The Age-Gap Extends Beyond Maine’s Border

Although Maine is the extreme example of age disparity and young people leaving a state for better opportunity, the supposed age-gap problem as it has been coined is found in other states as well.

States such as Vermont, Minnesota, Connecticut and New Hampshire have began taking measures to come up with initiatives to help retain their young population and attract more people to their state.

Specifically, the state of New Hampshire has brought the issue upon themselves by their Governor setting up a task force to deal with the issues through analysis and strategy.

Like Maine, New Hampshire is one of the oldest states in the nation and is beginning to feel the wrath of the first wave of baby boomers beginning to retire and put a strain on government-funded programs.

The state is experiencing a very similar phenomenon as Maine currently is called “brain drain” – a situation when the young and educated members of society are moving out of the state.

“Between 1990 and 2000, the number of young people 25 to 34 in NH declined by 23 percent,” according to Senior Demographer Ken Johnson at UNH’s Carsey Institute. “The decline occurred because relatively few children were born during the 1970’s due to delayed childbearing and fewer births to baby‐boomers .”

Regionally, New England’s numbers in terms of young adults with college degrees are ‘flat’ compared to others parts of the nation. “From 1990 to 2005, the number of 25 to 39‐year‐olds with a Bachelor’s degree went up 22%, and that rate almost doubled in the South Atlantic and Mountain states.”

As a way to combat these issues, New Hampshire has come up with some creative initiatives as an investment to build a sustainable youth population in the long-term.

With the state already having a pretty relaxed taxation system in place, it has been up to the task force to come up with different ways to help New Hampshire attract and retain young workers.

Initiatives such as a ‘Stay Work Play’ student loan repayment assistance program, support for an increased use of internship programs by small and mid-sized businesses, reintroducing commuter rail along the Capital Corridor, and continuing support for increased workforce housing options are just some to name a few.

Outside of relieving citizens from the burden of taxes, many states turn to investing in education as a way to retain their youth and to create a more educated market of individuals.

Along with New Hampshire setting up a student loan debt relief program and offering incentives to businesses who offer internship programs, other states have chosen similar paths to help fix the age problem within their borders.

In 2000, the state of Connecticut began the experiment of investing $1 billion in education over a 10-year span to fix the age-gap and retain young people to start careers and buy homes within their state. An effort that has led to the expansion of the flagship University of Connecticut in terms of marketing, campus redevelopment, increase of enrollment numbers by a hefty margin, and 500 new tenure faculty hires over several years in strategic areas.

The state has taken on a strategy to aid to all its demographic groups with research and development through education topping the charts for its young population. With New York and Boston being just stone throws away depending on where you are in the state, Connecticut is doing all that it can to bridge the gap between New York and Massachusetts and be an attractable center by creating more suburban neighborhoods as well as career opportunities to retain UCONN students once they graduate and begin their journey of life (which is finding a career and residency in terms of this topic).

In the coming weeks, I will continue look at this demographic issue with a comparatives lens in hopes of finding the solution to Maine’s problem.

I believe it is truly invaluable for the state of Maine to study creative strategies used by other states in order to find the right fit for its own age-gap and demographic issues.

 

LePage Makes Push for Re-Election with Open for Business Plan

Since elected in 2010, Republican Governor Paul LePage has ardently pushed for lowering the tax burden and creating a more “business friendly” state in order to keep taxpayers in Maine and attract new companies.

With a Republican led majority legislature his first two years in office, LePage was able to do just that by laying down the foundation for implementing the largest tax cut in Maine history – reducing Maine’s top income tax rate from 8.5 percent to 7.95 percent and taking 70,000 low-income earners off the tax roll all together.

It was not until 2013 when the LePage administration’s smooth sailing came to a halt with the 2012 mid-term elections ousting many Republican legislators and turning the majority back over to the Democrats. Aside from paying-off the debt owed to state hospitals and reaching an agreement on a restructured state liquor contract, the Governor has come across a lot of friction with the 126th legislature over the budget, welfare reform, and Medicaid expansion of recent.

