FairPoint's finances are failing fast

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Two major safety valves in the financial house of cards that is New England's largest landline telecommunications service provider blew last week, leaving FairPoint Communications in a position of significant weakness, even as the company admits that its financial picture will worsen in the short term.

The North Carolina-based company, which bought Verizon's northern New England operations last year, had always made questionable assumptions when arguing it had the financial wherewithal to do the deal. (See "No Raises For Seven Years," November 16, 2007, and "No Raises — It Gets Better," November 20, 2007, both by Jeff Inglis.)

Regulators at the Maine Public Utilities Commission and its counterparts in New Hampshire and Vermont were so concerned that when they approved the $2.3 billion deal, they specified several limitations intended to preserve FairPoint's long-term financial stability.

But recent documents filed by FairPoint with state and federal regulators show that "stable" isn't exactly the right word for its current status.

The company has asked regulators in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont for permission to miss a March 31 $11.25 million quarterly payment to creditors, saying that while the states' public-utilities commissions had required the payment as a condition of the Verizon purchase, FairPoint's actual lenders don't require any money until the end of June.

"FairPoint is essentially reneging on the agreement," says Wayne Jortner, senior counsel in Maine's Office of the Maine Public Advocate, a state agency charged with defending customers' interests in utilities regulation.

The company is promising to make up the payment by the end of the year, to meet its state-mandated obligation of paying $45 million annually to reduce the heavily leveraged company's debt load. And Jeff Nevins, FairPoint's Maine spokesman, says the request will allow "more financial flexibility." But that flexibility may not help it keep that promise, based on the company's March 4 filing with federal securities regulators.

In that document, the company announced that it is suspending dividend payments entirely, and offered no date on which they may resume. This is alarming for two reasons. First, FairPoint is a holding company designed and intended to pay shareholders the kind of significant dividends earned from operating telecommunications companies (in previous quarters, it has paid as much as 36 percent). The company lost $68.5 million last year — down more than $100 million from a $32.8 million profit in 2007 — but had nevertheless been projecting paying out $93 million in dividends in 2009. The Maine PUC, through spokesman Fred Bever, calls the move "consistent with the commission's order" because it protects "customers against financial issues FairPoint might encounter." It nevertheless is a shift in the company's business model, though Nevins is quick to note that the company intends to continue "returning cash to shareholders over the long term."

But perhaps more important, ordering a reduction or elimination in dividends was one of the tools state regulators had in reserve to force FairPoint to strengthen its financial position if the regulators believed the company was in trouble. Now that tool is no longer available — and therefore, the means by which state officials could try to protect telephone customers is weakened.

"Our biggest concern is that this is not the start of something bigger," Jortner says. "We really need to get some reassurances." He expects to get that data and have formed an opinion based on it by March 13, and the Maine PUC may hold a hearing on March 16.

The picture gets worse. FairPoint is losing customers at a steeper-than-expected rate, which is, in turn, reducing its income. At the same time, FairPoint has warned federal regulators that its troubled transition to a new billing system — which meant delays in sending out bills, leading to receiving payments later than projected — could mean further cash shortages, even taking into account the suspended dividend.

And that's actually a best-case scenario. While Nevins says the billing system is now working properly, dozens of other systems still need to be transitioned. And buried in pages of boilerplate warnings about the future (such as the non-startling "the price of our common stock may fluctuate substantially"), the March 4 filing warns that "Due to, among other things, the size and complexity of our Northern New England operations, . . . we may be unable to integrate the (former Verizon) business in an efficient, timely and effective manner."

Even if they get it working, there will be far fewer customers to serve than FairPoint was hoping for. While numbers are not yet in for the first quarter of 2009, which includes the first months that FairPoint was actually running the show, 97,000 Maine residential customers have dropped their landlines since January 2007, when the sale was announced. Residential subscriber numbers dropped 7.3 percent in 2007, but as the sale approached, the decline accelerated, with an additional 10.5 percent of residential customers dropping service in 2008.

