Recently we’ve had two perfect demonstrations of a maxim most people have known about for years, but which the federal government, apparently, has never understood.
The maxim, of course, has its origins in the “one size fits all” message on the inside of an adjustable baseball cap: in public policy the reverse is almost always true. Solutions drafted in Washington, D.C., seldom work well at the local level. Most of the time, one size does NOT fit all.
The federal law known as No Child Left Behind provided the first demonstration: designed for large, urban schools, its combination of testing, attendance and socioeconomic criteria produced what can only be described as ridiculous results when applied to schools in Maine. While most island schools were exempted from the law’s requirements because they’re too small, two of the three island schools of sufficient size – Islesboro and North Haven – landed on the list of “failing” schools, and remained there until their principals were able to set things straight. Both schools eventually received letters of apology from the state Department of Education, whose faulty attendance record keeping had put the schools on the wrong list in the first place. But the damage had been done: two exemplary schools, just at a time when their communities, and the rest of the state, were debating the cost of education and its effect on property taxes – were forced to defend themselves against charges that were neither accurate nor fair.
“One size doesn’t fit all” certainly applies to the East Coast’s current fishery mess as well. Whipsawed by a stressed fishing industry, determined environmentalists, politicians and a federal judge, the New England Fishery Management Council recommended a package of rules that will, by most accounts, devastate the region’s already battered groundfish industry. Like earlier federal efforts to preserve fishery resources, this one took the one-size-fits-all approach, failing to differentiate between groundfishermen who work out of Massachusetts ports (closer to the fishing grounds) and those who start from more distant places (e.g. Maine) when allocating the allowable “days at sea.” The effort to limit fishing effort is, as always, commendable; the application is wholly unfair to Maine fishermen and the communities where they live and sell their catch.
Things don’t have to be this way. In both instances there is ample evidence that regulations designed on a more intimate scale will work better. Small schools can be held as accountable as large ones if the criteria are designed to fit. On the fishery side, the success of Maine’s locally governed lobster industry speaks for itself. Federal regulations have their place, but in these two instances at least, smaller is better.
Good News
We’ve thought so for a long time, and now there’s new polling data to prove it: most Mainers are concerned about losing access to their working coast; they’re concerned about the decline in the industries that support its way of life; they support efforts to provide waterfronts with the same protections farm and forest lands now enjoy.
The survey was done in October by Market Decisions, a South Portland polling firm, for the Working Waterfront Coalition, a state-sponsored effort to find ways to preserve public access and working waterfronts up and down the Maine coast.
Seventy-four percent of respondents, the survey team reported, “show some level of concern that fishermen and marine trades are experiencing problems remaining on Maine’s waterfronts due to increasing land values.”
Seventy-nine percent of respondents “would show some level of support for a proposal that would give Maine’s working waterfronts the same protection against rising property taxes as Maine’s farm and forestry lands.”
High levels of concern showed up across age, income and geographic divisions, indicating that support for addressing the forces challenging this unique region is widespread.
As if to prove this point, a press release arrived on our desk the same day as we learned of the polling results: the governor was to announce “low-cost financing through Coastal Enterprises, Inc.’s Working Waterfront Loan Fund available to fishing co-ops, private pier owners, marine-related businesses for maintenance, repairs, dredging, environmental upgrades and acquisition….
“Protecting the working waterfront,” the news release concluded, “is smart economic development…”
The polls are in, the politicians are on board. Now we’ll get somewhere.