associated with a person’s health • Access to quality health services: The extent to (https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/socialdeterminants which people have access to and use health services /definitions.html). They can be central to the epideinfluences quality of care for both treatment and miological state of disease and health outcomes in prevention of health conditions. For example, the communities or specific populations. Determinants number of people who are uninsured or underinspan a range of spheres, including biology and genetics, sured can affect access to and quality of care. individual behaviors, social environment, physical envi• Biology and genetics: Many of these factors do ronment, and the health system (see Figure 1). not have actionable population health solutions A PHA concerns itself with both nonmedical and because genetic predispositions require indimedical determinants of health. By taking a broader vidualized treatment and cannot necessarily be look at a population’s health, the lens shifts away from prevented. Nonetheless, biology also refers to age the reasons for an individual’s illness and focuses on and gender, which are important considerations questions related to overall trends. The PHA is concerned in any public health program or policy. with upstream factors or causes of positive or negative PHAs use evidence-based determinants, which link health status and outcomes. Determinants of health health outcomes to known differences and disparities in reflect a broad continuum of biological, circumstantial, populations.

The goal of the health assessment is to structural, and environmental factors, many (if not quantify each determinant’s effect and identify the most most) of which are well beyond the control of a health significant determinants and the ways to address them. system. Many social factors associated with negative

Planning Goals

Focused Interventions

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In summary, the information collected as part of the PHA will first provide a situational representation of health status, and second, lead to the underlying causes based on what is already known about the potential determinants associated with each of these health outcomes.

Social Determinants of Health Social determinants of health link the root causes of health outcomes to factors outside the health system context (Table 1). There are many characteristics about the way people live that influence health outcomes, either directly or through mediating factors. Social determinants are overlapping, interrelated, and not mutually exclusive. Inequity is an important driver of Table 1:

negative social determinants. Poverty, social and physical environment, and education may be driven by “unequal power relationships interacting across four main dimensions—economic, political, social and cultural—and at different levels including individual, household, group, community, country and global levels” (Popay et al. 2008: 2).

DATA COLLECTION, METRICS, AND ANALYSIS

T

he first step in conducting a PHA is defining the study area, which may be a geographic jurisdiction or a select population. Data are then collected to create a comprehensive health status profile, illustrating the sociodemographic characteristics of the service area.

Examples of Major Social Determinants of Health

Determinant

Causes

Health outcomes

Poverty

Social exclusion Being a single parent Economic conditions (external) Lack of education Environmental disasters Low-wage jobs Reduction in welfare support

Less favorable neighborhood conditions Childhood obesity Diabetes Hypertension Smoking-related illnesses Asthma Low birthweight

Pre-tax income against poverty threshold Consumption

Unsafe or negative work conditions

Limited employment options Unemployment Work-related stress Extensive job strain Physical risks

Demands or restrictions of job Overly sedentary Unhealthy habits Coronary heart disease

Self-reported psycho- Enforcement of safe working conditions logical job demands Identification of negative health conditions Decision latitude Workplace health promotion programs Social support at work

Psychological stress

Anxiety Social isolation Financial insecurity (poverty) External crises

Diabetes High blood pressure Depression Metastases

Income or unemployment Social inclusion Self-reported

Stress management programs Support groups Stress hotlines Affordable counselling Training to identify high-risk groups Routine screening interviews at places of work, educational institutions

Low educational attainment

Poverty Location Poor nutrition Social inequities Parents’ educational attainment

Increased levels of stress Higher blood pressure Elevated cholesterol levels

Standardized testing Rates of college enrolment

After-school or summer programs Learning or skill-building opportunities at community centers Access to libraries or other learning tools Reducing obstacles to school participation Reducing barriers to attendance

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How a determinant is measured

Measures to prevent negative health outcomes Amenities to encourage physical activity Behavior change communication Social engagement Increased access to and affordability of healthy food Safe and attractive recreational facilities Nutrition programs Removal of barriers to healthy behavior Access to public library Skills development strategies

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Initially, a PHA requires quantitative data; later in the process, the data are mostly qualitative. The quantitative data rarely answer the question of what to do about the identified health issues. Rather, the data permit us to raise questions about what may be driving the health issues. The types of data are typically chosen to assess high-level health issues and are usually available from local, state, or federal governments (such as census, birth, and death records), health systems (such as use of health system, incidence of disease, and test information), and household or community surveys. The measures address risk factors (medical and nonmedical), disease or condition prevalence and incidence, access, availability, quality, and performance (care management).

