When heating oil spiked in 2008, roughly 500 Mainers took a state housing authority course to become weatherization technicians. Another 200 became certified energy auditors.

Then two unexpected things happened: Oil prices collapsed and the country plunged into a deep recession.

The result was that fewer people had the incentive or money to insulate their homes. Today, the majority of those trainees are doing other jobs or are out of work.

“It should be a cautionary tale,” said Curry Caputo, president of the Maine Association of Building Efficiency Professionals.

Maine won’t need hundreds of new insulation techs or auditors in the near future, Caputo said, despite the sense that a flood of federal stimulus money and the state’s goal of weatherizing all homes will create a wave of new, green jobs.

“The estimates are inflated,” he said. “There’s no doubt about that.”

Green jobs. Maine is trying to position itself as a leader in a clean-energy economy. Advocates envision thousands of green jobs, buttoning up drafty homes, developing wind farms and installing solar panels.

But a new report by the Maine Department of Labor says the reality is more complicated. It’s not possible now for the state to develop a detailed plan for green work force development, the department has concluded. Researchers can’t even confirm the number of green jobs in Maine today.

“It’s a moving target,” said John Dorrer, director of the state’s Center for Workforce Research and Information.

As weatherization training shows, green jobs are highly dependent on volatile energy prices, government policies and the overall economy. After consulting with state agencies and industry reps like Caputo, labor department researchers concluded the state will only need another 55 full-time energy auditors and 118 more weatherization techs between now and 2015.

“The last thing we should be doing is training more people,” Dorrer said.

To gain a more accurate picture, Maine has begun working with a consortium of seven Northeastern states that are using software to track Internet job postings that call for green job skills. This approach reflects a move away from simply counting green jobs to understanding what skills and educational requirements are needed to power a clean-energy economy.

The stakes are high for Maine. The state lost 30,000 jobs since the economy peaked in late 2007. Most were in manufacturing, retail and construction.

The energy sector holds promise for helping replace them. Some are near-term activities, such as land-based wind projects and new transmission lines. Others are long-term prospects, including offshore wind farms and biofuels development.

The labor department report, compiled this month for the Maine Legislature, represents a continuing attempt to tally clean-energy employment and plan for future training and education. From the start, researchers have run into a basic hurdle –how to define a green job.

The department tried to do this by identifying firms that say they’re involved with renewable energy or efficiency products or services. By that rough measure, Maine had 523 green employers and 16,782 green jobs in 2008.

But this approach has problems, Dorrer said.

If a bulldozer operator is opening a road at a wind farm, that’s a green job. But the job is no longer green, Dorrer said, when the operator finishes and moves to a highway bridge project. It’s the same with a heating contractor trained to install wood pellet boilers, or an electrician certified to wire solar panels.

So the focus shouldn’t be on green jobs specifically, Dorrer said, but the greening of jobs in general.

Dorrer said he’s reminded of late-20th century hype over high-tech jobs. Call centers were considered high-tech workplaces – not customer service employers — when they first began springing up in Maine. Today, working in front of a computer screen is the norm.

“I think a lot of that will happen with green jobs,” he said.

But the desire to count green jobs remains powerful because the numbers are a tool to shape public policy. And headcounts may invite hyperbole, when headlines fail to convey important details.

For instance: Efficiency Maine Trust is the new, independent agency preparing to coordinate the state’s conservation efforts. It recently unveiled a three-year plan that it says could create 12,000 new jobs.

But only 1,500 of those positions actually would be green jobs. The rest would be created through a multiplier effect, in which economists calculate how a job creates and supports additional employment.

Green job projections also tend to depend on the availability of public funding over time.

An example is the report released last April on Earth Day by Opportunity Maine, a Portland-based education and work force advocacy group. Maine could cut its energy bills by $10 billion and create 10,000 jobs over a decade with a comprehensive economic and energy plan, the group estimated.

