Law to address state ethics shortcomings: Baldacci responds to abuses first revealed in the Phoenix

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Three weeks after the Portland Phoenix first reported that Maine Turnpike Authority officials had been treated to a $1342 dinner at a posh Portland restaurant by a Turnpike consultant, Governor John Baldacci has asked all so-called “independent” state agencies to adopt a code of ethics if they do not already have one.

Though it was not illegal, the dinner had drawn criticism from the governor in the Phoenix’s story, in which a statement from Baldacci’s indicated he would “support legislation to apply the same financial ethical standards to independent authorities that apply to state government.” (See “E-ZPass on Ethics,” by Lance Tapley, August 4.)

The Maine Turnpike Authority has no code of financial ethics, according to agency spokesman Dan Paradee. Other agencies covered by the new edict include the Finance Authority of Maine (which handles student-loan grants, business-development loans, and other state-subsidized financial efforts), and the Baxter State Park Authority.

Baldacci, who cannot order other agencies to take specific actions, has also asked officials in his administration to develop a proposed law that would require each “independent” agency to develop a code of ethics, which are not now mandatory, though some authorities do have them.

Proposed Code of Ethics and Conduct:

• Be guided by the highest standards of honor, personal integrity, and fortitude in all public activities in order to merit the respect of other officials, employees and the public. Strive to inspire public confidence and trust in Maine State Government and its related institutions.

• Serve the citizens of the State with respect, concern, courtesy, and responsiveness, recognizing that government service means service to the people of Maine; keep the Legislature and public informed on pertinent issues.

• Strive for professional excellence and encourage the professional development of associates and those seeking to enter the field of public administration in order to provide effective and responsible government to the citizens of Maine. The primary role is to provide the best possible and most cost effective service to the citizens of Maine.

• Approach organizational and operational duties with a positive attitude and constructively support open communication, cooperation, creativity, dedication and compassion.

• Avoid any interest or activity which is in conflict with the conduct of official duties. Serve in a manner as to avoid inappropriate personal gain resulting from the performance of official duties.

• Respect and protect the privileged information to which there is access in the course of official duties.

• Use discretionary authority to promote the public interest.

• Accept as a personal duty the responsibility to be informed of emerging issues and to administer the public’s business with professional competence, fairness, impartiality, efficiency and effectiveness.

• Support, implement, and promote programs of affirmative action to assure equal opportunity in the recruitment, selection, and advancement of qualified persons from all elements of society.

• Respect and value the work done by the employees of Maine State Government and its related institutions.

Maine author reviving Marvel character

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The Son of Satan is being reborn in the brain of a Maine writer.

Alex Irvine, a former Portland Phoenix staff writer now teaching English at the University of Maine at Orono, is doing what he calls a “reboot” of Daimon Hellstorm, a character in the Doctor Strange section of the Marvel Comics universe.

The new comic, the first in a five-part series, will be out in October. Irvine has a short-story collection, Pictures from an Expedition, coming out in the next few days, and a novel about Batman, called Inferno, being released by DC Comics shortly, too. (That one includes a new villain, but that’s all we can tell you.)

Irvine landed the Hellstorm gig while on a visit to New York to read a short story at a bookstore, after which his agent introduced him to a Marvel editor, with whom Irvine “kicked around” some ideas for characters to work on.

“The Hellstorm thing dovetailed really nicely with a story idea I’d had in my head for a long time,” Irvine says.

He says the process of creating a comic is “completely different from writing fiction,” involving illustrators and colorists as well as editors. It’s Irvine’s first comic, though he says “I actually wanted to write comics before I wanted to write fiction,” and is talking with Marvel about doing more after this series.

In this story, which Irvine calls “horror-noir-ish,” Hellstorm is “much less super-hero-y,” and is instead depicted as a son struggling with his own independence as well as how to please his father, Satan — a congenital liar who stands for evil but who gets his son’s admiration all the same.

