Throughout much of Maine’s history, we have been served by governors who – like members of the British monarchy – did a lot of reigning but very little ruling. As a practical matter, the governor of Maine – at least until institution of the cabinet system in l972 and the abolition of the executive council in l977 – has been held hostage by the interests and values of legislative leadership.

Such mid-20th century governors as Sewall, Hildreth and Cross, were able to compensate for this institutional shortcoming because their immediate pre-gubernatorial experiences included service in legislative leadership and because the legislative leaders in office during their gubernatorial tenure were themselves members of their own political party.

Having so recently emerged from the legislative fraternity, they could usually achieve parity with their Republican brethren who would also occasionally yield to the desire of one of their erstwhile colleagues to dominate.

Though Cross’s successor, Democrat Edmund Muskie, had to confront a Legislature controlled by an opposing political party, his status as a popular recent member helped him cross many a political river during his four years in the Blaine House.

In the late 1960s, Democrat Ken Curtis was not so lucky. He was only the second governor in Maine history to have been neither a legislative veteran nor a member of the same political party as the legislators in office during his tenure. (The first, Clinton Clauson, succumbed to a heart attack after less than a year in office in 1959.)

Though as governor Curtis possessed leadership of a significant Democratic legislative minority and also held veto power over GOP proposals, policy initiatives were often the prerogative of the most active and creative in the Republican leadership.

Meet GOP legislative leader Harry Richardson, Maine’s de facto policy leader during the late l960s and early 1970s era of the Curtis administration. The one-time UMaine offensive tackle and Chicago trial attorney would find many occasions to use his strategic athletic and courtroom instincts. Though it is Curtis’ portrait that now graces State House corridors, it is often Richardson’s image that comes to mind when one considers the lasting impact of the Curtis years, particularly in the area of environmental laws.

Reflecting on this period one afternoon with this columnist at the North Gorham home of Richardson and his wife, Cate, Richardson recalled the 1940s era comments of his father, a one-time UMaine county extension agent: “You know, if we keep doing what we are doing to the groundwater supply we are going to end up having bottled water in this state.”

At the time, Richardson now says, “I thought that was absolutely crazy of course” but with the proliferation of the bottled water phenomenon, Richardson can see how his father’s environmental wisdom has proven eerily prophetic.

Richardson’s personal awakening on the environment occurred in a House debate over downgrading classification of Aroostook County’s Prestile Stream. This was a bill passed during Richardson’s freshman term in 1965 before his own rise to political prominence, but enacted only after an ardent protest from the Cumberland County backbencher. “As far as I am concerned any corporation that does not want to comply with our environmental law should move out, and I will meet them in Kittery with a brass band,” comments that drew a rebuke from fellow freshman member John Martin, who like others in the Aroostook County delegation, supported the stream’s downgrading so as to pave the way for further development of a sugar beet refinery.

It didn’t take long for the views Richardson promoted to become ascendant. By 1969, Richardson steered through a series of environmental laws that are even today a cornerstone for curtailing pollution in Maine.

The Coastal Oil Conveyancing Law – imposing strict and unlimited liability on not just ships but also terminal operators for petroleum spills – establishment of the Board of Environmental Protection and other environmental measures became law with Richardson’s alert and enthusiastic stewardship. Such laws made Maine a model for many other states.

A favorite Richardson environmental bill is one that never made it onto the books but did almost as much to provoke a change in land use preservation policies as any of the ones that did. For over a hundred years, the major paper companies had held timber rights to thousands of acres of so-called “public” lots in Maine’s unorganized territories. Maine law also provided, however, that once an unorganized territory became incorporated as either a town or plantation that these private paper company cutting rights would terminate.

Richardson seized upon the idea that if Maine law placed all of the state’s unorganized territory into organized plantations, the century-old paper company cutting rights on state-owned land would finally come to an end with the state then being able to take a more active hand in managing and preserving remote but valuable environmental resources.

Though this Richardson bill didn’t pass it “scared the hell out of them,” and brought the major paper companies to the State House bargaining table. The threat of its approval led to something of a win-win outcome for both sides. The paper companies in many places exchanged their cutting rights for a fixed title in a marketable parcel of land, more fully ascertaining for all parties where they stood and making land use planning decisions in the northern half of Maine more predictable. Such a policy was also a harbinger of the Land for Maine’s Future and similar programs on the books today.

Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analysis and historical understanding of Maine’s political scene. He may be reached by writing to him at 163 Main St., P.O. Box 608, Farmington, ME 04938-0608; or by e-mail at pmills@midmaine.com.

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