The plan, however, needed $180 million a year that the group hoped to raise by convincing lawmakers to expand taxes on energy purchases, such as heating oil. That effort failed.

But the plan made a point, according to Rob Brown, the group’s co-director. To create and maintain green jobs, funding must remain predictable and the cost of energy has to be high enough.

“What drives demand is public and private investment, and energy prices,” he said.

Lacking a clear picture, educators are taking advantage of public investment, and perceived demand, to design green courses.

Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield is a leader in work force energy training. It received a $2.8 million federal grant last year to train community college instructors in the region who then will teach students how to install photovoltaic and solar hot water systems.

Students taking existing solar hot water courses tend to be plumbers who want to diversify, according to Dana Doran, the school’s director of energy programs. That approach is in line with the idea of expanding green skills, he said.

Doran said he’s aware, though, that fewer students are signing up these days for solar courses. It may be because there are enough installers now to meet consumer demand, he said.

But that reality hasn’t slowed weatherization and energy auditor training.

The school is planning to offer new courses this summer. Some students may be upgrading their skills to meet new certification requirements, but Doran said he doesn’t follow up to know how many recent graduates are working.

“There is demand,” he said. “We are filling the training programs.”

http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/despite-predictions-state_s-green-economy-not-blooming_2010-04-17.html

With so much attention on health care, few have noticed that Congress just passed crucial legislation to expand educational opportunity.

Increasing access to higher education and training is the best way to prepare Americans with the knowledge and skills that the 21st century economy demands. Raising the proportion of degree holders in our work force is the best way to grow our economy. For individuals, every new level of educational attainment — from occupational certificate to associate degree to bachelor’s degree and beyond — translates into higher wages and lower likelihood of unemployment.

Unfortunately, the cost of higher education and training prevents many people from pursuing further education and training after high school. This is especially true in low-income, rural states such as Maine. Making college more affordable can help more people get over that financial hump, and will give our economy and businesses the skilled work force they need to thrive.

Over this last week, both houses of Congress passed a budget reconciliation bill that will make college much more affordable for Mainers and for the rest of the nation. It will increase the amount of Pell grants, which reduce the cost of college, and then effectively lower interest rates on the student loans that people use to cover the remaining costs. The bill will also reduce loan payments for people who have low incomes — a crucial protection at a time when student debt is at all-time highs and unemployment is widespread.

The bill accomplishes these things by eliminating the wasteful subsidized loan program, and replacing those loans with an expansion of the federal direct lending program. Under the subsidized loan program, the federal government provides billions of dollars in subsidies to private lenders to originate student loans, and then guarantees repayment of up to 97 percent. In the 1990s, the federal government established a direct lending program, which was able to make loans available much less expensively. Every $100 of loan costs the government $13.81 under the subsidized loan program, but only $3.85 under the direct lending program.

Moving from a mix of subsidized and direct lending to exclusively direct lending frees up $61 billion per year. $36 billion of that would go into increasing Pell grants in a way that keeps up with inflation. Without this infusion, Pell grants would have to be cut substantially, and 500,000 students would lose their grants, because so many people have chosen to go back to school during the recession; $1.5 billion would go to cap student loan payments at 10 percent of income. At a time when Mainers’ average student debt loads have risen to $25,000, this provides much-needed economic security for people taking on the risk of student debt to pursue higher education and training.

Tens of thousands of Mainers rely on Pell grants and student loans, and these sweeping federal changes will magnify Maine’s impressive efforts in making college affordable. The Opportunity Maine Program, a state income tax credit that effectively wipes out student debt for Maine college graduates, is the nation’s boldest universal higher education guarantee. The Competitive Skills Scholarship Program invests in helping low-income workers to finish a degree, certification, apprenticeship or on-the-job training program in high-wage, high-demand fields. The Parents as Scholars program helps public assistance recipients pursue higher education.

