Thumbs Up — Building consistency

The Brunswick Town Council made a prudent choice in declining Bowdoin College’s offer to revisit the Longfellow-McLellan building swap.

By voting 6-3 Tuesday to keep in place an agreement to give the former Longfellow School building to the college in exchange for the McLellan Building, the council sagely resisted the temptation to convert an asset into less valuable, but more immediately disposable income.

The McLellan Building is assessed at approximately $4 million. The college reportedly would have paid the town $2 million to buy the Longfellow School building outright.

While assessed property values don’t necessarily translate to real dollars, turning back potentially $ 2 million worth of downtown property would be difficult to justify as fiscally responsible under any circumstance.

A majority of councilors recognized that hastily revising long-term plans to address short-term needs — in this case, a $3 million school budget shortfall — would likely yield higher municipal government costs in the future and provide temporary relief, at best, for the school department’s ongoing budgetary woes.

A one-time infusion of cash for this year’s school operating budget wouldn’t answer the critical question of how Brunswick will sustain the quality of its school system.

Stopgap measures simply delay action required to address systemic problems. In this case, the system with problems is Maine’s public education subsidy formula, which is largely beyond the control of local officials, exacerbated by state government’s failure to comply with Maine voters’ 2004 mandate to fund 55 percent of K-12 public education costs and 100 percent of special education costs.

While working with legislators to demand fair and adequate state funding for all Maine school districts — and reasonable consideration of the unique short-term impact of Brunswick Naval Air Station closure on local districts — municipal government and school officials must continue to collaborate and keep in mind the long-term repercussions of the decisions they make now.

Thumbs Down — Working over workers

Gov. Paul LePage’s job creation strategy seems predicated on stripping workers of their rights.

In actions with far more direct implications than the governor’s much-publicized removal of a mural from the Department of Labor office, LePage continues to quietly introduce proposals that weaken workplace protections and bargaining rights. The latest, LD 1894, would repeal a 2008 law that allows independent, in-home child care providers to unionize and bargain collectively.

Dan Billings, LePage’s legal counsel, testified before a legislative hearing last week that the administration crafted LD 1894 in an effort to achieve fairness, because no other self-employed workers who receive state subsidies can unionize.

A union that allows child care workers to enter negotiations on an equal footing with state bureaucrats and gives them a unified voice in discussions about policies that affect them seems a better way to ensure fairness.

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