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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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The University of Maine

Journal

1999

Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Measuring Maine’S Marine Economy, Brian Roach, Jonathan Rubin, Charles Morrris Jan 1999

Measuring Maine’S Marine Economy, Brian Roach, Jonathan Rubin, Charles Morrris

Maine Policy Review

Even though Maine’s new license plate no longer features the lobster, the ocean remains central to Maine’s identity and to its economy. As the authors point out, Maine has more than 4,500 miles of coastline and more than 4,600 islands over one acre in size. For many who live here, their way of life is tied to the sea; for many who visit Maine, their stay is tied to the sea. Despite such prominence, it has been difficult to accurately assess the importance of Maine’s marine economy. In part, this is because there clear definition of a marine economy is …

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Closing The Class Gap In Civic Participation, Amy Fried Jan 1999

Closing The Class Gap In Civic Participation, Amy Fried

Maine Policy Review

In the Margaret Chase Smith essay, Amy Fried discusses the implications of increasing class stratification on civic participation in the United States. She suggests that public schools can play an important role in improving citizen engagement.

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Electric Utility Restructuring: What Does It Mean For Residential And Small Retail Consumers In Maine?, Lewis Tagliaferre, Susan Greenwood Jan 1999

Electric Utility Restructuring: What Does It Mean For Residential And Small Retail Consumers In Maine?, Lewis Tagliaferre, Susan Greenwood

Maine Policy Review

On March 1, 2000, Maine will offer electric power through open competition, a restructuring that poses both advantages and disadvantages to residential and small retail consumers. While electric restructuring in Maine has been thoughtfully developed, the basic question of whether electricity rates will be lower for the average consumer will remain uncertain for some time. This uncertainty is linked not only to Maine’s electricity rate bidding process but also to potentially oligopolistic national trends. In addition, whether individual consumers achieve savings in their electricity costs will be determined, in part, by their choice of electricity supplier. While some consumers may …

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Opportunity And Equity: Fixing Maine’S School Funding Formula, Yellow Light Breen Jan 1999

Opportunity And Equity: Fixing Maine’S School Funding Formula, Yellow Light Breen

Maine Policy Review

In its last session, the legislature adopted much needed reforms to Maine’s education funding formula. Among other things, these reforms help to establish a link between education funding and student performance, to recognize the true costs of education, and to better measure the communities’ relative ability to pay. Yellow Light Breen explains each of these elements to be phased in over the next several years. He also responds to Peter Mills’ argument (this issue) to eliminate income from the definition of ability to pay and on the need for broader changes in how local government is funded. He notes that …

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Housing Policies In Maine: A Historical Overview, Frank O’Hara Jan 1999

Housing Policies In Maine: A Historical Overview, Frank O’Hara

Maine Policy Review

Frank O’Hara traces the evolution of Maine’s housing policies from Maine’s settlement after the Revolutionary War to the current era, where concerns about sprawl and the preservation of communities have come to the fore. In doing so, O’Hara points out that the approach to housing has always reflected more than a desire to ensure every person has adequate shelter. Rather, it reflects core values and beliefs about society, our sense of beauty, and our relationship to the environment and one another. O’Hara urges policymakers to keep these broader constructs in mind when addressing Maine’s future housing needs. As history shows, …

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Maine’S Future Housing Needs: An Mpr Interview With David Lakari, David Lakari Jan 1999

Maine’S Future Housing Needs: An Mpr Interview With David Lakari, David Lakari

Maine Policy Review

Since 1994, David Lakari has been director and chair of the Maine State Housing Authority. The Maine State Housing Authority is an independent state agency and a $1.5 billion financial institution. Its mission is to help Maine’s low- and moderate-income citizens obtain and maintain decent, safe, and affordable housing and services suitable to their needs. In this interview, Lakari focuses on his concerns for the future, in particular, the need to find suitable housing options for one of Maine’s fastest-growing demographic groups—the middle-income elderly. While Maine has been doing a good job of building the capacity to house its wealthy …

