Working the room | Longtime lobbyist Chris Hall joins the Portland Regional Chamber
Maine is a good place to be a lobbyist. It's easy to bend the ear of a legislator, and sitting down with the governor doesn't require a hefty campaign donation. "We're actually pretty lucky," says Chris Hall, a long-time lobbyist who earlier this month joined the Portland Regional Chamber as senior vice president of governmental relations. "It's an intimate policy discussion. Everyone knows each other."
But easy access and familiar faces in Augusta can also represent a trial by fire for the unprepared. There's no place to hide for the uninformed, no way to wriggle out of a policy discussion with boilerplate arguments. That's one of the chief lessons Hall learned during his 17 years as a lobbyist for the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, where his official title was executive vice president. "You've got to know your material," says Hall. "If you don't know what [people] need, you won't be able to do your job, and that'll be pretty self-evident."
And if being a well-versed lobbyist means understanding what's needed by the citizens you represent, it also means knowing when to get out of the way. "A good lobbyist facilitates a conversation between citizens and lawmakers, and then takes themselves out of the middle of it," he says.
There will be similarities in Hall's new job at the Portland Regional Chamber, which represents seven community chambers from Scarborough to Cumberland. Here, Hall will continue to engage in what he calls "top-of-the-page" policy issues like taxes, government spending and rising health care costs. Take taxes: The key to resolving Maine's high tax burden, says Hall, is to address the state's spending patterns through careful legislation and thoughtful debate — not sweeping, one-size-fits-all referendums like last year's Taxpayer Bill of Rights initiative. (The Maine State Chamber opposed TABOR, which failed at the November ballot.) "You'll never see a perfect referendum on this issue, ever," he says. "It's devilishly difficult."
Another issue deserving attention, says Hall, is the state's research-and-development budget, which by many accounts is woefully underfunded. More R&D funding flowing to companies such as Idexx Laboratories in Westbrook would boost the area's economic fortunes, according to Hall. "The area is doing well, but it can't stand still," he says.
Hall, 50, says the Portland chamber offers some significant changes compared to his time at the state chamber. "At the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, I was speaking in aggregate," he says. "In Portland, I'm representing a place. I'm speaking for Portland's business interests. Their interests are more tangible, and that changes the discussion."
Hall, a Buxton resident who practiced law in Portland before joining the Maine State Chamber in 1990, expects a big part of his job to be balancing the needs of Portland's business community. Eighty percent of the region's businesses are small companies, he says, but Cumberland County also is home to the bulk of Maine's largest companies. And chasing policies that would help big companies at the expense of little ones isn't acceptable to Hall. "We wouldn't be doing our job to take sides, small versus large," he says.
As the first full-time lobbyist for a regional chamber in Maine, Hall's performance is likely to be closely watched by other organizations. In fact, Hall expects more groups to follow suit. And more lobbyists in Augusta would be a welcome development for Hall — even if it makes it that much harder to corner a lawmaker. "When they see it in action, they're going to see it's of real value," he says. "And if we can do this here and show that it can work, I think we can strengthen the state's business community."
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