Stonewalling - AG’s office: ‘If I had it, I wouldn’t give it to you’

Published in the Portland Phoenix

For someone whose government job is to handle media inquiries, Brenda Kielty, special assistant to and spokeswoman for Maine Attorney General William Schneider (a Republican), sure says some strange things on the record.

For example, when I was asking her how much taxpayer money the AG's office spent prosecuting fraud cases in Maine's welfare system, she told me her agency doesn't track attorneys' work by time spent on specific cases. When I asked why this government organization didn't use an extremely common business practice (private-sector attorneys bill in fractions of an hour as small as six minutes), she told me she was no longer going to help me.

And the information I had asked for? "Even if I did have it, I wouldn't give it to you," she said. "Because right now I don't like your tone." (It was quite obvious that it wasn't my calm tone she was objecting to, but rather the content of my questioning.)

I'd been taking notes through our conversation and double-checking things she said to me to make sure I got them right. So I wrote those two startling lines down and then read them back to her. "Excuse me, that's not a quote," she said, saying she would not cooperate with my inquiry into public expenditures "if you're going to be threatening to be putting my every word in print."

As I said, very strange for a person whose assigned job is to speak to the media. For his part, Schneider did not return calls seeking comment. As for the actual information we were seeking, we'll keep asking.

Gubernatorial scorecard: Break time

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Summer's here, and everybody needs a break. Even Governor Paul LePage seems to be taking a holiday from the hard work of keeping his mouth shut in public. What a relief for him to finally be able to relax, wag his chin, flap his lips, and score those wonderful headlines again! Herewith, our seventh Gubernatorial Scorecard, in which we score LePage on political savvy, and on whether what he's trying to do is good policy. Note the running total.

PRAYER BREAK | LePage issued a proclamation saying August 6 was a "Day of Prayer," and then promptly denied it was related to Texas governor Rick Perry's call for a "National Day of Prayer and Fasting" on the same day. Perry's move has generated controversy for being closely tied to the American Family Association, a conservative evangelical Christian group. Maine GOP lawmakers are circulating a letter of support, saying "the struggles we face as a state are often beyond the power of government to solve," and calling on God's aid.
POLITICS • It's an easy pander to his base, and an easy dodge to distance himself from the like-minded Perry | 8/10 POLICY • For a party that campaigned on fixing government, this sounds like "islam" — the Arabic word for "surrender" | 1/10

CRITICISM BREAK | When Marine Resources Commissioner Norman Olsen, generally a reasonable guy, resigned, he issued a damning statement accusing LePage of boot-licking special-interest groups and having a secret agenda kept even from his cabinet members. The press leapt on that, and on LePage's dismissive response was quick, concise, and atypically vengeless. But quietly, he undermined Olsen by giving a GOP operative evidence to the contrary, and later issuing that operative's resulting blog post as an official press release.
POLITICS • He ousted a qualified cabinet member, then quietly wrecked the guy's rep | 8/10 POLICY • Politics aside, third competent cabinet member to exit | 5/10

URBAN BREAK | In Olsen's allegations was a claim that LePage refused to cooperate with Portland leaders because Maine's largest city voted against him last year. LePage met with city mayor Nick Mavodones to assure him that the business engine of the state was never far from gubernatorial thoughts, but made no apology, real promises, or statements of substance.
POLITICS • Pissing off people who already hate him? A big win in the Other Maine | 8/10 POLICY • Stupid threats, especially when retracted, weaken an already struggling leader | 3/10

MEDIA BREAK | Before the meeting with Mavodones, LePage swung wildly at his favorite piñata — the media. Singling out State House insider Mal Leary (of Capitol News Service) for rare praise, the gov claimed that the press didn't publish his side of the Olsen mess, and specifically accused MaineToday reporter Rebekah Metzler of having "never written an honest thing since I've been governor."
POLITICS • It's an old, tiresome canard for most of us, but it works for his anti-media supporters who also hate Portland | 9/10 POLICY • Is he done shooting the messenger yet? | 3/10

