Just how conservative is the Cato Institute? Not enough if you’re the executive director of the Maine Heritage Policy Center.

Recently, the Cato Institute issued their fiscal policy report card. In the report, Cato rates several economic trends, like a state’s ability to keep tax rates low and keep spending growth in check. Gov. Baldacci received a B.

Pretty good, at least when I was in school.

But if you’re the Maine Heritage Policy Center and you see a Democratic governor get good marks for fiscal policy, you find yourself in a tough spot. As a right-wing partisan group, you have to decide between accepting that the governor did a good job, or you have to move even further to right. The Heritage Center decided to break ranks and move right.

Of course, if you do that, you put yourself out of touch with a group that’s been around for over 25 years, championing solidly conservative values like “Individual Liberty, Limited Government, and Free Markets.”

For the record, Baldacci’s grade was the seventh-highest among 25 freshman governors in the country. After hearing about the governor’s Cato grade, the Maine Heritage Policy Center claimed Baldacci’s grade was “bizarre.”

But the Maine Heritage Center’s opinion creates a gap between themselves and what everyone else thinks about Maine’s economy.

In their most recent move away from the mainstream, the center claimed that state spending under the governor “has increased annually by more than twice the rate of inflation.” The Cato Institute, on the other hand, contends that they give good grades to governors whose state budgets only grow at a rate equal to inflation.

Stephen Slivinski, co-author of the Cato report, said the governor has “been able to keep spending under control.” Slavinski defends the report further and says the governor deserves the grade he got.

There’s a reason for this. The average percentage growth in the state budget has decreased under Gov. Baldacci, down to 3.5 percent. Under the last Republican administration, state spending increased by close to six percent. Under Jim Longley, it was at more than 10 percent.

But the Heritage Center would rather ignore this.

They would also like to ignore cost-cutting measures in the governor’s most recent budget. Gov. Baldacci has proposed to consolidate state government services, making state operations more efficient by restructuring finance, payroll, information technologies and human resource services.

And then there’s economic growth. An independent report on the state’s economy from the Maine Revenue Services, State Planning Office and the Maine Department of Labor found that Maine’s economy created 4,700 new jobs during the governor’s term, recovering all of the jobs lost during the most recent recession. Maine’s gross state product and personal income growth rate were well above national averages. And in 2003, personal income growth was the 15th highest in the nation.

It makes sense that the Maine Heritage Policy Center didn’t know what to do when it faced Gov. Baldacci’s solid fiscal record and an economy that continues to pick up speed. It’s this success that railroaded the Heritage Center’s partisan agenda.

In response, it distanced itself from the Cato Institute, and that is what’s really “bizarre.”

Pat Colwell is chairman of the Maine Democratic Party. He lives in Bath.

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