Health data are then analyzed with metrics on known determinants of health status such as education, poverty, and economic and social or cultural characteristics. This type of analysis identifies gaps in programs, policies, and services (either in the health care system or in the community) more efficiently than a typical CHNA does.

Once the scope of the PHA has been defined, the next step is to determine what data are needed to measure the goals and objectives of the assessment. A broad PHA requires a more comprehensive set of data than one aimed, for example, at better understanding the mental health status of a community subpopulation.

A simple disaggregation of data is done for identification of trends, variations, and inequities at the state and local levels that might otherwise have been missed in larger units of measurement.1 Quantitative and Qualitative Data Compared to an epidemiologically focused CHNA, PHAs require enhanced data collection and organization methods. The planning process for a CHNA typically identified salient healthcare-related issues in the community through a systematic analysis of scientifically based health indicators and best practice information. Indicators are computed from an extensive set of health-related data. However, similar to community benefits planning, CHNAs were focused almost exclusively on health service needs and solutions (VHA Inc. 2002).

As in the CHNA process, PHAs starts with a comprehensive epidemiologically based health profile organized by domain or condition such as cancer, or cardiovascular, respiratory, or mental health. Indicators for most domains are further organized by risk factors, prevalence (or incidence) of disease or condition, care MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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DATA ANALYTIC METHODS Health indicators are generally analyzed at various population levels and may be compared to state or local averages. Comparisons to national or local standards of excellence, guidelines, or goals are valuable ways to evaluate health outcomes. To identify whether a community’s poor health outcomes can be traced back to determinants outside of the health system, we must first establish whether a community benefits from similar access to, use of, and quality of care. This epidemiologic approach identifies causes of poor health while highlighting differences within groups that are similar in other respects.

Indicators within each domain are produced as actual population rates or proportions. They are not adjusted for age, gender, or other population artifacts. This information is critical for health planning and is lost if rates are adjusted to an external population. To better understand the status of a health issue in a population, the actual rates are analyzed by the following subpopulations: gender, age groups, and/ or race and ethnicity (provided the data are available and it is appropriate from a population health or clinical perspective). Indicators are analyzed separately and across policy, infrastructure, and service issues.

PHAs generally do not test for statistical significance of rates between two or more populations.

It is the pattern of indicators that, taken together and analyzed sequentially, determines whether and what follow-up analysis is warranted. Statistical testing may be considered in special circumstances to further examine a specific area of the population.

management indicators, and care outcomes. A PHA includes measures of social determinants of health that are both scientifically valid and evidence based in their relationship to health outcomes (Table 2). For example, research has shown that stress is associated with the incidence of certain cancers. Metrics that use several different indicators (such as socioeconomic status) are also useful for making inferences about a population’s health or health-related status. The methodology also uses strategies to ensure the selection of appropriate geographic boundaries and representative comparative 56

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Table 2:

Examples of Population Health Status Indicators and Associated Public Health Responses

Using a PHA: An Example

Using breast cancer as an example, a PHA could be used to determine whether issues Socioeconomic; environmental Economic or infrastructure improvements related to elevated incidence of Risk factors breast cancer (cases) or poor Prevalence or incidence Economic or infrastructure improvements; screening or outcomes (survival rates) are due detection; access to or availability of care (workforce) to access to, or availability of, Care management Economic or infrastructure improvements; health care, education levels of (access, quality, effectiveness) evidence-based or culturally competent care the population, or some other Poor or negative health outcomes All of the above factor. The PHA could focus on women with relatively low levels of education, increased stress, and proportionally less income Table 3: Sample Breast Cancer Indicators and compare them to an otherwise similar population of Service Comparison women. In this example, one Breast cancer health measures area area cohort of women accesses Percentage females with high school education 75.00 90.00 mammography services less Percentage female population in poverty 18.00 12.00 frequently, yet experiences lower Percentage single head-of-household with children (stress) 2.00 20.00 incidence of breast cancer but with a higher disease-specific Percentage underemployed 50.00 33.00 mortality rate. In fact, women in Percentage insured 78.00 85.00 this service area diagnosed with Percentage mammography 65.00 80.00 breast cancer are 16 percent Percentage self-breast exam 75.00 90.00 more likely to die from the disease than those in the comparRate* breast cancer incidence (females) 90.00 107.00 ison group (Table 3).

