Last Thursday, Nov. 3, Maine Governor Paul LePage spoke to a full house of students, faculty and Maine residents in Ostrove Auditorium. The Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagment sponsored the event, entitled “A Conversation with the Governor of Maine.”

William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government and Goldfarb Center Director Sandy Maisel introduced the conversation with the governor. “Our democracy depends upon listening to the people with whom you disagree, respecting and hearing their views and airing your differences in a civil manner,” Maisel said.

More than 200 people attended the event, with some people standing at the back of the auditorium and in the doorway. LePage began the talk with a lecture on what his office has done since he was sworn in on Jan. 5, 2011, and what his on-going plans and priorities are as the new year approaches, specifically addressing business regulations, health care, welfare, energy, education and the state’s economy.

“We have a systemic structural…problem with the way that we govern in the state of Maine,” LePage began. He continued on to say that rather than focusing on “taxes and spending,” we ought to look at “the costs versus the benefits…because when we spend money…we should be providing a benefit for the people we serve.”

In order to find out what motions might best benefit Maine residents, “we held 25 meetings around the state,” LePage explained, “and asked ‘what is the single biggest problem that you’re faced with?’” He talked first about eliminating “absurd” business regulations, set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a federal agency.

On the topic of health care, LePage reminded audience members of his work in this area so far in adopting LD1333, a complex piece of legislation that looks to bring more health insurance companies into the state to increase competition and thereby decrease costs. The Bangor Daily News in May 2011, in a review of the measures taken by LD1333, stated that “While supporters [of LD1333] say these measures will help spur competition in the market, others predict out-of-state companies will ‘cherry-pick’ Maine’s healthier, younger consumers,” among other observations.

Addressing welfare in Maine, LePage proposed working to educate residents who depend on welfare on how to increase self-sufficiency instead of relying on a food-stamp system. When speaking about energy, LePage reassured residents that he would work to provide more affordable energy this winter in light of the recent cutback in federal funding to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

“I am going to ask the legislature to take some of the money out of Efficiency Maine to help the people this winter,” he said. “They have lots of funds that are earmarked for projects over the next three or four years, but the crisis is now.”

LePage addressed the state of education at length, including plans to improve public education in Maine. He discussed his interests in giving high school students access to college-level courses to better prepare them for higher education and make their transition to college more seamless, as well as increasing opportunities for students who choose not choose to attend college to enroll in trade schools. But “it’s not enough,” he said. “We fail the students in the classroom.”

The governor’s proposal to improve public education at its core is to recognize the important formative role teachers play in their students’ lives and make sure the teachers hired at public schools have the right professional skills. “The most important thing that can be done for our students in the classroom is not curriculum, it’s not new books, it’s not pretty buildings. It’s an effective teacher,” he said.

LePage compared Maine’s requisite qualifications for teachers to those of other countries such as Canada, stating that all Maine teachers should hold a degree in the subject area they teach. “If you’re going to teach English in Canada, you need to have a degree in English. Then you take courses on how to teach,” he said. “We’re looking…to increase the status of the teaching profession [in Maine].”

LePage seemed to contradict this point later, when he commented on joblessness and the ailing economy in Maine. He said, “We do not make it easy for someone who’s had a career [in] the military for instance…to go into teaching [after leaving the military]. It’s virtually impossible to use your life experience…to just jump into teaching. It’s very complex; you’ve got to take all kinds of teaching courses, so it’s discouraging to a lot of people….We need to take advantage of knowledge that people have and transfer that and let them teach in the classroom because it’s not the teaching that’s important as much as the mentoring.”

After his lecture, LePage answered seven questions from audience members. Questions for the governor first went through his staff, who asked attendees to write their questions down and submit them prior to the talk.

Many people felt that this process was unfair, and one student who wishes to remain anonymous said, “The people standing behind me—his staff—were sifting through the questions and the words coming out of their mouths were literally, ‘Oh no, no, he can’t answer that. He can’t take that question.’”

Three of the questions LePage’s staff chose concerned energy costs, the priority level of education and creating jobs in Maine, which allowed LePage to reiterate some points from his lecture.

Another question asked for LePage’s stance on Question One on the Nov. 8 referendum ballot, which stated: “Do you want to reject the section of Chapter 399 of the Public Laws of 2011 that requires new voters to register to vote at least two business days prior to an election?”

In response to the argument that eliminating same-day voter registration restricts the voting rights of “minorities, students and poor people,” LePage explained that soldiers deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq have to take 45-60 days to ensure that they are registered and that their absentee ballots are returned in time.

“If those people can take 60 days while they’re ducking bullets,” he said, “I think the rest of us at home that are free because of those people can give up that one day on election day….So, I don’t see that as a big, big deal.”

The event has provoked much controversy on the Digest of Civil Discourse. Some students said that they felt misled by the event’s title because the event was not really a “conversation.” A number of attendees were disappointed with both the questions LePage’s staff chose and the answers he gave.

“Some of his answers didn’t seem to me responsive to the questions that were asked,” Maisel said following the event. “He only answered the really easy questions and didn’t take on any of the difficult issues,” another anonymous student said. “What did he say tonight that he hasn’t said already?”

[For the full audio recording of the event, visit http://www.colby.edu/news_events/c/b/110411/2594063/a-conversation-with-the-governor-of-maine/]