Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Corporate Albatross Dept.: FairPoint's struggles continue

Published in the Portland Phoenix


It has been a very long time since our last FairPoint update, but you can rest assured that the North Carolina-based landline provider's downward slide has continued, as the company attempts to restructure its way out of crushing debt through bankruptcy-court protection. Here are a few gems from the past few months.


First up, and most recently, on August 5, MAINE TAXPAYERS GAVE FAIRPOINT A $1.1 MILLION GIFT, when Maine Revenue Services agreed to accept just shy of $400,000 as payment "in full" of a $1.5 million tax bill the company owed the state.

But new math appears to be the way, as the COMPANY'S ACTUAL VALUE IS IN SERIOUS DOUBT. In its October 2009 bankruptcy filing, the company claimed its assets, as of June 2009, were $3.236 billion, with debts of $3.234 billion. An independent valuation of the company, however, set its total worth at between $1.8 billion and $2.1 billion. In another filing, FairPoint says its northern New England assets are worth $1.2 billion — far less than the $2.3 billion the company paid (including $1.7 billion in actual cash), to Verizon to take over landline service in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, a takeover that was delayed several times before finally becoming effective at the end of 2008.

Also, ITS BUSINESS MODEL IS FAILING. The bankruptcy filing is clear: "FairPoint has been unable to attain the performance levels it projected at the time of the acquisition" of Verizon's northern New England business. In 2008, 8.5 percent of customers who had been with FairPoint before the merger cut their landlines. That's pretty bad, but customers who joined FairPoint in the Verizon switch left even more quickly: 12.3 percent of them bailed in 2008 alone, according to court documents. That's a big increase from the 7.3 percent subscriber loss Verizon experienced in 2007, which FairPoint's plan had projected it would beat (meaning lower losses, not higher).

The COMPANY HAS TROUBLE FORESEEING THE FUTURE in other ways, too. Beyond FairPoint's bizarre pre-merger projections, Vermont's Public Service Board (its equivalent of Maine's Public Utilities Commission) ruled in late June that "FairPoint has provided virtually no explanation" for its service-quality promises, saying that "based upon the record before us, we cannot find that FairPoint has demonstrated the financial capability to meet its obligations under Vermont law and its (state license) as a telecommunications carrier."

For that matter, FAIRPOINT HAS PROBLEMS VIEWING THE PAST ACCURATELY. In February, the company announced that it had overstated 2009 revenue by 3 percent, or $26 million.

The COMPANY HAS LEVERAGED ITS BANKRUPTCY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF STATE REGULATORS in Maine and New Hampshire, getting permission to delay paying millions in poor-service-quality penalties, and even the potential for them to be waived altogether, if service improves. FairPoint also was given extra time in those two states to roll out its outdated version of broadband Internet access to rural customers. Vermont regulators have so far held firm, but FairPoint is asking them to reconsider, and if that fails the company is expected to ask a federal judge to overrule the state officials.

This is particularly ironic in Maine, because FAIRPOINT HAS SPENT MONEY TO LOBBY AGAINST A HIGH-CAPACITY BROADBAND NETWORK to be built with state, federal, and private funds. The company has argued that such an effort would unfairly compete with the slower-speed and later-arriving service FairPoint promises it will one day get around to providing. But federal funds aren't the real issue: having failed to receive any of the $38 million in economic stimulus money it applied for a year ago, the company has nevertheless applied again, this time seeking $20 million in federal funds to build out its network.

In the past five months, two TOP EXECUTIVES HAVE LEFT, AND ARE BEING REPLACED WITH EXECUTIVES WITH PRIOR CORPORATE BANKRUPTCIES ON THEIR RESUMES. Alfred Giammarino, who became FairPoint's chief financial officer in September 2008, resigned March 31 for what were called "personal reasons." He was replaced July 18 with Ajay Sabherwal, who was CFO for Choice One Communications leading up to, during, and after that company's 2004 bankruptcy restructuring. And David Hauser, appointed CEO in June 2009, was asked to resign by the company's major creditors and did so in mid-August. He has been replaced with Paul Sunu, who was CFO of Hawaiian Telecom when that company, another former Verizon landline property, entered bankruptcy protection in 2008.

And then, if all that wasn't enough, FAIRPOINT HAS ARGUED THAT IT SHOULD FACELESS SCRUTINY FROM STATE AND FEDERAL REGULATORS after it emerges from bankruptcy. Specifically, the company told Vermont regulators that their oversight puts the company at a competitive disadvantage when offering Internet and television services that are not regulated by the state, in combined packages with landline service, which is regulated.

In making this argument, FAIRPOINT HAS FORGOTTEN THAT IT PROMISED THE PUBLIC MORE AND FASTER INTERNET ACCESS as a key element in its argument that its takeover of Verizon would benefit the public. Now that it has sought — and received — permission from state regulators to delay and renege on those promises, the public benefit is reduced. No wonder FairPoint wants less regulation.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Press Releases: Maine's broken e-mail system

Published in the Portland Phoenix


When Naomi Schalit of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting asked for electronic copies of e-mails between the chairman of the Maine Public Utilities Commission and representatives of companies the PUC dealt with, she did not expect to receive a cost estimate of $10,000 from the state — nor to be required to pay $80 for the privilege of receiving that estimate.

And when she wrote back asking for that exorbitant fee to be waived, as allowed in state law, because she is a reporter for a non-profit organization publishing its material in more than 20 newspapers around the state, she did not expect to get a revised estimate of $36,239.52. (Happily, she was not charged to receive that new figure, though in a passing encounter with the PUC's chief lawyer, she did have to hear complaints about "all the work you're making us do.")

The cost is clearly outrageous, and a barrier to public access to information that belongs to the public. But here's the really surprising thing the Portland Phoenix has learned from just a little research into the matter: the estimate reflects the state's actual cost to extract the information from its e-mail archive, which is so cumbersome that it's next to impossible to actually use.

Greg McNeal, Maine's chief information officer, says he and his staff have calculated that responding to a similar request (from an attorney involved in a lawsuit relating to state government) would take one of his two e-mail technicians an entire year of full-time work.

Hence the sky-high dollar amount: Even with a statutory limit of $10 per hour of state-employee time responding to freedom-of-information requests, the process of e-mail recovery is so lengthy that expenses easily rise into tens of thousands of dollars.

This clearly is not just delaying — and inflating the cost of — Schalit's request, but court proceedings, and even internal state investigations performed at taxpayer expense (McNeal confirms that his agency bills other state agencies similar amounts for similar services.)

McNeal calls the backup mechanism "archaic," and says he has been lobbying to improve it for some time now, but the state lacks both funding and a working example to adapt to Maine's needs.

State archivist David Cheever uses the word "nightmare" to describe this situation, and goes on to say the e-mail backup system is "entirely unworkable."

But Cheever and McNeal both say this is not a problem unique to Maine, which has roughly 12,000 state e-mail accounts, with thousands upon thousands of actual messages, which must all be backed up in a way that must somehow or other be accessible to the public and yet secure from destruction (and, in e-mail messages with criminal-justice information, secured from prying eyes according to strict federal rules).

Neither of them is aware of a state government that has a timely, inexpensive storage-and-retrieval method for state officials' e-mail messages. (For that matter, Cheever says he just got back from a trip to the National Archives, which has also not yet devised a functioning system for billions of federal e-mails.)

The state can't afford to experiment to find something that might work: "We don't have the money to be wrong," Cheever says. But every state is in that boat, and so all of them are sitting around waiting for someone else to experiment long enough to make something work.

Schalit's reaction to this information was partially relief (that she apparently isn't being singled out for obstructionism by state officials wary of her reporting), but also outrage. Calling the existence of a system like this "mind-boggling for anybody who has an interest in history," she says, "If this is the kind of system they have installed for government business, there's something wrong with the system."

But it's Cheever who has the best summary of the way things are right now for anyone interested in how state government is actually functioning: "There's your haystack. Good luck with the needle."

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Music Seen: Street musicians at First Friday Art Walk, Portland, August 6


Published in  the Portland Phoenix

With the Tower/Building of Song on hiatus while its creators move apartments (again), the street-music scene on First Friday was quieter than in recent months. But that left more aural room for buskers along Congress Street.

In a two-hour gallery-browsing stroll from Monument Square to Longfellow Square and back, we heard nine musical performances (two other people looked like they might be about to start playing, but didn't in the time we lingered in anticipation).

A traditional Americana fiddler outside the Maine College of Art got us going with a toe-tapping rhythm and a little shuffle of his feet. But something echoing down the street caught our ear, and it turned out to be a man smoothly playing soulful jazz on his saxophone very nearby — just outside SPACE Gallery.

