Election Day Choices
Today, Mainers have an important choice to make about the future of our state. For decades, career politicians have ignored what best for the people and acted to further their own political career or satisfy some special interest.
The choice before us today is whether we continue the pattern of electing the same people who have created the problems, or whether we change course and put Maine on an economic path to prosperity.
My entire professional life has been in the private sector managing companies, spending wisely, and creating jobs. I’ve dealt directly with the specific problems Maine has today. I know how tough it is to start and run a business in Maine and that you should only spend what you take in.
And I have been successful in my business dealings because I’ve never taken on excessive amounts of debt.
I hope I can earn your vote because I have the right experience and qualifications to lead Maine back to greatness. This election is too important to stay home. Our challenges are too important to leave in the hands of politicians.
Let’s take our state back. It all starts with your vote today.
Memorial Day
Today, we remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the United States of America. The men and women who died protecting the freedoms we enjoy deserve our most solemn gratitude. It is the bravery and courage of our fallen heroes which we honor on this Memorial Day.
Let us also keep in our thoughts those who continue to serve in places far from home. May they come home safe and soon.
Better Management for Maine Town Hall: Rockland
The campaign headed to Rockland last night for another event in our Better Management for Maine Town Hall Tour. It marks the 12th town hall we’ve held in less than a month. The tour has taken us to York, Rumford, Dover-Foxcroft, Augusta, Portland, Bridgton, and number of other cities and towns across Maine.
If you haven’t been to one of our town halls, I hope you able to come to one of the remaining events. I’ve also posted the video highlights of several town halls on my web site. It’s important that Maine’s next Governor hear directly from voters so he or she knows exactly what people are experiencing in their daily lives, how they view their interactions with state government, and what we can do to improve that experience.
The thing I hear most is that it costs too much to live and work in Maine. Whether it’s a business owner or a parent trying to provide a better life for his or her family, Maine is an expensive place to live. Many people are leaving as a result because they just can’t make it here.
The high cost is in large part because of the enormous tax burden our state government imposes to pay for spending on state programs that is way beyond national averages.
That’s why I have made a central part of my campaign a plan to spend only what we take in and reduce state expenditures on programs to the average of what they spend in other states. That will allow us to enact meaningful tax reform to benefit families and companies, and help keep our kids in Maine.
Better Management for Maine Town Hall: Bridgton
Our town hall in Bridgton featured a great group of engaged voters deeply troubled by the direction of their state. Energy costs, high taxes, state spending, education, and playing politics in Augusta were all topics of significant discussion.
We talked about how the next Governor is supposed to get anything done when the bureaucracy is so entrenched and our government is run by career politicians. As Governor, I will go directly to the people.
Case in point: at the same time we were discussing these issues in Bridgton, people in states around the country were changing their elected leadership away from career politicians. Long-time U.S. Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania lost his seat against his opponent’s anti-Washington campaign. And in Kentucky, Rand Paul, a political newcomer from the private sector, soundly defeated his opponent Trey Grayson, an establishment favorite.
The message? No more business-as-usual from career politicians.
Our own career politicians have so mismanaged state finances that Maine is now one of the worst places to do business in the U.S. We have one of the highest tax burdens in the country to pay for Maine’s out-of-control spending on state programs. Mainers across the state are fed up with nonsense in Augusta.
We can’t afford more career politicians poorly running our state, mismanaging our finances, or wasting our hard earned tax dollars. The people in Bridgton and all across Maine are calling for competent management of Maine.
In Kentucky and Pennsylvania, they have changed course. I am convinced we’ll see similar results in our election as well.
Better Management for Maine Town Hall: Waterville
Last night at the American Legion in Waterville we had another lively discussion about the future of our state. As with most of these gatherings, state spending on social services was a great concern, as well as our high tax burden.
People see jobs fleeing the state as a result of the cost and complexity of doing business in Maine. That cost is a result of our state’s addiction to spending. As a state, we need to fundamentally be honest about what services we should provide and what we can afford. State government cannot be all things to all people.
During this campaign, we have seen little attention paid by the other candidates to controlling spending, despite it being a chief concern among voters.
It’s really a question of fiscal management. If we commit ourselves to being a state that only spends what it takes in, then we’ll be able to rebuild our economy, lower taxes, and encourage business formation and job growth.
If we do, it would be a fundamental shift away from business-as-usual in Augusta. I am convinced career politicians in Augusta and Washington will not make these tough decisions.
More than ever, we need someone from the private sector in the Blaine House who knows how tough it is to do business here. Our next Governor must direct state finances based on sound economic judgment and experience, not based on what will get them reelected.
For Jobs, It’s Spending First, Then Cut Taxes
While most of the candidates for Governor support cutting taxes to create jobs, little attention has been paid to first addressing what Maine spends. It’s true that Maine must lower taxes, but putting the cart before the horse will deepen Maine’s economic problems.
Specifically, cutting taxes without first addressing Maine’s addiction to spending threatens the solvency of our state. Cutting revenue without fundamentally reforming the services our state provides will only make our budget problems worse. It is troubling that none of the other candidates appear to understand the seriousness of Maine’s spending problem, or have proposals to address it before we can lower taxes.
So the question becomes, how do we reduce spending so we can lower taxes in a fiscally responsible way?
In the private-sector, when you’re facing a cash shortage it’s easy to identify where cuts should be made. Good business managers keep detailed data on how valuable resources are used and whether the expense was effective in achieving stated goals. Professional managers know if money is wasted or does not end up where it was originally intended.
Maine state government cannot perform this function. Most state departments, agencies, and programs have no performance metrics in place to evaluate whether they are successfully implementing their objectives. Worse, many have no stated objectives at all.
