On May 18th, 2010, I was honored to be featured as the Keynote Speaker at Hope Association's Annual Meeting.
For decades now, Hope Association has been providing top-quality services to individuals in the River Valley living with developmental disabilities. To learn more about Hope Association please visit their website at http://www.hopeassociation.org/.
Reprinted below is a copy of the remarks I offered at Hope Association's Annual Meeting:
It is truly a great honor to be invited to share this evening with you and to offer a few remarks. Having grown up in Rumford, I have long been aware of the great work that this organization has done on behalf of other Rumford citizens. You have been one of the real leaders in Maine in serving a very special population with creativity and dedication. It is a privilege to join you and a distinct honor to get a chance to talk with you tonight.
I have to admit that I’ve known about his speaking engagement for quite a while, and I’ve had lots of time to think about what to say -- which means I’ve had lots of time to worry over what I should say and do and how I could rise to the occasion of sharing my thoughts and my experience with a room full of such dedicated and caring people. What I mean to say is this -- What can I possibly say that would be worthwhile to such an audience? I’m truly humbled by this crowd and your record of service to our community.
Fortunately, having spent two years in Augusta, I’ve had plenty of experience observing people who are willing to talk at great length about things they know very little about -- so I certainly know how to “take the plunge!” Please don’t quote me to any of my Augusta colleagues -- although we’ve all been guilty at one time or another. I don’t want to dive in -- so I thought I’d talk about some of my own experiences and things that I do feel qualified to talk about.
I thought I’d take my few minutes tonight to consider some of the lessons I learned from the Legislature in the last session -- and some of the larger issues they suggest, including some of my life lessons. I’m the kind of guy who has to bring things down and internalize them -- apply them to my own life and experience to really understand them. I grasp things -- but to really understand them, I have to see ideas through the lens of my own life. I’m a pretty concrete thinker in that way -- it’s just the way I’ve always been made, and it has served me pretty well. I hope so anyway -- because I don’t imagine I’ll wake up tomorrow having become a theoretical astrophysicist overnight.
So, tonight I want to talk about two themes that came through over and over in the last session and that have larger implications for almost all we do. The themes are balance and resiliency. They are both pretty important ideas to me personally, and it seems like they are engines for this great organization, too.
First, balance. I’ve gotten a little bit of attention in the news recently for something that was almost accidental. As you may know, one of the initiatives I sponsored in the last session was a bill to sanction and regulate mixed martial arts events in Maine. I’m a huge fan of the sport. I was a wrestler in high school, and my younger brother was one of the greatest wrestlers to come out of Mountain Valley. He has continued to train and has become a mixed martial artist. I have friends who are fighters and trainers and promoters, and I wanted to bring the sport to Maine while making sure that there were standards and oversight to protect the health of all those involved in the sport.
I won’t go into a lot of detail about the mechanics of the legislation -- but we had to pass something because in 2007, the Maine legislature eliminated the Maine Athletic Commission that used to oversee professional boxing events. Apparently, it had been years since there was any boxing match scheduled, maintaining the Athletic Commission cost the state money, and so in 2007, the Legislature voted the Commission out of existence. Nobody came to testify against that action, there were no questions asked about the elimination of an organization that apparently had no function.
In 2009, we created a new regulatory body -- the Mixed Martial Arts Authority -- designed to oversee mixed martial arts or MMA events. The Governor appointed members to the Authority, they have been meeting and working on rules, and the first MMA contests will be held later this year. Here’s where the story gets complicated. I read an article in the Lewiston Sun Journal about the Gamache family planning to have a prize fight in June in Lewiston. I was at an MMA Authority meeting, sitting next to a representative from the Attorney General’s Office and asked him if he had seen the article. I was actually reading the article on line at the time. He said, he hadn’t seen it and would I send him the link. So I did -- with a simple question : Who is overseeing these fights?
To make a long story short, the Gamaches were eventually contacted, informed that the fight they had planned was illegal under a 19th century Maine statute and that they should consult a lawyer before they proceeded with the fight. Apparently, my question started a process that ended up with the Gamaches being “warned” against holding the event. Since then, I have been working to try to find a way to let this fight move ahead under emergency rules passed by the MMA Authority. Unfortunately, the AG’s office has vetoed the idea and so now it looks like the fights will have to be moved to next year after the Legislature can create a new statute allowing boxing to once again be sanctioned in Maine.
So -- what does this have to do with balance? Besides the fact that boxers need good balance. As you can imagine -- I have gotten a fair number of e-mails and calls from irate boxing fans who want to tell me how stupid the state is for eliminating the Athletic Commission -- WHAT WERE WE THINKING? My favorite was from a constituent that I hear from a lot. He has strong opinions about many things and I enjoy the exchanges because he is a thought-provoking, common sense fellow I have known all my life.