Two guitar players were next, a female singer-songwriter with some original tunes outside Two Point Gallery and a man strumming Spanish-tinged airs on a classical guitar outside the Empire.

Outside the Green Hand Bookshop were three women merrily fingering their accordions, giving our turn to head back toward the Monument a little extra jaunt. At least until we encountered a young man with a synthesizer outside Strange Maine. He was working the electronica-plus-drum-machine end of his small keyboard, extracting haunting, ethereal sounds that in some cases seemed to surprise even their creator. (His abstraction meshed startlingly well with the classical guitar across the street. Perhaps there's a collaboration option there?)

Down by LL Bean, a man was playing two different-sized recorders simultaneously, fairly capably handling a pair of two-handed instruments without help. And then he switched to saxophone, with a big-band sound.

Next on our way was a woman strumming on a banjo and doing vocals that are best described as shouting. She was outside MECA (the fiddler had moved on), and her friends were whooping it up around her, possibly having too much fun than could be reliably ascribed to their muse of the moment.

Finally, as we left the Art Walk to go in search of sustenance, a lonely Cranky the Clown School Dropout was mournfully tending to his saxophone, sitting beneath the gaze of Portland, To Her Sons Who Died For The Union.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Press releases: Crimes and hoaxes

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Portlanders collectively sucked in their breath with fear when the story broke last Tuesday morning on Facebook and the local news media: a 20-something woman had reported to police that she had been attacked and sexually assaulted by a group of men while she was walking on Baxter Boulevard at 9:30 pm the night before.

The story, as told by the police to the press, was scary: the woman was followed by five men, who forced her to the ground, held her down, and assaulted her until a passing motorist yelled and scared the assailants off. After the bizarre one-punch killing of Eric Benson in Monument Square in May, it seemed like random horrific violence might really have come to Portland after all.

Tuesday afternoon, Portland Police Chief James Craig held a press conference near the suspected site of the attack, asking anyone who had seen or heard anything to come forward to help with the investigation. But less than an hour later, Craig was telling the media that the woman had made up the whole story and was herself being charged with the crime of filing a false report.

The city's mood went from terrified to bewildered. Why would someone make up a report like that? (The best, though still decidedly murky, answer on offer so far is that the woman had some kind of fight with her partner.) And then, how could someone have snookered the police and the media so thoroughly? The media and police have long had to deal with hoaxers and their ilk — but those isolated incidents are magnified with the power and speed of online social networking. So while both parties rushed to judgement — and will probably do so again — the audience was a lot bigger for the entire debacle than might have otherwise been the case.

It is sad but true that most assaults, even rapes and murders, in Portland and elsewhere are not random violence involving a victim and aggressor who have never met, but rather between people who know or are even related to each other. An attack may be horrific and tragic, but it rarely means there is a serial assailant on the loose. The incident is newsworthy, but less urgent, giving the police and the media a little bit of time to assemble facts and issue a more complete report.

But when information comes in that suggests that a group of unknown marauders is out attacking unknown victims, the police and the press rightfully get alarmed, and want to warn the public as quickly as possible — in hopes of preventing anyone else getting hurt for lack of timely warnings.

That urgency, though, means fact-checking time is limited. Even more than usual, the media are stenographers for officialdom — whatever the police say is broadcast, published, and posted online. And even more than usual, the police give an incomplete version of events — what they say is utterly dependent on a single person's anguished report.

This scramble happens a second time when the story is found to be a hoax. Police and the media rush to retract their earlier warnings, eager to reassure people that no, in fact, there is not a mob out attacking women, but rather a disturbed woman telling stories for unexplained reasons.

And then the rest of the information comes out — the police had known the woman was reluctant to go to the hospital to allow medical staff to collect DNA samples as potential evidence. And wait — isn't that specific stretch of the boulevard, between Hannaford and the road to North Deering, fairly well-traveled even after dark?

Those red flags might have caused a cop — or a reporter — to pause and ask more questions, but not in that rushed situation. Those inquiries came later, in the follow-up investigation and reporting. But just as Craig says he'll respond the same way to similar reports in the future, it's just as likely that the media will too.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Music Seen: Chris Teret + Man Forever + Guitar Cloud at SPACE Gallery, July 17

Published in the Portland Phoenix

When Kid Millions (Oneida) brought his new project, Man Forever, to SPACE Gallery, it was more than an opportunity to see a friend I have long known as a drummer with unusual intensity and stamina. It was a chance to see four more drummers like him — one even a local standout — at the same time, pouring sound and sweat in equal volumes into the cavernous SPACE.

Opener Chris Teret knew Kid from the past too — Kid had produced Old Baby, the 2008 Brah Records release by the band Company, of which Teret is part. He began with a few songs in his haunting voice, standing stock still, moving so economically it was almost as if the guitar itself birthed the notes and the vocals came from out of thin air.

But then, starting suddenly with a unanimous thunderous roll on snares, toms, kickdrums, and cymbals, Kid, Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Shahin Motia (Ex Models, Oneida), Andrew Barker (Gold Sparkle Band), and local Andrew Barron (Cult Maze, Domino Harvey) put out a physically solid, powerful roar that Just. Kept. Going.

It was a nonstop half-hour of continuous pounding, a whirlwind of arms, legs, heads, and the occasional flying drumstick. The coordinated improvisation produced rumbles and resonance that shifted from subway-train-approaching to calving-iceberg (due not only to the performers' physical prowess, but also to Chase's pre-show efforts, tuning the drums precisely to B or F-sharp). One particularly furious collective flurry looked like a group seizure but sounded like the Earth was coming apart around us.

Bassist Richard Hoffman (Sightings) joined in after a time, and later gave the drum corps a break with a screeching, wailing solo that blistered whatever eardrums were left in the spare but rapt audience.

After the Man Forever inundation came Guitar Cloud, another planned-improv endeavor, with more than a dozen guitarists jamming together in a collective drone that broke apart into themes, anthems, and solos — sometimes soft, other times overwhelmingly loud, and always dancing on the edge between control and madness.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Judging By Their Covers Dept.: Guides for 'Complete Idiots'

Published in the Portland Phoenix

If you want more proof of the degeneracy of modern American society, look no farther than the series of books labeled The Complete Idiot's Guide To. Published by Alpha Books, they appear to be aimed at those people whose intellects are one step below the customers of Wiley Publishing's ... For Dummies series.

And what do these books help the average "Complete Idiot" do? All sorts of things — raise goats, understand Facebook, and even learn Latin (perhaps targeting those who, like former vice-president Dan Quayle, think people still speak that language).

There are several volumes, though, that are disturbing in nature, and might cross the line into realms we prefer not be trod by someone who carries around a book identifying them in large orange type as a "Complete Idiot."

Some of these books could make mini-series of their own. Start, for example, with the eye-opening Sex for Dummies book, and then move on to The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth. That should fill the gap before you need to buy the CI's Guides to Raising Boys or Raising Girls. A few years later, pick up the latest edition of Open Nesting, which has, according to its cover line, "all you need to know about re-opening your home to your adult children." But when they move in, give your boomerang kids the CI's Guide to Self-Sufficient Living. Maybe they'll take the hint.

And then there are the books that we really wish they hadn't published. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Government Jobs, for example. Perhaps we could suggest a companion volume: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Preventing Idiots from Getting Government Jobs.

Most disturbing, though, is The Complete Idiot's Guide to the ASVAB. This refers to the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the standardized test administered to all new members of the military to help determine what job they should do. After Abu Ghraib and General Stanley McChrystal's bizarre behavior in Afghanistan, do we really need this book?

Here are some other real highlights from the latest catalogue, with our suggested tips for each volume:
UNDERSTANDING ETHICS Lie.
GETTING INTO TOP COLLEGES Cheat.
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY Steal.
THE MUSIC BUSINESS If you don't work for the RIAA, please give this book to someone who does.
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS If you don't work for Goldman Sachs or the Federal Reserve, please give this book to someone who does.
CASHING IN ON YOUR INVENTIONS Idiots rarely invent things that actually work. Try it again, just to be sure. But first, check your life-insurance policy!
VENTRILOQUISM Please, try not to speak for others, but rather let others speak for you.
RECOVERING FROM IDENTITY THEFT Now's your chance! Steal someone else's identity and stop being an idiot!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Press Releases: Wrong, Right

Published in the Portland Phoenix


You probably missed the kerfuffle over the rules governing media access to particular areas of this weekend's Nateva Music and Camping Festival, and over what (if any) rights news photographers would have to the images they made during the multi-day event. But it's an important lesson in how lawyers try to control media access, and the reversal — and happy transparency — that can develop when actual company leaders retake the reins from the attorneys.