With the federal government stepping up to make college more financially accessible, now is the time for Maine to redouble its efforts to catch up with the rest of New England in educational attainment. Studies have shown that we have the lowest incomes in New England because we have the lowest proportion of degree holders in our work force. Our state agencies, high schools and colleges need to tell students — over and over and over again — that no matter what their life circumstances, they can build better lives through higher education. The Opportunity Maine, Competitive Skills Scholarship and Parents as Scholars programs will work only if Maine residents know about them.

If we drive this message home with our young people and help our many displaced workers pursue higher education and training, we can emerge from this recession more prosperous than we entered it.

Cliff Ginn and Rob Brown are co-directors of Opportunity Maine.

PORTLAND – Forget death and taxes. The two certainties of life in Maine are a lack of good-paying jobs and high and volatile energy costs.

On education, as a recent college graduate facing the “should-I-stay-or-should-I-go” question, I can say first hand that it is a difficult one and, frustratingly, seems outside of my control.

Although I was born, raised and educated in Maine, I have also lived in other states. Time away made me realize how great Maine is, but having recently completed a degree in environmental sciences — a fast-growing field — I have found it is nearly impossible to find a job here.

That’s true even though I could land a job tomorrow in Massachusetts. Business opportunities of the 21st century will not be fully realized if Maine’s work force is not prepared.

One example of how Maine has faced this challenge is the newly created Opportunity Maine Program.

The program allows individuals who earn an associate or bachelor’s degree at a Maine college or university and continue to live and work here to be reimbursed for student loan payments through an income tax credit.

Alternately, businesses that create a student loan reimbursement program as an employee benefit are eligible to take the credit instead. This type of bold yet practical initiative rewards Maine’s workers with educational opportunity, rewards businesses with a better-educated and skilled work force, and contributes to a stronger and more sustainable economy.

And on energy, as the snow piles up every year, so too does the burden of heating and other increased energy costs. Whether in our household budget or the state budget, these higher costs are offset by cuts elsewhere. The inverse relationship between energy costs and economic growth could not be clearer.

We can address our economic, educational and energy challenges head on by bridging the gap between our economic and work force development strategies. Developing the clean-energy sector will create opportunities for Maine to prosper in a rapidly changing, internationally competitive, knowledge-based economy.

Incredible job growth would result for many professions, including engineers, carpenters, plumbers, researchers, marketers, financial services, steelworkers, machinists, IT specialists, energy auditors, and electrical, HVAC, wind and other technicians, all with upgraded certifications in a variety of green skills.

Unfortunately, Maine continues to suffer from a vicious cycle keeping our economy weak, outsourcing the knowledge and skills of our current and future work force, while wasting billions of dollars on foreign oil.

What message are we sending to our students, employees and businesses when the potential for job and business creation is lacking, yet so clear? Are we marketing “the way life should be” without the prospect of better jobs and a brighter future?

State and federal policymakers have made a good start with greater attention to and investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and the education and skills of our work force. But more focus and coordination are needed. We need a plan that Mainers can believe in, contribute to and succeed within.

An aggressive, coordinated economic and work force development strategy will address both sides of this “weak economy” coin.

If we focus on developing an educated and skilled work force and a clean-energy sector, educational and economic opportunities, greater energy independence and an even higher quality of place will follow.

Average incomes and educational attainment levels in Maine continue to be the lowest of any state in New England. Every year our colleges and universities graduate thousands of young people, only to see this investment short-circuited because too many of those graduates are unable to secure decent-paying jobs.

As this outflow of knowledge and skills continues, so too does our weak economy.

- Special to the Press Herald

http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/green-jobs-should-graduates-stay-or-go__2010-03-16.html

It may be one of the best kept job-retraining secrets in Maine. It offers an attractive benefits package and good pay and the training program itself is free. And it’s being held up as a model for how business, education and labor can help strengthen the new economy.

