How to Save Maine for One Thin Dime

It looks, feels and reads like a newspaper. Appearing on newsstands, A Maine Manifest even costs a dime. But it is a master plan--a compilation of data, projections and ideas of the kind that most citizens never see. It tells how Maine's residents "might regain control of the state's future, which has slipped away from them."

Maine's dilemma is to gain the benefits of economic development without ruining its glorious natural environment. That the poverty-stricken state will grow is certain: its thick stands of timber, its scenic land and deep harbors ensure more manufacturing, trade and tourism. As in most states, development has been disorderly, resulting in an ominous trend toward the most irreversible sort of pollution--badly used land. To stop that trend, A Maine Manifest proposes several steps, including:

-Tax reform to relieve one of the nation's stiffest property taxes (which encourages poor property maintenance and piecemeal land sales) and to raise new revenues to preserve, maintain and restore land.

-- A land bank, which would acquire land, by right of eminent domain if necessary, in the name of the people of Maine and for their perpetual benefit.

-Community-development corporations to set up and control new local and regional businesses.

Such proposals clearly require, as the plan says, that "the people of Maine feel free to submit personal interests to the common good." While none of the proposals is unprecedented--Oregon has put its entire Pacific shoreline in the public domain, for example, and many states encourage community corporations--Maine's individualist Yankees do not take kindly to infringements on their liberties.

The Manifest is the result of a $44,000 study by The Allagash Group, an informal think tank in Bath, Me. Behind Allagash is John Cole, 49, editor of the weekly Maine Times, who has put his journalistic experience to good use. "When you do a research job," he explains, "you've got to package it for the public." Hence the newspaper format, style and distribution.

The study was prepared mainly by Richard Barringer, a political-science lecturer at Harvard, who says of his handiwork, "I want it to change Maine forever." That may be too much to ask, but the paper is at least being read. Though few state legislators have yet commented on the proposals, environmentalists and commercial boosters alike praise the report as "balanced" and "provocative." The first run of 5,000 copies has already sold out--plain proof that what this country really needs is a good 10-c- land plan.

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