Maine Policy Review publishes timely, independent, peer-reviewed analysis of public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine. The journal is published twice a year by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine and the Margaret Chase Smith Foundation. The material published within does not necessarily reflect the views of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center nor of the Margaret Chase Smith Foundation.
Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center & Margaret Chase Smith Foundation
In this Margaret Chase Smith essay, Frank O'Hara explores the effect of baby boomers on Maine’s landscape, culture, and politics.
Copyright (c) 2026 Maine Policy Review https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Whether it be artificial intelligence (AI) or the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes, there is no significant public debate about the social, economic, or environmental impacts of new technologies. Rather than rely on technology assessment to judge whether a new technology is good or bad for society, policymakers fall back on a belief that well-functioning markets will weigh benefits and costs better than research teams. The author argues that newness alone is not enough to justify letting the private sector decide what is in the public interest. The public interest is measured in more ways than just the investment returns for technology billionaires.
Transformational Resentment and Educational Persistence: Understanding Reentry Education in Maine
A recent study of formerly incarcerated individuals reveals education as a form of self-care that drives resilience and a unique pathway out of the criminal justice system. Participants emphasize the need for robust reentry support, including housing and mentorship, to facilitate educational success. Key policy implications include expanding educational access, strengthening reentry programs, integrating education with employment, enhancing data collection, and maximizing federal funding. Investing in education for justice-impacted individuals is crucial for reducing recidivism and creating a more equitable society.
An Opportunity for Healthcare Reform in Maine
The author reviews the three major approaches Maine legislators have taken to address problems within Maine's healthcare system—establishing commissions or boards, proposing bills to address specific problems, and proposing systemic reform. He then discusses a simple, practical opportunity for legislators to address them: appointing the Maine Health Care Board as established in law in 2021.
A half century ago, George Mitchell used the term “Two Maines” to describe rural Maine’s lagging economy and high incidence of poverty. Later, the State Planning Office divided the state into three regions: coastal, central, and rim counties. In 2005, the authors contributed to a report documenting the rim counties’ chronic socio-economic distress. This article updates the earlier analysis, presenting statistical indicators of change in rim county demographics, economics, and personal well-being compared to the rest of Maine. Evidence suggests that there have been improvements, but rim counties continue to lag the rest of Maine, especially the coastal counties, by many measures. But we also highlight stories of revitalization, focusing on Skowhegan and the Moosehead Lake region, that underscore the critical role of innovative leaders: entrepreneurs, towns, state agencies, and non-governmental organizations. They point to the potency of “silver buckshot” strategies, rather than a vain search for “silver bullet” solutions.
Meeting Essential and Quality of Life Needs of Rural Older Mainers through the Community Connector Pilot
Rural America is aging rapidly and experiencing health and population declines. Older age counties - those in which more than 20% of the population are age 65 or older - are overwhelmingly in rural locations. While some rural locations in Maine are destinations for retirees due to the beauty of the natural environment, those communities face housing, healthcare, and service access challenges and environmental pressures. Maine’s recent Statewide Needs Assessment for our State Plan on Aging identified many essential and quality of life unmet needs and preferences of older Mainers, including the many older adults living in rural areas. A recent State of Maine initiative, the Community Connector Pilot, shows promise for addressing the unmet needs of older people residing in rural locations. The Pilot will inform policy change for state and local governments and can be a successful model in future locations in Maine and other rural states.
The Role of Volunteerism in Bolstering Community Climate Capacity: A Case Study Approach to Explore Opportunities for Rural Maine
Maine’s rural communities are challenged with complex climate planning and preparedness in an environment with limited resources and competing priorities and do not have the capacity to undertake climate change mitigation or adaptation projects alone. Through existing literature and case studies, this paper highlights the opportunity and benefit of increased investment in recruitment, education, and training for local volunteers, to increase the capacity of rural Maine communities to effectively respond to climate risks.
Rural Resilience: The Role for Innovative Public Transportation
Access to employment, education, health care, and shopping is essential for any community. In rural communities, these destinations typically require access to a private vehicle or public transit given the distances involved and the lack of sidewalks, bike lanes, and other active transport systems. Rural communities can be particularly vulnerable to climate change as they may lack the human adaptive capacity to plan for and respond to climate-related natural disasters and generally possess more rigid transport systems. Our work reviews the provision of rural public transit in Maine and similar rural states and makes recommendations on how innovative public transit can enhance mobility and add to rural resilience. In addition, we explore applied and theoretical applications of on-demand transit and microtransit. We note that ongoing, stable funding for public transit and rural public transit continues to be a challenge.
