Maybe it's because I no longer toil at the Statehouse that I find myself truly lamenting the big layoffs being reported by daily newspapers in Maine, particularly the loss of veteran reporters. I find myself wondering with a lot of concern what it means for the condition of our little democracy in Maine.

I know for sure that I didn't always value the Statehouse press corps' relentless pursuit of news when I worked in the governor's office.

Gov. Angus King's instruction and practice was always to "feed the beast" -- to answer the questions of the press as honestly and in as timely a fashion as possible. He held "press time" each and every day he was in the governor's office, a practice that made his aides cringe and got him in trouble on more than one occasion -- announcing an idea before it was ready for prime time and generating opposition before potential supporters even had a clue of the governor's thinking. King's commitment to provide information to the general public, through the press, was unwavering.

But that's not to say he wasn't frustrated by press coverage.

He often said that if he walked across the Kennebec River, the headline the next day would read: "Governor Can't Swim."

No reporter made me more nervous about my own level of preparation than did Nancy Perry, a long-time Statehouse reporter for the Portland Press Herald and its sister papers, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel.

Perry was one of those reporters who dug deep for information and she wasn't carrying anyone's water other than her desire to know as much as anyone else about the state budget. She wasn't partisan, she wasn't pursuing a pre-conceived story and she didn't sensationalize a story in search of a Pulitzer Prize.

She was always skeptical, though, that she wasn't getting the whole story. So she probed and probed and probed some more.

"Chewing on tin foil" was how some of my colleagues referred to an interview by Perry. She was the Statehouse expert on the state budget and it was my job to provide her the background on the budget each time a new one was proposed or amended by the governor.

I took care in preparing for those interviews and knew that the only way to survive one was to give her all the facts ... at least the ones she requested.

Perry used full page yellow-lined tablets for her notes instead of a reporter's notebook and had a habit of drawing a squiggly line when she was done pursuing a particular line of questioning. I yearned to see those squiggly lines appear on that piece of yellow paper, even though it likely meant she was about to turn to another issue.

If we rely on the media to provide the information that we need to make our democracy work, what would it portend if all of our daily newspapers could no longer employ skeptical reporters to probe for honest information because of declining advertising revenues?

What will become of the health of our state when open debate and public discussion of issues turns into "he said, she said" matches of polarized, often strictly partisan views -- the substitute we too often see in lieu of the in-depth reporting of the kind conducted by Perry and reporters like her?

Like it or not, a free and skeptical press is the foundation of a democratic society.

Thomas Jefferson recognized the importance of an unfettered press to the democratic experiment, even in its infancy. In 1787, when he was the U.S. Minister to France, Jefferson said, "The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

Even when the press was hounding him about his liaison with Sally Hemings and full of criticisms about his sympathy and support of the French Revolution, Jefferson told a friend, "They fill their newspapers with falsehoods, calumnies and audacities. I shall protect them in their right of lying and calumniating."

Statehouse coverage on the daily complexities and machinations of the state budget hasn't been the same since Perry left and now other veteran reporters that we've depended on to cover other important Statehouse issues also are retiring and not being replaced. It's a cause for concern.

Kay Rand is former chief of staff for Maine independent Gov. Angus King.