JUN
23
Employers are finding it harder and harder to make it work here. We turn a blind eye to that at our peril.
The following editorial was published by the Portland Press-Herald on July 28, 2024. Read on Portland Press Herald.
It was the kind of news that could have come and gone from the inbox unnoticed.
Sent by the statewide advocacy body the Maine Jobs Council, the subject line read: “Maine Drops to 9th Worst State for Business in New Study.”
Any mention of a “new study” is generally a red flag for a time-pressed journalist. And yet, the content of this email gave us pause-perhaps because its message was all too familiar. According to CNBC’s annual roundup of the best U.S. states in which to do business, Maine hobbled over the finish line this year, at the very back of the pack.
Our drop from 39 to 42 was, according to the executive director of the Maine Jobs Council, Joe Edwards, attributable to CNBC’s putting more emphasis on “infrastructure, access to investment, and business friendliness – categories where Maine has consistently ranked low.”
Edwards, a former state insurance superintendent and administrator of statewide workers’ compensation insurance funds, continued: “Workforce also remained an important category, and our ranking plunged from 22 to 46. Workforce, productivity, investment, taxes and infrastructure are all categories that impact prosperity, growth, employment and quality of life. Maine is in a very select group of states that score poorly in all of these categories.”
We need to get out of this select group. The long-term economic health of the state of Maine matters. If this statement is as obvious as it seems, why aren’t we taking the rehabilitation of our business environment more seriously?
In an op-ed in these pages back in March (“In order to thrive economically, Maine has to compete”), Derek Volk, the CEO of Biddeford-based Volk Packaging Corp. and Volk Paxit, outlined the specific challenges faced by his business in recent times: losing millions of dollars in sales to companies that have chosen to depart Maine, to out-of-state acquisitions (which often result in a disbanding of the Maine-based operation) and to business closures.
In his opinion piece, Volk attributed this trying landscape to “high costs, high taxes and high regulatory burdens.”
Economically, to look at the stats and figures, Maine has been faring well in recent years. Federal data released at the start of this year showed the state leading New England in terms of economic growth; the pandemic brought new people and new cash into the state – remote workers and choosy retirees among them. These new arrivals make a difference when it comes to personal income, dividend payments and so on.
That uplift cannot hope to compare, however, to the meaningful security offered by a robust base for small and medium enterprise. We can’t let relative fiscal comfort create any complacency about the burning need for a new, forensic review and a comprehensive strategy that aims to make Maine as good a place for businesses as it is for residents.