Percentage diagnosed breast cancer (early) 7.00 11.00 These measures raise several Percentage stage IV breast cancer (distant) 25.00 10.00 challenging questions for the Rate* breast cancer mortality (females) 40.00 30.00 community: What is driving the elevated cancer mortality—lack Ratio of breast cancer mortality to incidence 0.44 0.28 of access to mammograms, poor *Rates are per 100,000 female population education, insufficient preventive insurance coverage, late diagnosis, or some other factor? populations. The results—using a pattern recognition Why are women in this community diagnosed so late— analysis—identifies priorities for follow-up.2 The results lack of access to mammograms, education about the point to both needs and strengths in a community’s value of mammograms, poverty, distance to test sites, or medical and nonmedical infrastructure and services that some other reason? are affecting its health status.

Based on these findings, a PHA then uses strucCONCLUSION tured interviews or community meetings to obtain a clearer understanding of the issues that need to be lthough a PHA will identify a range of health issues, addressed to improve health. This analysis results in there are resource limitations (financial and organiidentifying priority issue areas and highlights differences zational) affecting how many issues can be addressed at or disparities within a population. one time. Priority development allows for targeted goal setting so the PHA can focus on issues that either affect Health status indicators

Innovations or service implications

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THE PHA PROCESS Once issues along with a set of key questions for each issue are identified for follow-up, there are several steps to take in developing potential solutions to the problem.

• Determine where follow-up interviews or focus groups are needed and with whom.

• Determine how to obtain community involvement in answering the questions. For example, hold community circles.

• Put together multisector collaborations to lead the improvement process.

• Perform an asset-mapping exercise: Identify community assets that could be used to address the solution, including those that currently address it.

• Conduct a capacity, cost, and administrative assessment of successful intervention.

• Develop specific recommendations for health improvement—successful (model) programs for adaptation to the area.

• Obtain resources, implement, and continuously evaluate results.

the largest proportion of people in a target population or contribute to a significant burden of disease in a disadvantaged population. While these are not the only parameters for establishing a health priority, it is most likely that community health interventions will seek to target efforts where need is greatest.

It is vital that stakeholders, community members, and implementation partners participate in identifying and validating these priorities to avoid duplication of efforts and encourage consolidation of assets. When setting priorities in this way, it may be challenging to build consensus, so it is helpful to establish criteria for determining if a community health need should be considered a priority. Examples of such criteria may include, but are not limited to the following: 1. A health priority should be one that results in the greatest proportion of morbidity, mortality, disability, and years of productive life lost within the target population.

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2.

There should be opportunities for prevention-based interventions rather than just care and treatment.

3. Solutions to health needs should be actionable and involve the entire community, rather than limited to those who are directly affected. There will be greater sustainability and buy-in if the target population has a stake. Even if programs are targeted to reach certain groups, there will be benefits for the whole community.

4. Conditions or health needs should have a measurable impact.

5. Limitations, parameters, restrictions, and opportunities should all be considered and balanced appropriately when considering interventions and setting priorities. This can be done through an asset-mapping exercise or creating an inventory of all the resources and gaps available: • Physical resources and infrastructure (e.g., schools, exercise areas or classes, educational opportunities, community spaces) • Financial resources (e.g., budget restriction, potential grant support) • Human capital and capacity (such as community organizations, civic groups, businesses, school districts) • Policies (both health and nonhealth related).

Asset mapping will provide a current picture of assets that can be used to improve the community and population health outcomes. Examining programs or policies that were implemented in the past is part of this exercise, so that past experiences can inform new approaches. The objective of an asset-mapping exercise is to develop a list of relevant community resources or services that address the health needs of the community and the gaps that remain, including infrastructure and policies. An additional benefit of the exercise is to identify groups or individuals within the community who should be involved in the development and implementation of interventions.

Once assets are understood and gaps have been identified, it is important to take stock of the limitations that exist. In many cases, the limitations are financial constraints. Other limitations to consider, however, include culture and political climate. Multisector groups made up of representatives from government, businesses, school districts, and volunteer agencies, need to be

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involved in the planning process. These groups make a difference in seizing opportunities and overcoming limitations. In many cases, a great deal can be done even without large budgets or major policy changes. ENDNOTES 1 It is always a challenge to determine the level of granularity needed in contrast to the scientific validity of the measures produced. There is no right answer; it depends on what one is trying to measure and the level of data available.