Many of them have gone to cellular phones or telephone service provided over the Internet, often via phone-Internet-TV packages sold by cable television companies. And FairPoint has recently re-emphasized its longstanding position that the key 21st-century telecom technology, fiber optics, is not in its plan — the company told the Wall Street Journal that a private plan for several Vermont communities to build their own fiber network "isn't necessary." Rather, FairPoint plans to bring them much-slower DSL service — eventually.

Press Releases: Countdown

Published in the Portland Phoenix

With last week's news that Portland Press Herald managing editor Bob Crider has been summoned back to the state of Washington to run a Blethen-owned paper there, the countdown to the end of the Press-Herald-as-we-know-it has begun in earnest.

In 2006, the Blethens moved Crider from the Blethen-owned Yakima Herald-Republic, where he had spent nine years as managing editor, to Portland to be the ME here. Now, they're bringing him back to be the top editor in Yakima.

In the advertising and management departments, Blethen family members have already departed; last to go was Rob Blethen, who left his job as director of advertising at the PPH six months ago for a post as the associate publisher of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, another family-owned paper.

This withdrawal is unsurprising, but it lays the groundwork for three possible outcomes: two bad, one uncertain, and all three potentially leaving the city without an established daily paper.

• First up, of course, is the continuing prospect that the Portland Press Herald and its Maine siblings might fold entirely, leaving their buildings to a real-estate deal (see "After the Fall," by Jeff Inglis, August 1, 2008).

Richard Connor, a Bangor-raised Pennsylvania newspaperman, continues to claim he is trying to buy the papers, but of his three 30-day letters of intent to purchase them in the past year, two expired because the needed financing didn't come together. The third, signed February 17 — which, like the previous two, included an escape clause in case the money fails to materialize a third time — is just days away from running out. (No other players are in the running, though Connor and the Blethens could sign a fourth letter of intent if they were so inclined.)

If the paper closes, the buildings it occupies might fetch $30 million for their property value alone (see "Herald or Harbinger?" by Jeff Inglis, July 4, 2008). But that's probably a high estimate, given the Blethens' eagerness to get out of Maine, and the economic collapse, which has led to a drop in commercial-property values.

• The second bad possibility is that the Press Herald will continue publishing in limbo indefinitely, but without effective leadership. While plenty of media watchers around town will say that's been true for ages, the perennially just-over-the-horizon appearance of a new owner (who's likely to signal regime change by ordering top management to pack their desks) will surely vaporize whatever clout Jeannine Guttman, editor at the PPH, and Eric Conrad, executive editor of the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, still hold. Neither is likely to follow Crider to Washington: Both arrived pre-Blethens, in 1994 and 1995 respectively; Conrad left in 2006 for a job in Connecticut but returned to the Blethen Maine fold less than a year later.

• The third outcome — the uncertain one — is what might happen if Connor actually closes the deal. He has been a hands-on editor-publisher in Wilkes-Barre (even writing a 1450-word personal endorsement of John McCain to counter his editorial board's 375-word Barack Obama endorsement; both appeared in the October 26, 2008 issue of that city's Times-Leader).

He is remembered in union circles as a vicious strike-breaker and union-buster (dating back to the late '70s), and though Maine union officials speak of him in positive and even cheery tones, he's driving a hard bargain. His offer: union workers get a collective 15-percent ownership stake in a near-valueless company and the prospect that some of them will keep their jobs, in exchange for a wage freeze, longer working hours, and what even union folk expect will be significant layoffs — on top of the massive staff-slashing that went on in 2007 and 2008.

Whether it collapses, pokes along aimlessly, or takes an all-new form, tomorrow's Press Herald will be nothing like today's.

Gulf War vet 'saved' by Phoenix article

Published at thePhoenix.com; a version was also published in the Portland, Boston, and Providence Phoenixes

Mike Fitzgerald spent 10 and a half years in the Marine Corps. He'll turn 43 tomorrow (March 13), and has been out of the corps since he was honorably discharged in 1997. A Gulf War veteran, he lived in Providence, Rhode Island, after he left the service, and worked as a housekeeper at a VA building there — not just as a job, but as a way of keeping himself "under their nose," he says, so they would know what he needed and be sure to help him.

In January 2008, he moved back to Maine, where he grew up, and began to fight against his country, for his life.