He let me have it in an e-mail. Augusta this, and Legislature that -- you get the idea. We were interfering where we had no business and so forth. Why I liked the e-mail so much was because I had gotten one from him just a few days before complaining about the way we “wasted money in Augusta” spending it on all kinds of unnecessary things -- bureaucracy that didn’t do anything, and on and on …..
I hadn’t had the chance to respond to that first e-mail, so they were both in my inbox, and ended up next to each other. I suppose you can see where I am going with this ….. How do we balance such competing interests? When the Legislature eliminates a Commission that was costing taxpayer dollars but hadn’t had any activity in years -- it looked like a good idea -- one he could certainly support. It was a good idea, until the Commission was needed to license a boxing match -- which he really wanted to attend. Tough to be a fan of less government, smarter budgeting and fiscal responsibility -- and still want all the services that government provides -- including regulating prize fighting.
It’s all about finding the balance between what we need, what we want and what we can afford.
That has been a big lesson for me serving the River Valley in the House of Representatives. How do we find that balance? Another way to think about it is -- how do we set the right priorities? As a member of the Health and Human Services Committee that was the stark lesson from every day’s sessions. There are so many valid, yet competing claims for the limited resources. Allocating those limited resources requires a real balancing act -- and lots of priority setting.
I wish I could come here tonight and say -- things in the next budget will be better, it will get easier, money that has been cut will be restored. But that is not the case. We will have even greater demands and even more fiscal constraints in the next session. In the last session, we were able to fill some of the gaps with the infusion of federal resources from the stimulus act. Those funds will not be available as we project the next two year budget. As a result, we can expect even more belt tightening, even more cut backs, and an even harder time trying to provide essential services to Maine’s most vulnerable citizens.
Sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it?
So that brings me to my second theme for the evening -- Resilience. We not only need to keep our balance -- we need to find the ways to bounce back -- be resilient. I can tell you right now that there will be pressures on the state funding that Hope Association receives. That will be true of every health, human services or social services organization that receives state funding or state contracts. I don’t know what the pressure will look like -- but it will be coming. Guaranteed.
As someone who has lived with a disability for more than a decade -- I’ve learned firsthand the value of resilience. Without an ability to bounce back, I don’t know where I’d be. That same resilience is characteristic in the lives of so many of the individuals and families that your organization so ably serves. Resilience is what we do -- and what we will be called upon to do even more if we are to continue to serve.
But even before my injury, resilience is something that I learned growing up in the River Valley. We’re a place and a people who come back. We’ve seen difficult economic times -- and we are still seeing them. We’ve seen big changes at the mill and in the paper and woods industry -- but we know how to bounce back.
Resiliency requires some creativity. After my injury I had to learn lots of new ways to do things I had been doing all my life. In hindsight, I realize I had to unlearn a number of things -- old patterns, old ways of doing things that just didn’t work anymore because of my changed circumstances. Being creative, learning new approaches became a lot easier when I finally let go of some of the patterns that had dominated my life. The key to resilience is that ability to let go of old patterns that may have worked well in the past, but have a more limited application in the future. Tough to let go of things that have served us well -- but it is necessary to face the new challenges.
For an organization like Hope Association that is all about promoting resilience for individuals and their families -- I know you can and will rise to the challenge. You have got to find new ways to reach out and to serve, even in an era of fewer resources. You will have to find new ways to help families become more resilient, more independent and more creative as we all struggle to do more with fewer resources.
We have a lot going for us. The River Valley is a strong community of neighbors and friends. We have a tradition of caring and looking out for each other. Hope Association is a perfect example of that spirit. And we have a history of picking ourselves up and moving forward despite setbacks.
Now is the time to start exercising those creative muscles. Go back to the roots of the organization and look for new ways to accomplish your goals. Prepare now for the changes that are coming -- don’t wait to be overwhelmed by them. This is a strong and vital organization -- and its true vitality will be found in its resiliency in this changing environment. Don’t just react to the change -- lead the change.
Speaking to an organization with a name -- Hope Association -- you cannot deliver anything but an upbeat message. Yes, times ahead will be challenging. My commitment to you is that I will work as hard as I can to find balance and help the state set the right priorities between supporting programs that people depend upon, and operating in the most cost-effective manner possible.
I hope you will work with me in seeking that balance -- with your good ideas, your thoughtful analysis of alternatives, and your commitment to resiliency. Together, we will find a way to continue the outstanding record of service that has characterized Hope Association for decades.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. I look forward to working with you individually and as an organization. Thanks again.
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