With the legislative session winding down and the 2014 gubernatorial election just months away, it is now or never for LePage to fight for last-minute accomplishments and position himself for re-election in November as he pushes for welfare reform (specifically with the EBT and food stamp system) and a balanced budget with no tax increases.

But aside from all the short-term goals and partisan bickering, LePage has something bigger up his sleeves for the future of Maine.

After touching upon it during his State of the State address at the beginning of the 2013 fiscal year, LePage revealed his “Open for Business zones” proposal last month in hopes of shrinking the power of labor unions and ultimately offer incentives to encourage state businesses within these zones to hire Maine workers and buy materials or subcontracted services from Maine providers.

Aside from the controversial partisan politics that are alive with this plan, as a Mainer, one must admire the strong push to attract jobs to Maine.

With a state that is currently suffering through a demographic imbalance that is creating fewer skilled employees for businesses as well as fewer customers to buy their goods and services, we must embrace such a proposal and work with it.

LePage has often spoke the tax-cut rhetoric during his term as Governor, as he has been far from shy in pointing out that Maine’s high-tax policies have been discouraging young people from moving to Maine and staying in Maine, as well as discouraging entrepreneurs from creating jobs.

The Open for Business plan is intended to attract large businesses to Maine by offering tax credits, sales tax exemptions, reduced energy costs along with exempting these businesses from collective bargaining requirements.

Although the proposal will likely die in the Democratically lead legislature, there’s no doubt that LePage will use this in this year’s election as a continuation to his efforts to drive down energy costs and push for right-to-work laws throughout his term in order to put Maine on the map as a business destination.

LePage says the proposal would “provide a 100 percent corporate tax credit for the first 10 years and a 50 percent credit for the next 10; offer sales tax exemptions and reimbursements for as long as 20 years; and offer annual reimbursement to businesses under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Trust Fund to lower energy costs.”

He also referenced that states who have recently attracted large businesses happen to be right-to-work states, which is part of why we have seen a recent push by Maine Republicans in the past 3 years with two right-the-work bills being proposed but ultimately rejected in the state legislature.

Personally, I believe It’s nice to finally see the Governor come out with a plan with substance to help drive businesses to Maine and create a sustainable future for keeping taxpayers here. It’s a nice refresher to know some elected officials still care about Maine’s future and are working diligently to make our state a better place.

 

 

Blog Audit

After three months of blogging about the issue of demographics and age-gap here in Maine, I have seen myself grow when it comes to knowledge about the issue as well as my writing style as I move towards narrowing down themes and diving into policy.

When I first began this blogging adventure back in January, I introduced the topic at hand that I have chosen to focus on this semester: Demographics and the Age-Gap here in Maine. I began by throwing out national statistics in terms of the average median age of citizens in Maine and the lack of diversity in terms of ethnicity that currently exists in this state.

I also quoted University of Southern Maine professor Charles Colgan, a Maine visionary when it comes to the state’s economy, several times to describe the hole we are in with a surplus of baby boomers and a shortage of young adults which may potentially lead to a shortage in skilled labor and a shrinking economy if we choose to do nothing in terms of fixing it.

While giving my audience a taste of my topic and beating a dead horse with the fact Maine is on path to become a dieing state, my writing then slowly transitioned into being more critical of the issue. In the past month, I have moved to narrow down the problem at hand by digging up specific issues that exist and offering potential avenues the state can take to fix them.

The broad solution is obvious but far from simple: Maine must attract more people from other places to move here while retaining our young population before they exit the state for good.

Although it’s been difficult finding that ‘one’ solution which is a cure all, I believe I have done a good job at remaining optimistic for Maine by taking strides in my writing through offering solutions that are fresh and may potentially dig us out of the age rut we’re currently in.

With the help of Bangor City Council Chairman Ben Sprague’s economic growth plan for Bangor, I have come across some thoughtful solutions that I thought were worth sharing in the previous weeks.