The furor began with an awkwardly worded e-mail on June 22, from Elevate Communications, a Boston-based public-relations firm handling various tasks relating to the festival, including coordinating attendance by members of the media. The e-mail laid out the conditions under which accredited photographers would be allowed to take and use photos.

The conditions included a few unsurprising items, like banning flash photography during band performances and stating that bands would not pay the photographers for taking photos during the show.

But they went much, much farther, making several demands that litigation-wary lawyers are increasingly placing before photographers: banning photographers from certain areas of the event, banning photos of any illegal behavior (like drug use and nudity — as if participants themselves weren't going to post them on Facebook), claiming total ownership of the images made by professional media photographers (while simultaneously forcing the photographers to accept all liability if anyone objected to the photos' content), and demanding the right to destroy photographers' physical property (digital-camera memory cards) if festival organizers disliked what a photographer was doing.

This type of move is called a "rights grab" in the news business, and is becoming "standard operating procedure" for many organizers, according to Mark Loundy, a professional photographer who tracks the terms in photographers' contracts for the National Press Photographers Association (of which I am a member).

Loundy says that while the spread of rights grabs is "like a bad case of the flu," photographers are taking up opposition. "There seems to be a higher level of awareness that these things aren't in the interest of our profession," he says, though noting that many event organizers limit recourse by presenting rights-grab requirements at the time of the photo shoot, and ensuring that any person who could change the agreement is unreachable at that moment. (Some photographers, he says, leave without shooting; others sign "Mickey Mouse" or some other fake name, while most just sign their own names and carry on.)

And yet Loundy has "never heard of any of these entities ever trying to exercise their rights" under these agreements. So lawyers demand all sorts of rights and indemnification, but never use any of them. Still, it is rare for an event organizer to say "never mind" and get rid of any requirements or limits on photographers.

But that is exactly what happened in the Nateva case. Photographers objected, and when festival creator and organizer Frank Chandler got wind of the move by his PR firm, he acted swiftly. The following morning, he and the PR firm held an "emergency meeting," and that afternoon issued an apology letter from Chandler himself to all media and prospective photographers. That letter's tone was very different from the previous day's legalese-filled e-mail: "Unless you have spent some years as a member of the Cuban or North Korean press corps, I expect that you found these 'rules' nothing short of insulting," Chandler wrote.

Noting that just about everyone has a camera in their pocket at all times these days, he dismissed the idea that any accredited photographers would need to sign any sort of form, opened the festival and its entire grounds to media access, and specified that "You own all the pictures that you take and what you do with them is your business."

Good for Chandler for doing the right thing, and doing it decisively.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Holy war How an unholy alliance of Catholics, Mormons, and evangelicals seeks to control our lives

Published in the Portland Phoenix, the Boston Phoenix, and the Providence Phoenix

And so it came to pass, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and evangelical Protestants have banded together to battle, well, the rest of us — the heathens, the godless liberals, the Hitchens-reading progressives.


If you are unmarried and have sex, you're one of us. If you are married and use birth control, you are among the damned. If you are gay, you are especially damned. And if you are straight and favor gay rights, you're just as fucked.

This triple entente of sky-god worshipers — call them the Unholy Alliance — have amassed an almost unlimited treasury with which to wage war on abortion rights, birth control, and legislation that might support women's or gay equality.

The rest of us can run, but none of us can hide from the Unholy Alliance. From California to Maine, the Alliance has done a hell of a job killing same-sex marriage. There is no way to deny the unholy triumph.

The weirdness of all this is that each faith's tradition holds as a central belief that the others are not true believers; Catholics go further, believing that Mormons are not even Christians.

There are similarities among the three, of course — a professed desire to do good in the world, and to help people be part of something larger than themselves. As a result, many interfaith groups work together to fight hunger, poverty, and low-quality health care, bringing to bear their congregations' numbers and wealth to make others' lives better.

Now, though, as religious leaders from these sects — previously suspicious of each other — collectively redirect those resources to gender and sexual politics, they are looking beyond doing good in this world, toward creating what they view as God's world.

To really understand what's happening, we have to look beyond rhetoric and into theology. At the heart of this political work is an unwavering approach toward sin. Most faiths teach that there are certain practices that followers should shun, such as the Jewish and Muslim ban on eating pork. But some teachings in conservative sects go deeper, asking followers not only to refrain from forbidden behaviors themselves, but to work to prevent others from engaging in them.

A good example of this comes from Elmer Towns, the 77-year-old evangelist who in 1971 co-founded Liberty University with Jerry Falwell. "We no longer believe the Bible is the means of authority for how people should live," he laments to the Phoenix over the phone from his home in Virginia. "Sin is sin."

Towns would prefer Americans to live more godly lives — whether they are believers or not. "America has always been, let the minority have their say — let the majority have their way," he says. (He is careful to note Jesus's Biblical urging to "love your neighbor as yourself," but still sees the active purging of society's moral wrongs as "God's work.")

It is an aggressive and prescriptive interpretation of the concept of being one's brother's keeper. While some, like Towns, won't come out and say it directly, their line of argument is clear: not only are we responsible for our own salvation, but we must endeavor to save others, even from themselves. The consequences of failure are severe: true followers of each of these three faiths believe that, if one of their flock is aware of a sin, even one committed by others, and does not act to prevent it and reform the sinner, then the believer is as guilty of the sin as the person who actually committed it. And it is true that there is no better way to impose a set of restrictions across the entire population than by law.

What it looked like
This phenomenon was first seen in modern America during the '70s and '80s with the rise — and then fall — of the Moral Majority. Towns recalls the criticism directed at Falwell then for suggesting that evangelicals, Mormons, and Catholics "join together not for salvation purposes but for ethics and for family."
Driven by their shared objections to what they view as the excesses of modern culture, the churches were driven into each others' arms.

Towns cites Falwell as an example of a religious-political leader who "felt he had a mandate from God to bring this nation back" to a remembered glory. (It won't surprise you that Towns is a fan of the Tea Party movement, although he doubts its chances of success.)

The collaboration resurfaced and drew national attention in 2008, with California's gay-marriage debate, though it had begun to come together in 2006, when President George W. Bush nominated conservative judges John Roberts Jr. and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

"They recognize that the Supreme Court plays a very important role in shaping political and cultural dialogue," says Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Public Research Associates, a Boston-area progressive think-tank that watches the political actions of the religious right. The Unholy Alliance solidly backed Roberts and Alito, seeing them as like-minded activists who would continue to shift government toward churchly goals, particularly on gay-rights and abortion issues.

The Alliance opposed Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor and are working to block Elena Kagan's appointment, seeing them as too liberal. "If Obama gets to appoint the people he wants to appoint," Berlet says, "it will shift the political scene over the next 30 years" — and not in a way the religious right are hoping for.

When Proposition 8, which set to outlaw same-sex marriage in California, was placed on that state's ballot in 2008, the Unholy Alliance was again at the forefront. Led by the Mormon church, Catholic and evangelical leaders also donated church funds and urged followers to contribute time and money to the campaign.

In Maine last year, the same thing happened, led this time by the Roman Catholic bishop of Portland, Maine, Richard Malone, who personally testified before lawmakers in opposition to a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage. When it passed, Malone spearheaded the repeal effort, issuing letters to be read from pulpits statewide, and ordering special collections during services to send their proceeds to "defend marriage." Evangelicals were prominent in the campaign, and the Mormon-linked National Organization for Marriage provided two-thirds of the funding. (Nationwide outcry against this overt political action by churches led to a backlash; see sidebar, "Paying Taxes?")


In the national health-care debate, the Alliance — often in the form of the Family, an evangelical group with ties to many members of Congress (and Maine governor John Baldacci, a former congressman), — stepped in to protect the godly from the godless. Berlet sums it up neatly, saying their argument was that big government is really a form of collectivism, which leads to totalitarianism, which leads to authoritarianism, in which a person is substituted for (or alternately believed to actually be) a god. And so, in their eyes, Obama's desire to expand government's role in health-care is evidence that he is both Stalin and Hitler.

The underpinning 
Scholars of the intersection of religion and politics agree that this development is both new and startling. But they also see a rationale: "Religion fundamentally has moral values and principles," says Roger Keller, Richard L. Evans Chair of Religious Understanding at Brigham Young University. "When those get tweaked by social issues . . . that's what normally draws people into the political arena."