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Ten Years Of Affordable Housing Policy: Is Maine Making Progress-- A Symposium, Elizabeth H. Mitchell, Dennis P. King, James B. Hatch, Jay Hardy Jan 1999

Ten Years Of Affordable Housing Policy: Is Maine Making Progress-- A Symposium, Elizabeth H. Mitchell, Dennis P. King, James B. Hatch, Jay Hardy

Maine Policy Review

In December 1987 Governor McKernan appointed a 30-member, statewide task force to address the issue of affordable housing in Maine. The task force was charged with investigating the quality and cost of affordable housing for lower- and middle-income families, and recommending a set of actions to improve the quality of existing housing as well as to increase the supply of housing. In September 1998 the Task Force issued a report that prescribed a number of local and regional—as well as private and public—solutions to the problem of affordable housing. More than ten years later Maine housing advocates note that the …

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What Would Margaret Chase Smith Have Made Of Bill Clinton’S Tragi-Comedy?, Charles Calhoun Jan 1999

What Would Margaret Chase Smith Have Made Of Bill Clinton’S Tragi-Comedy?, Charles Calhoun

Maine Policy Review

In the Margaret Chase Smith Essay, Charles Calhoun reflects on President Bill Clinton’s presidency, with its accomplishments and his personal flaws. He speculates on what Margaret Chase Smith would have thought about Clinton.

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A Challenge For The Next Decade: Preserving Affordable Rental Housing, Laura Burns Jan 1999

A Challenge For The Next Decade: Preserving Affordable Rental Housing, Laura Burns

Maine Policy Review

Many of Maine’s low-income families and elderly residents have been able to secure affordable housing with help from a Section 8 certificate, which allows residents to pay no more than 30 percent of their income toward rent and ensures the federal government will make up the difference. Over the years, much of the development of Section 8 housing projects has been assisted by financial incentives and agreements between private and non-profit owners and the federal government. Yet recent changes in federal legislation remove many of these incentives and the agreements that go with them. As a result, some of Maine’s …

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The Importance Of Moderately Priced Rental Housing To Continued Economic Growth (Or, Portland’S Rental Housing Plight), Erin Maclean Jan 1999

The Importance Of Moderately Priced Rental Housing To Continued Economic Growth (Or, Portland’S Rental Housing Plight), Erin Maclean

Maine Policy Review

Currently, the Greater Portland, Maine area is experiencing a significant shortage in both subsidized rental housing and moderately priced, market-rate rental housing. According to Erin MacLean, the problem is that even with heightened demand, historically low interest rates, and historically high rents, developers are finding that new, market-rate housing is too expensive to build in Portland. The lack of moderately priced housing has affected local business owners as well, who report they are finding it difficult to hire workers in the $8 to $15 range. Their efforts to recruit and retain workers place an upward pressure on wages, which can …

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Adolescent Homelessness: A Roundtable Discussion Jan 1999

Adolescent Homelessness: A Roundtable Discussion

Maine Policy Review

Where do homeless adolescents come from? Are there more homeless youth today than ten years ago? How do we help these youth? What do they need? In December 1998, these questions formed the core of a Maine Policy Review roundtable discussion featuring: State Representative Michael Quint; Dana Totman, deputy director of the Maine State Housing Authority; Christine O’Leary, coordinator of Portland’s Preble Street Resource Teen Center; Bob Rowe, executive director of New Beginnings in Lewiston; and Brad Coffey, chair of the board of Bangor’s Shaw House from 1994-1998. In their wide-ranging discussion, the participants focused on the varied circumstances that …

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Performance Government In Maine: The Effort To Make State Government More Efficient, Responsive, And Accountable, Bruce Clary, Barton Wechsler Jan 1999

Performance Government In Maine: The Effort To Make State Government More Efficient, Responsive, And Accountable, Bruce Clary, Barton Wechsler

