AUGUSTA – Gov. John Baldacci’s time in office has been marked — some would say plagued — by an economy in turmoil.
The Democrat inherited a $1.2 billion budget deficit when he took office in 2003.
Additional Photos
As he leaves office next month after eight years, the gap will be approximately $800 million.
“When you think of the challenges of those eight years, and of getting out of bed every day and facing the wrath of a bad economy, he gets high marks for effort, accessibility and hope,” said Dana Connors, president of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce.
Baldacci took office with the country still reeling from the dot-com bubble burst, and has more recently led the state through the worst recession since the Great Depression.
The trouble started immediately.
At the end of his first full day in office, Baldacci left his inaugural ball to hold a brief news conference to address the first major crisis of his governorship: Earlier in the day, Great Northern Paper Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, jeopardizing 1,100 jobs in northern Maine.
As a Bangor native with close ties to the community — his family ran an Italian restaurant in town for decades — he knew full well the impact of a mill closure.
“It made it personal because those people at Great Northern Paper Co. in Millinocket and East Millinocket went to Bangor to shop and eat at the restaurant,” he said in a recent interview. “I knew it meant jobs at our restaurant, it meant jobs in the Bangor community. We’re all tied together. It was personal.”
Lee Umphrey, a friend of Baldacci’s since the early 1990s, was one of the first people hired by the governor. After playing an advisory role in the transition, he became the governor’s spokesman.
“During the transition, we found out increasingly the state budget situation was worse than we anticipated,” said Umphrey, who left the administration in 2006. “We had that huge emphasis already focusing the new administration, and you throw on the Millinocket mill closing. For that part of the state, it was pretty devastating.”
A day earlier, Baldacci had announced an ambitious agenda for his first year in office. He wanted to combine two large state agencies, provide universal health care, balance the state budget without raising taxes and transform the state’s technical colleges into a community college system.
Yet while Baldacci did reach many of the goals set out in his initial address, nearly everything he did was overshadowed by the state budget.
Maine now has a vibrant, but overcrowded community college system that can’t keep up with demands for enrollment or facilities.
The state Department of Health and Human Services was created by merging two agencies — human services and the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services. Yet that department is under constant budget-cutting pressure.
Several times through the years, hundreds of people from various DHHS constituencies crowded the State House to protest cuts to programs that help those with mental illness, the elderly, the hard of hearing and those with brain injuries.
In 2008, liberal groups and church affiliates called for a tax increase in lieu of Baldacci’s proposed cuts to human services.
Yet despite the pressure, Baldacci did not raise broad-based taxes.
“He was incredibly focused on ensuring the safety net and ensuring we met the commitment to education and also to not raising taxes,” said Rebecca Wyke, Baldacci’s first budget chief, who served from 2003 to 2008.
Wyke, who now works for the University of Maine System, said Baldacci was very involved early on in discussions about how to handle the budget. She described him as determined to find a way to continue to deliver services without caving to interest groups and fellow Democrats who often insisted a tax increase was the only way out.
Baldacci was also unlucky to have had two major economic downturns hit within his eight years in office, she said.
Wyke believes that only later will the public realize what Baldacci did to trim state spending, both by combining internal state functions and the more public consolidations that were often resisted at the local level.
“Maine is not a wealthy state,” she said. “We have a love of local control that we can’t afford. We want more than we can afford and are willing to pay for.”
Rather than see the bad economy as a hindrance, Baldacci insists it enabled him to push through changes that, in a good economy, would not have been possible.
“For a generation, they’ve been talking about too much administration,” he said. “Too many school administrative districts, county jails are being operated independently from each other, the state has too much of a bureaucracy.”
School districts, jails, police dispatch centers and some state functions such as finance, human resources and information technology were consolidated.
Lawmakers rejected proposals to merge the state’s natural resource agencies and to combine the economic development department with state business regulators.
Former Sen. Peter Mills, R-Cornville, said when it comes to the budget, Baldacci will be remembered as the “Democrat who wouldn’t raise taxes.”
But he believes the governor also lacked an overall vision.
“It’s hard to say whether Baldacci had a big-picture image for the state,” he said.
Baldacci, who got support from state workers to get elected, reduced the state work force by about 1,000. More recently, he instituted 20 unpaid days off for state workers, froze merit and longevity pay and required state workers to start paying a portion of their health insurance.
Chris Quint, executive director of the Maine State Employees Association, said that, as a boss, Baldacci was “tough but fair.”
“MSEA-SEIU Local 1989 didn’t always agree with him, but we respect him for his willingness to listen to us and his respect for Maine’s collective bargaining laws,” he said in an e-mail. “He was a tough negotiator, but that’s his job as governor.”
Baldacci, 55, comes from a family deeply involved in Democratic politics.
Following in his father’s footsteps, he was elected to Bangor City Council at age 23. He served 12 years in the state Senate, then won election to the U.S. House of Representatives representing Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.
In 2002, he wanted to return to his home state and successfully defeated three challengers to become the state’s 73rd governor.
Umphrey credits Baldacci’s experience in local, state and federal government for his ability to balance the budget without raising taxes. He surrounded himself with experienced state employees — he hired former Department of Transportation official Jane Lincoln as his chief of staff and Wyke as his finance chief — which enabled the new administration to get off to a fast start, Umphrey said.
“He paid his dues, and in today’s environment, there’s a tendency to frown upon government experience,” said Umphrey, who now works for a nonprofit in New York City. “It’s a wrong assumption. You need government experience to understand the best way to get things done.”
Even with just a few weeks left in his term, Baldacci refuses to see the bad economic hand he was dealt as a negative.
But he acknowledges that he came to power at very difficult time.
“I used to tell people, if we weren’t at the bottom when I started, you could at least see it from where we were standing,” he said.
MaineToday Media State House Writer Susan M. Cover can be contacted at 620-7015 or at:
scover@mainetoday.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.