A friend who owns a business in Waterville, where Gov. Paul LePage was mayor, warned me when LePage entered the 2010 Republican primary for governor. “He’s a bully,” my friend said.
He went on to name a couple of other LePage vices, vices at which Al Diamon has hinted. The warning by my pal, who is a pretty conservative guy, didn’t change my mind. I was already backing Peter Mills in the Republican primary.
Another buddy, who is a pretty liberal guy and lives a few blocks into Missouri from the Kansas state line, said, “Every time I think (Kansas’s governor Sam) Brownback is the worst public official in America, your guy (LePage) does something stupid to keep the title in Maine.”
It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to argue that LePage’s manner has made him an effective, or even acceptable, governor. So, I won’t.
But give LePage his due. When he’s right, he’s right. Here are four times he’s been right.
Early in his time in Augusta, LePage insisted that Maine pay its huge debt to the state’s hospitals. He stated, correctly, that the previous governor (John Baldacci) had balanced state budgets by delaying Mainecare (Medicaid) reimbursements to the hospitals.
If the hospitals had continued to go unpaid, the burden for financing them would have fallen increasingly to the people who pay their own hospital bills and to the insurance companies that pay most others. Hospitals might have had to ramp up the age-old practice of overbilling those who do pay to make up for those who don’t.
In this case, Deadbeat No. 1 was our dear old State of Maine.
LePage called Baldacci’s maneuver a gimmick and Diamon called Baldacci’s a “failed administration.” Spot on.
And LePage held out against the Legislature until it agreed to pay about half a billion dollars in Mainecare reimbursements.
Score one for LePage.
(LePage may be returning to where Baldacci left things by refusing to enroll Maine in Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which would have brought money into the state to pay hospitals, whose losses are rising again.)
Right from the start, LePage has made a big deal of domestic violence. Whether we have a growing problem with people beating up and even killing family members or whether victims are just more likely these days to tell police about it, LePage has stood four square with people threatened by the ones they most need to trust.
LePage’s own early life might explain why. He was thrown out of his family’s house before he was a teenager. He was gritty enough to keep body and soul together on the mean streets of Lewiston, eventually getting a degree from Husson College and becoming the general manager of Marden’s Surplus & Salvage in Waterville.
Anyone trying to launch a program to fight domestic violence or to raise awareness that Maine has a particularly intransigent domestic-abuse problem can count on the Guv to lend a hand and the prestige of his office to the cause.
Score two for LePage.
LePage has been a better governor for education than you might expect. Funding for the University of Maine system has risen, as has general-purpose aid to public schools. This despite the imbroglio over his refusal to name an education commissioner in the face of a likely rejection by legislative Democrats of his choice, William Beardsley.
But his most striking idea in education is for the state to take over paying public-school teachers as part of general-purpose aid to education. In this season of school budgets going to referendum, this idea appeals. One contract. Statewide.
It would mean, among other things, that the competition among school districts to recruit teachers would switch from which pay the most to which offer the best working conditions, which give teachers the most freedom to try to be really good teachers, which give teachers the most say in how to run their classrooms, etc.
Perhaps what LePage had in mind, though, is to disarm the teachers union, the most powerful lobby in Augusta. If the teachers union had to bargain with a state government that is far more powerful than any one school district, the union might lose much of its ability to play districts off against one another.
Given that that the legislative Democratic party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the teachers union, LePage’s idea may have little likelihood of becoming reality, but it is a terrific idea well worth a try.
Score three for LePage.
Finally, Maine sits amid a sea change in how we generate electricity. Coal-fired power plants are nearly extinct, and not a decade too soon, and oil-fired are on the way out. The argument is about how to replace coal and oil.
LePage has tilted against windmills, literally, in opposing both wind and solar power as too expensive. He favors natural gas and hydro. The folks pursuing wind and solar (and other alternative energies) complicate matters by being in league, for the most part, with those who want to tear out all the hydro dams so ocean fish can swim to Rangeley and Millinocket. LePage backs hydro power and is angry every time another dam goes down.
Hydro power has everything going for it that should please environmentalists: lack of emissions, sustainability, avoidance of fossil fuels, low operating cost, etc. But fish can’t climb the dams that humans built between 80 and 150 years ago.
Taking out the dams may sell a few more fishing licenses, but it also drives up the cost of electricity. And adds to the emissions from other sources of electricity.
Our neighbor Quebec is one of four Canadian provinces (along with British Columbia, Manitoba and Newfoundland) that generate more than 90 percent of their electricity by hydro. Quebec doesn’t lack fishing opportunities, either.
We don’t have Quebec’s resources, but we could buy some of its hydro power and keep more of our own. Fifteen years ago, Maine produced about half of its electricity by hydro. Today, it’s about 27 percent. It’s the cleanest and most sustainable 27 percent.
Score four for LePage.
You judge whether being right on four major issues in six years is enough.
In a bit more than two years, we’ll say adieu to LePage. I would love to see the new governor pursue LePage’s good ideas while sharing milk and cookies with legislators rather than hissy-fitting at them all the time.
Bob Neal lives in New Sharon. By way of disclosure, he was in the teachers union while a faculty member at the University of Maine, 1981-83. As chair of the SAD 9 Board of Directors, he sat across the bargaining table from the union’s negotiators, 1993-94.
I can find no faults in your commentary. As a matter of fact, I rate it an A+ and wish more from your desk, especially on how to improve our messed up education system, locally, statewide, and nationally! Sincerely, a member of CCSE.
Where are the commentators that will state ” I don’t care, I hate Lapage!”? Lol
I’m right here, Franklinite. Bob has the right to express his views, just like you and I and everyone else does. Why should I repeat myself all the time?
