In 2014, I moved my family from the heart of Washington, D.C. to Falmouth, Maine. I grew up in Portland throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s but had not lived full-time in Maine since 1989. The reasons for coming back were simple: safe communities, low cost of living, and strong public schools for my two daughters. However, over the last six years, the quality of life in Maine has gone over a cliff, and that fact is inextricably linked to the Democratic Party’s complete control of state government since 2019.
Perhaps nowhere is Maine’s decline more evident than its collapsing public school system. In 2018, Maine’s schools were ranked 19th in the nation among all states. Today, those same rankings have Maine’s public schools dead last. Reinforcing this calamity, Maine students recently produced the lowest test scores in reading and math in 30 years, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a.k.a. the Nation’s Report Card.
[RELATED: Shocking Chart Shows the Alarming — and Expensive — Failure of Maine’s Public Schools…]
Despite students across Maine being unable to differentiate a preposition from a past participle, the Maine Department of Education under Gov. Janet Mills (D) is working hard to ensure students can accurately recite their pronouns and the innumerable genders that supposedly exist. Meanwhile, as the quality of Maine’s education system has collapsed, Maine’s education spending has grown nearly 45 percent over the last decade from a total of roughly 1.1 billion in 2014 to just over $1.6 billion in 2023.
While Maine currently enjoys the worst ranked schools in the nation, it’s excelling at producing some of the highest tax rates among the fifty states. According to the Tax Foundation, Maine ranks 48th when it comes to its property tax rate and 40th for business taxes. Despite this already heavy tax burden, Democrats in Augusta want to increase taxes on Maine people by millions of dollars. Gov. Mills has proposed hiking taxes on cigarettes, hospitals, ambulances, and entertainment streaming, while some Democratic lawmakers want to raise income taxes even higher.
In addition to high taxes and burgeoning education spending that produce negative education results, Maine has seen its total budget increase by 85 percent under Governor Mills and the Democrats in the legislature, or from $8.8 billion in 2019 to $13 billion in 2023. According to the Maine Policy Institute, the governor’s current budget proposal would increase general fund spending by an additional $1.1 billion compared to the last biennial budget. [Disclosure: The Maine Wire is a project of the Maine Policy Institute.]
Mainers have also watched in shock as the cost of living has ballooned from just a few short years ago. In 2018, the median sale price for a home in Maine was $215,000. Today, it’s $360,000, and rising. These out of control prices make it virtually impossible for most people to afford a home here, as they would need an annual income of $110,000 to make such a purchase and the median income in Maine is just under $76,000.
As housing affordability has decreased, homelessness in Maine has skyrocketed to record levels starting in 2022. On top of making homes unaffordable to buy, the increased property taxes that go along with rising home prices are pushing older Maine homeowners on fixed incomes to the brink. One Democrat mayor recently told the older people living in his city that their best option for paying sky-high property taxes might be a reverse mortgage!
Even as the housing and cost of living nightmare has progressed, the Mills Administration has welcomed thousands of illegal aliens across Maine at an estimated cost of $94 million annually for taxpayers, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s 2023 assessment. This dwarfs the estimated $15 million these migrants pay in taxes each year. Such mass migration stresses health, housing, social services, education, and public safety resources across the state.
The most dangerous change in the quality of life has been the rise of violent crime across Maine. In 2018, there were 23 murders in the state. In 2023, the most current data, there were nearly three times as many. While 18 of the 60 victims were from the mass shooting in Lewiston that year, that still leaves a total of 42 victims statewide, nearly double the number from 2018 and a 50 percent increase from 2022.
Mainers have also watched transnational criminal organizations from China, Mexico, and elsewhere infiltrate our communities while the state government does little to intercede. These organizations have helped push the fentanyl crisis in Maine which has contributed to nearly 10,000 total overdoses in 2023, among which over 600 were fatal. Drug related deaths totaled 354 in 2018.
These horrific changes across Maine creep into our lives often slowly and become normalized over time. To that end, Mainers must avoid becoming the proverbial frog in the boiling water. As the water slowly gets hotter, they don’t realize it until it boils over and it’s too late to escape. A textbook example of this phenomenon is the once mighty State of California.
Democrats in Augusta and across Maine often look to the former Golden State for inspiration. Meanwhile, California is collapsing in real time with its population implosion, homeless crisis, record poverty rates, crime waves, emergency response failures, inflation, and budget deficits that exceed Maine’s total budget outlays. California is a dire warning for Maine people, not a model.
While elected Democrats have led Maine down this perilous path, it will be up to Maine voters to change course. Those voters shifted right in the past election, but not enough to turn either chamber of the State Legislature over to conservatives as a check against Gov. Mills. The next election is not for another two years, and Maine will need a revolution of common sense to undo the catastrophic damage wrought upon our communities over these last six years. The future of the state depends on it.