From property tax rebates and grant programs for first-time home buyers, student loan relief programs for young people in debt, and providing businesses with tax relief they’re first two years of existence, it has been interesting thinking about relative ideas of how to fix the age-gap problem and attract more people to Maine.

In the coming weeks, I hope to continue finding ways to fix the issue as well as focusing in on Republican Governor LePage’s plan to lower the tax burden here in Maine and make a more ‘business-friendly’ state by keeping tax payers in the state and attracting new companies to the pine tree state to ultimately create new jobs.

While doing that, I think it will also be worth while to treat some ideas I’ve already mentioned as resourceful as I begin to research deeper into the heart of the issue and roll out my thesis for my research paper, which focuses on a specific aspect of the demographic issue while brainstorming policy that may be the answer to fixing the problem.

In pursuing my research, I have decided that I want to to focus on the comparative analysis of state strategies to confront the “age-gap” problem here in Maine. I feel that studying strategies employed by other Northeast states will be helpful in coming up with new ways for Maine to become young and strive again.

The Northeast sadly makes up 8 of the top 11 states with the oldest populations in the United States. Many of these states are also feeling the strain of needing to grow their tax base with fresh, young residents just beginning their careers in order to support the growing population of older workers who are retired or planning to do so soon and will need governmental assistance. So it makes sense to study other policies and strategy used in neighboring states who are in the same boat when it comes to demographic challenges and aging.

But now that you have a taste of what is in store for the coming weeks, I hope you’ll continue keeping up with my blog and thoughts of the current state of the state of Maine.

 

 

 

 

 

Diving into the Solutions

Picking up where I left off last week, it’s time to finally dive into Sprague’s suggestions to beef up Bangor that he laid out for us at the beginning of February.

Certainly, I applaud his efforts to want to tackle this issue and I believe he raises a good conversation that needs to be had throughout the state.

In fixing the problem, I believe the place to start is by reaching out to people who left Bangor to figure out why and if anything could bring them back. This input from former residents will truly be valuable in pin-pointing the issues of attraction.

In terms of the proposed solutions, there’s no doubt that the state of Maine must begin offering more incentives in order to retain its current population and attract young people. As I left off saying last week, the demographic challenges Maine cities are feeling are ‘fundamentally economic challenges,” so its important that we focus on providing economic incentives for the individual in order to get things booming again.

In doing this, I believe a good place to start would be adjusting the structure of taxes here in Maine to help end the burden on land owners and inspire businesses to want to open up shop here.

I thought Sprague came up with a few creative ideas in his plan to help get this ball rolling.

Specifically, I like the idea of providing businesses with tax relief the first two years of their existence in order to promote entrepreneurship and begin stimulating a pretty malignant economy. Although the state will be missing out on the business taxes for the first few years, revenue will still be pumped into the system through the businesses employees who are still generating income tax, sales tax, and excise taxes.

In terms of real estate, what better way to inspire first-time homebuyers than providing partial property tax rebates and grant programs for home rehab? Today is more of a ‘buyers’ rather than ‘sellers’ market in terms of the best bargain, so this would be a smart avenue for cities in Maine to begin exploring.

Perhaps an income-tax rebating program for new residents, as Sprague mentioned in his report, would make sense as well.

Another key area that Sprague hit on and that I personally believe deserves attention is the idea of providing additional help for young people entrenched in student loan debt. He talked about offering tax credits to help former students dig out of their debt and encourage them to choose Maine even if they didn’t attend school here.

We are already beginning to see these student loan relief programs coming about like the Opportunity Maine program launched in 2008 to provide a tax credit to help cover the payment of some student loans for eligible Maine students who graduate from a Maine community college and then work and pay taxes in Maine.

But due to the state’s failure to effectively market it, only a fraction of college graduates take advantage of the program.