Maine’s Rural Maternity Crisis: A Policy Agenda
Maine faces a worsening rural maternity crisis driven by the closure of hospital maternity units and deteriorating maternal health. Fifty-two percent of Maine's rural hospitals have closed their maternity units, creating vast maternity care deserts where pregnant women face the longest average drive times in New England for prenatal care and delivery. This crisis is compounded by workforce shortages, hospital financial pressures, declining birth rates, and Maine's status as the nation's oldest and most rural state. Rural pregnant women experience disproportionately high rates of chronic disease, substance use disorders, and mental health conditions, contributing to worse maternal and infant outcomes. Evidence-informed policy solutions require concurrent action: ensuring rural hospital financial stability through alternative reimbursement models, implementing regional care coordination, expanding telehealth services, diversifying the maternity workforce, addressing public health challenges and social determinants, ensuring safety across all birth settings, and supporting rural immigration to sustain communities and healthcare systems.
A Personal Perspective on Rural Maine’s Coastal Transformation
This commentary explores how the structure of home rule, rising gentrification, conservation rhetoric, and population change collide to threaten the future of working coastal towns.
An interview with Jennifer Blossom, a University of Maine faculty member and leader in rural mental health.
Recent Changes in Access to Care among Adults in Rural Maine
This study examines changes in access to care among adults in rural Maine from 2018 to 2023, a period of significant transformation in the state’s healthcare landscape. Using individual-level survey data, we document a substantial increase in the self-reported rate of health insurance coverage across rural Maine during this period, reaching 94 percent in 2023. Coverage gains are most pronounced among adults in more remote and economically disadvantaged rural areas and are accompanied by steep reductions in financial barriers to care. We also find large increases in several measures of primary and preventive care, including higher rates of annual checkups and having a personal doctor. Despite these gains, we find evidence of ongoing access challenges, with over one in four adults in rural Maine delaying medical care for reasons other than costs in 2022, and persistent disparities in access to dental care between adults in metro and rural areas. The findings from our analysis highlight both recent progress and continuing barriers to healthcare access across rural Maine communities.
Beyond the Breaking Point: Maine’s Behavioral Health Workforce Crisis
Maine’s behavioral health workforce crisis has escalated into a structural threat to the state’s economy. Chronic underinvestment in training, compensation, and access has left providers overwhelmed and entire communities underserved. This commentary examines the economic toll of the workforce shortage, drawing on labor and industry data to illustrate its impact on productivity, public spending, and key sectors—fishing, forestry, agriculture, and tourism. In rural regions especially, the shortage drives higher emergency department use, workforce attrition, and municipal costs tied to unemployment and crisis care. Structural barriers—such as fragmented credentialing, supervision shortages, and inequitable access—worsen disparities and stall workforce development. The analysis argues that closing behavioral health workforce gaps is not only a healthcare imperative, but a strategic economic investment. Policy recommendations include reimbursement reform, paid training pipelines, telehealth expansion, and integration of behavioral health into statewide economic planning. Maine’s long-term economic resilience depends on urgent, coordinated public investment in behavioral health infrastructure.
Addressing Climate Change by Expanding Transportation Choices for Rural Maine
Maine has a transportation problem. Our system of moving people and goods around the state is expensive, dangerous, and polluting, and it is increasingly clear that this system is not sustainable from an economic or environmental standpoint. This problem isn’t unique to Maine, but it is particularly acute in a rural state such as ours that has historically overinvested in car infrastructure while underinvesting in public, active, and community transportation options. Transportation is by far the most polluting sector in our state, accounting for nearly half of Maine’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing transportation emissions is “Plan A” in Maine’s climate action plan, but car traffic and associated pollution continues to increase year over year, tragically correlated with an uptick in pedestrian casualties. Transitioning to a clean transportation system does not have to be a sacrifice. In fact, it is a major opportunity to improve Maine’s connectivity while increasing safety for all users, inducing economic growth by investing in quality public transit and appealing walking and biking infrastructure, improving accessibility for people with no or limited access to a vehicle, reducing transportation costs, and minimizing environmental harm. Rural communities in Maine are constrained by system dependence on expensive, dangerous, and polluting private vehicles, but this does not have to be the case. NRCM has been working on several policies to reduce transportation sector emissions by increasing transportation options for all Mainers, which in turn will make Maine’s transportation system safer, cleaner, more accessible, and less expensive.
