I had a chance to read Tony Payne’s column in the Sept. 12 Maine Sunday Telegram (“New report dissects our government”). Oh boy!

Another report, this time “Reinventing Maine Government: How Mainers can create a sustainable government and a new prosperity” put out by Envison Maine, that dissects Maine government and tells us what we already knew.

Let me say right off that I have great respect for Tony Payne and for the folks that contributed to the report, but what pray tell will we do with yet another report?

Alan Caron and his merry band have cranked out a previous report with the Brookings Institution in 2006; there are stacks of them here in Augusta distributed by various organizations, but guess what — not a piece of implementation, no push, no get up in front and lead.

Just a simple menu for us to pick from. But who is doing the ordering?

This state has huge problems and we need to solve them.

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It’s fair to say that in order to solve them we’d have to list them. But we have listed them ad infinitum and it has almost reached the ad nauseum benchmark.

What we need is some method to implement some excellent suggestions in this report and in the Brookings report, but most of these reports, with all due respect to those who work so hard to put them together, get the big yawn in Augusta.

Somebody ought to come up with a report that says, “Here’s how we implement it.”

 


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