"It's the emotional appeal based on references that are largely Biblical and widely recognized in an evangelical culture in which every political action has to be linked to a Biblical background," says Berlet.

Rhys Williams, director of the McNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion at the Jesuit-run Loyola University Chicago, says there is a core belief that "politics has to be moral and we want to get our religious views in there." He characterizes the political aspirations of religious movements as "a way of protecting the public sphere as part of their image of what a moral society looks like."

Williams says, in an aside, that many of these individuals may not have problems with homosexuals as people, but rather object to any form of public approval, such as having those relationships recognized by the government as in any way similar to heterosexual marriage.

And while the focus of moralist social reformers has shrunk over the past century (giving up on Prohibition; reining in zealotry around the content of television shows and musical recordings), the conflict between the godly and the rest of us is likely to continue for some time.

Keller says part of this battle is theological: "Some of them are trying to save their neighbors." A converted Mormon who is a former Presbyterian and Methodist minister, he has a more detached view than some of his co-religionists; he argues that his beliefs don't give him the right to say what the government should impose on others. "I shouldn't ask the government to do the job of defining for everybody my moral standards."

But Keller admits, "often, religious organizations don't make that kind of distinction."

That may be dangerous, warns Traci West, a professor of ethics and African-American studies at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Codifying in law a specific prohibition, she says, demonstrates lack of the humility most religions preach. "Christians ultimately never know who is right based on who is saved," she says. "It is only God who separates the wheat from the chaff."

As a result, she suggests an alternative faith-based approach to morals: urging the government to protect "some common values of supporting each other to be caring and respectful across our differences, which of course we're going to have."

Looking forward 
And so we come down to the crux of the matter: those who believe the United States should be "a Christian nation," and those who want it to remain the open, pluralistic society it has always been. "We shall be as a city upon a hill," John Winthrop wrote of the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. "The eyes of all people are upon us." But America as a whole was created as bigger than that, with tolerance and mutual understanding of our differences underpinning the communal ability to be a far greater whole than the sum of our parts. (That's also, by the way, the origin of Ben Franklin's "Join, or Die" cartoon, which is one basis for the Gadsden "Don't Tread on Me" flag so widely waved by Tea Partiers today.)

Perhaps the best news, if it can be called that, is this: Williams predicts that the positions that are aggressively defended by religious organizations, and their mutual alliances, are likely fairly solid now, having retreated to the most basic fundamental human ideas of family, marriage, and sex.

The energy with which those positions will be held, however, worries Keller, who likens churches "imposing" their doctrines on government to the religious-political connections in Iran's government, which is largely run by clerics acting behind the elected lay politicians.

West, as might be expected of a scholar of African-American culture in northern New Jersey, sees America as a "very pluralistic society" in which all types of people must learn to coexist. Opposing same-sex marriage is, to her, supporting "destruction of family life"; she says she wants to ask church leaders who oppose it, "Why that sense of urgency?" — especially when the Catholic Church, in particular, is facing significant obstacles both financial and scandalous in places as far-reaching as Germany, Ireland, and Wisconsin.

But she acknowledges that faith and religious teachings will always be in the political discussion. The question is whether dogma and belief spread themselves into the secular realm of backroom deals. "It's a fine line between standing up for what I believe is true about how we should live as a society because I am inspired by my faith" and prescribing "things in law should be aligned with my faith," says West. "Spending money to shape public policy to fit your religious tradition crosses the line."

sidebar: The Future of the Unholy Alliance

Stem-cell research arose as a controversy not long ago, because researchers were experimenting with embryonic stem cells, which required destroying embryos (which were usually surplus eggs fertilized through artificial insemination, and later donated by their parents). That furor has largely quieted down, mainly it turns out stem cells donated by consenting adults have a lot more promise than previously thought — nearly as much, in many cases, as embryonic ones. Now scientists are focusing on understanding and expanding the capabilities of adult stem cells; at some point they may seek to return to embryonic work, but that may be decades in the future.

Or will there even be an Unholy Alliance to take on issues like this?

Fred Karger, a leader in the movement to expose the exact size of religious contributions to political campaigns, says he thinks the alliance "will unravel without any outside help," observing the Mormons' public retreat in the face of public outrage after the Prop 8 campaign. "The Catholic Church will be right behind them," Karger predicts, saying that even though their efforts succeeded in repealing same-sex marriage in Maine, the backlash did "tremendous damage to their reputation."

We should be so lucky.

sidebar: Pulling Political Churches' Nonprofit Exemptions
We might think we're safe from this religious injection into politics, because of the Constitution's separation of church and state. But there's a loophole: while the government cannot favor one religious tradition over another, there is no legal structure that prevents religious groups from wielding political might. (Some Republicans have, at various times in the past decade, introduced federal legislation that would actually protect the ability of churches to spend on political matters. Fortunately, it hasn't gotten anywhere — yet.)

Religious organizations, at present, get automatic certification from the IRS as nonprofit groups. There are some rules limiting how much political activity nonprofits can have, but churches — most notably the Catholic Church — don't pay those rules much mind, preferring instead to wield significant political muscle both in person and with money.

Particularly in response to the religious war waged on same-sex marriage, there have been a number of public campaigns to revoke nonprofit status for churches that break the rules.

Some — including the Phoenixin a 2009 editorial — have argued that religious groups should have to apply for tax-exempt status (rather than automatically receiving it), and that their lobbying efforts and related spending should be made public.

But perhaps the best measure is with a relatively simple, possibly administrative change. At present, IRS rules limit only religious groups' efforts in support or opposition to "any candidate for elective public office." But same-sex marriage is not a candidate; it is a referendum question. If the IRS prohibition were expanded to ban church efforts regarding, say "any question put to the voting public on a ballot," the stakes would be raised, and the enforcement much clearer.

sidebar: The Keys to Heaven Can Make For Good Fundraising
How much money can the Unholy Alliance bring to bear on campaigns? In California, reports have estimated that as much as half of the $42 million spent to support Prop 8 came from organized religion, or from individuals inspired by appeals from conservative church leaders.
In Maine, the Unholy Alliance and its members gave $2.7 million of the total $3.1 million in cash and in-kind donations generated by Stand for Marriage Maine, according to official campaign-spending reports on file with the state. (As far as organizations go, the National Organization for Marriage, which has been linked to the Mormon Church, gave $2 million; the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland gave another $570,000, including more than $250,000 from dioceses elsewhere in the country. The national Knights of Columbus Catholic service organization gave $50,000. And the evangelical-supported Focus on the Family gave another $120,000.)

But that's not even close to their fundraising capacity. "It's unlimited. It's as big as they want it to be," says Fred Karger, an activist seeking to expose the exact amounts religiously motivated donors have contributed to banning gay marriage. Donations can often be channeled through churches to make them tax-deductible, Karger observes.

And some donors have effectively unlimited resources. Naming vastly wealthy evangelicals Howard Ahmanson Jr. and John Templeton Jr., Karger says they would write checks for any amount, as long as their names were not connected to the funds.

For them — and for everyone — Karger jokes, " 'Give us all your worldly goods or eternity is in jeopardy' is a very effective fundraising tool."

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Press Releases: A call to action

Published in the Portland Phoenix


In this campaign season of railing against government and the status quo, do you actually know much about all the different things your government does? I don’t mean to insult readers by suggesting you don’t know, for example, how much public toll money it will cost to repair the Maine Turnpike bridges over Gorham Road and the I-295 southbound exit ($1 million).

Certainly, some of that is the fault of media outlets, which don’t always do a great job of investigating government actions and uncovering the hidden truths about what those who serve us are really up to — whether good, bad, or (as seems to be most often the case) indifferent.

But this is not a call to action directed at media outlets — they already hear enough of that, and if they’re slacking off the digging, they know it. Quite frankly, ensuring government openness, transparency, and effectiveness is not solely up to the media: It’s up to you.

You are the most effective person for the job. Contrary to popular belief, the media have no special rights to public information — what’s available to reporters is no more or less than what’s available to everybody else. And government officials don’t exactly like media scrutiny all that much: whenever lawmakers and policymakers are considering becoming more open or (as is much more often the case) more secretive, the most persuasive arguments for transparency are not that the media will be shut out, but that the people will be.

Which is why it behooves you not just to rely on media outlets to get you the information you need, but to go out and get it yourself. Right now, all over Maine and across the country, public officials are going about their business without worrying that anyone’s watching — because often, nobody is. Whether you object to a government program or support it (or hate some and like others), go learn more about it, from the source. Keeping government honest is everyone’s business.