Quality of Place in Rural Maine: The Way Life Should Be
This paper examines quality of place across Maine counties, with a focus on differences between rural and urban areas and comparisons to all US counties. A wide range of factors are considered, including climate (e.g., January temperature), natural features (e.g., percentage of area covered by water), the location of arts and recreation businesses (e.g., museums, skiing facilities, and marinas), services (e.g., healthcare and childcare), housing costs, local economic opportunities (e.g., job growth) and population density. Results show that several Maine counties rate high nationally for natural features, arts and recreation, healthcare and childcare services, and low population densities. However, people and places face significant tradeoffs when considering these different aspects of an area’s quality of place. The study finds that attempts to enhance a region’s quality of place need to recognize that individual preferences vary widely and actions that benefit one group may not align with the interests of others.
Place-Based Strategies for Economic Resilience in Rural Northern Maine
This research paper will examine how extremely rural Maine communities are adapting conventional development tools to meet their unique circumstances, demonstrating how approaches considered standard elsewhere represent a significant innovation in rural contexts. Using northern Maine's post-Loring Air Force Base experience as a framework, the paper explores five interconnected areas of rural development: housing and land use, broadband connectivity, industry recruitment, downtown revitalization, and adaptive tourism. Transportation challenges and solutions are woven throughout each section, highlighting how mobility (or lack thereof) fundamentally shapes rural development opportunities.
List of reviewers for Maine Policy Review, Volume 34.
Islands on the Edge: Resilience and Risk in Maine’s Year-Round Island Communities
Maine’s 15 year-round island communities are on the front lines of converging challenges—including climate change, housing shortages, volunteer burnout, and economic fragility. Based on a 2024 learning tour in the aftermath of record-breaking winter storms, this article explores the vulnerabilities and strengths of these unique rural communities. Despite rising sea levels, declining fisheries, and seasonal population pressures, islanders are responding with creativity and collaboration—from community-owned housing and aquaculture diversification to region-wide climate planning. Drawing on firsthand observations and community conversations, the piece highlights both the urgency for place-based policy solutions and the islands as inspiring examples for adaptation in rural and coastal regions nationwide.
From Resilience Planning to Action: Small Towns and Big Costs
These authors explored the transition from climate planning to action in semistructured interviews with town staff and leading volunteers in each of the nine communities. They focused on coastal communities with fewer than 3,000 people and organized as towns. All are in Hancock County, had completed a climate vulnerability assessment or had one underway, and experienced substantial, costly damage in the January 2024 storms.
Assessing the Needs of Southern Maine Farmers: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Role of Extension
Southern Maine’s (York County) farming community is experiencing both growth and disruption as producers navigate opportunities and challenges shaped by shifting demographics, climate, and markets. A 2024 needs assessment identified key strengths, including diversification through agritourism, expanded access to resources via UMaine Cooperative Extension and USDA-NRCS programs, and emerging legislative support for PFAS remediation and sustainable practices. However, persistent barriers such as rising land costs, limited cold storage, labor shortages, and unpredictable weather threaten long-term viability. Knowledge gaps in business planning, labor recruitment, and Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) remain widespread. While Extension is valued as a trusted source of support, producers emphasized the need for more localized outreach, culturally relevant programming, and advocacy around small farm viability and land use policy. This assessment highlights the essential role of Extension in fostering resilience and shaping Maine’s future agricultural landscape through targeted, community-driven solutions.
Recreation and Regulation: A Policy Analysis of the Registered Maine Guide Program
This article is a thorough policy analysis of Maine’s Registered Maine Guide (RMG) statutes, rules, and interpretations, with a focus on the recreational class of guiding. The analysis included a review of similar policies from other states, defining existing issues, developing alternative solutions, and seeking feedback from key stakeholders via a survey and interviews. The RMG system was created in 1897 and the basics have remained consistent for well over a century: people who receive compensation for leading others into the woods and onto the waterways of the state of Maine must be Registered Maine Guides. There are now six Guide classifications for different types of activities and specific environments. RMGs work in all corners of the state, particularly in rural and remote outdoor recreation and forested areas. Though the Registered Maine Guide label is highly visible and well-respected, the program has encountered issues for decades, particularly in relation to who and what activities require a license. In some instances, exemptions and entirely new licensure programs have been developed in response to conflicts. This is the first comprehensive policy analysis of the RMG program since a legislative review was completed in 1988, and it will hopefully establish a new baseline of information from which future RMG policy discussions can be based.
