Consistency, we are learning, is not something one can expect from Gov. Paul LePage. The Republican governor came into office as the scourge of debt. He argued against borrowing in all its forms, whether bonds issued by state agencies or approved by the voters. He backed up his point by vetoing bond issues and refusing to issue several previously approved by the voters, from both the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Lately, though, he’s been changing his tune. When he announced in February a borrowing plan to pay off the state’s hospital debt, he included an endorsement for a $100 million bond to overhaul state prisons. On Thursday, he came out in favor of a $100 transportation bond, saying the state needs to improve its infrastructure.

So far, LePage has proposed $200 million in new borrowing, and it’s not clear whether he’s done yet. Traditionally, governors roll out their bond proposals all at once, but LePage apparently prefers to highlight them one at a time.

By comparison, the entire 2011-12 bond package that went to the voters was $75.7 million, after LePage vetoed a research and development bond. Even the 2009-10 bond package, enacted when Democrats were in control, was $194 million. LePage and his allies criticized it as excessive.

The governor’s newfound enthusiasm for borrowing, however, doesn’t fit well with his previous stance. He has refused to issue any of the 2012 bonds that lawmakers and the voters approved, which happens to include a $51.5 transportation bond. A community development bond of $23.7 million and a land conservation bond of $9.7 million from 2010 also remain unissued.

Including federal funding leveraged by state dollars, the unissued bonds could inject $300 million into the state economy and support 3,200 jobs. But why new borrowing needs to be approved while old borrowing remains blocked by the governor is a truly head-scratching question.

Even if LePage were to reverse course now, it might be too late to have much effect on this year’s construction season. Highway projects take time to be advertised and bid. The holdup of 2012 drinking water bond money, meanwhile, could mean that municipal utilities planning projects this year will have to put them on hold, much as many downtown improvement plans were scuttled when the 2010 bonds remained unissued.

At his Thursday news conference, LePage responded to claims from Democratic legislative leaders that he’s holding the approved bond issues hostage, not by denying the claim, but by agreeing with it.

“It’s the only way I can get anything done upstairs. You’ve got to threaten them,” he said, predicting that hospitals won’t get paid otherwise. “They won’t get it done unless I force it,” he added.

Yet the governor isn’t even very good at carrying out his threats. Earlier, he said he’d veto every bill that crossed his desk until his hospital pay plan was approved. Instead, he signed the now-notorious St. Patrick’s Day bill to allow bars to open at 6 a.m. when March 17 falls on a Sunday, and then let six more bills become law without his signature.

Given this track record, it’s hard to see what withholding his signature from bond warrants accomplishes.

Yet there may be a stronger motivation than jousting with Democrats to explain LePage’s about-face on the need for borrowing —  the state of the Maine economy.

The year before an incumbent seeks re-election is often the most crucial in determining voters’ willingness to grant or deny a second term. And the signs for LePage are not good. The unemployment rate remains stuck at 7.3 percent, just where it was one year earlier, with more than 50,000 Mainers still unemployed.

In the meantime, the national unemployment rate, which was more than 2 percent higher than Maine’s at the height of the recession, has edged down to 7.7 percent. The national economy is recovering, though slowly, and Maine’s is not. One Republican office tried to put a favorable spin on things by citing a magazine survey predicting that the state economy would grow this year —  at half the national rate.

Putting the construction industry back to work, which is what building prisons, highways, water lines and port facilities would do, is one element that could prompt a return to sustained growth.

The question is, by the time the tangled web caused by LePage’s previous actions, current hostage-taking, and future proposals gets sorted out, will it be too late?

Douglas Rooks is a former daily and weekly newspaper editor who has covered the State House for 28 years. He can be reached at [email protected].