The basic plot involves “an infestation of demons in post-Katrina New Orleans,” which Hellstorm discovers, along with “a woman who appears to be Isis,” the ancient Egyptian goddess whose main task is to reassemble the body of Osiris, the judge of the dead and the granter of life, to resurrect him.

The demons in New Orleans, Irvine hints, are the key to the final piece of Osiris’s body — what Irvine gently calls the “generative organs.” And, not to disappoint fans, the story has plenty of demons and “bloodshed and gruesome stuff,” he assures.

Daytime TV turns into a book

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Blame it on Oprah. Her penchant for finding strange but true stories and putting them on daytime television has inspired not only the tele-shrink career of Dr. Phil, but a novel by an Iranian immigrant living here in Portland.

And, though it’s a suspense thriller, the themes and ideas make Ali Alavi’s The Tombland’s Tale (self-published; 269 pages; $12.95) the kind of on-your-toes-but-feeling-good book Oprah might even like. Plus, it’s fiction, so she needn’t worry about any messy disclosures later.

Alavi, an earnestly softspoken USM grad who moved to Portland as an international student at USM in 1995, set his book in his adopted home, the Forest City, and on Peaks Island, using some of his own frequent haunts, like the USM campus and Exchange Street, and other vaguely camouflaged local elements (“the Atlantic Pearl, a floating restaurant” and the “A.P. Warren” paper company )as settings . Released last week, the creepy thriller explores the disappearance of three exotic dancers who work at a Portland strip club.

In this, his first novel, Alavi found a use for a character he had had in mind for a while, a forensic psychologist with spiritual leanings named Rashid Sanjih. Sanjih, a USM professor, plays mentor to Christopher Wayne, a character based on Alavi himself. Wayne, like Alavi at the time he was writing the book, is an engineer beginning to realize that what he thought he wanted to do in life was not making him happy any more . Inspired by a late-night conversation with his mentor, Wayne retreat s to coastal Maine to write a novel.

Alavi, who has written three poetry collections in his native Persian and several short stories, knew that if was going to use his professor as a character, the psychologist would need a narrative conflict.

Alavi was stymied until he saw an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show devoted to the real-life tale of a man who had abducted several women and kept them imprisoned for year s. Alavi knew that that story — including an on-camera interview with one of the victims — would form the basis of the book’s plot.

Into that mix Alavi threw some of the research he had been doing at USM, studying business administration, focusing on Jungian analysis of decision-making, seeking the subconscious motivations behind business choices. Inspired in part by New Hampshire author Wayne Dyer’s book The Power of Intentions as well as spiritually influenced fiction by Paulo Coelho, Alavi uses his protagonist to survey the concept that a person who puts himself in a positive, open state of mind causes inspiration to come and positive events to occur.

It’s just the sort of concept Oprah credits with her own success. Chalk up another one for the Queen of Lazy Afternoons.

Baxter School tries to ban Phoenix freelancer

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In response to our continued efforts to investigate conditions for students at the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf on Mackworth Island, the school has attempted to ban Portland Phoenix freelancer Rick Wormwood from the island, which is state-owned property, and part of which is a state park.

Wormwood has reported for the Phoenix about the school’s history of abuse (see “Why I Hate Mackworth Island”), and has continued to seek access to public records held by the school. He has previously been refused access to school grounds over the school’s objections to his reporting (see letter, “Past is Passed,” by Superintendent Larry Taub, June 18, 2004), and school officials have, as recently as last month, objected to Wormwood’s assignment to cover the school for the Phoenix.

An e-mail message, sent by Baxter Director of Business Operations Peter Gray to Wormwood on July 25, says, “you are no longer allowed access to Mackworth Island,” and says Gray made the decision “based on a long-standing history of confrontational outburts on the island,” alleging that one took place during Wormwood’s July 21 visit to hand-deliver a Freedom of Access request to the guardhouse on the island. The e-mail offers no specifics of the history.