Stacey Timberlake of Lisbon Falls didn’t plan on becoming an electrician. She originally got a teaching degree in elementary education. And when her son was born nine years ago Timberlake became a stay-at-home mom. To supplement her income, she eventually started waitressing on the side.

One day some of her customers started talking about Local 567′s Joint Apprenticeship Training program, how it was good to have an aptitude for math, which Timberlake did, and how you were virtually guaranteed a job. Timberlake went down and filled out an application.

The next thing she knew, she was enrolled in a five-year program to become what’s known as an “inside wireman.”
“I think we do about 980 hours of classroom time and 10,000 hours of work time before we finish the program. We have to work 2,000 hours a year. You work Monday through Friday – a 7:00 to 3:30 schedule with the rest of the journeymen.”

Classroom training takes place a couple of nights a week in the IBEW’s training center in Lewiston. And just about everything is free. Apprentices are responsible for their books and their tools for the job. Participating electrical contractors pay for the rest. That’s because they’re looking for skilled labor, people who can literally hit the ground running.

Timberlake is beginning her fourth year in the program. She says she had just four months of classroom training when she went on her first job. “My first day on the job site was horrible,” she laughs. “It was so cold and the heater in the van didn’t work. My bottle of water froze – but I learned a lot and I mean — it was a residential job my first time and we were pulling wire and they’re very patient with you. And you have kind of a level of what you’re expected to know with each year.”

Susan Sharon: “When you get done what will you be qualified to do?”

Stacey Timberlake: “When I’m done I can work residential, commercial and industrial. I can be a foreman, a journeyman, I could do jobs on my own.”

SS: “You’ll be an electrician?”

ST: “Yup.”

Timberlake expects to earn much more than she did as a teacher. And she’s already getting benefits. Once she’d worked 500 hours on the job those kicked in. And the contractor she’s working for right now is contributing to her pension plan. Apprentices can also train to do shorter, three-year programs in residential applications or for teledata, installing lines for telephones and computers.

This year there are 71 apprentices, but some years the program swells to as many as 120. “Eighty-five percent of the folks who come into this facility graduate and of those 90 percent are placed immediately into jobs,” says Rob Brown, Executive Director of Opportunity Maine, a non-profit and advocacy program that supports workforce development.

And in a way that makes sense for displaced mill workers and others who might not be interested in devoting the next four years of their lives and their bank accounts to a college degree program. “Very little public money goes into this. This is supported by the contractors themselves. These students are not paying tuition to go here. It’s an earn while you learn strategy of education and work.”

And it’s one that Brown thinks can be replicated in other fields, like health care, for instance, through the help of pending legislation in Congress that’s sponsored in the Senate by Maine Senator Olympia Snowe and co-sponsored in the House by Maine Congressman Mike Michaud.

Recently, Michaud paid a visit to the IBEW’s apprenticeship program in Lewiston, where he spoke about the Sectors Act, which would provide grants of up to $2.5 million for stakeholder partners to train workers. “It really is a game-changer and it brings business, unions, educators and the public workforce to grow and save an entire industry.”

Michaud says it could also help Maine foster new industries too. As an example, supporters point to the IBEW apprenticeship training program where several students worked on the Kibby Mountain windpower project installing 20 wind turbines over the summer. By the time they’ve completed their training, students will also have skills to install solar panels as well, something that could be a factor for clean energy developers as they consider project sites around the country.

Maine’s intertwined economic and energy challenges have deep roots. We have the nation’s oldest housing and work force, greatest reliance on heating oil, and highest percentage of young people neither working pursuing education. Electricity costs are high, and Maine has the lowest income and education levels in New England.

We must turn these challenges into opportunity. Public and private investment in energy efficiency and local renewable power generation can save Maine’s economy billions and create good-paying, non-exportable jobs in every community, if we give our work force the skills to refashion our energy economy.

Across the country, the most effective model for meeting challenges like Maine’s energy crisis has been the “sector partnership model,” which unites stakeholders in an economic sector to lead training efforts across multiple firms for current and potential workers within the targeted industry sector.