The goal for Maine is quite simple: We need to prevent “brain drain” and keep the best and the brightest in the state. That is why I believe it is absolutely worth investing time and money to revamp this program and create other incentives for college graduates to want to stay here. With no money behind a marketing strategy, and recent efforts to fund one being cut, the program has gone overlooked and underutilized which is truly unfortunate.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to digging out of this demographic rut.

I hope to continue bringing practical solutions to discussion in the coming weeks, but in the mean time, it is definitely worth checking out Ben Sprague’s “38 suggestions” for more of a look at the efforts currently in the works to help rejuvenate an aging Maine. http://bangordailynews.com/?attachment_id=1645424&ref=relatedSidebar

There’s Reason to be Optimistic

Although Maine’s population trends are far from ideal and the age gap continues to grow by day, it is still important that we do not throw in the towel and let our state collapse while watching. 

Even in the darkest days, there is still plenty of reasons to be optimistic about Maine’s future. But as I’ve pointed out already, fixing these problems is not going to be a cake walk by any means.

It’s going to take a lot of thought and effort from people all over the state, not just legislators in Augusta. 

And with all the partisan gridlock causing inability and ‘over-reliance’ on short term fixes to larger structural challenges, it is likely that real solutions will have to come from outside of the state’s capital as Bangor City Council Chairman Ben Sprague explained in his Bangor Population Growth Strategy plan released two weeks ago. 

Sprague, a young and energetic Maine public servant, is ready to fight Maine’s age problem by its horns and welcomes any and all who are willing to do the same. 

He stresses small ideas in his economic growth plan for Bangor in hopes of attracting more people to the city while reaching out to people who left Bangor to figure out why and if anything could bring them back. 

“In the scheme of what will ultimately be necessary to boost the population of the Bangor region and the state, these are relatively small ideas. But that’s precisely why they’re so good. They are doable. The Bangor council and selectmen everywhere should have been acting on proposals like them years ago. Growth rarely happens in leaps and bounds. It builds on itself. It requires lots of work by many people on many projects over time — essentially, commitment and focus.”

Politicians in Maine have often aimed for big deals to address Maine’s population problem and although they are goals that are well-intentioned, they are not ‘entirely realistic.’

That is why Sprague has laid out 38 suggestions as a new approach to tackle the underlying problem that has been bringing Maine down and as a way to retain and recruit people to the Greater Bangor Area.

His plan includes: “creating a “how-to” guide for starting a business; reaching out to people who left Bangor to figure out why and if anything could bring them back; creating a grant program for home rehab for first-time homebuyers; launching a branding campaign to promote the city; creating a 10-year plan for the waterfront, Main Street and downtown; launching business recruitment missions; and providing partial property-tax rebates for first-time homebuyers.”

I admire Sprague’s thoughts and efforts, and believe it is important that we follow his direction and build upon it before it’s too late.

After reading his plan, it is clear to me that the demographic challenges Bangor and the rest of Maine face today are fundamentally economic challenges.

And in order to grow our population, we must first take steps in growing our economy which will then lead to more jobs, people and energy throughout the state to help fuel economic activity and tax revenue that is needed in order for Maine to be a thriving, prosperous state. 

But until next week, stay warm and think positive Maine. 

 

How Do We Fix it?

Like I ended in my post last week, the solution to Maine’s age problem is pretty straightforward but far from simple.

We must get more people from other places to move here while retaining our young people before they exit the state for good.

It’s a harsh reality, but if Maine does not see close to 60,000 new arrivals in the next 20 years, the state will be doomed as University of Southern Maine Economist Charlie Colgan put it at a roundtable forum last fall. “People assume that if we could just keep our young people here, it
would solve the problem. There are not half enough of them because
not enough young people are born here. We have to get people from other
places to move here. We’ve got to get more people in.”

Maine has continually struggled when it comes to finding ways in recruiting young people to the state.

Many suggest such issues of higher taxes, frigid winters and a lack of high paying jobs have been responsible for creating such challenges in recruitment and I see myself agreeing with that.

