BRUNSWICK

During the runup to the 2014 election, The Times Record’s editorial board interviewed two of the three candidates for governor, Democrat Mike Michaud and Independent Eliot Cutler. Multiple invitations were extended to Gov. Paul LePage to meet — either at our office or his — and all were declined.

Mike Michaud (D)

U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, who currently represents the 2nd District, is the ranking member on the Veteran’s Affairs Committee and also serves on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He served for several terms in the Maine Legislature, beginning in 1994. He worked at the Great Northern Paper Co. in East Millinocket after graduating from high school, working for the mill for 29 years.

Michaud is proud of his Congressional record. Although many of the bills he sponsored were later subsumed into omnibus bills, he has been an active member of Congress. Three bills he is especially pleased with include:

1) The New England Border Regional bill. Although the region technically had a border bill since 1965, Maine had never had its own. The bill brought $30 million per year to the distressed northern part of the state, triggering $5 million in state and local matching funds, and stands to trigger even more funding from the federal government’s departments of transportation, agriculture, health and human services, and more.

2) Veteran’s Rural Health Facilities. New facilities for veterans in Maine in more rural areas, including Houlton and Lincoln, through partnerships with local hospitals, were part of this bill. Facilities, especially for female vets, were identified in Bangor and Lewiston. In addition, the ARCH program in Aroostook County provided services through mobile systems and community care facilities, saving $600,000 in travel expenses to Togus.

3) The second round of the BRAC closures spared Limestone’s Maine Military Authority, even though Loring AFB itself closed in 1994. The authority refurbishes vehicles, equipment and component parts to factory specifications. A new contract in June of this year will provide $19 mil- lion to refurbish Massachusetts Bay Transit’s aging bus fleet.

Michaud said his lead is so narrow because he isn’t well known in the 1st District as of yet. He also thinks that LePage’s advertising, especially around the hospital payments, is misleading and may be swaying some voters. He said that the goal in this election must be electing someone other than LePage and that he and Cutler are “on the same page” as far as that is concerned. Michaud also said that Cutler is a very smart man.

Health Care: Michaud called Medicaid expansion “morally right,” but said it would also end up saving Maine money and create jobs.

“The 3,000 jobs that will be created offset the costs,” he said. “Those are good paying jobs and will be paying taxes.”

He also said that the state needs to find ways to hold down costs, and floated the idea of allowing businesses to buy into the state’s health care plan, which would bring down the state’s costs as well as business costs.

He also believes that health insurance has to pay for “outcomes” rather than procedures. That is, doctors and hospitals should not be incentivized to pay for multiple tests when one will do, or new drugs when older, generic drugs work fine on the condition. Paying a single price for a given course of treatment, for instance, paying a hospital or doctor $1,500 to treat a broken leg, means technology that isn’t necessary, such as an MRI, probably won’t be used and patients may be given older drugs for pain instead of more expensive drugs that are still under patent.

Tele-health — using technology to see and diagnose patients without long-distance travel, such as having a cancer patient get a second opinion from Sloan-Kettering or Dana Farber via the Internet, means that patients in rural areas get better access to high-quality medicine.

“That’s especially important to our elderly patients, especially in the 2nd District,” Michaud said.

Reimbursement rates are crucial. Medicare and Medicaid need better rates to make sure that patients have access, and Michaud is in favor of putting Maine in the Boston market for reimbursement, instead of the Maine rate, which would make a difference of $168 million per year for hospitals and doctors.

Economy: Michaud said that LePage’s “divisive leadership” is holding down Maine economically. Michaud said that in the specific case of the mills in Bucksport and East Millinocket, he would meet with the owners and CEOs and come up with a game plan for how the businesses could succeed.

“The problems are pretty well known,” he said. “They’ve invested millions, but then they get hit with high energy costs, and changes to the Business Equipment Tax that throw their planning off.”

Michaud said that what business owners need is predictability and stability and sustainability.

“I am in favor of a 10-year bonding cycle,” he said.

He also believes that the state should have a longer term capital budget.

“A job in a paper mill is worth 5-7 jobs in the service industry,” he said. “ But there are other options. The mills can be made ‘ data mills’ for government and industry. We use pulp for insulation, a huge and upcoming industry throughout the country. And we should be partnering with colleges and universities to capitalize on Maine’s strengths by doing research and development.”

Michaud said that 97 percent of businesses in Maine are small businesses and that R&D translates directly into jobs for small business; 31,000 new jobs in small businesses come from research and development. He also said that Maine has the youngest farmers in the country, a real plus.

“We could be the food basket for New England,” he said.

Clean, renewable energy is another field ready to explode.

“The governor has to be a positive force,” he said, referring to the StatOil loss.