One of Maine’s most successful sector partnerships and best kept educational secrets is the Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee in Lewiston.

The JATC is managed by a board comprised, in equal numbers, of business and labor representatives. Its curriculum, training and credentials conferred guarantees graduates possess the skills businesses need.

An impressive 85 percent of those who start the training complete it and more than 90 percent of graduates are placed in good jobs. The JATC’s high completion and placement rates result from its “earn while you learn” training strategy. Apprentices work real jobs and get an education in a coordinated, streamlined program. When it comes time to find a job, these graduates already have one foot in the clean energy work force.

Sector partnerships like the JATC target resources by supporting the long-term competitiveness of industries and education, and training opportunities that lead to good-paying, green-skilled jobs. They unite stakeholders in a given industry — in this case, clean energy — to identify all needs for building the sector as a whole, and meeting those needs in a manner that maximizes economic opportunity for local people, particularly those with low incomes and other disadvantages for which a four-year college degree is not practical or possible.

We are setting ourselves up for failure if we build a renewable energy market without developing a high-quality work force, and if we don’t parlay our clean energy and work force investments into opportunities to bring renewable energy component manufacturing to Maine. Currently, over half of all wind components, 90 percent of solar components and 100 percent of advanced battery technology is manufactured elsewhere.

It will mean little to American workers if the clean energy economy is built in China.

Meeting our energy needs and manufacturing the products to do it requires greater coordination and innovation than now exists. Workers must be trained for jobs that exist today and will exist in greater numbers as the clean energy economy expands. Both Maine and the federal government have taken promising steps in this direction, but require bolder action.

One of the most promising developments is the federal SECTORS Act (Strengthening Employment Clusters to Organize Regional Success). It would provide state grants to establish or expand sector partnerships, allowing businesses, work force development boards, labor unions and community colleges to collaborate to determine work force and community needs and link skilled workers with emerging industries. Sen. Olympia Snowe is a lead sponsor, and Rep. Mike Michaud has championed SECTORS in the House.

Additionally, the Senate must now pass the American Clean Energy & Security Act, which will implement substantial energy market reforms and work force investments in the clean energy sector. This legislation, with the new Efficiency Maine Trust, clean energy investments and reforms Opportunity Maine has proposed at the state level, and the work force investments contained in the SECTORS Act and epitomized by successful partnerships like the JATC, can turn an energy crisis into an opportunity for prosperity for this and future Maine generations.

Don Berry is the director of the JATC. Rob Brown is the executive director of Opportunity Maine. E-mail: dberry@ibew567.com or rob@opportunitymaine.org.

An expanded sales tax, a lower overall income tax rate and progress on efficiency all merit praise.

As I suggested last week, two significant pieces of legislation dominated the latter days of the legislative session in Augusta: tax reform and an omnibus energy bill.

Many of us had given up hope that meaningful legislation to reduce Maine’s high income tax rate and broaden Maine’s narrow sales tax base would ever garner enough votes to pass. Luckily for Maine, Rep. John Piotti, majority leader of the House, never gave up hope that such reform was possible.

Piotti, D-Unity, has been a leader in this effort through two sessions and several previous failed attempts. He worked tirelessly to craft legislation that would address both tax issues and have a chance of passing. Piotti was able to enlist the support of three influential business groups: the chambers of commerce of Portland, Bangor and Androscoggin County.

Even with all this, Gov. Baldacci nearly scuttled the entire effort at the last minute with what seemed to be a silly veto – coming back with changes that made little sense (i.e., dropping the sales tax on ski-lift tickets).

One might well ask where the governor had been in the months and weeks when this legislation was coming together. The governor’s timing was good enough to get him prominent mention in a Wall Street Journal editorial. While the Journal got many of the details wrong, it was a nice boost for Maine from a most unlikely source.

