Volume 16, Number 1: Summer 2007 
(download entire issue)

Features

To Our Readers

The Margaret Chase Smith Essay
The Green Deal: A Call for Changed Lifestyle
Samuel S. Inman

Forums

Despite decades of concerted federal, state, local, and private effort, poverty persists in Maine and many parts of the nation. Ann Acheson updates the profile of poverty in Maine, examining recent trends and the nature of regional disparities. She concludes with a brief overview of current policies and programs.

The state’s Medicaid program, called MaineCare, provides health care coverage to one in five of the state’s citizens. Paul Saucier raises key questions regarding MaineCare’s mission, complexity, and financial stability. Commentaries critique reform efforts in other states and stress MaineCare’s role in Maine’s health care system (Lisa Pohlmann and Christine Hastedt) and look at MaineCare from the providers’ point of view (Erik Steele).

Taking a New Look at MaineCare
Paul Saucier

Building on MaineCare's Success
Lisa Pohlmann and Christine Hastedt

MaineCare--A Provider Prospective
Erik N. Steele

Since the mid-1990s, the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has been the nation’s largest anti-poverty program for citizens under 65. Glenn Beamer gives a brief overview of how the program works and how states have piggybacked on the federal EITC to further assist their working poor. He suggests that expanding Maine’s EITC would direct resources to parts of the state that are struggling economically.

Rebecca Berger looks retrospectively at how the problems associated with implementing Maine’s local assessment system (LAS) were caused by a lack of understanding of important aspects of assessment. As the state considers future standards-based reform efforts, she raises three concerns: lack of capacity at state and local levels to implement change; problems related to alignment between curricula and assessments; and competing priorities among current federal/state reforms.

Many would argue that Maine’s tourism industry has not fully realized its potential to enhance the well-being and sustainability of communities, particularly through high-quality, nature-based experiences that leverage Maine’s extraordinary landscapes, wilderness, and rural culture. Based on Elizabeth Munding’s interviews with tourism stakeholders, Munding and John Daigle suggest that the state plays a key role in realizing this potential.