Maine For Keeps

Alec Porteous has run the numbers. He’s been the CFO of Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services. He’s been the Commissioner of Administrative & Financial Services, the state’s top budget job. He’s been the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Business Officer at the University of Southern Maine.

And now? He’s sounding the alarm.

In this episode, we dig into Maine’s budget explosion and what Alec sees as the most under-discussed risk to our future.

We cover:

- Why Maine’s Medicaid budget is growing 21% a year and no one knows why

- How state spending ballooned 25% while population grew just 5%

- Why working Mainers are getting squeezed while newcomers think Maine is a steal

- The paradox of rising revenue and rising property taxes

- How to put real teeth into revenue sharing and municipal accountability

- What Alec would do with our $1.5 billion rainy day fund

- Why now might be the moment to experiment with bold tax cuts

- The truth behind Maine’s economic outlook and what’s needed to fix it

This isn’t about cutting for cutting’s sake. It’s about building a Maine that’s affordable, competitive, and resilient for the people who already live here and the ones who are trying to stay.

🎧 Available on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

📍 Subscribe to Maine For Keeps for weekly conversations about how we build a stronger future for Maine.

Lt. Nick Goodman has been a cop in Portland for over 20 years.

He’s run narcotics stings. Solved cold cases. Led Portland’s SWAT team through high-risk raids and manhunts. He’s watched the city change, from a place where gunfire made headlines to a place where “another shooting” barely raises eyebrows.

This episode is a raw, unfiltered look at what public safety in Maine actually looks like today (and what it will take to turn things around).

We cover:

• Why Portland went from 1–2 shootings a year to 60–70

• The real reason police recruitment is collapsing

• What happens when jails stop taking violent offenders

• Why COVID still haunts Maine’s courts, streets, and police departments

• How “well-meaning” laws backfire in ways few people understand

• What a Vegas man did to get a heart transplant in Portland

• Why tech silos make Maine a playground for repeat offenders

• And what Lt. Goodman believes Maine’s next governor must do right now

We also explore a bigger question: what happens when systems stop working and the people inside them still try to show up?

This is not a pro-police or anti-police episode. It’s a pro-reality episode.

And it’s one of the most urgent conversations we’ve had on Maine For Keeps.

🎧 Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

📍 Subscribe for weekly episodes on the future of our state.

Stephen Bowen has seen the future of education, and he’s seen what happens when we ignore it.

As Maine’s former Commissioner of Education and now Executive Director of the Hoover Education Success Initiative at Stanford, Stephen brings a rare perspective: deep local roots combined with a national, bird’s-eye view of what actually works.

In this episode, he lays out a bold, actionable vision for how Maine can rescue its schools, support its students, and rebuild its economy.

We cover:

- Why Maine’s education rankings have collapsed in the last decade

- The one metric that determines a student’s future (and a state’s future)

- What Mississippi and Louisiana got right and how Maine can follow

- The school choice model already working in parts of rural Maine

- How local districts are blocking students from accessing better programs

- The untapped potential of micro-schools, magnet academies, and virtual learning

- Why ignoring top-performing kids is a dangerous mistake for small towns

- What Maine’s next governor should do on day one to start the turnaround

This is one of the clearest, most strategic conversations we’ve had on Maine For Keeps about education.

Listen now on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to Maine For Keeps for weekly conversations on how we build a stronger future for Maine.

Charlie Baker has a reputation for making big, complex institutions actually work. As governor of Massachusetts, he was consistently ranked the most popular governor in America, running one of the bluest states as a Republican without getting bogged down in partisanship. Today, he’s the president of the NCAA, steering college sports through its most turbulent era.

In this conversation, Baker shares the same pragmatic playbook that guided him through both roles: results matter more than rhetoric, and time is money. If it takes five years to permit housing or six years to approve energy, you’re paying for it in higher rents, higher power bills, and lost opportunities.

We talk about what states like Maine can learn from Massachusetts’ turnaround under Baker’s watch: fixing the relationship with cities and towns, treating time as a cost driver, and giving communities the flexibility to actually move. We also touch on his leadership philosophy: building coalitions, keeping public trust, and staying focused on outcomes.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

- Why time is the hidden driver of housing and energy costs

- How to lower the cost of living by fixing state

–local processes instead of just writing checks

- Why ownership opportunities matter more than subsidies in housing policy

- How Baker used a simple “menu” approach to let cities bundle grants and revitalize downtowns

- What bipartisan leadership looks like when the goal is results, not headlines

- The leadership lessons Baker carries from Massachusetts into his role as president of the NCAA

If you care about building more, paying less, and leading with results, this conversation with Charlie Baker is a masterclass in pragmatic statecraft. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Mitch Daniels has worn a lot of hats: Governor of Indiana, President of Purdue University, and before that, business executive and federal budget director. But through it all, he’s carried a reputation for doing the hard, unglamorous work of making institutions perform better.

In Indiana, Daniels balanced the budget after years of deficits, capped runaway property taxes, and launched one of the boldest infrastructure programs in America without raising taxes. At Purdue, he froze tuition for 11 years straight while expanding access and research, proving that higher education doesn’t have to keep getting more expensive.

In this conversation, Jonathan Bush digs into the lessons behind Daniels’ results — and what states like Maine can learn from them.

Some highlights from the episode:

• Why Daniels insisted “simple beats smart” when designing reforms

• How he kept the focus on raising disposable income for citizens as the North Star of government

• The story behind Indiana’s property tax caps and why they’ve endured

• His philosophy on balancing local control with statewide reform

• What Purdue’s tuition freeze reveals about tackling higher ed affordability

• Why trust in government is just as important as budgets or programs

This is a playbook for leaders, policymakers, and anyone who cares about making government simpler, smarter, and more accountable.

