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(Republicans, Michaud staff spar over accuracy of two campaign ads)
(Portland economy losing ground at 'alarming' rate, study shows)
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The Michaud campaign defended the ad and reiterated calls for TV stations to pull an ad from the Republican Governors Association, which claims Michaud supports giving welfare to illegal immigrants. The Democrat s campaign called that claim false, and questioned the sources purporting to back it up.
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Bill Becker, president of the Portland Community Chamber, who called the results alarming, said the study will help city officials and business leaders identify the barriers preventing businesses and people from moving to Portland. Ultimately, chamber officials hope to use the data to affect policy decisions within the city, he said.
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  Our job as a chamber is to take this data and act on it, Becker said.
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The back-and-forth highlights the role of television advertising 鈥?<a href=http://www.symbiose.ca/images/christianlouboutin.gwij.php>Christian Louboutin Outlet</a>  both positive and negative 鈥?in Maine s tight gubernatorial race pitting Republican Gov. Paul LePage against the six-term congressman and independent candidate Eliot Cutler.
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Results of the study should serve as a warning to local elected officials, business leaders and residents that Portland s economic-growth strategy needs improvement.
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  Campaigns still overwhelmingly drop their money into TV, said Mark Brewer, an associate professor of political science at the University of Maine. That tells you that TV is still a dominant player in influencing voter choice and moving public opinion.  
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  We don t want to go through another boom and bust, said Christopher Hall, CEO of the Portland Regional Chamber. If we don t improve these lagging indicators, we will.  
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Michaud s ad features the headline House Passes Michaud Amendment Requiring 100% Made-in-USA Uniforms under a State News Services banner styled to resemble the front page of a newspaper. However, that organization, which is actually called States News Service, appears to be an online aggregation of news releases issued by members of Congress.
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The study was scheduled to be distributed at the monthly Portland Chamber Eggs and Issues breakfast at the Holiday Inn by the Bay. It was prepared by Camoin Associates of Scarborough, which has researched the three previous scorecards.
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Some of the data was sobering. Although Portland had job increases in certain sectors, overall job growth was sluggish. Total employment decreased by 0.1 percent in Portland from 2012 to 2013, compared with employment growth of 0.2 percent for Maine and 1.2 percent for the U.S., the study found.
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During a media conference Monday at Republican headquarters in Augusta, Bennett didn t dispute facts stated in the ad, but said Michaud was essentially padding his resume by citing his own release as a source.
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Job growth is important to the economy because it determines how easy or difficult it will be for residents <a href=http://capstone.edu.sg/images/gucciusaonlineoutlet.php>gucci outlet</a>  to find work, the study said, adding that steady employment growth is a sign of economic stability.
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It s a simple rule my son in his junior year of high school understands: You cannot cite yourself as a source, Bennett said. Yet after 34 years in politics, Mr. Michaud broke that rule.  
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Another weak area for the city was the average annual wage, the study found. While the city s 2014 average of $44,289 was higher than the state average of $37,215, it was nearly 7 percent lower than the national average annual wage of $47,451.
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Bennett said it wasn t the first time that Michaud s ads have faced criticism.
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The average annual wage reflects whether the city has an adequate number of higher-quality, professional jobs. Hall pointed out that while Portland s unemployment rate continues to fall, so does its average wage, which signifies that a growing share of jobs are <a href=http://capstone.edu.sg/clreplicashoes.php>Christian Louboutin Outlet</a>  low-paying.
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Last summer, Michaud had to revise an ad that claimed Maine had lost jobs, when in fact it had added jobs. The ad was based on information from the Pew Charitable Trusts Stateline news service, whose data was later corrected by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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High property taxes are a major red flag for employers and workers considering Portland as a place to locate, Hall said.
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In 2012, Michaud exaggerated upgrades that Republican Kevin Raye, the former state Senate president, made to a small kitchen area of his office by using an unrelated stock photo of a large, shiny kitchen with an island.
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The study found that the average home-owning household in Portland spends about 10.1 percent of its income on property taxes, compared with 5.1 percent in Maine overall. The average property tax among all the larger cities in Maine is 7.5 percent of household income.
