Winter pays for summer BY AL DIAMON

With the arrival of warm weather, Mainers can take pride in watching while the taxes we paid during the frigid months of the year are put to good use:

Paying for TV spots to attract tourists.

This year — with the state borrowing $450 million to balance its budget, with tax reform facing rejection because there’s no money to pay for it, with courtrooms doing without security, with cuts in services to abused children, the mentally ill, and the elderly — we’ll be buying advertising, mostly in Boston and New York, telling potential vacationers "It Must Be Maine."

That promotion will cost $7.5 million. What do we get for our money?

There are plenty of jobs that depend on flatlander cash, although determining exactly how many is like trying to figure out the accounting practices at the state Department of Health and Human Services (motto: Hey! Look! Under the Sofa! Money!).

According to the Maine Innkeepers Association (motto: It’s Not Raining Here and It Never Has Been and Anyone Who Says Different is a Commie), businesses that cater to out-of-staters in Bermuda shorts and saggy, black, over-the-calf stockings produced 181,000 jobs in 2004.

The State Planning Office (motto: We Don’t Know Where You Heard Those Rumors That the Bars in Maine Have to Close at 1 a.m., That You Can’t Drink Beer on the Beach, and That There Are No Casinos, But None of That is True) puts the figure at 124,000.

The Maine Office of Tourism (motto: Black Flies — They Taste Just Like Lobsters) says it’s more like 122,000.

Nat Bowditch, a top tourism official (who, as far as I know, does not have a motto), told the Morning Sentinel in 2003 the figure was 115,000.

A 2001 report by the research firm Longwoods International came up with the figure of 100,000.

The following year, the tourism office was tossing around the number 77,000.

And a 2002 study by Bowdoin College Professor David Vail calculated that tourism was responsible for the equivalent of 70,000 full-time jobs.

Not particularly good jobs.

Vail figured about 75 percent of workers in tourist-related businesses made less than 10 bucks an hour. The average annual wage of all those toilers among the shelves of moose-turd earrings, blueberry-flavored beer, and little people made of lobster shells was $13,320.

Okay, so the proles aren’t reaping any great benefit from the summer complaints. But somebody is, because tourists are dropping a ton of cash in this state. Depending on your definition of a ton.

The state tourism office reported that soaking the Massholes and Yankees fans grossed us $9.4 billion in 2004. That figure might be subject to some interpretation, because in 2003, the tourism office claimed we took in $9 billion, but the planning office set the figure at $6.1 billion. That same year, Bowditch told the Lewiston Sun Journal the total was more like $5 billion. In 2002, it was the tourism office at $9.5 billion and the planning office at $6.2 billion. Longwoods put the take at $5.6 billion. And Vail had it at $2.5 billion.

Some of these questionable figures indicate spending by tourists has grown about 20 percent in the last five years. That might be good news if it meant the number of tourists had increased. But it doesn’t. The extra revenue is almost entirely the result of higher prices on rustic-cabin rentals, whale-watching cruises, and fried clams.

In 2000, the state spent just over $4 million on TV spots and newspaper spreads. That resulted in about 43 million visits by tourists.

In 2002, the ad budget was increased by 50 percent. We still got 43 million visits.

Last year, all those promotions cost us nearly $7 million. The result: 43 million visits.

In the meantime, surveys show Maine has fallen off the list of the top 10 states deemed most attractive by potential vacationers.

Don’t worry, though. State officials have a plan to fix the problem. They’re establishing a "tourism research center" at the University of Maine. The start-up cost is about $300,000, of which the tourism industry is generously donating somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000. The rest is public money. By 2008, the center’s budget is expected to run about $1 million a year, but its supporters promise it will generate over $250 million in new spending by sightseers and rubberneckers. Among the swell things the center will do is set up a weekly survey of occupancy at the state’s hotels, motels and B&Bs, thereby giving us yet another statistic that won’t jibe with any of the others.

There’s no doubt Maine needs tourists. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, their spending accounts for 15 percent of the gross state product. (I always thought the gross state product was moose-turd earrings.) If you believe Professor Vail’s study, it’s more like six percent.

In any case, it’s a big part of our livelihood, and it appears it’s being managed by idiots. Or the Department of Health and Human Services.

I’m not on vacation, so you can email me at ishmaelia@gwi.net