Education: Michaud said that his goal is to move to 55 percent of state funding, as mandated by the people’s referendum in 2004. But, he warned, it would not happen “overnight.” Part of the problem with proficiency in the public schools, he said, is that education is linked to many other societal ills, including poverty. Michaud believes that pre- kindergarten would solve many of these problems, and envisions public/private partnerships to cost savings.

In higher education, his plan is to make the sophomore year tuition free at Maine’s public colleges and universities, as studies show that students who drop out tend to do so in the sophomore year because of costs. He is also in favor of college credit for learning done in businesses, along with a small stipend.

Teaching to the test is a major problem in public schools, Michaud said. To improve student proficiency, he said, teachers should be well trained, and then the state and the federal government should get out of the way, except to note that schools are using best practices in the educational field. Language barriers and special needs issues are also problems in the schools, and should be dealt with locally. The greater problem, he believes, is that students face bigger hurdles than education. Students who are living in poverty, or who are homeless or hungry are not going to do well in school. Those issues must be addressed first before any expectation of improvement in the test scores.

DHHS: The Department of Health and Human Services needs a lot more oversight, Michaud said. He would establish an Office of Inspector General that would consist of people both in and out of government to provide oversight. The inspector’s main goals would be to look at waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement.

“Some have said that I’d have trouble hiring a commissioner with that kind of oversight,” he said. “But if I were commissioner, I’d welcome a second set of eyes on a budget as large as the one I would be responsible for.”

Michaud said that people need to be helped to get off welfare by keeping some benefits even after a wageearner begins a job.

“If they lose all their benefits … food stamps, health care, and so on … they can’t afford to take the job,” he argued. “ I favor a tiered approach. When you accept a job, you may lose some benefits, for instance, TANF, but you wouldn’t lose everything.”

He’d also be in favor of getting the Labor Department involved in helping job seekers on state aid get matched with a job that makes sense.

Michaud is very concerned about Riverview, both the loss of funding and the road it is heading down “toward what AMHI” was. AMHI was closed because of rampant abuse and neglect of patients. Riverview has recently lost CMS funding to the tune of $20 million. Michaud would work with the federal government to restore those funds and remain in compliance.

Aging Population: Michaud said that Mark Eves’s plan for “aging in place” is a good one, and he endorses it. He also said seniors who are aging in place need transportation options, and he envisions a public/private partnership, as well as federal funds, in towns and cities to help seniors get around. Making sure seniors have energyefficient homes and support systems will also take state and local money, but the trade off is that fewer will be forced into nursing homes, which can cost as much as $100,000 per year for Mainers.

“Using some of the funds we would spend for nursing care to make sure seniors can stay in their homes, where they want to be, makes all the sense in the world,” he said.

Roads and other infrastructure: Michaud has a 10-year bonding plan, and would have a separate capital budget.

“We have the rainy day fund, but it’s never enough and hasn’t been used appropriately,” he said. “Businesses want predictability and stability, and not having our roads in good repair means we have a structural gap.”

Michaud thinks that roads and bridges and other infrastructure problems, including railroads and ports, are a reason that businesses won’t settle here.

“ We’re the end of the line,” he said. “We have to make sure the infrastructure is better than other states or there’s no incentive to come here.”

Energy: Manufacturing is energy intensive, so Maine’s relatively high energy costs are discouraging good-paying jobs. Home heating oil is also a major threat to Maine’s GDP. Moving people off home heating oil onto more sustainable heating systems, including solar, geothermal, heat pumps, and wood pellets is a long term solution. Federal funds can be leveraged with private sector money to help winterize houses, and RGGI funds can be used to help families afford new appliances. Michaud thinks that natural gas will be a bridge fuel, but in the long term, he expects to see wind power in the Gulf, as well as onshore wind, tidal and solar energy generation. He does not envision a new nuclear plant in Maine.

Eliot Cutler (I)

Eliot Cutler grew up in Bangor and attended Harvard. Immediately afterward, he worked for Sen. Edmund Muskie, D-Maine, crafting the Clean Air and Water Acts, the National Environmental Policy Act. Cutler later served in the White House under President Jimmy Carter as associate director for Natural Resources, Energy and Science in the Office of Management and Budget. After a long career as a lawyer, Cutler ran for governor of Maine in 2010, losing narrowly to LePage. He founded and chaired OneMaine, a political organization dedicated to helping moderate candidates.

Early in the election season, Cutler told supporters that if they did not believe he could win after the primaries, they should “vote for someone else.”

“Essentially, the voters are in charge,” Cutler said. “I wouldn’t encourage them to vote for either of my opponents right now, that would send them running for the hills.”

But Cutler doesn’t believe either LePage or Michaud is equipped to lead the state during the economic turnaround that must occur.

If Maine had had a second chance voting scheme in place, it is likely that Cutler would be governor now, and it is no surprise that he favors such a plan.