Go exercise your right — think about something that matters to you, contact the relevant public agency, and ask for documents on some aspect of the issue. (If you’re stuck, an agency’s annual budget is always a good place to get ideas of what else you might want to learn about.)

Air quality, water quality, bridge maintenance, reports of infectious diseases, pollutant and toxin releases, tractor-trailer accident data, road-building plans, building- and business-inspection records, and all kinds of other information are open to the public — that means you.

For some tips, check out the Portland Phoenix’s blog, thePhoenix.com/AboutTown, where you can find a link to a PDF of a handout from a Society of Professional Journalists freedom-of-information session I helped organize in Portland last week (I’m the president of the Maine SPJ chapter). If you run into problems, there are some strategies in the handout; SPJ can help, as can the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition, and — especially when it comes to government spending, the Maine Heritage Policy Center’s site at maineopengov.org.

The overall point is to remember, both as you go to the polls this week and throughout the rest of the year, that people in government agencies work for you. This does not mean you get to harangue or harass them (free-speech principles apply, but so do those of adult decorum). Think about it this way: if you’re their boss, you don’t want to be the rude, mean boss everyone hates and is afraid of. You want to be the effective boss people like working hard for.

Take a few minutes — maybe on the first weekday of every month — to think about some information you’ve been meaning to ask for from your government, and make the call, or send the e-mail. It’s up to you — and not just the media — to keep your government working hard, honestly, and openly.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

June Election: Referendum questions

Published in the Portland Phoenix


All Maine voters — whether you are registered as a member of a particular party or not — get to vote on five questions on June 8.

First is a PEOPLE’S VETO, repealing a law that would give Maine a flat 6.5-percent income-tax rate (changing from a graduated rate with the highest bracket at 8.5 percent for people with income over $16,700) and make up the money lost by expanding the sales tax to a wide range of services including auto repair, tickets to movies and performing-arts events, sightseeing tours, pet-care services, bar cover charges (for live-music venues), and admission to amusement parks. A “Yes” vote is for repeal; a “No” vote supports the new law.

Second is a $26.5 MILLION BOND FOR “ENERGY INDEPENDENCE,” giving $11 million to off-shore wind development (which will also draw $24.5 million in federal and other funds) and $15.5 million to energy-efficiency improvements at the University of Maine, community colleges, and Maine Maritime Academy.

Question 3 is a $47.8 MILLION TRANSPORTATION BOND to spend $24.8 million to improve highways, $16 million for railroads (plus designating an additional $4 million from last November’s transportation bond for railroads), and $6.5 million for a deep-water pier at Portland’s Ocean Gateway terminal.

Question 4 is a $23.8 MILLION ECONOMIC-DEVELOPMENT BOND including $8 million for redevelopment of the Brunswick Naval Air Station, $11 million for various business-grant programs, and $1.25 million for purchasing historic properties for preservation.

Question 5 is a $10.3 MILLION WATER-QUALITY BOND supporting improving water supplies for drinking and for agriculture, as well as improving household and municipal wastewater treatment systems. If approved, this bond will draw as much as $33.3 million in federal and other funds to augment these projects.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Up-and-Comers Dept.: Deering High musician having a banner year

Published in the Portland Phoenix

You might have caught 18-year-old Dominic Sbrega on NPR’s From the Top last week, playing Mexican folk-dance music on his stand-up bass, accompanying three trumpeters (from the Washington DC area), two 17-year-old Maine percussionists, and show host Christopher O’Riley on piano.

If you’re a road-tripping music fan, you also might have caught Sbrega in California, performing in the Grammy Jazz Ensembles back in January as part of the week leading up to the Grammy Awards ceremony. But if you’re a jazz fan, it’s pretty much a sure thing that you’ll see him performing on even larger stages at some point not too long from now.

Sbrega plays the upright bass in classical, jazz, and (apparently) Mexican folk pieces, and is also one of seven high-school students recognized this year by DownBeat magazine for outstanding performance. In the fall, he’ll head to Rochester, New York, to attend the Eastman School of Music to study jazz performance on the bass.

A Deering High School senior at the moment, Sbrega is unimpressed with the Rams’ music program, saying the facilities are fine but the people could be more dedicated. Of course, he sets a high bar: In addition to performing with the Portland Youth Symphony Orchestra and various all-state music ensembles, he spent two weeks last summer taking master classes at Eastman. Keep your eyes — and ears — out for his return to town, but after a very busy winter and spring, he says, “I think I might take a little bit of a break” over the summer.

Follow-up: Attorneys cleared

Published in the Portland Phoenix



Three attorneys who faced allegations of professional misconduct (see “CMP Attorney, State Regulators Under Review,” by Jeff Inglis, April 2) have been cleared of wrongdoing by a committee of the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar, according to a ruling issued last week.

The three had been the objects of a complaint from Bob Bemis of Levant, stemming from how they handled communications with him and with staff of the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) during a regulatory proceeding.

Ken Farber, the general counsel for Central Maine Power, was given the cleanest bill of health, with the board noting in its ruling that the person charged with proving the allegations, Jacqueline Gomes, admitted during last month’s hearing on the matter that he had done nothing wrong.

Eric Bryant, an attorney for the Maine Office of the Public Advocate, had admitted failing to send a copy of a single e-mail message to Bemis and another party in the proceeding, but the review board’s report says that error was “of little consequence,” and the e-mail contained “no new information” that needed to be provided to Bemis. As a result of those facts, he was also found not to have violated any rules of the bar.

Joanne Steneck, general counsel for the PUC, was found to have been “operating under the sincere, though perhaps mistaken belief” that Bemis and another party to the proceeding had agreed to let her communicate without sending copies of correspondence to them. The report suggested a couple of things Steneck could have done that “would have been better practice,” but because she was operating in good faith and because the report said no serious damage was done by her actions, she was also found not to have violated any rules.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Press Releases: Poor WGME

Published in the Portland Phoenix


As the gubernatorial primary date inches closer, we’re starting to see more and more TV ads showing would-be governors touting themselves and their qualifications for the job. But this year is a little different: We’re not seeing any Democrats advertising on WGME, the Sinclair-owned CBS affiliate that broadcasts on Channel 13 from Portland.

That’s unusual, though the ostensible reason isn’t: there is an ongoing dispute between unionized station employees and management, and the Dems want to be seen supporting union workers.
More unusual, though, is that the station’s general manager, Tom Humpage, went public to complain about it. Naturally, though, he barely even mentioned the real issue: money.
 

In a video statement that went out on the airwaves and streamed online, Humpage lamented the candidates’ decisions, but he appeared unclear about how to approach them. Should he cozy up to these people who are depriving his business of cash, or get angry?

First, he went courtly, calling their decision “surprising . . . given that WGME is one of the most watched stations in Portland.” (That’s true; WGME has posted strong ratings for individual news programs, and is generally in second place for viewership in the Portland-Auburn market, though very far behind top-rated WCSH 6, the Gannett-owned NBC affiliate.)

But Humpage, who did not return phone calls seeking comment for this story, quickly got combative, pointing out a few facts in his favor: the union is not on strike (true), the station is “not violating any state or federal labor laws” (true, though a union-filed unfair labor practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board has yet to be ruled upon), and that WGME “employs more union employees than any other television station in all of Maine” (a claim that is nearly impossible to prove either way).
 

We can forgive him for being worked up — and confused. This is not a total Democrat boycott of WGME: all the Democratic candidates participated in an April 28 debate televised on that channel and moderated by WGME news anchor Gregg Lagerquist.

But while they seem happy to take the free airtime and face-time from the station, they’re not giving anything back. And that’s really what has Humpage upset. The amounts in question are significant. In 2002, for example (the last time the governor’s race was for an open seat), the 15 candidates spent more than $2.5 million on television advertising (more than half of all campaign spending in that race). In 2006, with a Democratic incumbent facing a primary and a host of Republican challengers, TV ad spending for the governor’s race still hit $2.2 million. (Legislative revenue is minuscule by comparison — combined, all the State House candidates in 2008 spent barely over $75,000 in TV ads.)

Already in this year’s gubernatorial campaign, the 30 candidates have collectively spent nearly $1 million on TV ads alone, a pace that suggests the final tally will be much higher. It’s reasonable for Humpage to want to get a cut of that spending, and for him to be upset at learning that his station’s union relations are hurting that possibility.
 