In the end, a tax reform bill was passed that is historic, mostly as a first step toward a more reasonable tax structure in Maine.

It does not quite reduce Maine’s real top income tax rate from 8.5 percent to 6.5 percent, as billed, because the governor raised the top rate to 6.85 percent and because the many current deductions have now been excluded.

Nonetheless, the state does finally have a broader base for the sales tax, making us less hostage to wild swings of the economy. We have given modest tax relief to Mainers, mainly by shifting some of the tax burden to out-of-state visitors.

The optics, at least, of the overall income tax rate moving from 8.5 percent to 6.85 percent are something – as the Wall Street Journal editorial attested. All in all, it was quite a feat for this state in this year. We should pass emergency legislation to exempt Piotti from term limits (he is termed out this year) and give him another go at this in the 125th Legislature.

Energy legislation was also the subject of much debate and interest. Part of the interest derived from the availability of federal stimulus funding, both for new technologies such as offshore wind power and for energy conservation efforts that focus on low-tech approaches to weatherization.

In a state such as Maine with a long winter and high dependence on oil, the payback is high on weatherization and like efforts to improve energy efficiency.

Part of the interest stemmed from imaginative approaches suggested by unlikely sources. Peter Vigue, the chairman of Cianbro Corp., put forward several proposals that the governor incorporated in his energy legislation.

Then there was a grass-roots effort by Opportunity Maine, which teamed with Rep. Seth Berry, D-Bowdoinham, to define a comprehensive energy-efficiency bill that would have made Maine the leading state in the nation in developing a green energy economy, complete with up-front financing, a cadre of new jobs and impressive payback numbers.

Clearly, energy was an area of substantial interest, even excitement.

The Joint Select Committee on Maine’s Energy Future, co-chaired by Sen. Phil Bartlett, D-Gorham, and Rep. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, took in all of these proposals and produced a comprehensive bill that embraces many of the elements proposed in earlier legislation.

Most significantly, it establishes an Efficiency Maine Trust to consolidate all energy-efficiency programs; to fund new efficiency efforts and work force training for new weatherization work; and to promote alternative energy resources programs in the state.

There is much more to this bill, which runs to 58 pages. It is somewhat more than a good start, but somewhat less than what many hoped for.

Beyond initial funding, mostly by two-year federal stimulus funds, no decisions have been made about how to make these efforts self-sustaining. The legislation also delays the electric transmission corridor initiative – a particularly promising idea. On energy, much remains to be sorted out.

The only significant disappointment in the session was the lack of real progress on the education front – but I’ll say more on this in another column.

All in all, though, there is much to praise in the work of the Legislature this session. Leadership, in particular that of House Speaker Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, deserves credit for a deft touch in the management of several major initiatives.

Energy costs are stifling Maine’s economy and making it increasingly difficult for ordinary people to pay their bills. The greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression has greatly accelerated the economic insecurity of Maine’s families, making this bad situation even worse.

In this crisis lies an opportunity to meet our energy needs in a way that costs much less, creates more jobs, reduces our impact on the environment and improves our economy for this and future generations of Mainers. Meeting our energy needs by investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE&RE, as I’ll call it) rather than through traditional sources costs one-third as much and creates at least four times as many jobs.

Changing directions is now a necessity, not a choice. One cannot go without heat in Maine. We need to pay for the energy to power our homes and businesses. We need to think boldly and strategically about how to improve the economy and create jobs. The question is: How do we do all of this in the most coordinated, cost-effective and sustainable manner?

In the short term, to get the pieces in place for a high-wage, high-growth, new energy economy, Maine needs aggressive, coordinated deployment of federal stimulus funds. For the long term, Maine needs an explicit commitment to develop the workforce and business capacity of the EE&RE sector. As a Sun Journal editorial said on April 28, this investment, “”should not be left to chance. Whatever Maine lawmakers decide on energy should include proposals to develop a workforce to see it through.”

