It’s been clear this decade that “LA: It’s Happening Here” is more than just a catchy slogan.

This week, more good news about economic progress in Lewiston-Auburn came from the Milken Institute’s new rankings of the fasting growing metropolitan areas in the United States.

While Portland stagnates in the list of top large metros, both Bangor and L-A inched up in the rankings of small metro areas, which are measured in job, salary and technology sector growth.

Beyond giving a “tip of the hat” toward those investing in growing our community, the subtlety inherent in L-A’s ranking is worth discussing.

To be blunt, it wasn’t the cities of Lewiston and Auburn and their 60,000 residents that received this ranking. It was the entire metropolitan area of more than 100,000 that is centered around L-A.

When national organizations measure this region’s success, they include Poland, Minot, Lisbon, Greene and several other towns. While 50 or more years ago, economies were said to be town or even neighborhood-based, today they are regional. It is understood that a residential development in Turner is more likely to house people that work in Lewiston or Auburn than Turner; the same conclusion is natural for most of the small towns in this area.

So, since national and international firms look at our region for possible investments, what initiatives can we cite to demonstrate the collaborative efforts in our regional economy?

It is still a significant leap, of course, to think this region would create its own economic development strategy and reach agreement on its implementation. Recent news reports point to the reason why.

Rural towns have given a resounding thumbs down to sharing one regional dispatch center. To them, the cost increase was unacceptable. What’s missing from this reasoning is that the county system is heavily subsidized by Lewiston and Auburn, which operate their own systems and are therefore paying twice for this service.

Attempting to have every person save a penny in regional efforts is like finding a needle in a haystack; maybe this was the premise this effort should have started with.

Do residents of towns outside of L-A benefit from the highways into the city being plowed to accommodate their daily commute? They must certainly enjoy the Auburn subsidies that led to the mall area development or Lewiston’s investment in its industrial parks. There is no means to charge these visitors from other towns, nor would one want to, but it is clear, avoiding discussion of regional cost sharing will limit available resources to invest in growth.

The recent implosion of the citizens’ commission report on merging assessing points to further parochialism in our community. Councilors, whether they knew it or not, were onto something when they suggested the service of assessing could be done regionally, not just between Lewiston and Auburn.

However, thousands of dollars and a $200-an hour, high-powered consultant couldn’t see the obvious and went about the status quo: just merging Lewiston and Auburn. Two cities sharing services is not, nor will it be, the solution to efficiently regionalize services.

And of course, the likely disbanding of the Joint Downtown Master Plan Committee (of which, full disclosure, I am a member) that was proposed in Lewiston City Hall should have all of us concerned.

While I agree that forming committee after committee to examine hard issues can be too convenient and delay inevitable decisions, the notion Lewiston and Lewiston alone can set its course without collective efforts of the region is not only shortsighted, but doomed to failure.

While the world economy sees L-A as a single region on the map, made up of nearly a dozen communities, local elected officials seem content to put on their municipal blinders and go it alone.

Can over a dozen small towns in central Maine rowing against each other make any progress in the ocean that is the world economy?

Jonathan LaBonte, of New Auburn, is a columnist for the Sun Journal. E-mail: [email protected].