Gov. Paul LePage and the Republicans here in Maine have been quick to point at the state’s tax policy in being responsible for discouraging entrepreneurs from creating jobs and attracting people to move to Maine.

Since he was elected in 2010, LePage has spoken of lower taxes, responsible budgeting, less welfare and a pro-growth attitude as the winds of change needed for Maine to get back on the map.

By enacting policies that lower taxes, reduce welfare and create a more business friendly state, more companies will be willing to set up tent in Maine and begin offering good paying jobs.

LePage believes this will allow for more private-sector businesses to create jobs and revenue needed to grow Maine’s economy and provide services needed to take care of its aging population.

But whether this is the right approach to dig Maine out of its rut is up to debate.

Either way, we can all agree that the current demographic strategy here in Maine needs to be gutted out in order to fix Maine’s natural population decrease and compete with other New England states for people in the younger age group.

Although Maine’s population is still growing overall, those incoming residents alone can’t be counted on to fill the workforce vacancies left behind by retiring baby boomers. The Census shows a July 2012 population of 1,329,921, up from 1,328,544 in 2011 and 1,327,585 in
2010 — due to the steady migration of new residents from out of state.

As J. Scott Moody, economist and CEO of the conservative Maine Heritage Policy Center puts it, “The economic analogy I use is that migration is the short-term business
cycle. But your long-term growth is driven by your net natural growth,”
Moody said. “Our migration tends to be from the Boston area, and the
folks coming here are … older, retiring baby boomers. The type of
migration we’re getting in the state isn’t likely to change that
long-term pattern [of people leaving the workforce], and in fact may
reinforce that long-term pattern.”

So although Maine is technically seeing numbers of migration today, it isn’t necessarily the type of migration that is sustainable enough to fix the workforce issue coming down the road in the future.

Maine would have to bring in people way above the historical trend
in order to make up the difference between the number of
people likely to leave the workforce and those being born here and
coming of age.

Let’s Talk Age-Gap

While many people in Maine are talking football and gearing up for tonight’s Super Bowl, I can’t help but think about the elephant in the room that has been stressing me out lately. That’s not to say I will not be watching tonight’s football game because I definitely will. But first, I want to free my mind and wake up Maine’s youth about the age-gap that is disproportionately growing every day that passes.

Like the old adage says, admitting you have a problem is the first step in fixing the problem. Maine is the oldest state in the nation and is one of the ‘whitest’ states in terms of demographics. Although we’re not made up entirely of old white people, we’re pretty damn close.

With a median age of 43.5 years reported by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2012, Maine’s age distribution topples the national median age average at 37.4 and continues to grow older.

As Professor Charles Colgan from the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service puts it, “It’s not that we are disproportionately old,’ he said. “It’s that we are disproportionately not young.”

Maine, demographically, is currently at a surplus of baby boomers and a shortage of young adults.

Sadly, the problem is only going to worsen through time if action is not taken. With the rate of baby boomers growing older and our population decreasing over time, there is going to come a point where the tax base will not be big enough to support such government program services necessary for our senior citizens.

A decreasing population will also lead to a shortage in skilled labor and a shrinking economy if Maine fails to attract skilled and educated workers to the state.

We are already seeing signs of this as Maine’s retired population grows and the number of non-working dependents begins to outweigh the number of working age adults in what is known as the ‘dependency ratio.’

In terms of how to fix the problem, the solution is straightforward but far from simple: Bring more people to Maine.

Welcome!

My name is Cameron and welcome to my political blog. Over the course of the next several weeks, I hope to share my thoughts on Maine policy while focusing on demographics and the challenges posed by the age-gap here in Maine. With Maine being one of the oldest states in the nation, I believe this to be a big concern for myself as well as others within my generation who will soon be graduating college and seeking career opportunities. It’s early in the year, but 2014 has already showed many signs of being a critical year, especially with the gamut of important elections that will be taking place this Fall. So stayed tuned for my future posts and I hope you enjoy what I have to say.