Proposal would set ‘real Maine’ apart from rest of state

[Every so often someone in California offers up a proposal to split up California into two or three states. It usually falls flat on its face pretty fast. I sort of get the mindset that Rep. Joy is trying to express, but I don’t get this proposal, especially since he admits the chances are “slim to none.” Maine would lose more than gain. Rep. Joy perhaps should spend more of his time helping in the cutting of the state budget shortfall rather than cutting the state in two. – KM]

For Mainers who tire of summer traffic and wish those tourists would just stay away, Rep. Henry Joy, R-Crystal, has a solution: Split Maine in two.

If a bill he has proposed gets any traction – a possibility he described as “slim to none” – there would be a “real Maine” up north, and the rest would go back to its former landlord: Massachusetts.

“Some of them are sort of upset because I call this Northern Massachusetts, but their lifestyle is like those in Massachusetts,” he said.

Joy knows something about the Bay State. He traces his lineage to the first Joy in Boston, Thomas Joy.

His hometown – Crystal, in Aroostook County – is nowhere near Boston, however. In 2000, Crystal had 285 residents with a per-capita income of $14,338.

“I’d rather have my roots in Maine,” Joy said.

The new Maine Joy imagines would encompass Oxford, Aroostook, Piscataquis, Somerset, Franklin, Penobscot and Washington counties, and part of Hancock County. All others would become the new state of “northern Massachusetts.”

Click on the link to read the rest of this story by Ethan Wilensky-Lanford in the Kennebec Journal.