Of course, that money is split across as many as seven TV stations around the state, but it’s money WGME was certainly planning on receiving that now it has to scramble to make up. (By contrast, Gannett as an overall corporation reported the Olympics drove significant gains in first-quarter advertising and is projecting as much as 20-percent increases in the second quarter.)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Tee-Partee Lohjik: Tyme fer moore lernin'

Published in the Portland Phoenix and the Boston Phoenix

Much sport has been made of the hilariously misspelled signs created and proudly displayed at rallies by barely literate Tea Partiers. But far more serious are their apparent deficits in basic math, science, ethics, and social studies, not to mention logic. The results of a recent New York Times/CBS News poll suggest several areas for possible re-education.

ON GOVERNMENT SPENDING (LOGIC) The percentage of Tea Partiers who live in households with Medicare and Social Security recipients is higher than in the overall population, and 62 percent of them say Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost to taxpayers. But 67 percent of them would favor having a smaller government, even if it meant cutting domestic programs — including Social Security and Medicare.

ON POPULAR OPINION (MATH) Though the poll — the margin of error of which is three percentage points — finds that just 18 percent of Americans identify themselves as Tea Party supporters, 84 percent of Tea Partiers think their movement’s views “generally reflect the views of most Americans.”

ON RACISM (SOCIAL STUDIES) Perhaps they are the real post-racists: 73 percent of Tea Partiers think black people and white people have equal opportunities to “get ahead” in today’s society.

ON PUBLIC EDUCATION (ETHICS) Sixty-five percent of them send their kids to public school (which is less than the 70 percent rate in the overall population).

ON CLIMATE ISSUES (SCIENCE) More than half — 51 percent — of Tea Partiers think global warming will not have a serious impact on human existence, and a further 15 percent don’t think it’s happening at all.

There are, however, some unexpected bright spots highlighted in the poll.

ON SURVIVALISM Many fewer Tea Partiers (only five percent) than we might have feared have actually gone the bunker route and purchased gold coins or bars in the past 12 months.

ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE Sixteen percent of Tea Partiers want same-sex couples to have the right to marry, and 41 percent want civil unions legalized.

It also seems noteworthy that this movement doesn’t have much youth power: a full three-quarters of them are over age 45, with 29 percent over age 64. Nor, for as passionate as they seem, do they offer much commitment: 78 percent of people who consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement have neither donated money nor attended a rally or meeting. Nor much tech-savvy: 68 percent of them haven’t even visited a Web site associated with the movement. (Perhaps, like their ideological brother Chief Justice John Roberts, they don’t actually know how to use a computer.)

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Relentlessly ringing freedom: Northern New England's Tea Partiers go local

Published at thePhoenix.com


Amid relentless bell-ringing (“Let freedom ring!” chanted the enthusiasts as they deprived passersby of their hearing and sanity), the Tea Party came to Portland last week to greet President Barack Obama.

None of the folks at the Portland gathering were openly armed, and a walkthrough by a pair of Secret Service agents didn’t appear to draw their interest to anyone in particular. (Police later reported no arrests in any of the demonstrations — pro- or anti-Obama.)

But as supportive as they are of the Second Amendment, the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states powers not explicitly granted to the federal government, is as closely in focus as anything else. And while most mainstream media coverage of the Tea Party movement is related to national issues, the next frontier for the Tea Party is in the state capitals — and then in a town hall near you.

What happens there, though, is anybody’s guess, given the divergent and sometimes contradictory views from various folks at the rally.

Joe DeCoste, an unemployed Emden man, agrees with charity and community support for needy neighbors, but wants to do it through the church, not the government. “We do that in our community,” he says, unconsciously admitting that government support isn’t even close to enough for most needy families.

He suggested that Obama’s efforts to create jobs “is going back to the old ways that didn’t work,” arguing that “the government cannot actually create anything” without taking something from citizens. The job-creation schemes of government are really plans to “redistribute your wealth” hatched by officials who “have never held a job in the private sector.”

DeCoste suggested we model our society on the “cooperative nature of the Pilgrims.” Whether that was how they cooperated with the natives by bringing disease and endless waves of undocumented immigrants, or how they cooperated with dissenters like Roger Williams was unclear.

DeCoste did have an interesting suggestion: He suggested that if we took the “$45 trillion we spend on Medicare” (whose annual budget is closer to $500 billion) and set out to design a health-care system, we wouldn’t come up with Medicare. As an example of “how free markets work,” he offered the cosmetic-surgery industry, whose services are not often covered by insurance, and has high-quality, low-cost treatment options widely available.

Mary Ellen Farrell, holding a sign with a lengthy argument from Thomas Jefferson whose ultimate point was that consolidating government in Washington would make government secrecy easier, talked emotionally, with tears in her eyes. “I feel our liberty slipping away,” she said. “I’m afraid of government,” said the former social worker, because she saw “abuse of entitlement” by people on government programs. “Everything is a gimme,” she said.

Laurie Pettengill of Bartlett, New Hampshire, finished the argument. Wearing a replica Minuteman uniform (“I wore this to 9/12 in DC,” she declared proudly), she suggested all Americans “read the Constitution for themselves,” particular that 10th Amendment — the states’ rights one.

“We need to get enough people who believe in states’ rights” to let health care and other issues in each state, rather than in the nation as a whole. (Nearby protestors mentioned abortion rights, gun rights, and same-sex marriage as other issues that should not be decided federally.)

Press Releases: Tree party

Published in the Portland Phoenix

It was, quite obviously, big news when President Barack Obama came to town last week. Even the Bangor Daily News sent a pair of reporters to explore the Portland Expo, while the New York Times sent a correspondent across the street, where health care was actually being delivered to those in need.

Gallons of ink were spilled writing about Obama’s visit, the politics of his health-care package, and the Tea Partiers across the street with bells to “let freedom ring” (even though some of them admitted the din was annoying), but it took the sense and presence of mind of an outside publication to look the other way — to see that the story was not Obama, but was the people the health-care package is intended to help. Sadly for an industry that keeps chanting “local local local,” the national view was sharper, clearer, and ultimately more satisfying.

When newspapers that are struggling for existence claim to provide information nobody else does, they need to keep in mind that it also has to be information someone actually cares about.


Of course, when the president comes to town, there’s lots of excitement and hoopla, especially when he’s coming to thank the local representatives for their votes on reform and to pressure the local senators to be wary of their party’s growing efforts to repeal it. (There’s also a whole lot of overtime pay for police officers — though nobody, until now, has reported that the exact amount will be available on Wednesday.)

And indeed the local media did a decent job of covering the goings-on inside the Expo, with Obama’s supporters, as well as outside, where more supporters demonstrated, as did opponents of the president and his policies.

Unsurprisingly, the Portland Press Herald did the most voluminous job, publishing eight related stories on the day after visit — detailing (among many other factoids) the Maine connections of the helicopter pilot who flew Obama into the Portland Jetport, the long waits to be in the audience, the disappointment of some who were not allowed in, the unsubstantiated and unchallenged complaints of the Tea Partiers protesting outside, the excitement of a Portland Red Claws player who got tickets to the event, the gifts that Governor John Baldacci — and a Fort Kent man — offered the president, and even a vague note that the Secret Service “took over” a building at the Jetport as part of the visit’s security precautions. There was a political-reaction piece in which Republican Senator Olympia Snowe revisited her recurring unspecific gripes about the bill, which she helped craft but ultimately voted against. There was also an “analysis” piece that did synthesize points from various sources and events, but nevertheless failed to add substantively to the debate that has occurred non-stop for months now.

For analysis, the place to go was a short article in the Christian Science Monitor by Portlander Colin Woodard, which offered the political explanation with a clarity everyone else lacked: “Obama won’t win any elections for Democrats this fall by coming here. ... But if the White House was looking for friendly turf in a rural, relatively poor, and overwhelmingly white state, it chose the right place,” noting that Democrats run state government and are only opposed in Portland’s city government by the left, not the right.

And for real impact, it was the Times’s piece (Dan Barry’s “Health Care For All, With Obama Down The Street”) that described the dire needs facing many Americans with no health insurance coverage, discussed what was already being done (under the stimulus package) to help fix the country’s broken health-care system, showed the changes already wrought from those changes, and suggested developments that might occur as a result of the reform bill.

It can indeed be very hard to see the forest for the trees. But if you report on the trees and not the forest, your audience knows the difference.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Rule of Law: CMP attorney, state regulators under review

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Three prominent Maine attorneys — two who are state employees and the third who works for one of the state’s largest regulated utility companies — will appear together this week before the grievance committee of the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar, the professional organization monitoring attorney conduct.

The lead attorney for Central Maine Power, Ken Farber, and two lawyers for state agencies, Joanne Steneck of the Maine Public Utilities Commission and Eric Bryant of the Maine Office of the Public Advocate (which represents consumer interests before the PUC), face allegations that they violated the rules of good attorney practice when handling a complaint before the PUC.