I found all this out earlier today. Yesterday, we published "Soldiers Committing Suicide," by Jason Notte, and just hours later, Mike left me a voicemail on my office phone, saying he's experiencing the same things that a man described in the story had. That man, Lance Corporal Jeffrey Lucey, had struggled with federal Veterans Administration officials to get proper healthcare after his return from Iraq, and had killed himself in 2004.

In the morning, Mike and I spoke for about 15 minutes, in a conversation whose ramifications would take over most of my day, and would ultimately involve me crying quietly to myself in my office, and then writing this short piece.

Diagnosed with bipolar, he has been prescribed lithium and Effexor, but "they won't refill my medications until I take the last pill." And when he calls to order more, they mail it to him, which takes seven to 10 days. As a result, every few months he suffers withdrawal, and then has to go back on the meds.

He told me Thursday that he was in his ninth day of withdrawal, having run out of all of his meds a week and a half ago. "I'm angry," he says, not only for himself but also for fellow Marines like Lucey, who have ended up killing themselves. "These kids didn't get killed over there," he said. Lucey, Mike told me, got "to come home and have the VA kill him."

Mike also gets upset when he sees news coverage of celebrations for troops returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, because he knows what many of them will face. "In two months, they will be me," he says. "No wonder we're knocking ourselves off."

Mike thanked me over and over again for publishing the article; he told me he had written to local and national news organizations, including e-mailing Katie Couric at CBS News, trying to tell his story. He has contacted Senator Olympia Snowe's staff, and even brought a copy of the Phoenix article to her Biddeford office to show her staff.

After speaking with Mike, I got in touch with Jason, who had written the original story. Jason suggested I call Mike back and suggest a local counseling service for veterans, if I could find one that was not actually part of the VA, with which Mike was having such trouble.

Fortunately, our staff writer here in Portland, Deirdre Fulton, had done a story back in July 2007 about efforts in Maine to help returning veterans with mental-health problems. (See "Coming Home," July 11, 2007) When I asked her which she would suggest contacting first, she immediately told me that I should get in touch with the Community Counseling Center here in Portland. (207.874.1030).

I gave Mike their information, and he promised to call them. Jason Notte, who had written the article, also spoke to Mike for a while.

A little later on, Mike left me a short message saying that he has an appointment with a counselor scheduled for early next week. In the middle of the message, he choked up, and said that between the article and Jason's and my conversations with him, "You guys saved the life of a veteran."

Then I heard from a woman who works in an attorney's office in Bar Harbor. She said she had just talked to Mike, who is a client of the firm, and also thanked us for saving his life. She said her office has been keeping in close touch with him lately, because he was, she said, "close to the edge." She asked about the counseling service I had suggested to Mike, and I gave her that information and the link to Deirdre's story.

Jason and I will continue to check in with Mike, and we'll see how things go from here.

Medical Miracle: Cheaper prescriptions — for free?

Published in the Portland Phoenix

It started out normally: I was filling a 90-day prescription at Hannaford, and my insurance co-pay was $20. But wait! said the woman behind the counter. Was I a Hannaford Healthy Saver?

A what? I asked.

A Hannaford Healthy Saver. If I signed up for this program, my co-pay would drop to $9.99.

How much does the program cost? I asked.

Seven bucks. All I had to do was fill out a form — name, address, birth date, phone number, all stuff Hannaford already had on file — and Hannaford would basically give me $10. I'd make three bucks this time (plus get a coupon book that could help me save another $100), and — since the up-front fee was an annual one — I'd save even more down the road.

The next time my wife or I needed a prescription, it was almost a sure thing that Hannaford would give me more money. Nearly 500 drugs for humans (and even some for pets) are covered in this strange new program, under which 30-day prescriptions for covered drugs cost only $4. Many generic antibiotics are — get this — free. Wal-Mart offers a similar program; so do other supermarkets and pharmacy chains around the country.

But these companies are doing more than saving us money in the short term. They are teaching us how to fix our healthcare system — how to sell at rock-bottom prices and still make a profit.