Most EE&RE sector jobs are considered “middle-skill” jobs, which require some amount of post high-school education, but not necessarily a four-year degree. Research by The Workforce Alliance has shown these types of jobs are both primed for the greatest growth and suffer from the greatest current shortage, in Maine and the nation. A comprehensive workforce development program will allow Maine to close that gap and create good jobs in the EE&RE sector.

The Sun Journal editorial urged lawmakers to not “lose sight of one question: what should we do to make these good ideas happen? How they answer should ensure many Mainers can find, or get back to, work.” Opportunity Maine recommends a three-prong strategy including pathways, partnerships and proportional investment to answer this question.

Pathways are an “earn while you learn” strategy of career ladders that provide meaningful opportunities to access education and training and encourage continuous skills-upgrading, allowing workers to move up into better and better jobs. Partnerships bring together education institutions and programs, businesses, workers, social service providers and others to develop a plan to build the workforce and business capacity of a given sector and region. Proportional investment means explicit, coordinated funding for sector-based education and training that is proportional to the size of any program.

An effective strategy must reach across federal, state and private sector funding and across educational institutions and workplaces, to create a comprehensive response to workforce needs in a given sector. It must provide the support to make education and training opportunities meaningful to a broad range of people, and be responsive to industry needs by training people for jobs that actually exist.

This coordinated strategy has been shown to work time and again. A recent study of broadband public investment and job creation in Virginia shows communities that included an explicit workforce development strategy saw robust, sustained job growth. Regions that invested equivalent amounts, but did not include explicit support for workforce investment, saw little sustained job creation.

It is just that simple.

Opportunity Maine’s new “Green Jobs, Green Savings” report provides examples of how, in state after state, effective EE&RE sector development that includes a comprehensive workforce development system resulted in the sustained creation of high-quality jobs. The report is available at www.opportunitymaine.org/greenjobs.htm.

This week the legislature is considering measures that would expand the EE&RE sector throughout the state.This is a welcome move, but an essential component of the legislature’s plan must be a comprehensive workforce development strategy to get the job done and build our economy for the long haul.

In short, efficiency measures can meet a large portion of energy needs at much lower cost while creating many more jobs, but this will not happen automatically. We know we must pay for our future energy. We know we need to create jobs. Why not meet these needs in a way that costs less, makes us less susceptible to oil price shocks, puts many more people to work and improves Maine’s economy?

Why not indeed?

Rob Brown is executive director of Opportunity Maine, an organization committed to expanding educational opportunities and workforce development in Maine. E-mail rob@opportunitymaine.org.

Maine has enormous potential to build a new energy economy that will sustainably produce, distribute, consume, and reduce demand for energy. This will lower costs for citizens, businesses, government, and civic institutions while reducing global warming. Following the successful approaches other states have taken would:

• Create demand for efficiency and renewable energy through high standards.
• Generate funding within the energy system to meet standards and to leverage private investment.
• Centralize programs and information in a single transparent and accountable entity.
• Invest in efficiency and renewable technology research and development.
• Develop and fund training initiatives and integrate them into industry partnerships, to develop the workforce needed to transform the energy economy.

Click here to read more.

The days when a high school diploma assured a good job for life are long gone. Like most growing industries, even Maine’s manufacturing sector now frequently require education well beyond high school just to get in the door, let alone advance up the career — and income — ladder.

To make better jobs available to more Maine people, we must better align educational programs that should be ladders from poverty to self-sufficiency.

To that end, Maine’s Department of Labor and Opportunity Maine are working together to promote a more comprehensive vision of work force and economic development that will improve business growth, create good jobs and raise incomes in Maine.

Maine has the lowest incomes and the lowest rate of degree attainment of all the New England states. We have a surplus of low-skilled workers and a shortage of middle- to high-skilled workers, leaving many businesses struggling to grow.

For the sake of our economy, common sense dictates that we invest in developing the ability of those low-income workers to gain the skills needed to meet this shortage.