2 “Pattern recognition can be defined as the classification of data based on knowledge already gained or on statistical information extracted from patterns and/or their representation” (https://www.geeksforgeeks.org /pattern-recognition-introduction). Applied to health, pattern recognition is used to analyze clusters of related measures, such as specific risk factors including social determinants, disease prevalence, disease management, early diagnosis, and health outcomes. The process aids decision-making on what is driving health status and outcomes and subsequently identifies specific activity for health improvement.

REFERENCES Allen, Susan, Jareen Meinzen-Derr, Michele Kautzman, Isaac Zulu, Stanley Trask, Ulgen Fideli, Rosemary Musonda, Francis Kasolo, Feng Gao, and Alan Haworth.

2003 “Sexual Behavior of HIV Discordant Couples after HIV Counseling and Testing.” AIDS 17(5): 733–740. https://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/Fulltext/2003/03280/ Bezruchka, Stephen. 2012. “The Hurrider I Go the Behinder I Get: The Deteriorating International Ranking of U.S. Health Status.” Annual Review of Public Health 33(1): 157–173. doi.org/10.1146/annurev -publhealth-031811-124649

Popay, Jennie, Sarah Escorel, Mario Hernández, Heidi Johnston, Jane Mathieson, and Laetitia Rispel.

2008. Understanding and Tackling Social Exclusion.

SEKN Final Report. Lancaster, UK: WHO Social Exclusion Knowledge Network. http://www.who.int /social_determinants/knowledge_networks/final_reports /sekn_final%20report_042008.pdf Syme, S. Leonard. 2004. “Social Determinants of Health: The Community as an Empowered Partner.” Preventing Chronic Disease 1(1). https://www.cdc.gov/pcd /issues/2004/jan/03_0001.htm VHA, Inc. 2002. Community Benefits Planning: Strengthening Commitment to Mission. A VHA Inc., Concept Brief.

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

Deprez and his colleagues are leaders in the development of population-based healthcare needs assessment and planning technologies. Deprez has led over 80 community assessment and planning studies in the United States and abroad.

Chloe Manchester is a public health professional with a background in global maternal and reproductive health and childhood immunization.

Deprez, Ron, and Rick Thomas. 2016. “Population Health Improvement: It’s Up to the Community—Not the Healthcare System.” Maine Policy Review 25(2): 44–52. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol25 /iss2/8/ NRC (National Research Council) and Institute of Medicine.

2013. U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health, edited by Steven H. Woolf and Laudan Aron. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK154469/ OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). 2015. Health at a Glance 2015.

Washington, DC: OECD. https://www.oecd.org /unitedstates/Health-at-a-Glance-2015-Key-Findings -UNITED-STATES.pdf

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INTERVIEW WITH ROB SHETTERLY

Interview with Artist Rob Shetterly R ob Shetterly came to Maine in 1970, as part of the back-to-the-land movement. He and his family homesteaded in a cut-over lot in Gouldsboro, living off the grid for 11 years. During this time, when he wasn’t digging clams, working in the sardine cannery, cutting wood, building the house, or growing vegetables, he was teaching himself how to draw and paint. He had no formal training. In the mid-1970s, he began drawing for the farm and garden magazine Farmstead, then for Rodale Press. He drew the editorial drawings for the Maine Times for 12 years. His artistic ambition was to be a surrealist, that is, to create visual metaphors for the issues he thought most important. He brings that sensibility to Maine Policy Review covers.

How did you get started creating the covers for Maine Policy Review?

In 1997, MPR hired the design firm Designwrights in Blue Hill, Maine, to redesign the journal and covers.

Designwrights asked me to come up with some ideas for sample covers, and I’ve never looked back.

Can you tell us a bit about how you come up with a cover?

I’m very pleased to hear when readers like the covers, but it’s more important for me to hear when I have offended someone or been obtuse. My goal is not to offend or confuse. As I said, I like to challenge, but I don’t want to hurt or baffle anyone. When someone is disturbed by a cover, I go back to it and look for what I missed. It’s very easy for me to think a metaphor is saying one thing and not realize it may say the opposite, too. I try, then, on the next cover, to be more careful. I think, though, that misunderstandings are inevitable. My art is subjective, comes out of my experience, and, for me, needs to be a little risky.