SCHOOL BREAK | LePage has proposed extending Maine high schools to five years, after which students would graduate with a standard diploma and an associate's degree or equivalent college credit. How much it would cost Maine taxpayers remains to be seen, but it could boost educational and income levels in our state, which is nationally low in both areas.
POLITICS • A social program couched in economic-development terms — very slick | 10/10 POLICY • An idea with real potential to put Maine among the nation's leaders | 10/10

This month's total | Politics 43/50 | Policy 22/50 | Last month: Politics 40/50 | Policy 13/50 | Overall: Politics 231/350 | Policy 141/350

Offshoring: Calling MaineToday in Honduras

Published in the Portland Phoenix


Maine's largest daily-newspaper group has outsourced its circulation customer-service work to Honduras, letting five Maine-based employees go, reassigning another, and allowing one to retire early.

The workers, some of whom were part-time, were paid at rates that for full-time workers were between $445 and $542 per week, depending on their seniority, according to Kathy Munroe, administrative officer for the Portland Newspaper Guild, the union that represents most of the paper's non-management employees.

A call to the circulation number posted on the websites of MaineToday Media, the corporate owner of the Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram, Morning Sentinel, and Kennebec Journal newspapers reached a customer-service representative who confirmed he was in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He was very cordial, even spelling the city's name for me. Another rep there told me there are 14 people there who cover around-the-clock hours solely waiting for calls from MaineToday clients. When asked about his hours and wages, he referred questions to the MaineToday human-resources department in Portland, which referred questions to owner/editor/publisher Richard Connor. Through his assistant, Connor declined to comment.

San Pedro Sula has several call centers, which appear to be based in its high-tech Altia Business Park, where online marketing materials boast about large numbers of English speakers (including numerous English-language schools) as well as high-reliability phone and Internet connectivity to the United States.

The move follows a consolidation within the MaineToday papers that shifted all circulation handling to South Portland, from locations in Augusta and Waterville. Though there have been other intra-company consolidations and transfers, this is the first outsourcing at the company that Munroe is aware of. "I take it personally when I hear about outsourcing," Munroe says. "We're hurting for jobs right here."

She says the company followed the provisions of the union contract, so there will not be a grievance from her organization related to the outsourcing, but "I'm hoping that there's a clamoring from subscribers."

Press Releases: Where's the drumbeat?

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Last week's news was dominated by a larger-than-life figure whose cartoonishly confident self-image was battered by revelations that high-level staffers were engaging in questionable practices while trying to get their jobs done.

No, I'm not talking about Rupert Murdoch, but rather Paul LePage, Maine's governor. There was the Phoenix's own story about a man we'll dub "Copy-Paste LePage" for the way he turns private-interest memos into public policy (see "The LePage Files," by Colin Woodard, July 22, for the details of how lobbyists control his agenda, including overruling his own ideas). And there was the blistering letter released by resigning marine resources commissioner Norman Olsen, accusing LePage of answering to anonymous special interests in the state's fisheries industry, refusing to communicate with one of his cabinet members, and directing public policy by private polls.

Stories like the Murdoch scandal are best handled by a practice Murdoch himself perfected: the constant drumbeat of new revelations, with even minor ones being used as an excuse to recycle all the old allegations, day in and day out, week after week, until the target of the reporting is beaten and battered, with public disgrace forever attached to his name.

LePage fares better in the tame Maine media ecosystem. There is clear evidence that the corporate influence-peddling in the LePage administration has reached levels that in most other states would be considered unacceptable — if not downright corrupt (see, in our own pages, "LePage's Secret Bankers," January 21 and "LePage's Secret Puppeteers," February 11. both by Colin Woodard).

But the Portland Press Herald, Bangor Daily News, and Lewiston Sun Journal — the state's biggest three papers — have given a pass to the governor and his cronies.

