Are people in southern Maine finally smartening up? Consider the evidence:

In November, Portland voters kicked Democratic kingpin Jim Cloutier off the City Council and Green Independent financial whiz Ben Meiklejohn off the School Committee.

After a brief flirtation with artiness, Westbrook has decided it doesn’t want to be “the next Portland” and will remain “crappy old Westbrook.”

The Portland Press Herald’s circulation keeps declining.

Rustic Overtones reunited.

Now, if they’d just bring back the Skinny and the Brunswick Naval Air Station, and get rid of the MERC incinerator and Channel 13’s Lucas Colavecchio, southern Maine would be a paradise.

Except, it’d still have that ugly neighbor: northern Maine.

It’s so difficult to enjoy the cottage on Kennebunkport’s Gold Coast, the art galleries in Ogunquit or the Casino Royale martini at an Old Port wine bar knowing that just a few miles away good ol’ boys are sitting around their mobile homes, dressed in dirty wife beaters, drinking PBRs and watching mixed martial arts marathons on cable TV they don’t pay for because they traded an old chain saw and a bottle of Seagram’s 7 to a guy who hooked them up illegally. Just sharing a state with these bumpkins is enough to put one off one’s tapas.

In yet another sign southern Mainers’ IQs are on the rise, South Portland Mayor James Soule has come up with a solution to this unseemly juxtaposing. In his Dec. 3 inaugural address, Soule called for the south to secede and form its own state. One with some class. And a better appreciation of all his city has to offer, such as the Maine Mall and … uh … lots of other big box stores and chain restaurants.

Soule pointed out that SoPo generates over $45 million a year in sales taxes, but receives annual school subsidies of just $4.1 million. “The state of Maine needs South Portland more than South Portland needs the state of Maine,” he said.

You sure? We’ve got plenty of Wal-Marts and Tim Horton’s of our own.

Nevertheless, there’s something attractive about Soule’s proposal – aside from the opportunity it affords for over half of Maine’s population to avoid living in the same state with Jim Soule. In fact, some northerners have been pushing the idea of a split for years. In 2000 and 2005, Republican state Rep. Henry Joy of Crystal (motto: When You Get To Benedicta, You’re Still Not Here) introduced bills in the Legislature to have the north do its own seceding.

Joy’s idea differed from Soule’s in that it called for nine counties – Aroostook, Franklin, Hancock, Oxford, Penobscot, Piscataquis, Somerset, Waldo and Washington – to disengage and form a new state with the suggested name of Acadia. Soule recognized that such a division wasn’t extensive enough to rid his neighborhood of riffraff. He’d leave behind all Joy’s counties, plus Androscoggin, Kennebec, Knox and Lincoln. His new state would be composed only of prosperous Cumberland, Sagadahoc and York.

In his speech, the mayor didn’t mention what name he’d prefer for the seceded section, but Nouveau Massachusetts has a nice ring. Nicer than Snotsylvania, anyway.

Even though this latest call for sundering the bonds is coming from southern Maine, Joy stills thinks the idea has merit. If the state split, he said, “It would really invigorate people in northern Maine to know they didn’t have that powerful bloc of votes in the Portland area to sit on them. Everything in Augusta goes Portland’s way.”

As for Soule’s claim that his city is forced to finance all the state’s deadbeats, Joy said that simply isn’t so. “We have 10.6 million acres that are self-sufficient,” he said. “In the unorganized territories, all services are paid for by the people who live there.”

The unorganized territories make up about a third of Maine and would comprise nearly half of a separated state of Acadia. If the municipalities in the other half – Lewiston, Auburn, Bangor, Farmington, Augusta, Ellsworth, Bar Harbor, Houlton, Presque Isle, Machias and a few others – could be convinced to disorganize (not a huge change in most cases), Acadia could operate on a pay-as-you-go basis. If the current unorganized territories serve as an example, that would mean low property taxes – and almost no services. But with the money residents would save, they could afford to hire somebody to plow their roads. And educate their kids. And that sort of stuff.

Politically, both new states have some burdens to bear. The south would be forced to take Tom Allen, Olympia Snowe and Ethan Strimling. The north would be stuck with Susan Collins, Mike Michaud and John Baldacci. Acadia would have to provide refuge for most of the current state Legislature. In return, Nouveau Mass would have to agree to keep State Treasurer David Lemoine and Biddeford Mayor Joanne Twomey isolated from contact with normal people.

Northern Maine gets the better of that deal. Maybe those people in the south aren’t as smart as I thought.

Smart-mouth comments may be e-mailed to aldiamon@herniahill.net.