Do you have a particular favorite MPR cover?

It is hard for me to choose. But these are my favorites: • Fall/Winter 2004—A dissolute Uncle Sam with his fingers crossed behind the head of an indigenous person.

• Winter / Spring 2012 — A perplexed man, modeled on Rodin’s Thinker, who holds a double-ended harpoon that has an impaled fish and duck on one end and a redwood tree on the other. The cover is meant to reflect the quandary of having taken too much from nature.

I think about the major concerns to be explored in the issue then read some of the articles. I find one that I think will be fun and challenging to represent visually and start making sketches. It’s a process of play and free association. Some come quickly, others not. The danger is that metaphors that seem obvious to me may not be obvious to a general audience.

What do you seek to represent by the cover?

For the best covers, I hope to extend thinking on a social issue, not just illustrate an idea. And, if I can do that, I try to challenge the viewer a bit to think in a different way. I try to engage the viewer by being somewhat witty. I usually think that if the cover amuses me, it will amuse others.

We often hear from readers that they find your covers interesting and inspiring. Occasionally, a reader is concerned about a cover. How do you respond to this?

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• Summer/Fall 2014—A blue Democratic donkey and a red Republican elephant both happily eating away from the same leafy dollar sign as a reflection of what passes for bipartisanship.

• Fall 2016—A distressed Pinocchio submerged in rising sea water, only the tip of his very long nose above water, with the last polar bear balanced on it. Pinocchio’s hair is a presidential orange.

Robert Shetterly lives and paints in Brooksville, Maine. More information about him and his art is available on his website: https:// www.americanswhotellthetruth .org/

Is there any connection between your other projects and MPR covers?

Definitely. The project I’ve been working on for 17 years, the Americans Who Tell the Truth portrait series, is all about issues of social, economic, racial, and environmental justice. Same as MPR. (Although my politics may be a little left of MPR.) In fact, my portrait of Margaret Chase Smith was used on the cover of MPR. The portraits implicitly pose questions: What is our true history? What is that history in relation to our ideals? Who has worked to make those ideals available to all people? Who has resisted that? Why? How does change happen? How should we be living if we want to survive in a healthy fashion on this planet? What are the prerequisites for a healthy democracy?

Where can interested readers see your paintings and/or find more about your art?

The best place is the website. All the portraits are there (except the ones I’m still working on), along with bios and our educational project for middle school students all across Maine, the Samantha Smith Challenge. Also some longish artist’s statements about why I’m doing this work.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I think Maine Policy Review is a great publication, and I’m honored to have been associated with it for so long. -

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STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Margaret Chase Smith Library 2018 Essay Contest Each year the Margaret Chase Smith Library sponsors an essay contest for high school seniors. The essay prompt for 2018 concerned the importance of a free press. The essay has been edited for length.

First-Place Essay

Democracy Needs a Free Press

by Cassidy Lessner

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

—Thomas Jefferson (1786)

T

homas Jefferson understood that a free press is critical to sustaining liberty. Along with free speech, a free press is indispensable for people to be informed and to participate in democracy. The transparency that journalism brings to events makes government work better, decreases the risk of corruption, and ultimately makes America safer. Information uncovered by journalists leads to prosecuting wrongdoings, holding officials accountable, and rectifying injustices.

The media robustly protects First Amendment freedoms, which have served America since its beginning. But changing technology and an evolution in the way people consume news have brought challenges. Among these challenges are fabricated news stories shared on social media sites and a tendency of readers to consider only news stories that adhere to their political ideology.

Both challenges have eroded trust in the media.

The erosion of trust in institutions weakens the foundation of America’s MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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democratic system. In a 2017 Gallup poll on honesty and ethics by profession, only 23 percent of respondents ranked journalists as very high or high. Attacks by government officials on the press is also damaging. Calling the media “dishonest” or “the enemy of the American people” works to destroy public trust. Trying to bully the press with threats or insults weakens American democracy.

But this is not a new phenomenon.

Many presidential administrations have fought requests under the Freedom of Information Act; they have prosecuted whistle-blowers and journalists, and criticized news outlets they did not like.