The most glaring example is the $200,000,000 Maine spends on so-called “economic development” each year. The Office of Program Evaluation & Government Accountability (OPEGA) found that 90% of tax incentive programs were at high risk of not performing because there was no evaluation of whether they actually helped the businesses and industries targeted by the tax credits.
Ironically, many of my opponents are proposing to continue or expand just these kinds of business tax incentives without instituting a proper evaluation system. That would be gross fiscal mismanagement at a time when Maine’s next Governor has no room for error.
A statewide audit of all departments, agencies, and programs is necessary to determine where we can find savings. It will also help us determine which programs are working so they are not punished by lazy across-the-board cuts.
In addition, it is also critical to appoint the right people to oversee our departments and be held accountable for how taxpayer money is spent. As Governor, I will install department heads who have successful management experience in the private sector. Career politicians and bureaucrats tied to the current system will not make the tough decisions to reform programs and reduce state spending.
There are certainly a number of programs, and even whole agencies, which most people could identify as needing considerable reform. DirgoHealth is an obvious example of a program that has totally failed.
However, voters should be skeptical of any candidate who believes he or she can reduce spending in a meaningful way by cutting a handful of programs without having the proper information. We should be cautious of anyone who rejects or plays lip service to a government-wide audit.
That’s how Augusta has been doing business for decades and it should end.
Spending must come first. Once we get our fiscal house in order and become a state that only spends what it takes in, then we can lower taxes in a meaningful way to help our struggling families and encourage business development and job formation.
We can fix our economy, but it’s important Maine’s next Governor approach the solutions the right way.
Experience is Trust with Evidence
Trust is saying what you mean and doing what you say. Experience is trust backed up by data.
So far we’ve heard from all the gubernatorial candidates promising to improve Maine’s business climate and create jobs. Candidates want you to trust that they will accomplish these goals. But which one has the necessary experience to actually achieve them? Who has actually dealt with Maine’s urgent economic, fiscal, and job-related problems?
In short, who actually has experience dealing with the specific challenges that face Maine’s next Governor?
This is where a critical line of difference appears between the gubernatorial candidates.
Several of the candidates have political experience, but we all know that it has been career politicians that have gotten us into our current economic mess. Intimate knowledge of how to horse trade, avoid tough decisions, and win reelection shouldn’t inspire confidence in someone’s ability to make government more accountable, close a $1 billion budget gap, or tackle $9 billion in unfunded liabilities.
Career politicians are simply wired for short-term political self-preservation, which almost always comes in conflict with the long-term health of our state economy.
Some in the gubernatorial race will tell you they have business experience, and certainly some can claim that as the truth. But close inspection will reveal that there’s only one candidate in the race who has spent his entire life in the private-sector successfully dealing with the specific challenges most similar to what Maine’s next Governor will face.
For the better part of my professional life, I helped run an asset management firm responsible for safely investing pension funds for companies like Bath Iron Works and International Paper. When I started, the assets under management totaled $35 million. With my leadership, that number grew to nearly $5 billion – more money than our state government spends in a year. We did it with hard work, integrity, persistence, talent, and proper financial management.
At Avatar Associates, our business was to carefully evaluate companies, make wise investments, and responsibly manage the hard earned money of workers. We continually analyzed financial and other data to determine companies that would be successful and those that would not. We also looked at the business environment a company was operating in to determine if that company was likely to succeed.
As a company executive and managing partner, I was also responsible for helping to properly manage our company. I oversaw departments, motivated employees and held them accountable, and contributed to budgeting decisions.
I’ve also been an entrepreneur. For more than a decade, I’ve been running, managing, and investing in businesses in Maine that have created hundreds of jobs and put millions of dollars into our state economy. I have worked long days and nights filling out paper work, paying taxes, hiring workers, negotiating with vendors, dealing directly with state and local agencies, and experiencing all the joys and headaches involved with being a businessman in Maine.
One company I run is a housing construction business in Midcoast. I negotiated for two-and-a-half years with 4 state agencies and 3 at the local level before I could proceed. That’s two-and-a-half years before I could hire one worker! Maine’s next Governor must have experience navigating the web of business regulations, and be ready to fix them.
Career politicians and others wanting to hold public office can give forceful and passionate speeches that move people. But Maine faces a set of specific and potentially crippling economic challenges that won’t be fixed by words. Solving these problems requires someone with intimate knowledge and experience successfully handling them.
It’s important that we restore trust in our elected leaders to properly address Maine’s problems. I believe that will only come from someone with the right experience.
As President Reagan famously said, “Trust, but verify”.
Better Management for Maine Town Hall: Rumford
Watch the video highlights here
In Rumford, voters want their next Governor to address taxation, education funding, and government spending. Maine has so poorly mismanaged state finances with high taxes and overspending that the local municipalities are seeing their education funding dwindle year after year. Local governments have little choice but to adjust their property tax rates up, which makes the problem worse.
Mainers can handle the truth – and they deserve it. The truth is that Maine is broke. We have no new money. For the last thirty years, politicians in Augusta have refused to make the right choices to put Maine back on a path to prosperity. Instead of looking in the mirror and being honest about what we should provide and what we can afford, our elected officials have made the choice to do what they need to do to get reelected.
You can’t make those kinds of short-term decisions in the private sector. You have to think long-term. You have to look ahead to see how the economy or your industry might be headed. You have to spend wisely, lower costs, and put money away for the lean times. That’s how good managers survive in the real-world.
In Augusta, they spend more, borrow more, shift money around, take federal funds, and hide the truth from voters with budgeting gimmicks.
We need to be honest with Mainers about the problems we face and the choices we need to make to fix them. There’s no silver bullet or big idea that will save our state. We just need to get back to basics and address the root cause of our economic, fiscal, and job-related challenges.