“I support an open primary, followed by a run-off in November, with a six-week campaign,” he said.

The other choices are ranked choice, the so-called instant run-off, or a partisan/ nonpartisan run- off election (in which “independent” candidates would be running against one another in an earlier vote). Cutler said that in California, the open primary system has created a working Legislature — instead of one mired in partisan gridlock.

Asked about concerns that Cutler did not seem to be focused on Maine during the last four years, he said he was focused on bringing real jobs to the state.

“ I myself started two businesses in Maine,” he said. “Maine Asia, which brings goods made or grown in Maine to Asian markets, and Solar Greenhouses, which allow for year-round agriculture in Maine.”

Cutler said he also worked on foundations for various Maine charities. He is also a partner in a project to develop compressed air machines to store renewable energy, such as wind power, that blows largely at night.

Cutler said his OneMaine PAC was successful in bringing moderates back to the Legislature, and points to Dick Woodbury, a senator from the 11th District, including Falmouth and Cumberland. He said that polarization is caused by moneyed interests in election.

Cutler said that he doesn’t think LePage really thinks that Social Security is “welfare,” but thinks his outrage about it is misguided, since his staff, not the Michaud staff, certainly suggested it in the press releases that LePage is incensed about.

Health Care: Cutler would take money to expand Medicaid, and said that Maine has to have a health care system plan.

“We can’t keep spending a lot of money for noncare,” he said, referring to insurance company costs.

He would like to see a managed health care system based on Maine’s hospital groups, to which all Mainers would have access when they need health care. He would like to see telemedicine and tele-psychiatry as part of the mix.

Economy: For the older population, home health care is essential, with property tax reform for older adults. One way to do that would be to start with a $50,000 homestead exemption for everyone.

That could be paid for by broadening the sales tax slightly to 5.5 percent, or by having a seasonal sales tax: 7 percent from May to October, and 5 percent from October to May. That would bring in $185 million. Sending $ 100 million to the towns and cities for enhanced revenue sharing would offset the property tax decrease. The rest would go to public schools to get very close to the mandated 55 percent state match.

During the last 11 years, Cutler said, Maine has fallen 40 percent behind the rest of New England and is still declining. The governor needs to lead, he said, which was shown not to be the case during the situation with Cate Street and the paper mills. Most organizations that looked at the mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket did not believe they could be saved, but the state kept looking until it found one, Cate Street, that said it could do what now appears to be impossible — saving the mills. They weren’t able to — one mill shut down and the other filed for bankruptcy.

“ We need to find some solution to the problem of all these people now being out of work,” Cutler said.

He later went to the Verso plant in Bucksport to try to encourage the owners to sell the mills to a local or state redevelopment organization.

Some of the problem with the economy statewide, Cutler said, is that the current governor is averse to bonding and the state has never had a capital budget for dealing with long- term expenditures, such as roads and infrastructure.

Education: Cutler said he has a way to pay for the mandated state funding match, with the creation of a seasonal sales tax. Some of the funds would go to the towns for revenue sharing, but the remainder would go to public schools to get very close to the match the state is required to meet.

“I don’t believe that education should be a function of your zip code or your parents’ affluence,” Cutler said.

Those funds would meet K-12 education costs, as well as Pre-K costs and higher pay for the best teachers.

Cutler would also endorse several magnet high schools — one for agriculture, one for marine sciences and one for creative arts, to be colocated at USM.

Cutler would help finance public university education with a program he calls “ pay it forward, pay it back.” The program would advance tuition and other costs to public university students. They would pay back a small percentage of their annual salaries after college for a set number of years. Those who end up with lower- paying jobs would pay back less, those who have higher paying jobs would pay back more.

He would also expand Opportunity Maine, which would provide tax credits to students who completed all their coursework and graduated from a Maine institution, and stayed in Maine to live and work. He has said that he is in favor of encouraging degrees in sciences, mathematics, technology and engineering by providing a STEM center in Maine that would coordinate programs at many colleges and universities as well as research centers outside of academia.

Aging Population: Cutler is in favor of home health care options to allow for aging in place, as well as an increase in transit options for older adults. He believes that many of the programs that would work for managed health care for people in rural areas would also work for seniors aging at home, including telemedicine options. Financially, a property tax savings for older adults would go a long way to helping them stay in their homes, especially a $50,000 homestead exemption, and revenue sharing that would allow towns and cities to hold the line on property tax increases.

Energy: Cutler is the author of the Clean Air and Clean Water Act, and is environmentally minded. He believes that Maine should be using clean energy to the extent it is possible, including onshore and offshore wind, and homebased solar. He would reapproach StatOil to attempt to create a partnership between the energy giant and UMaine to put offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine. He is also in favor of supporting new energy businesses in Maine by establishing a Maine Energy Finance Authority.