Tonight is the State of the State speech by Governor Lepage. It will be interesting to see what he comes out with tonight. Rumors have it that there are gong to be some initiatives that will really impact education, and after his ill advised comments about the need to pass his budget or he would close Maine’s schools as of Mat 1st it should be interesting to see what he has to say. In addition it is almost a given that there will be more talk about DHHS and other issues.
Perhaps the most interesting thing will be to see if he talks about the loss of Kestrel to Wisconsin. So far it has been the SODDIT (some other guy did it) routine. The fact of the matter is that the state does not have all of the resources that a larger state such as Wisconsin has. Plain and simple, we don’t have the ability to match larger states in these incentive packages. The blame doesn’t lie with the Governor’s office, with Coastal Enterprises, the base redevelopment efforts, or with the legislature. The fact of the matter is that we were probably used by Kestrel as a way to squeeze more out of Wisconsin.