Competition can be not just on service or product, but price as well. Most supermarkets offer similar — even the same — products and services. Medical professionals do, too, but they don't compete on price — try to think of the last time you saw a medical ad, even for liposuction or corrective eye surgery, that told you how much the procedure would cost.

If doctors posted their prices, competition would drive down costs — and doctors who charged more than average would have to justify their higher price by claiming a better technique, an advanced degree, or more experience. Would quality of care suffer in the name of economy? Only if the government, which regulates the quality of the groceries we buy at competitive prices, dropped its standards for medical care. Consumer protection is necessary at any price point.

It's time to apply this market common sense to the entire healthcare system. Right now, there's no way for a layperson to determine the actual cost of a prescription. The companies involved — manufacturers, insurers, distributors, suppliers, pharmacies — treat their costs as trade secrets.

The closest anyone comes to disclosure is found in the lists of "usual and customary" (U&C) costs. But no drug price is really usual or customary — partly because no two companies agree except by coincidence, but mainly because almost nobody ever actually pays it. Nobody with insurance does, because their insurance plans have negotiated a reduction. Nobody who signs up for $7-a-year discount programs does either, because that's the point of the discount.

And, in fact, the "U&C" charge is not anything close to an actual cost — the prescription I got for $10 had a U&C cost of $175!

That's the killer — and, for people who struggle to afford healthcare, it's a literal killer — the purported cost is not the actual price of providing a service (or its value to others), but rather a negotiating tool to fool others into handing over more money.

Companies like Hannaford can upend this system, not by taking losses or writing checks they can't cash, but by telling customers the truth — how much they really need to charge to make a bit of a profit.

Naturally, Matt Paul, a very friendly and helpful spokesman for the Scarborough-based Hannaford Bros. company, was reluctant to give any details on how much profit the company actually makes. But he would say that instead of the insurance company setting the profit margin for its prescription plan, Hannaford was calling the shots on the costs in the Healthy Saver plan.

It's not enough to make healthcare affordable on its own, but it's a big start.

Stuff you really should know (From a guy who learned it the hard way)

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The biggest - and hardest-to-follow - rule in homebuying is that friendly real-estate agents and mortgage brokers don't actually work for you, no matter how much they act like they do. They work for themselves, and they earn money based on the prices (and interest rates, for brokers) at which the deals close.

This means the real-estate agent wants you to buy a house for the highest price she can talk you into accepting, and the mortgage guy will give you the highest interest rate he thinks you'll agree to.

But if you spend all your cash on the down payment, and lock up all your monthly income in a mortgage payment that's too high, you'll become "house-poor" — you'll have a house, but no money to improve it or fix anything that might break, and you'll risk being unable to make the payments if unforeseen expenses crop up.

So, buyer, beware - and be patient. Don't let other people pressure you into something you don't want, and when you find something you do want, bargain with them to get the best deal for yourself.

Your real-estate agent will ask what your price range is. And then she'll try to show you houses with asking prices "just a little more" than that. That's her upsell trick - if you fall in love with a house that costs more, your emotions might take over, and she'll make a bigger commission - for ignoring your initial request.

Once you've found the right house, your agent will start negotiating for you. She'll probably ask "How high are you willing to go?" But your answer is not just giving her information that can help her make a deal on your behalf; it's giving her tacit permission to set your highest price as the final amount (which makes her a better commission). Just tell her what your offer is at that moment.

If a counteroffer comes back, consider it - on your own. Multiple rounds of offers and counteroffers are quite normal - though your agent may push you to make big concessions to close the deal (so she gets paid sooner, and for less work).

Mortgage brokers will pull similar tricks, trying to get you to take a higher rate - which gets them better pay. If you want something lower, keep pushing, and keep waiting.

Above all, remember that right now, houses aren't moving. Agents and mortgage brokers are sitting idle, hoping to close deals to get some income for themselves. So drive a hard bargain - even with the people who are "on your side." If you make it clear that your offer is your offer, and you're not moving, your agent will work really hard to close the deal. If you are unambiguous about wanting a lower interest rate or better terms, your mortgage broker will step up to the plate for you. But you must make it plain that you know the market favors you, and you're willing to wait.