Bob underscores what I have said about LePage all along- he had some good ideas. But he hasn’t been adept at getting many of them adopted. And he has undermined the few successes he has had, such as the hospital payment vs. refusing to expand medicaid.
A successful politician is one who can get his proposals enacted. Regardless of which party. Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, FDR, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt.
Not advocating solar power is a mistake for the Gov that will be remembered. Solar is where the money should go, in my opinion. I am not alone in that thought, some big players are jumping on that train. Global warming is going to make Maine dryer. It’s beginning to look like solar will beat out wind as an alternative power source.
Well done!
I am a long time liberal democrat, but I have long thought that LePage has sometimes been right – perhaps more often than the proverbial broken clock.
This does not negate or balance out the fact that he is an egomaniacal bully.
I would add a couple more instances where he was right.
It was a good idea to take back the cash cow of liquor sales that had been sold for one-time gain.
It is right and wise to place controls on how recipients of social programs can spend benefits.
Thank You for another well written article.
I really love reading your commentaries, but I wish people would stop with the teacher union bashing.
You know why I laugh at comments about hating Lepage? because there is too much hate and venom being spread out there already. And that’s from the politicians themselves! When everyday people like ourselves delve into all that morass, we become like them and play into their games. Rise above it, find the good in people for a change.
Good point Franklinite. Can’t we all just get along?
Was all for LePage and his cutting welfare. However, he cut those in need (the ones who work and still need some assistance) and kept the non – working (a lot of young people choosing to sit home and have baby after baby) receiving benefits. I am all for helping out the elderly and disabled. Those perfectly able to work, should be working. But why would they? With no income they can receive benefits galore!!! LePage just went at the welfare cuts the wrong way.
If someone told you to go make your bed but didn’t give you any blankets or sheets, does that make any sense? Well, the way the governor has handled welfare is just like that. “Go get a job for under $8 an hour” and pay your rent, utilities, babysitter, transportation and Obama crap. If someone wants you to make a bed, they should give you some sheets, blankets and pillow cases. If our governor wants people to work, then why doesn’t he do something about it? Just last week, it was announced in the newspaper that he is wanting to cut 2,300 jobs from Maine. If he’s so smart, why doesn’t he find more living wage jobs for people?
When I make my bed I don’t expect someone else to ” give ” me sheets and blankets. I go out and earn the money and buy them.
I guess you don’t get the point
Single parents have to pay for everything I have mentioned, as well as food. I am not a young person, but I used to be a single parent who never got any child support. Scrubbed floors. I cleaned the dirtiest of houses but if relatives would babysit for free, then maybe, some could afford to go to work. I think a person on minimum wage gets about $20 after they pay for everything. So where is aunt, uncle and grandparents to help? Or do you just want to sit back and condemn people?
” Maybe someone could afford to go work “?? I guess I don’t get the point.
I thought that’s what work was all about, work, get paid, buy things to live. I raised my family ( my wife stayed home ) on poverty level wages. We didn’t have cell phone, we didn’t have cable TV ( 3 channels ), we raised some food.
Bought clothes at second hand stores. As the years progressed I made more.
What gets me is that a large portion of the population think that it is ” owed ” to them. Cell phones, big screen TV’s, junk food.
I don’t understand that. I have always been first in line to help a friend or neighbor when hard times hit. But because it ” pays ” better to sit around and collect welfare rather than work. Sorry, can’t buy into that.
Well, guess what? I’ve lived in the woods and lugged water and had no electricity. I cut trees by hand with a hand saw. I’ve washed laundry by hand for years. I shoveled a driveway about 100 feet long. I fought off a coyote that wanted to eat my cat. I agree that there are a lot of lazy people out there, but not all are If they have no family support, heaven help them. I love my grandkids and would do anything for them unless they are in the wrong. I pay my grandson and grand-daughter. It’s not because I have to. It’s to teach them how to make money.. I don’t think it’s very nice to judge others unless you’ve been in their shoes. I have probably taken in over 10 homeless families in my life and I’ve never charged them a cent. Someday, you might bee homeless, too.
I had a landlord who lost his job and moved into the yard on the property we were renting from. This was in early spring when it was still cold out. This guy weighed about 350 pounds, crawling on his hands and knees into a truck camper. It rained almost every day. So, me and my friend decided to move. Trouble was, I’d already been paying the rent every week and didn’t have enough to get another place so we lived in the woods with pine boughs, a tarp and a kerosene heater. I know what it’s like to not live like most. I don’t know what it’s like to live like the poorest, either. But I think mothers and children are valuable. If you want them to work, offer to babysit for free and give them transportation
Since I’m unpopular, I probably won’t get published. That’s o.k. though, seems to be a Republican column anyway. I’m not really a voter of any particular party but I hate mean people. And I think people are stupid to stick to a party all the time instead of thinking for themselves. Sheep — that’s what we’ve got in America
Agree with Frumpleton’s last comment. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to vote for one party’s candidates. It seems to me that people who Only vote for candidates of one party in election after election are narrow minded and in a sense bigoted. Basically, they are rejecting, as a matter of course, 50% of all good ideas.
Don’t expect any further comment on party politics from me. I’m not going to get into “who shot john” discussions in this forum.
frumpleton: … I hate mean people. And I think people are stupid to stick to a party all the time instead of thinking for themselves. Sheep — that’s what we’ve got in America
One attribute of mean people is hatred of other people and their beliefs. So, frumpleton is a mean person.
Another attribute is disparaging the intellectual capabilities of others instead of debating their statements. Doubly mean.
And what’s his problem with lamb chops? Wotta meanie!