Bar Overseers staff say it’s “rather unusual” to have more than one attorney being considered for discipline during a single hearing, and only “rarely” in the committee’s roughly 200-case annual workload does a lawyer for a state agency appear, much less two.

The origins of this case stretch back several years — to a 2005 complaint from Levant resident Bob Bemis about CMP’s practices handling connecting electricity service to newly built homes. Steneck ran the hearing process for the PUC, in which Farber represented CMP and Bryant the OPA.

At issue before the grievance committee is whether the three attorneys communicated with some parties while excluding others, a practice called “ex parte communication” that is specifically banned in both PUC rules and separate bar rules governing attorney conduct statewide.

Bemis has alleged they did so, specifically by not sending him copies of e-mailed discussions they had, which he claims led to prearranged decisions he disagreed with as the inquiry moved along. (PUC processes are typically very slow; this one remains unresolved.)

All three attorneys have denied that they did anything wrong, and Farber’s written response to the allegations specifically notes that Bemis consented to being left out of at least one communication, on May 16, 2007.

Peter DeTroy, Bryant’s attorney, explained his client’s response — which is very similar to the others’ — by saying that it is in four parts: 1) the communications were not prohibited; 2) they had no substantive content (DeTroy suggested they might have been asking for a reminder about a meeting time, as an example); 3) anything that was substantive was only communicated after receiving permission from the parties left out; and 4) if there was anything substantive communicated without permission, it was ultimately immaterial because everyone was brought up to speed before any decisions were made.

The grievance commission will hear the case on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and will ultimately issue a ruling on whether any or all of the attorneys did anything wrong or face further sanction. There is no deadline by which they must make a decision.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

More Government Fees: Barring the way to public records

Published in the Portland Phoenix


The Maine Legislature is considering a move that will make it more difficult for concerned citizens to find out what their government is up to. Many branches of state, county, and local government already violate the spirit of public access by charging large fees for photocopies — or even electronic versions — of documents public officials have already been paid to create and archive for posterity. It could be about to get a lot worse.

Sure, officials allow you to look at public documents for free during business hours, but if you want to share something with a friend (or attorney) or read a long document overnight, you'll need a copy. State law specifies that copying charges have to be related to the actual cost of making the copy, but some offices — legally — charge as much as $2 per page, which is 2000 percent more than the dime Portland-based XPress Copy charges walk-in customers for the same service at its for-profit business.

The new proposal comes from the counties' registries of deeds, which store property-ownership documents. Those offices rake in millions more than their annual expenses from other sources, and funnel profits to other county programs. Now they are asking lawmakers to change the state's open-government laws to let them charge even more, by adding non-copy-related costs to their already top-scale photocopying fees.

The move, in LD 1554, a bill being debated in the Legislature this week, has a Falmouth business owner objecting in court, freedom-of-information advocates concerned, and registers of deeds statewide playing political defense.

The businessman, John Simpson, of MacImage of Maine, is the reason for much of this kerfuffle, though he says he's just trying to meet the needs of a very small niche market — title researchers and others who property-records examinations and are frustrated with the patchwork systems Maine's registries of deeds use. He wants to get all of the records from all of the registries and offer online access to them in one place, rather than requiring researchers to visit as many as 18 different places to see property records from around the state.

"Most of the counties have Web sites that are difficult to use," he says, and each county's records are separate (with some counties having two different registries with separate online systems). He has asked for the records, in bulk, to be provided electronically at little or no cost. Refusals from several counties have led to lawsuits, only one of which has been settled — against Hancock County, in Simpson's favor.

His insistence has the counties fearing competition for their budgets. For example, Cumberland County's Registry of Deeds spends a total of $800,000 a year in operations and capital investments. The office takes in $1.5 million in recording fees from people and companies involved in property transactions, and a further $600,000 annually in photocopying fees, according to county budget documents.

Bob Howe, a professional lobbyist who serves as executive director of the Maine County Commissioners Association, says any losses in photocopying revenue would have to be made up by raising property taxes on homeowners.

"The counties are concerned revenue is at risk," Simpson says, but "the real issue is a control issue." It's hard to fault his perception, when you hear objections like those raised by Pamela Lovley, the Cumberland County register of deeds, and her counterpart in Hancock County, Julie Curtis.

They don't dispute that the records should be available to the public — for inspection — but say they are worried about what might happen when someone like Simpson gets copies, expressing concern, for example, about whether Simpson's database will be complete and accurate.

Simpson says that's his problem, not the counties', and observes that nobody is forced to pay for his service if they find it of no use. The issue is not what he is going to do with the information, he says, but why the counties won't allow people to get inexpensive copies of public documents. "For whatever reason, they like to think of these as their own property," he says.

He has the backing of Maine's open-government advocates, including Mal Leary, president of Maine Freedom of Information Coalition, who notes that the registers' request would carve out "a back door exemption" to the state's freedom of access law. Specifically, he says, it would raise costs to the public for acquiring public records. While every other state, county, and local agency must charge "reasonable" copying fees related to the actual cost of copying, this proposal would allow the registries of deeds to include other expensive factors, like data-storage costs and the price of keeping the documents secure — which the registries must pay for whether anyone wants copies or not.

Worse, Leary says, is that when a fee is set, "there is no way to appeal it. . . . There ought to be some check and balance to what's reasonable . . . so you don't end up with counties balancing their budgets" on photocopying fees.

The Lewiston Sun Journal has editorialized on the matter, asking rhetorically which agency will next be allowed to exempt itself from statewide open-records laws, if this effort succeeds.

Oddly, Lovley claims the registries' proposal will not raise fees. She even goes so far as to say that if lawmakers allow her office to factor in hundreds of thousands of dollars of capital investment — and the millions of taxpayer dollars spent in the past — the result will be the opposite: "I think at some point you'll probably see some of our copy fees will go down."

But that argument doesn't impress Simpson: "They're already making a huge profit before making copies," he says. "It's not fair and it restricts access."

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Press Releases: Haiti troubles

Published in the Portland Phoenix

What can we learn from the Portland Press Herald's month-long-and-counting series following the beleaguered Sea Hunter ship carrying relief supplies from Portland to Haiti? Quite a bit, but more about the Press Herald's commitment to skeptical observing and detached reporting than anything else.

It certainly seemed a decent enough idea: A Maine-based ship owner volunteered to carry donated relief aid from Mainers (and some others along the East Coast) to Haiti in his ship, the Sea Hunter. Among the key items was a 37-foot truck equipped as a mobile medical-treatment facility, with exam rooms and other supplies, donated by the Augusta-based Maine Migrant Health Program to Konbit Sante, a Portland-based group providing community medical care in northern Haiti. Sending columnist Bill Nemitz along for the ride would generate good and interesting copy, tell a nice happy warm story about local do-gooders, and — crucially — give PPH readers something they couldn't get anywhere else.

As it turned out, though, the ship was found to have violated a few pesky US Coast Guard shipping rules about how much it could carry and how qualified its captain was, languished for ages under a detention order in Miami, and was only able to sail for Haiti with the intervention of Maine's congressional delegation and the donated time of a retired mariner (the second; he signed on after the first retired-mariner volunteer deemed the ship too unsafe for him to captain).

When it finally got to Haiti, it sat offshore for days, waiting for clearance to unload. Any semblance of speedy or effective relief had long since disappeared, but Nemitz gamely remained on the ever-extending story — in for a dime, in for a dollar. His journalistic ability was stretched beyond its limit; it was difficult to bring interest, much less drama, to the mind-bendingly mundane bureaucratic issues the ship owner had failed to anticipate. 

What he has to show for it is, more or less, a chronicle of repeated stymieing of one man's ill-informed though good-hearted idea.


But Nemitz and his newspaper never actually published the very basic observation they were showing: No matter how well-meaning a DIY relief effort is, professional aid organizations exist for a reason — including their ability to anticipate and work through (or around) the kinds of obstacles the Sea Hunter faced.

The fact that such an unremarkable insight has never seen ink in the thousands of words the PPH has printed on the subject makes it, in the end, hard to avoid the conclusion that this series was more about making Mainers feel good about themselves than about shedding light on the situation in Haiti.

Unfortunately, nobody at PPH HQ noticed the story had changed. The ship owner was repeatedly portrayed as a hapless victim of overweening bureaucracy, rather than as the guy who created the entire snafu in the first place: A water desalinator, food, and medicine arrived weeks after the direst need abated, though admittedly they would be welcome at any time in such an impoverished place.

