SOUTH PARIS — “Do more with less.” My father often shared that mantra with me when I was growing up.

With declining state revenues and a $4.3 billion shortfall in Maine’s employee pension plan, I now see the wisdom in these words. There are many in Augusta who say that “doing more with less” is not possible.

I don’t presume to have a magic panacea or all the answers to the multitude of questions surrounding these troubling financial times. However, I do have a fairly unique perspective that offers some much-needed optimism.

From 1986 to 1996, I spent 10 years in the Maine House and Senate. This decade of experience, juxtaposed with the last 15 years spent as judge of probate, has afforded me invaluable insight as to how our precious state resources are spent.

State, county and local governments must set priorities for their use of revenues to meet the requests of their citizens. The harsh truth is there is no way to generate the level of revenues necessary to support all of the requests.

This column is not about “spreading the pain” or “drawing lines in the sand.” Instead, my aim is to offer reasons to embrace these difficult times as an opportunity to look for creative ways to change the existing paradigms.

Why be optimistic? Look at the efforts of Maine’s probate courts. With absolutely no central administration for these 16 courts, we have been able to develop a unified web-based docketing system at a fraction of the cost of what both the state and counties have spent on similar systems.

Less than 10 years ago, the probate courts were arguably the most antiquated courts in Maine. In response, the bipartisan judges and registrars from Oxford and Androscoggin counties promoted the concept of a single unified system for docketing cases to the remaining 14 counties.

While “herding cats” is an overused metaphor, it is more than appropriate in this instance, since each county in Maine is basically its own fiefdom and operates independently from all of the other counties.

Based on our collective legislative experience and familiarity with state appropriation procedures, it allowed us to think outside the box. We approached the state to take advantage of its buying power.

We crafted a request for proposals to secure a company to design a program to serve all 16 counties. No county could have afforded this expense on its own, but by allocating the proportional share statewide, it proved very affordable.

To put this in perspective, the state judiciary has an administrative office budget well in excess of $4 million. In contrast, the 16 probate courts have no similar central administrative office.

I currently serve as chair of the Advisory Committee on Probate Rules. This committee serves purely as volunteers without even the nominal benefit of mileage or meal reimbursement. We are tackling the prospect of making electronic filing available for all probate matters.

Neither Maine’s district nor superior courts currently allow this. By allowing for electronic filings, the probate courts will save a tremendous amount of staff time by avoiding much duplicative data entry. By converting to a primarily paperless system, we will save on storage space, which is becoming a priceless commodity in most of our county courthouses.

Maine has a rapidly “greying” population, a fact that will significantly increase the workload of the probate courts.

If we don’t start implementing such cost-saving measures now, we will end up millions of dollars in the red before you can say, “unfunded billion-dollar pensions.”

How much is it going to cost the counties, and accordingly the taxpayers of Maine, to realize these savings and implement electronic filing?

The answer is, basically nothing. We had the foresight to create a system platform five years ago to support e-filing when we were ready to take the next step.

The system will then sustain itself by those using it. Some people told us we were on a fool’s errand to implement a statewide Web-based unified docketing system, yet it has now been operating successfully for five years.

There are those in Augusta who insist it takes a multimillion-dollar administrative budget to put into operation such global statewide programs that spawn significant cost savings for generations to come.

Don’t listen to them. There are opportunities for similar ventures and cost-saving measures throughout all levels of government; you just need to take the time to look around and find them.

It has been said, “The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” It’s time to start walking.

– Special to The Press Herald

 

Copy the Story Link