Tenants Harbor - Some encouraging job numbers show Maine could be making a comeback from the recession.

According to a report from the Maine Department of Labor, 7,400 new private sector jobs have been created in Maine from June 2011-June 2012. "It's part of what's happening nationally, but it's also reflective of a real positive development here in Maine," said Thomaston Republican Senator Chris Rector.

According to the report, 900 manufacturing jobs, 700 professional business and service jobs, and 1,400 healthcare jobs have been created over the past year. 3,500 new jobs have come in the leisure and hospitality arena but many of those are due to the new gaming facilities in Bangor and Oxford.

Rector credits bipartisan reforms passed by lawmakers in Augusta that have changed the business climate in Maine. "I think the LD1 committee, regulatory fairness and reform, I think our streamlining there has made a difference," Rector said Friday. "I think tax reform has made a difference. I think workers comp reform some of the other reforms we did in workers compensation really have made a difference and made people feel like the environment is more predictable and they can hire new employees."

Rector stresses that it's been a bipartisan effort in Augusta where the two parties have managed to work together avoiding the partisan gridlock that has paralyzed Washington. "Every major initiative that we passed this session was passed with bipartisan support and I think that's a demonstration of the leadership that we had in both the House and the Senate and the desire to move things forward."

The changes to Maine's business climate are starting to come to life in places like Tenants Harbor, where a once abandoned waterfront facility is once again booming.

Thanks to 23-year-old Kyle Murdock's vision, Sea Hag Seafood is now a reality. "I come from a fishing family," Murdock said. "The price crash happened in 2008 and after that everyone was always talking about what can we do to generate more demand for our product, to keep the price from collapsing again or even make it better now? Everyone's answer always came back to processing."

Murdock left school at Worcester Polytechnic Institute to open his new seafood processing business that he hopes will ensure Maine seafood is processed here in Maine. "70% of our lobster catch is sent to Canada for processing, which takes the control of the product away from us and takes that value added process away from us," Murdock explains.

With the help of state programs designed to help get small businesses off the ground, Murdock opened Sea Hag Seafood in August.

He took advantage of two programs offered by the Finance Authority of Maine. The first, the Loan Insurance Program, is a partial loan guarantee which reduces the lender's risk enough to make a startup like Sea Hag Seafood a more palatable risk. "For us the biggest hurdle was getting it through the bank. Since the banking crisis in the middle of last decade, the banking regulations have become a lot stricter, which has made it a lot harder for them to loan money to a startup business with no credit history. Or a 23-year-old with no credit history whatsoever," Murdock said.


The second FAME program Murdock took advantage of, the Seed Capital Tax Credit Program, gave his investors a tax credit for a percentage of their investment, reducing the risk for investors, and guaranteeing that they receive something out of their investment.

He also saved roughly $30,000 in construction materials while renovating the facility through the Sales and Use Tax Exemption.

Murdock says a representative from the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development came to him and helped him navigate the process and find all the programs and incentives he was eligible for.

Now his business is off the ground. The day we visited Murdock, he had just finished doing his payroll. "I think we printed 56 paychecks."

Sea Hag Seafood has around 50 steady employees who process on average 11,000 pounds of lobster daily, but they're hoping to get up to 20,000. "We're getting more product for them to work on. Once we can do that and get too much product for them to work on, then we can hire some more people."

To learn more about programs geared toward helping small businesses off the ground you can follow any of these links.

Maine Department of Economic and Community Development:

http://www.maine.gov/decd/index.shtml

Finance Authority of Maine (FAME):
http://www.famemaine.com/

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