What about that big-ticket piece of cargo, from Mainers to a Maine-led group in Haiti? In a dispatch filed nearly five weeks after leaving Portland, when unloading finally began, Nemitz revealed that that 37-foot medical-treatment truck would actually have to return to Maine for lack of anywhere to offload it.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Encores: We heart even more people!

Published in the Portland Phoenix

We were right. We told you two weeks ago that any list of Portland's Most Influential people was inherently incomplete — and so it was. (See "We Heart These People," February 12.) I asked you to send in names of people you know who should have been included, and several of you did, or mentioned to us on the side that we'd missed someone.

One writer observed that fairly few of our nominees were volunteers, which is indeed a good point. We got one self-nominating note, took a call from a person who found possibly our biggest omission from the list, and even spotted one particular brief, amusing Facebook status update.

Herewith, our attempt to rectify some of our omissions. (And sorry, folks, no double-encores. If we still missed someone, we're sorry, but it'll have to wait until the next time we do a list like that. Send suggestions along anyway, though!)

GRETA BANK | artist | Portraying the undersides of humanity through bold visions, dripping with inspired color
MEREDITH STRANG BURGESS | cancer-detection activist; state representative from Falmouth; owner, Burgess Advertising | Working tirelessly to help others live better lives
KIRSTEN CAPPY | owner, Curious City | Getting creators, readers, and fans of children's books on the same page
KEITH FITZGERALD | owner, Zero Station | Opening his doors to help open others' minds
MAIR HONAN | pastor, Grace-Street Ministry | Non-sectarian ministering to those most in need
MATT JAMES + ALISON PRAY | bakers, Standard Baking | Feeding our need for buying home-baked goodness
BERT JONGERDEN | general manager, Portland Fish Exchange; member, Portland Board of Harbor Commission | Keeping the waterfront working
JULIE MARCHESE | founder, Tri For A Cure race; co-founder, SheJams.com | Getting women on the move toward healthier living
SARAH PARKER-HOLMES | coordinator, USM Center for Sexualities and Gender Diversity | Promoting diversity and open-mindedness on and off-campus
ANITA STEWART | executive & artistic director, Portland Stage Company | Behind the scenes (literally and figuratively) running the city's biggest shows
MICHAEL TOBIN + JEFFREY CARON | artistic directors, Old Port Playhouse | Renewing an old venue with performances, teaching, and verve
VJ FOO | projection artist | Mixing video, music, and audiences to light up dance parties all week long

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Government Reform: Should non-citizens vote?

Published in the Portland Phoenix

We Americans know we don't like taxation without representation in our democracy, but should we allow participation without naturalization? The Portland Charter Commission, tasked with recommending changes big and small to the city's governing document, is discussing just that question, and will likely ask city residents to vote on it in November.

The big question before the commission got going was whether they would seek to create an elected-mayor-with-power position, rather than the ceremonial-figurehead-selected-by-the-councilors position we have now. But, led by Green Independents Ben Chipman and Anna Trevorrow, they've moved past that (answer: yes, and they're also recommending we choose the mayor by instant-runoff voting, a system that will give third parties more clout but may not change the actual electoral outcome) and are on to the question of whether non-citizens should be allowed to vote in Portland's municipal elections.

Before he spoke to the commissioners in a public meeting, Ron Hayduk, a social scientist at the City University of New York, spoke to the Phoenix about what this might mean.

Hayduk reports that in the first part of American history, many places — as many as 40 states and territories — allowed non-citizens to vote. That may sound nice, but those rights came mostly via laws designed to restrict voting rights to property owners, a rule that took years to overturn.

As voting rights expanded, governments hoping to avoid challenges to their existing power (often from poor and immigrant populations who were finding their political voices) introduced other rules, such as poll taxes and literacy tests.

Now a third party finds itself with significant power in Portland, and is moving to open the franchise to non-citizens. Chipman observes that Maine is a leader in encouraging voter participation, allowing same-day voter registration as well as permitting convicted criminals to vote from prison. This would be another way to get more people involved in governing.

"We don't have a problem with too many people voting," he observes. He wants to get people more involved in the community, and to acknowledge the involvement people already have. Chipman observes that an American citizen could move to Portland from Texas the week of the election, know nothing about local issues, and cast a valid ballot — and says it's not fair that people who have lived here for years and been deeply involved in those same issues can't vote at all. "They're stakeholders," he says. (Estimates of Portlanders in this situation range between 4000 and 5000.)

Legal immigrants typically take between eight and 10 years to earn citizenship, if they decide to. "Many of our immigrants are refugees" with legal status, Trevorrow says, who have kids in the public schools and pay property, income, and sales taxes yet at present lack a voice in how that money is spent — at least for the period before they become citizens. Some, for whom renouncing another citizenship would mean loss of property or ability to visit relatives abroad, never become US citizens and never have a voice in how their new home is governed.

It's not without controversy. Apart from the question of whether such a move is legal without action from the state Legislature (a bill to allow just this option to all Maine municipalities failed last session), America's historical cultural wariness toward people from other countries is also at play. (It's ironic, Hayduk notes, in "this nation of immigrants," but "it's an old periodic conflict" in which we must "talk about what divides us" as well as things we have in common.)

And while seven immigrants asked the commissioners to allow it, several commissioners appear wary of letting non-citizens vote, suggesting that if they want to have a voice, they become US citizens. "Immigrants want this to happen," Trevorrow says. But since citizens get to choose whether it does, the real question is whether Americans want this to happen.

What Promise? Dept.: Baldacci, Dems raise broad-based taxes

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Despite numerous repeated claims that he and his party will not raise "broad-based taxes" while attempting to solve Maine's decade-old budget disaster, Democratic governor John Baldacci and legislative Democrats have done exactly that, and are now expanding those efforts by increasing an additional tax that hits many Mainers.

Baldacci's typical methods for balancing the budget have involved drastic spending cuts, increasing fees for government services, and shifting money within state coffers. He has regularly promised not to raise taxes paid by most Mainers. But rather than cut roughly $6 million in state spending (such as in corporate subsidies, or Baldacci's favorite targets, health and education funds) or increase other revenues (by, say, taxing the wealthy slightly more), Baldacci and his party are doing what they promised not to: Nearly all Maine homeowners will see increased property taxes in the 2010-2011 fiscal year because of state policies.

The governor has repeatedly in the past, and again this year, pushed lawmakers to slash millions of dollars in state support for local school systems, forcing towns to raise their own taxes. Baldacci elegantly sidesteps the blame for that, saying those tax-increase decisions are made locally — ignoring the fact that local officials wouldn't need to raise taxes if the Baldacci's administration met its legal obligations for education funding. That's not new.

What is new this year is a reduction in the so-called "homestead exemption," through which roughly 315,000 Maine residents get a break on their local property taxes, courtesy of the state treasury (for owner-occupied homes only, and not for second homes or those owned by out-of-state residents), in an effort to reduce local governments' reliance on property taxes to fund services.

When the exemption was introduced in 1998, the state paid the local property tax on $7000 of a home's assessed value (so a person owning a home worth $100,000 would pay tax on $93,000). In 2003 and 2005, the Legislature increased the amount, such that last year the exemption was $13,000 (a $100,000 home would be taxed on $87,000).

But last year in a little-noticed revision to the budget, Baldacci and his party's majority in the Legislature reduced the exemption to $10,000 (meaning a home worth $100,000 would be taxed on $90,000), starting with tax payments due this August.

Baldacci's spokesman, David Farmer, says the governor's proposal was to reduce the exemption by 10 percent, to $11,700, but the taxation committee went with the lower $10,000 figure, in part in an attempt to reduce the severity of cuts to other programs, such as the state's "circuit-breaker" program (which provides state rebates to people whose property taxes are higher than a certain percentage of their income).

Farmer says it's not a broken promise: "It's not a broad-based tax. It's a reimbursement to municipalities." He's sort of right: the state pays towns half of the amount they would receive from taxpayers if there were no exemption. (The other half is just absorbed by the towns, which may have to raise property tax rates slightly to cover the difference; Farmer notes that "it's not just a benefit to the state," because there will be less of a difference for towns to make up.)

But remember that the point of the program was to lessen upward pressure on property taxes, not to give towns more money. Based on last year's tax rate, the change could cost Portland residents $53.22, city spokeswoman Nicole Clegg says. And the state will save roughly $6 million in the bargain, according to Dave Ledew of Maine Revenue Services. Less money in taxpayers' pockets and more money in the state treasury? Sounds like a tax to us.