Perspectives from Rural Maine Educators: Supporting and Inspiring Youth Through Place-Based Education
In rural Maine, daily life is intimately tied to the natural environment. Changes in seasonal milestones like the timing and yields of potato harvest and maple sap production impact how communities engage and work together. To adapt to this changing landscape, young Mainers must develop knowledge and skills to connect their physical surroundings to their ways of life. One way to support youth in this endeavor is through place-based experiences, which make learning geographically and personally relevant and build upon knowledge of industry, technology, natural resources, and local history. As a pedagogical framework, place-based education (PBE) is a relatively new approach. It has been shown to benefit youth engagement, collaboration, and content learning, but often requires more time, relationship-building, community support, and curricular flexibility than traditional STEM instruction. In this article, we present a case study of nine in-school and out-of-school rural Maine educators to examine if and how PBE is implemented in rural contexts. We find that while educators do not necessarily elect to use PBE to structure their activities per se, the ways in which they engage with youth are prime examples of PBE in practice. We highlight shared features and challenges of designing and implementing place-based experiences for youth and detail examples of activities anchored around local changes in natural phenomena. These perspectives demonstrate how the defining qualities of rural life create an ideal context for PBE and offer insights into conditions and strategies for all educators as they prepare youth as leaders towards a resilient future.
Amplifying Rural Voices in Maine Climate Planning
In 2024, the University of Maine’s Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions partnered with the Maine Climate Council to support the update of Maine Won’t Wait, the State’s climate action plan. This project focused on expanding participation to include people not engaged in the original 2020 plan development and people who may experience barriers to engagement: households with low incomes, people of color, older adults, and rural and climate frontline communities. The Mitchell Center team partnered with 21 community-based organizations to conduct 73 engagements in 26 communities, collaborated with Wabanaki partners, and implemented a statewide survey co-designed with partners. Engagement and survey findings highlight the importance of climate solutions that meet basic needs—affordable transportation, housing, heating, and community services—and education, capacity building, and funding that address climate change and the cost of living in coordination. These insights informed the 2024 climate plan update and continue to guide policy development and implementation.
Stormwater Management Challenges in Rural Coastal Maine: Identifying Place-Based Solutions by Studying Current Practices
In December 2023 and January of 2024, three historically severe storms resulted in catastrophic flooding, overwhelming culverts and stormwater infrastructure in Maine’s rural coastal communities. These storm events highlight the urgent need to accelerate climate resilience planning and investment. In many rural coastal communities, culvert conditions and frequent and powerful storms cause malfunctions and failures, often leading to flooded streets and disruptions throughout communities. Stormwater management (SWM) practices vary across communities, ranging from periodic inspections and cleaning to systematic data collection, and many rural communities struggle to maintain and upgrade their stormwater systems. To better understand current SWM and maintenance practices and challenges, we conducted semi-structured interviews with town officials of three rural Maine counties. Conversations with town officials revealed challenges such as delays in problem point identification due to lack of formal data collection, a dearth of mapping systems, and dependence on word-of-mouth knowledge. SWM is deprioritized due to budget constraints and the common practice of delegating multiple responsibilities to a single person. Therefore, reactive rather than proactive decision making is prevalent, increasing failure risk and cost and time for repairs. We found that stormwater system managers in Hancock and Waldo County placed stronger emphasis than their Washington County counterparts on collaborative efforts with neighboring towns and adaptive upgrades to address capacity limitations. Preliminary findings suggest voluntary education, collaboration among towns, culvert inventory, and stormwater system mapping could lead to community-engaged, prompt decision-making and sustainable SWM. Addressing the identified gaps strengthens communities against recurrent storms benefiting rural Maine and beyond.
STEM Nights in Rural Maine: Connecting Classrooms, Careers, and Communities
Community STEM Nights have emerged as a powerful rural engagement strategy through Maine’s Workforce Ready 2030 (WFR) research–practice partnership. In one of the most rural states in the U.S., these educator-led events bring students, families, and local employers together around hands-on learning in computer science (CS) and emerging technologies. Grounded in principles of co-design, relevance, and local leadership, STEM Nights connect CS education to Maine’s heritage industries and community priorities. This article explores how rural educators use these nights to foster intergenerational learning, build trust, and make CS both accessible and place-based. With growing participation and evidence of impact, STEM Nights offer a scalable model for rural districts looking to deepen engagement and expand equitable CS pathways.