Maine Policy Review

Maine, like the federal government and many other states, has embarked upon a major initiative to change how government conducts its business. At the federal level this initiative has been called the National Performance Review. Spearheaded by Vice President Al Gore, its goal is nothing short of reinventing government so it performs better, costs less, and gets results. Today, many states have undertaken initiatives similar to the National Performance Review and the general term used to describe these activities is “performance government.” In Maine, a 1991 Special Commission on Governmental Restructuring marks the first time this concept was seriously talked …

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Performance Government: A Roundtable Discussion Jan 1999

Performance Government: A Roundtable Discussion

Maine Policy Review

Many states have undertaken initiatives similar to the National Performance Review; the general term used to describe these activities is “performance government.” Although performance government may apply to a wide range of administrative changes, it most typically applies to three reform initiatives: strategic planning, performance budgeting and performance contracting. Maine has been reinventing its government systems to include each of these components. This roundtable discussion, co-facilitated and co-edited by Bruce Clary and Barton Wechsler, features eight individuals who have been helping to shape the reinvention of Maine state government: besides Clary and Wechsler, these include: Carolyn Ball, Charles Colgan, Merton …

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Homeless In Maine: Who Is? Who Might Be Tomorrow? What Do We Do About It?, Suzanne Guild Jan 1999

Homeless In Maine: Who Is? Who Might Be Tomorrow? What Do We Do About It?, Suzanne Guild

Maine Policy Review

The December 1998 denial by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to fund Maine’s applications for homeless assistance catapulted the needs of this vulnerable population to top priority status. As Suzanne Guild notes, Maine’s homeless population is comprised of two groups: those who are homeless for the first time and who, after a brief stay at a shelter, will regain stable housing, and those who cycle in and out of the state’s shelters on a more or less regular basis. Both groups tend to be young and undereducated; more than half are male; and many report problems with …

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Maine’S Homeless Families: An Interview With Helen Hemminger, Helen Hemminger Jan 1999

Maine’S Homeless Families: An Interview With Helen Hemminger, Helen Hemminger

Maine Policy Review

Since 1991 Helen Hemminger has been director of The Tedford Shelter, a homeless shelter serving adults and families in the Brunswick, Maine area. In this interview, Hemminger provides a first- hand account of Maine’s changing homeless population. The good news, she reports, is that the percentage of people with mental illnesses staying at the shelter has gone down. The bad news is that since 1994 the shelter has experienced a steady increase in the number of homeless families. As Hemminger notes, there are more Maine families today working very hard to make ends meet. Living on a precarious edge, one …

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Maine’S Dubious Odyssey Into The Funding Of Local Government, Peter Mills Jan 1999

Maine’S Dubious Odyssey Into The Funding Of Local Government, Peter Mills

Maine Policy Review

Despite recent reforms to Maine’s school funding, State Senator Peter Mills argues that the formula will not be truly “fixed” until the state addresses the municipal side of property tax inequities. To that end, he prescribes some tough medicine for Maine policymakers to relieve the disproportionate tax burden on the state’s service center communities. Among other things, he suggests we consider repealing some of the exemptions that exclude a quarter of all property from taxation; permitting service centers to adopt local option taxes; and injecting the state’s limited revenue sharing funds into just those municipalities with intolerable tax burdens that …

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The Velocipede Craze In Maine, David V. Herlihy Jan 1999

The Velocipede Craze In Maine, David V. Herlihy

Maine History

In early 1869 when the nation experienced its first bicycle craze, Maine was among the hardest-hit regions. Portland boasted one of the first and largest manufactories, and indoor rinks proliferated statewide in frenzied anticipation of the dawning “era of road travel. ” In this article, the author traces the movement in Maine within an international context and tackles the fundamental riddle: Why was the craze so intense, and yet so brief? He challenges the conventional explanation - that technical inadequacies doomed the machine - and cites economic obstacles: in particular, the unreasonable royalty demands imposed by Maine-born patent-holder Calvin Witty. …

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