Recent business surveys bear this out. For the National Association of Manufacturers, 90 percent of respondents indicated a moderate to severe shortage of skilled employees.

For the Maine Development Foundation, 42 percent of respondents ranked “educated work force” as their No. 1 need, ahead of other concerns such as taxes, transportation or utility costs.

Furthermore, Phillip Trostel, a research economist at the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Center and School of Economics, has demonstrated that the states with the highest percentage of degree-earners also have jobs that pay the highest salaries. High-wage employers in need of high-skilled workers are not going to locate in a state with a work force like ours.

To improve the composition of our economy, we need to change the composition of our work force. We must invest in educational opportunity. Any economic strategy for Maine that does not have coordinated investments in the skills and capacities of our work force at its core is not sustainable and would not be likely to succeed.

Recognizing this fact, Maine recently passed two innovative laws aimed at increasing access to higher education and developing the state’s work force:

• The Competitive Skills Scholarship Program is directly tied to the work force needs of high-wage employers in every region of the state. It simultaneously cuts worker compensation taxes for Maine businesses and invests in helping low-income workers finish a degree, certification, apprenticeship or on-the-job training program.

These are folks for whom tuition is but one barrier. The scholarship program provides needed support with child care, books and transportation, as well as with remedial math, reading, writing and computer skill instruction.

• Opportunity Maine invests in those same workers’ ability to enter Maine’s work force in a good job without immediately sinking under the burden of education debt.

It will allow those who earn an associate or a bachelor’s degree at a Maine school to be reimbursed for education loan payments through a state income tax credit during any year in which they continue to live, work and pay taxes here after graduation.

Alternatively, businesses that pay employees’ education loans as an employee benefit will be able to claim the tax credit, providing a strategic tax cut and a strong incentive to expand or locate businesses in Maine.

These two programs combined represent the most innovative, ambitious investment in affordable education and economic development in the nation. They are two sides of the same coin: helping Maine workers prepare for careers in high-wage, high-demand occupations, and rewarding hard work and a commitment to Maine with educational and economic opportunity.

The Competitive Skills Scholarship Program and Opportunity Maine are two elements of a visionary work force and economic development strategy that will result in a more prosperous future for Maine’s workers, families, businesses and communities.

Combined, they hold the transformative potential to sustainably address Maine’s demographic imbalance, build our skilled work force, raise incomes and improve our business growth.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Rob Brown is executive director of Opportunity Maine. Auta Main is manager of the Competitive Skills Scholarship Program and the Maine Lifelong Learning Accounts Program.

Most news media in Maine recently covered the heartwarming story of Chelsea Edgar of Whitefield, who was the first recipient of a new state-issued high school diploma.

Because of this program, Chelsea, obviously a bright young woman, will be able to attend Kennebec Valley Community College this fall. This is a great example of how the state can work to create an education system that is focused on the individual and responsive to their needs.

Another recent, innovative step towards accessible, affordable and personalized education was the creation of the Opportunity Maine program. Any post-secondary education policy wonk will tell you that back-end tax credits, while politically popular, do little to increase access to college. By presenting the Opportunity Maine tax credits as a contract and a guarantee, however, the drafters of this legislation have created a system that may make it easier at the front-end as well and increase both access to education and the retention of skilled graduates without high burdens of debt. I hope they’re studying the results closely to see how it works.

I’ve worked as an advocate for higher education for the past two years, and I can see that Maine has some unique needs and opportunities in this sector. Two of the biggest hurdles for the state are making the transition from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based one and dealing with state demographics that trend towards the elderly. An increased focus on college education could be the answer to both.

Opportunity Maine was a great first step in another respect as well – it brought students together to advocate for their own interests. It would be fantastic if those seeds could grow into a permanent student lobby. College students seem to be one of the few interests in Maine not well-represented in Augusta, despite their importance to the future of the state.