Designing Educational Opportunities that Inspire Youth Aspirations and Strengthen Rural Community Vitality
Rural Aspirations Project (RAP) is a small nonprofit founded by rural, public school educators with experience working in traditional and alternative classrooms and in designing innovative educational programming. We (1) co-design and facilitate visionary, responsive professional development for rural schools, offering a clear process that builds and strengthens systems to sustain the work; (2) build thematic collaborative projects that invite communities to imagine a vital future, leading to hands-on, community-connected learning experiences; (3) collaborate with and build networks to connect organizations, businesses, and agencies into design processes and the needs of rural schools. Over 12 years, RAP’s work has evolved in response to a broadening understanding of rural education and statewide economic and community initiatives working towards a vibrant future in Maine. We believe that if we work in the “in-between” spaces to center youth, educators, and community, and create programs, curricula, and systems that result in participants building a sense of self, place, and belonging, then youth will develop healthy aspirations and contribute to rural community vitality. In this article, we unpack our theory of change and examples of our work to understand the systems and policies needed to connect youth aspirations to community vitality in rural schools.
Are We There Yet? Changing Migration Patterns in Rural Maine and Implications for Long-Term Population Growth
Over the past few years, rural Maine has found itself at an unexpected demographic crossroads. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the state’s rural counties experienced minimal or negative population growth, reflecting broader national trends of rural decline. Maine’s demographic composition compounds these challenges, with many residents aging out of the workforce. However, the pandemic disrupted previous migration patterns, as an influx of new residents led to a notable increase in rural population growth. While this shift marked a sharp departure from pre-pandemic trends, questions remain about its long-term impact. This study uses population projections under three migration scenarios to consider the potential outcomes for rural areas. The findings have implications for policymakers, planners, and community leaders. If recent growth persists, it could help counteract workforce shortages and revitalize communities long challenged by demographic and economic decline. However, if it proves temporary, rural Maine may continue to grapple with an aging population and labor force contraction, exacerbating socioeconomic pressures.
Tradition in Transition: Fishing, Hunting, and Food Security in a Changing Maine
We explore how rural Maine people, who possess a long heritage of fishing and hunting, are navigating impacts from environmental contamination and climate change. Two surveys conducted in collaboration with Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife: one with Maine fishing license holders (August 2024, n = 3,549) and another with Maine hunting license holders (March 2025, n = 13,330) allow for an in-depth exploration of current fishing and hunting habits, including reliance on wild foods for sustenance, concern about environmental contaminants such as PFAS, and views on climate change. Key findings reveal that wild meat is an important component of food security for many hunters, with rural anglers and hunters being significantly more likely than their urban counterparts to hunt or fish to support their household's food security. Nearly all large game hunters but far fewer anglers consume their harvest. Awareness of contaminants varies, with hunters reporting higher recognition of PFAS than anglers. Although a substantial portion of sportspeople are informed about consumption advisories, over one-third are unaware or unsure that they exist. Few people report changing their hunting or fishing behaviors due to environmental contamination concerns. We document a strong awareness of climate change and its impact on fishing and hunting opportunities in Maine. A majority of rural Mainers agree that climate change is happening and impacting Maine. This research documents how rural Maine residents are adapting traditional practices amidst evolving environmental challenges, highlighting areas for targeted outreach and policy considerations to support food security and rural traditions.
Education as a Rural, Public Good: Preparing Maine’s People, Families, Schools and Communities for the Opportunities of Tomorrow
Looking toward the future, Maine faces many wicked problems that will require innovative, human-centered solutions. Without such a response, climate change, an aging workforce, housing shortages, widening geographic opportunity divides, growing economic inequality, and other pressing challenges threaten the state’s long-term economic prosperity. Education informed by and linked to rural community development will be an essential strategy for creating the adaptive, transformative change required to turn the challenges of the future into the opportunities of tomorrow. In this article, we contextualize the idea of education as a public good specifically for Maine’s rural communities. We then propose a framework for understanding the role of the universities in supporting rural communities as they try to balance global educational priorities, leverage local assets, and address regional challenges.
Small Rural Town Revitalization in Maine: Test Pilot of the SEED Model
The Sustainable Ecosystem Economic Development (SEED) model is a methodology designed to facilitate revitalization in small towns and rural communities. During the 2023–2024 academic year, our team of faculty advisors and students served as project champions to implement a pilot test of this model, leveraging the unique expertise and resources of relevant stakeholders to support a small town in rural Maine. The approach included communication and relationship-building with the town manager and stakeholders, a knowledge summit to discern needs and capabilities, an iterative process of resource-needs mapping, and providing deliverables based on the town’s requirements with sustainable practices.