Over the past six years, Gov. Janet Mills has had plenty of opportunities to offer real solutions to many of the problems facing Maine. For four of them, she had a remarkably compliant Democratic majority. Sure, the legislative leaders occasionally disagreed with her on stuff, but they never pressed it. They always sustained her vetoes, and leadership rarely – if ever – spoke out against her in public.

While they often pushed for a more progressive agenda than she did, they never really quite stood up to her and actually challenged her on it. They kept the internal Democratic disagreements to a bare minimum, maintaining an impressive degree of party control – despite their lack of real motivation to do so. That’s impressive, and they truly deserve all due credit for that, especially given the prior tumultuous relationship between former Gov. Paul LePage and Republican legislative leadership.

Still, after six years of Janet Mills, the question remains: What, exactly, has she accomplished? To be fair to her, her major accomplishment has been keeping the state’s fiscal house (mostly) in order, something that I personally have appreciated. She’s been able to consistently buttress the rainy day fund, putting us in a good position to weather the next financial downturn.

That’s all well and good, although she hasn’t exactly rushed to cut taxes in the face of this windfall. In fact, she’s resisted it at nearly every turn, apart from the occasional handouts during the pandemic and subsequent economic downturn – or when the state union gets feisty, handing out $2,000 checks to state employees as part of an agreement about compensation. With the state awash in money, one would have expected her to take the chance to reduce taxes, even if only nominally in a place or two here or there. Instead, she broke her promise to the Maine people that she wouldn’t raise taxes in order to establish the Maine family leave program.

So, while it might seem like Mills is fiscally responsible because she increased the rainy day fund, in fact she’s shown a willingness to raise taxes for no reason. She’s fought tax cuts, even the mildest possible versions, at every turn. All the while, she’s been handing out checks to state employees, and other Mainers, just not in a consistent, reasonable way.

If you expect me to give Mills credit for being somewhat fiscally responsible, you’ve come to the wrong place. Maine would have been better off if she’d scaled back on the handouts, cut back the spending and refrained from raising taxes – or even cut them. Instead, she doubled down on the entire liberal fiscal agenda by spending like a runaway freight train, all while leaning on her increase in the rainy day fund like a crutch. That’s not real fiscal responsibility, it’s the illusion of such to distract voters.

Meanwhile, there are a whole host of problems that she’s failed to address. This paper recently realized that the state has a lousy business climate. Mills has done nothing to address that. If she didn’t want to give personal, direct tax cuts to hard-working Mainers, she could have tried to help Maine businesses with tax cuts. This would have made a lot of sense, not only during the pandemic but afterward, when the higher inflation cut dramatically into their profit margins.

Instead, she stood back and did little, if anything, to help businesses or improve the state’s business climate. While she vaguely stood in the way of left-wingers who wanted to increase regulations and costs on businesses, that’s not really progress – it’s stagnation. A competent conservative governor would have fought to help them, rather than merely arresting the worst instincts of the radical left.

Another problem that Mills hasn’t fully focused on is the public defenders crisis. She deserves credit for getting the ball rolling by establishing the department, but it isn’t adequately funded, and her efforts to get big law firms to help are going nowhere. One would think that this would be a top priority for her, but she hasn’t pressed it nearly as much as she could have.

Mills’ administration has foiled her own base at times, while doing little – if anything – to please or placate her opponents. She’s consistently bent her own party to her will, without getting anything substantive done on a bipartisan basis. The question for Maine is, as we head in to the midterms and the next gubernatorial election, is that good enough, or do we expect something more from our leaders?