Richard Nixon railed against the Washington Post for its reporting on the Watergate scandal. During World War I, Woodrow Wilson signed Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918, which made it a crime to “utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the federal government. Under this act, Jacob Frohwerk was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for publishing articles that claimed the United States got involved in the war to benefit Wall Street bankers. His case went to the Supreme Court where he lost a unanimous decision. Since then, however, the courts have been kinder to the press.

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In Near v. Minnesota, the Supreme Court in 1931 established the principle of prior restraint, saying the government cannot censor or prohibit a publication in advance. In 1964, the Supreme Court ruled in New York Times v. Sullivan that the First Amendment protects the publication of even false statements about public officials unless made with malice or knowledge of falsehood.

America still enjoys press freedoms that many parts of the world lack.

Journalists are rarely threatened with physical harm or death for doing their jobs. But still, the degree of freedom is cause for concern. The group Reporters Without Borders ranks press freedoms in 180 countries. The United States ranked 41st in 2017, right behind Slovenia. The group cited the government’s war on whistle-blowers as well as surveillance activities against journalists as the main factors in America’s rating.

Freedom of the press is important not just to protect reporters and the news media, but also to protect citizens’ rights to have access to information we need to make decisions about our government.

The absence of a free press has serious consequences. As Senator John McCain said, “If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That is how dictators get started.”

However, today, consumers of the news can be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the many choices they face.

They can watch any number of channels at any time of day to get the latest news.

But what are their sources, and are they trustworthy? How can today’s consumers learn to distinguish between opinion journalism and objective reporting?

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Can they tell the difference between paid sponsorships and independent journalism? How can society help them to read a variety of news and opinions, not just what their friends recommend or what a Facebook algorithm determines is best? At a time when marketing, media, and news are slowly converging and readers are absorbed into this trend as consumer and product, how can essential news-reading skills be taught?

What are the core competencies of news literacy—the skills needed to understand the news?

Americans, students and adults, need to have the tools to distinguish fact from fiction, understand the First Amendment and the standards of journalistic integrity, and exercise civility while engaging in public debates.

Students must master print, radio, television, and electronic media, so they can use them as tools for intellectual development and critical thinking.

The obstacles to news literacy are many. They spring partly from the digital culture, which has brought a variety of challenges along with many obvious benefits. Seventy-five percent of adults in the United States get news from Facebook, which is selected and distributed not by editors, but by a mathematical formula that predicts what users might want to read. Social media companies seek to attract and hold an increasing share of their users’ time.

They promise diverse viewpoints, but filter out what they do not agree with.

Unfortunately, this narrows the vision required for understanding the news.

So students before they become adults must be taught to read widely and discuss articles from many leading newspapers, magazines, and books. They must follow television newscasts with distinct leanings and compare a whole

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range of websites. Also, they must cultivate analytical skills. For example, a basic lesson is to not believe a report that has no source and to be skeptical about a report with only one source.

However, to increase information literacy, straightforward, responsible journalism must continue as an indispensable public asset, a cornerstone of democratic life. Sadly, today, there is an urge to chase viewership at the expense of solid fact-based reporting.

Unfortunately, in the media world today, since opinion too often serves as the chief currency, politicians face less examination of their statements and less accountability. They are succeeding at manipulating the media by using Twitter, refusing to hold press conferences, restricting questions and cameras, employing set speeches, and refusing to conduct a discussion of their opinion in front of the press.

But all is not lost. America is fortunate to still have a number of highquality news organizations with first-rate reporters who continue to dig deep and uphold high journalistic standards.

These elements are crucial because we live in a time when solid reporting rooted in high standards of accuracy is a vital, democratic necessity. As consumers of news, we need to encourage the media to pursue the truth and hold its members to account when they stray.

We need to shoulder our responsibility to encourage news organizations to improve. After all, too often Americans turn to fluff rather than substance and consume only stories that reflect their own perspective. We need to step up our game, too. -

Cassidy Lessner was the valedictorian of her class at Highview Christian Academy in Charleston, Maine, as well as a three-sport athlete and All-Star soccer player in the East-West Conference. She was the recipient of a Presidential Scholarship and received another from the Elks. She is attending the University of Maine at Augusta, majoring in nursing with a focus on pediatric oncology.

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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 27 (2018):

Ann Acheson James Acheson Mark Anderson Brie Berry Travis Blackmer Sara Huston Edward Lindsey Jenn Page Linda Silka Judy Tupper

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