In a surveillance-camera video recording of Wormwood’s July 21 visit to the island, shown to the Phoenix by Gray on July 24, Wormwood can be seen having a several-minute-long conversation with the guard. But the video, which has no accompanying audio, does not show Wormwood acting violent, threatening, or physically confrontational.

Wormwood replied to Gray’s e-mail in a letter seeking the formal legal grounds for the ban, in reply to which Gray wrote on July 27 that the school is seeking a restraining order.

Officials at the school, including Gray, Superintendent Larry Taub, and Director of Communications Jim Gemmell, did not return phone calls seeking comment for this story.

Assistant Attorney General Sarah Forster, who represents the Baxter School, says state law gives the school and the Department of Conservation joint jurisdiction over access to the island — which she describes as an “unusual” use of state land — possibly without a restraining order, though she says, “someone who was unhappy with that could sue them.”

Fighting for freedom: You are the key to government openness

Published in the Portland Phoenix

I carry a copy of Maine’s Freedom of Access Act in my pocket. It’s not only useful as a reference when dealing with government officials who want to hold on to information I or my newspaper would rather they set free, but it’s an excellent reminder of how to approach government officials: with the attitude that they work for us, that their records are our records, and that their business is our business.

A statewide study four years ago and a follow-up in May, whose results were released this week, show how far Maine officials are from remembering who employs them. The studies highlight a serious threat to our democracy: Maine residents are being denied access to important information about our government’s actions, particularly at the local level — information we have the legal right to inspect.

Maine’s Freedom of Access Law is clear and specific when it says you and I have the right to see any piece of paper, any computer file, any sheet of microfilm in the custody of a public official. We have the right to see any videotape, listen to any audio recording, read any e-mail on office computers. It is a simple principle: we own the buildings and pay the workers, so everything inside is ours, too.

Any time you approach a public office, or a public official, you must keep that in mind. Don't walk away empty-handed if an official won't show you the information you want. Demand to be shown the text of the law allowing that information to be kept secret. And don’t walk away unless you personally agree, upon reading the law yourself, that the information is legally secret.

The Freedom of Access Act has your back. It says very clearly at its outset, “public proceedings exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. It is the intent of the Legislature that ... actions be taken openly and that ... records ... be open to public inspection.”

You do not have to be a town resident, a Maine resident, or even a US citizen. You do not have to give your name, show ID, name your employer, say why you want the information, or give out any information at all about yourself.

We in Maine now have strong proof that public employees are defying the intent of the Legislature. 

This is particularly a problem at the local-government level, where, ironically, the officials denying us access to public records are the same folks whose salaries we pay with our property taxes. Nobody argues that “local control” should mean “local secrecy,” but in some towns that’s what we’re getting, even though there is no cost involved in showing a person a piece of paper that already exists on a desk or shelf somewhere.

In 2002, I helped with a Maine Freedom of Information Coalition public-records audit that found not even six in 10 government offices surveyed complied when approached by a member of the public seeking a record that was certainly public (according to lawyers who helped plan the audit). And nearly two-thirds of public employees who allowed access to the documents broke the law in other ways, by asking for ID or a reason the person wanted the information.

Statewide, the results were so bad that the Maine Legislature created a committee to study the 500-plus exemptions in Maine laws that permit public officials to keep information from the public, and to review any future proposals of laws that would allow government records to be kept secret.

This year, a follow-up audit to test compliance — after the law changes, the missives from organizations intended to help governments do their jobs better, and even after a warning e-mail from one town manager to all the others around the state that an audit was in progress May 3 — found more than one-third of public officials audited still broke the law by denying access. And more than half of the offices that did allow inspection of public documents illegally asked for either a reason the auditor wanted the information, or the auditor’s ID, and some did both.

Me? On audit day this year, I was charged $12.50 just to look at a public document in Old Orchard Beach, in what the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition is highlighting as one of the most serious transgressions of the day. On any other day, I would have refused, pulled out my copy of the law, and argued about it. That day, though, the point of the audit was to find out how these sorts of requests were handled. I paid in cash, didn’t give my name, and got a receipt to prove the law had been broken.