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Michaud campaign spokeswoman Lizzy Reinholt said the claims in Michaud s recent ad are accurate. The campaign used the image of a fictitious newspaper banner because the headline was the simplest and most straightforward, she said.
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A high property tax decreases the attractiveness of a city to outsiders, which deters in-migration and stifles economic growth, the study said.
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Reinholt criticized a TV ad by the Republican Governors Association that claims Michaud supports giving welfare to illegal immigrants. A letter was sent last Wednesday to TV stations, asking them to pull the ad, she said.
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Just to be blunt about it, we need to get more people to move here, Hall said. And so we need to set the table for that.  
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In the letter, Philip Saucier, an attorney for the Michaud campaign at the Portland law firm Bernstein Shur, said the ad made three false claims: Michaud did not say he supports welfare for illegal immigrants in the article cited by the ad; the cost estimate of $1 million does not stand up to scrutiny, <a href=http://capstone.edu.sg/images/gucciusaonlineoutlet.php> cheap gucci</a>  because it includes costs for asylum- and refugee-seekers who are here legally; and a claim that Maine would be more attractive to illegal immigrants isn t sourced.
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One indication of the deterrent effect of high property taxes is Portland s low population growth rate. According to the study, the city s population grew by 0.1 percent from 2012 to 2013, compared with U.S. population growth of 0.7 percent.
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Steve Carter, <a href=http://www.museosangennaro.com/Public/wdluk.php>Christian Louboutin Shoes Sale</a>  station manager of WCSH in Portland, said the Federal Communications Commission prohibits stations from censoring political ads that are paid for and authorized by candidates. Those rules don t apply to ads purchased by outside groups, but Carter said the station has reviewed the complaint about the RGA ad and will not take it down.
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From 2009 to 2013, Portland s population shrank by 0.1 percent, compared with 3.1 percent growth nationwide. Maine s population during the same period also decreased by 0.1 percent.
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Station managers at WGME in Portland and WMTW in Auburn did not respond to requests for comment.
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A healthy level of population growth ensures there will be sufficient workers to fill the jobs needed to support a growing economy, the study said.
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James Melcher, a political science professor at the University of Maine in Farmington, doesn t believe the ad criticized by the Republican Party should be pulled, because many ads use fake mastheads. He said Republicans could be making a tactical decision to criticize Michaud, since the RGA ad has come under fire by Michaud s campaign and a recent Portland Press Herald editorial.
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Affordability of housing also should be a major concern for Portland, Hall said. The study found that the average cost of owning a home in the city was far higher than in both Maine and the U.S.
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This could be an attempt to deflect attention from that, trying to make people say Look, the Michaud campaign is just as misleading, Melcher said. But I really don t think this critique will stick.  
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The average homeowner spent about 26.7 percent of annual income on housing in 2012, compared with 24.1 percent of income in Maine and 24.5 percent nationwide, the study said.
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Brewer, however, believes that if the Republican criticism is true, the Michaud campaign ought to edit the ad.
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Renters fared better. The average renter in Portland in 2012 spent about 31.1 percent of household income on rent, compared with 33.1 percent in other major cities nationwide.
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I think it makes perfectly good sense for the Republicans to do this, given that it s not the first time Michaud kind of stepped in this stuff, Brewer said.
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Not all of the scorecard s findings were negative. Portland scored better than the national average in areas such as unemployment rate, education level, property value increases and low crime, among others.
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Hall said none of the previous three scorecards have led to policy changes, but this fourth installment is significant because it includes five years of data that show clear historical trends.
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Hall said city officials need to come up with more specific goals for economic development using input from business leaders and residents. The chamber plans to hold a series of meetings over the coming year to gather that input, he said.
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Hall noted that the study and its negative findings should not be interpreted as a swipe at Portland s <a href=http://capstone.edu.sg/images/gucciusaonlineoutlet.php>gucci outlet</a>  government leaders.
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I hope people don t read this scorecard as some sort of indictment of city officials, he said. We all own these numbers.
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Revision as of 23:11, 1 October 2014