👉 Listen now to Maine For Keeps with Mitch Daniels on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on Maine For Keeps, Jonathan goes solo from North Haven Island to share why he’s still a raging Maine optimist and why it’s time for our state to stop dividing a shrinking pie and start making more pie.Part personal story, part blueprint for Maine’s future, this episode digs into what makes Maine unique, and what’s possible if we unleash our natural strengths.

Highlights from the episode:

- Why Maine’s workforce is perfectly suited for the AI-driven economy ahead.

- The idea of Maine as America’s national strategic housing reserve — building homes with our 6 million acres of forest and exporting cross-laminated timber.

- How Maine could become a green protein export powerhouse by growing bottom fish instead of just catching them.

- Why tourism and our parks are still an underdeveloped superpower for the state.

- What Jonathan learned about resilience, community, and optimism from his own story in Belfast and North Haven.

- The problem with dividing handouts vs. building ownership and why that system poisons belief in fairness.

- How reminders of Maine’s past dominance, from shipbuilding to farming, are signals of what we can become again.This is a wide-ranging, candid reflection on what’s broken, what’s possible, and why Maine’s best days can still be ahead.

Maine’s rural communities have a healthcare problem — too few providers, too much distance, and too many people falling through the cracks. But what if the solution was already parked in your town, sirens off, waiting for the next call?

In this episode, Jonathan Bush sits down with Dr. Jonathan Busko (emergency physician and EMS innovator), Dr. Charles Burger (primary care pioneer), and Jeff Brown (systems safety consultant turned healthcare reformer) to talk about a game-changing idea: community paramedicine.

It’s a model that trains EMTs and paramedics to do more than respond to emergencies — from checking meds and following up after hospital visits to spotting home hazards and facilitating telehealth. The result?

• Lower costs per patient visit

• Earlier intervention for high-risk patients

• New career pathways that keep healthcare talent in rural towns

They dig into how Maine is making community paramedicine legal, what it will take to make it normal, and why the collapse of primary care might be our chance to build something better.

This isn’t just about saving rural hospitals — it’s about designing a system that keeps people healthier, closer to home, and out of the ER. And if Maine gets it right, the rest of the country will be watching.

Listen to the full conversation now on Maine For Keeps, available wherever you get your podcasts.

What does it really take to bring a city back to life?

In the latest episode of Maine For Keeps, I sit down with Mayor Tom Koch, the longest-serving mayor in Quincy, Massachusetts — and the man behind one of the most impressive downtown transformations in New England.

When Mayor Koch took office in 2008, Quincy’s downtown was full of empty storefronts and faded promise. The shipyard was long gone. The malls had pulled shoppers away. The local institutions were thinking about leaving.

So what did he do?

He fired the master planner. Rewrote the zoning code. Took bold, early bets on infrastructure. And started lining up capital and community support before he was even sworn in.

Eighteen years later, Quincy has:

• Over $250M in new public infrastructure

• A booming, livable downtown with housing, parks, and culture

• A reputation as one of the best cities in the country to live and do business

We talk about the whole journey, from firing the first developer to convincing the state to stop holding up a seawall repair for 10 months. We also dig into lessons for other towns: how to move faster, build smarter, and make space for new growth without losing local character.

Whether you’re a mayor, developer, planner, or just someone who loves watching cities come back to life — this one’s for you.

🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

Ohad Maiman is one of the most visionary figures in modern aquaculture. After successfully launching The Kingfish Company in the Netherlands (one of the world’s most sustainable land-based aquaculture operations) he set his sights on the U.S. market. His goal: bring clean, tech-enabled fish farming to rural Maine. His promise: a $200M investment, 80+ jobs, local hiring, low emissions, and zero impact on wild fisheries.

He had the permits. He had the support of the community in Jonesport. He had capital ready to deploy.

And then, the appeals began.

In this episode, Ohad joins Jonathan Bush to tell the full story: how a green project with local backing and global relevance was delayed, discredited, and ultimately derailed not by policy, but by process.

You’ll learn:

• Why land-based aquaculture could transform Maine’s rural economy

• Why land-based aquaculture could transform Maine’s rural economy

• Who really stood to lose from Kingfish USA—and who worked to block it

• What other states and countries are doing right that Maine is getting wrong

• What policy reforms could help Maine compete in the future

It’s a cautionary tale (and a roadmap for future Maine entrepreneurs).

Ohad has since launched new ventures, as the Founder and Managing Partner at AquaFounders Capital, aimed at solving the aquaculture bottleneck globally. But his story in Maine still holds powerful lessons for what’s possible (and what’s holding us back).

Because if we want Maine to lead, we need to make “yes” mean something again.

Listen now on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What started in the basement of a YMCA is now one of the most innovative community centers in the country.

In this episode, Jonathan Bush sits down with Barrett Takesian, founder and executive director of Portland Community Squash, a one-of-a-kind community hub that blends sports, youth development, immigrant integration, and economic mobility under one roof.

Barrett shares how he turned a few squash courts into a multigenerational, multicultural home for over 1,000 families in greater Portland — and why it works.

We cover:

• Why programs that try to “pick a lane” fail — and what happens when you build for everyone

• How squash became the vehicle for something much bigger

• The business strategy behind belonging, and why it’s twice as effective as traditional models

• Why he runs tournaments by skill, not age or gender — and how that creates connection across class and culture

• What Barrett sees as Maine’s greatest untapped advantage

This is an episode about sports, yes — but more than that, it’s about community, entrepreneurship, and a radically hopeful vision for Maine’s future.

Listen anywhere you get your podcasts.