IT'S WORKED FOR 400 YEARS:

Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire are `frugal Yankees' (Norma Love, August 27, 2005, Associated Press)

For years, New Hampshire's delinquents have sweltered on hot summer nights, locked in un-air-conditioned rooms behind security doors and heavily screened windows in decades-old buildings.

"When the kids go into the rooms at night, we shut the doors. It's very, very warm," said Tricia Lucas, chief of administration at the Division for Juvenile Justice Services. "Kids come off the mattresses to sleep directly on the floor so they can have the coolness of the floor."

Next summer should be different: the state reformatory, the Youth Development Center in Manchester, will be in a new, 144-bed facility with air conditioning.

The long wait for the $33 million complex illustrates the sort of Yankee frugality that has spared state governments in northern New England the debt problems plaguing some other states.

Nationwide, median state debt per capita is $703. New Hampshire's is a low $457, Maine's is $634 and Vermont's is $716, according to Moody's Investors Service, a credit rating firm.

Vermont actually has the highest credit rating accorded to the three states by Standard & Poor's, another rating firm. Vermont's AA+ rating is one notch below the top AAA rating and one notch above New Hampshire's AA score. Maine is one step below New Hampshire at AA- after a slight downgrade this year.

Geoff Buswick, the Standard & Poor's analyst who keeps tabs on the three states, says the ratings are based on the steadiness of a state's revenues, how well a state predicts its income over time, its spending patterns, the amount of its debt, the health of its economy and what kind of work force it has.

Analysts also watch closely to see that states pay their "living expenses" with current income. When states dip into savings, analysts look to see that the money is put back as quickly as possible.

Intangibles -- like being Yankees -- also are considered.

"We talk about that Yankee frugality as something seen as a credit positive," Buswick said.

The Third World starts at the MA line.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 28, 2005 10:01 AM