LEWISTON – A comprehensive review of the state’s economy recommends an aggressive plan to borrow almost $400 million, restructure the state’s taxes and cut government spending by as much as $100 million a year.

The recommendations are all focused on taking decisive action to shore up the state’s strengths, including its brand, its quality of place and the characteristics that make Maine special.

Eighteen months in the making and with a price tag of almost $1 million, “Charting Maine’s Future: An Action Plan for Promoting Sustainable Prosperity and Quality Places,” an economic development strategy created by the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, will be released at noon today at Bates Mill No. 6.

The study was commissioned by GrowSmart Maine and a coalition of business, environmental and government partners to join the ongoing conversation about economic development, the cost of government and taxes.

According to Alan Caron, the president of GrowSmart, the plan will enhance and preserve the state’s brand – Made in Maine still means something, he said – and protect the characteristics and quality of community that are attracting people to the state.

Included in Brookings’ recommendations is an analysis both of where the state stands economically and a strategy to capitalize on the state’s advantages and address some of its problems, which include high state government costs and K-12 school administration, conflicting government regulations and improperly managed growth.

“Maine is poised for prosperity,” said Bruce Katz, the director of the Metropolitan Policy Program, “but prosperity is not inevitable.”

According to Katz, a pervasive pessimism is running through the state, which is faced with a number of real challenges; nonetheless, “We are bullish about Maine’s future despite what we’ve heard.”

To former Gov. Angus King, who is involved with GrowSmart and familiar with the report, the data backing up that positive attitude is one of the big findings in the report – that things aren’t as bad as common perception suggests.

“The Maine economy has gone through some unnerving changes in the last 25 years,” King said this week. “The report tells us that we are about the national average for the portion of our economy made up of manufacturing. But people think it’s much worse. … Our incomes are rising. … We’re the fifth-fastest growing state in the country. It’s so contrary to what people think.”

The report recommends several big ideas and includes ways to pay for them.

Notably, Brookings suggests two large, 10-year bond programs, increasing the amount of money available to communities that want to consolidate services, tax reductions and a community grant program. The report also heavily emphasizes reducing the amount of money spent on K-12 administration.

To pay for its suggestions, the report says that the lodging tax should be increased, and that a commission similar to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission should be formed to evaluate and ultimately reduce the size of state government. The plan would increase the tax on lodging from 7 percent to 10 percent, raising about $20 million per year, and it estimates that between $60 million and $100 million in savings could be culled from state government per year.

The higher lodging tax would fund a $190 million Maine Quality Places Fund that would support community revitalization, land and farm conservation, access to forests and lakes and tourism promotion.

Savings from cuts in state government would pay for a $180 million Innovation Jobs Fund that would support research and development in areas such as forest bioproducts, information technology and advanced composite materials. The savings would also provide for $2 million annually to support cooperation between municipalities to more efficiently deliver services.

The reductions in state spending also would be applied to reducing property taxes, lowering the top income tax rate from 8.5 percent to 8 percent and expanding income tax brackets so a person could make more money before reaching the top rate.

A Maine Community Enhancement Fund, which would support reform in building codes and better planning tools for towns, would be paid for with a $20 increase in the deed transaction fee, generating between $5 million and $8 million per year.

“In the end, this report affirms Mainers’ abiding intuition that economic success and quality places matter equally, and can be fostered by effective, frugal government,” the report’s authors write. “Move along these lines and Maine people will achieve a good measure of what they so earnestly desire.”