@@@ Bill Becker, president of the Portland Community Chamber, who called the results alarming, said the study will help city officials and business leaders identify the barriers preventing businesses and people from moving to Portland. Ultimately, chamber officials hope to use the data to affect policy decisions within the city, he said. 

Our job as a chamber is to take this data and act on it, Becker said.

Results of the study should serve as a warning to local elected officials, business leaders and residents that Portland s economic-growth strategy needs improvement. 

We don t want to go through another boom and bust, said Christopher Hall, CEO of the Portland Regional Chamber. If we don t improve these lagging indicators, we will.

The study was scheduled to be distributed at the monthly Portland Chamber Eggs and Issues breakfast at the Holiday Inn by the Bay. It was prepared by Camoin Associates of Scarborough, which has researched the three previous scorecards. Some of the data was sobering. Although Portland had job increases in certain sectors, overall job growth was sluggish. Total employment decreased by 0.1 percent in Portland from 2012 to 2013, compared with employment growth of 0.2 percent for Maine and 1.2 percent for the U.S., the study found. Job growth is important to the economy because it determines how easy or difficult it will be for residents <a href=http://capstone.edu.sg/images/gucciusaonlineoutlet.php>gucci outlet</a> to find work, the study said, adding that steady employment growth is a sign of economic stability. Another weak area for the city was the average annual wage, the study found. While the city s 2014 average of $44,289 was higher than the state average of $37,215, it was nearly 7 percent lower than the national average annual wage of $47,451. The average annual wage reflects whether the city has an adequate number of higher-quality, professional jobs. Hall pointed out that while Portland s unemployment rate continues to fall, so does its average wage, which signifies that a growing share of jobs are <a href=http://capstone.edu.sg/clreplicashoes.php>Christian Louboutin Outlet</a> low-paying. High property taxes are a major red flag for employers and workers considering Portland as a place to locate, Hall said. The study found that the average home-owning household in Portland spends about 10.1 percent of its income on property taxes, compared with 5.1 percent in Maine overall. The average property tax among all the larger cities in Maine is 7.5 percent of household income. A high property tax decreases the attractiveness of a city to outsiders, which deters in-migration and stifles economic growth, the study said. 

Just to be blunt about it, we need to get more people to move here, Hall said. And so we need to set the table for that.

One indication of the deterrent effect of high property taxes is Portland s low population growth rate. According to the study, the city s population grew by 0.1 percent from 2012 to 2013, compared with U.S. population growth of 0.7 percent. From 2009 to 2013, Portland s population shrank by 0.1 percent, compared with 3.1 percent growth nationwide. Maine s population during the same period also decreased by 0.1 percent. A healthy level of population growth ensures there will be sufficient workers to fill the jobs needed to support a growing economy, the study said. Affordability of housing also should be a major concern for Portland, Hall said. The study found that the average cost of owning a home in the city was far higher than in both Maine and the U.S. The average homeowner spent about 26.7 percent of annual income on housing in 2012, compared with 24.1 percent of income in Maine and 24.5 percent nationwide, the study said. Renters fared better. The average renter in Portland in 2012 spent about 31.1 percent of household income on rent, compared with 33.1 percent in other major cities nationwide. Not all of the scorecard s findings were negative. Portland scored better than the national average in areas such as unemployment rate, education level, property value increases and low crime, among others. Hall said none of the previous three scorecards have led to policy changes, but this fourth installment is significant because it includes five years of data that show clear historical trends. Hall said city officials need to come up with more specific goals for economic development using input from business leaders and residents. The chamber plans to hold a series of meetings over the coming year to gather that input, he said. Hall noted that the study and its negative findings should not be interpreted as a swipe at Portland s <a href=http://capstone.edu.sg/images/gucciusaonlineoutlet.php>gucci outlet</a> government leaders. 

I hope people don t read this scorecard as some sort of indictment of city officials, he said. We all own these numbers.

 

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