Full Speed Behind

In a letter to the Bangor Daily News on February 18, Jodi and Matt Lassell state that they have two full-time and four part-time jobs between them, own one old car, and no cell phone. They say that they paid seven times more money to the state of Maine in taxes this year than last. I do not know if the Lassells have children, but two full-time and four part-time jobs, even for a family of four, should keep them out of poverty.

I do not question anything these folks said as fact, but as the 2007 legislature did not raise income taxes, any tax increase in that area can only be due to an increase in income from the previous year. Furthermore, any couple working that many jobs who cannot afford more amenities does not have a tax problem, but like far too many Mainers has an income problem. And that income problem is not brought on by taxes, but by Maine’s relative lack of attractiveness to the kinds of businesses and industries that pay the middle and upper middle-class wages that predominate in other parts of our region.

Our critical flaw is our lack of digital infrastructure. No amount of TIFs and special zones will make up for the facts of economic life in 2008: Entrepreneurs and established businesses can no longer survive—no less thrive—in the global economy on dial-up and DSL technologies. What Maine’s economy requires, if the state is to prosper, is universal access to high-speed digital Internet service and wireless accessibility, and statewide cell phone service.

Eight years ago, the current federal administration inherited a trillion dollar-plus surplus, money that could well have financed an Internet-access effort akin to the rural electrification projects responsible for bringing the most remote regions of the then 48-state union into the 20th century, something desperately needed in rural America.

By example, I offer these facts. I live less than a dozen miles by road from Bangor, 10 as the crow flies, yet cell phones are not reliable in my house nor is high-speed cable service available. This situation persists despite assurances from Time Warner for over a year that such service is imminent, and from the King and Baldacci administrations promises that Maine will become a leader in the high-tech field. (Cable trucks have been sighted in the area, but no one has been able to assure me of a hard-and- fast availability date.)

Those who would say that this lack of service is due to Maine’s topography are tipsy on the media companies’ Kool-Aid. My brother-in-law’s domestic cell phone works throughout the mountainous regions of Vietnam and in most of rural China and Africa, allowing him to work effectively in those places. A UK cell phone I rented to use in Europe worked in a remote area of the Swiss Alps and throughout the 30-kilometer-long Simplon Tunnel on the rail line from Switzerland into Italy from where I called my wife at her job in Boston. In the same alpine towns in Switzerland, where I marveled at the 12,000-foot peaks around me, every house had high-speed Internet access.

Were these services available in Maine, we could be swimming in jobs. Why? Because the quality of life, safety, and abundant natural beauty of Maine make it a desirable place to live and work.

However, in this day and age, especially in highly competitive businesses that depend on high-speed communications and real-time global electronic exchanges, companies need to have workers who can telecommute. If the requisite services do not exist where the employees live, as well as where they work, they will not come. Without them, the businesses cannot thrive. People in these endeavors demand to be able to work from home when they are ill or have a sick child. Companies demand it, too. This is because productivity is at the core of the businesses and industries that pay top wages.

I mentioned that my wife works in Boston during the week. She could work from home at least two of those days were all of Eddington wired for the 21st century. Last year she spent a fortune for rent, utilities, cable, etc., which all stayed in the Bay State. It is conceivable with the proper services that she, along with thousands of others, could work from Maine full-time. The more people earning top wages choose to live in our state, the more of their money enters our coffers through commerce and taxes. The more they spend, the more our struggling entrepreneurs, tradesmen, and traditional industries will thrive. That cable and Internet providers were allowed to cherry-pick neighborhoods without an obligation to cover every residence and business, a practice banned in many equally rural states, is the undying shame of previous administrations in Augusta, but that cannot be undone now. One thing that can be done is to demand that this policy change in the future.

The Lassells say they work hard for too little reward. I believe them. But the crux of their problem is this: As long as wages in Maine remain depressed by a lack of competition, especially for educated and trained workers, almost no amount of hours worked will garner the kind of disposable income that allows our people to save and invest in their futures and those of succeeding generations.

As every valid survey attests, taxes aren’t keeping jobs out of Maine—lack of infrastructure is. Maine needs to embrace 21st century technology instead of simply imagining it, and that is something we can address right here at home by demanding it from our leaders—who, by the way,
get free high-speed wireless at thestatehouse.

Bruce Pratt, who was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Award in fiction, lives in Eddington. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared widely in literary journals and magazines, and his poetry collection Boreal is available in local bookstores.