They changed that practice slightly when Olsen issued his statement — it was simply too inflammatory to be ignored, especially when written by a career US diplomat, who well knows the importance of word choice. But a week after these charges were issued, the headlines are gone, and LePage can go on his merry way with the tacit approval of the leaders of the state's media organizations.

If you're hoping these newspapers' State House bureaus are just digging behind the scenes and will begin their drumbeat soon, think again.

The coverage of a LePage "town hall" meeting in Dover-Foxcroft (his latest in the "Capitol for a Day" series) was, in fact, clearly friendly to the governor. None of the three papers took even a moment to note that the "questions from the audience" that LePage took were selected by his staff, from among written questions submitted by people as they entered the room before the event started.

MaineToday writer Susan Cover went so far as to say "No one asked LePage about the resignation of his marine resources commissioner" the day before. Her story did not say whether that assertion was based on checking the pile of submitted questions, or whether she simply tallied those that got past the LePage censors and were permitted to be raised aloud — but a meeting attendee suggests she did the latter.

Chris Korzen, co-founder and director of Maine's Majority, says members of his group (the folks with the "61%" stickers and T-shirts) did indeed submit questions about Olsen, as well as about those copy-paste-from-lobbyist practices. Korzen was not surprised that none were chosen. He characterized the meeting as "noncontroversial" and noteworthy mainly because, unlike other such events, where tempers have run hot on all sides, "there was nothing really remarkable at all" at the Dover-Foxcroft event.

While legal investigations are proceeding, public opinion seems clear that Murdoch's staffers engaged in despicable and deplorable acts that may yet clip the wings of his empire. But it seems regrettably likely that the revelations about LePage's public-trust violations have already finished their brief appearance in Maine's media. Unless the drumbeat starts.

Press releases: Shaking up Salt

Published in the Portland Phoenix


A school that has quietly drawn to Portland, trained, and set loose around Maine a large number of journalists and other young creative professionals is entering a new phase, and not a decade too soon.

The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, which relocated to Congress Street in 2008 after nearly a decade on Exchange Street (with its gallery in the space that is now the Corner Room), is adding more multimedia to its curriculum. The school's students have put out work displayed in a book (which terminated publication a few years back), gallery shows, and "radio church," a semester-end listening party playing work by students in the audio/radio track. In more recent years, many students have posted some of their work online, including collaborative writing, photography, and audio projects. That effort will now expand with additional faculty support.

The school does not grant degrees, but often serves as a host for college students taking a semester away from their regular campus (as well as college grads seeking additional education). Its four part-time faculty members quit earlier this spring "for a variety of reasons over the course of a couple weeks," says Donna Galluzzo, Salt's executive director.

She says the school has been planning a revamp of its curriculum, specifically to incorporate more multimedia work, for some time now. "We've been hearing off and on a lot over the years from students" seeking that sort of instruction in addition to the existing teaching.

"We've always had one class that's been an all-track class," Galluzzo says, and it's there that the school will center its multimedia instruction, led by Christine Heinz, who studied photography at Salt in 2001 and has worked at the school and elsewhere doing photography and multimedia storytelling.

Galluzzo says the multimedia class will seek to merge the existing disciplines at Salt into an online format, and will shy away from outright filmmaking. "We're not looking to be a film school or compete with any film schools," she says. As far as video goes, she says the school will provide "an opportunity for people to dabble."

Similarly for animation; "some (students) come in with tremendous skillsets," Galluzzo says, and Salt is trying to position itself to take better advantage of any opportunities "to combine what they know and what they're learning" that might arise.

The other new instructors have also been hired: Andres Gonzalez will teach photography; Michael May will teach radio; and Caitlin Shetterly will teach writing. Gonzalez is also a Salt alumnus, and a Fulbright Scholar who moved to Istanbul four years ago to document cultural transition in that city, which has been a crossroads for thousands of years. May is an experienced radio journalist (and has a solid print-journalism background) whose work has aired on major nationwide National Public Radio programs. Shetterly, too, is an author and public-radio producer (and former Portland Phoenix scribe).

What comes of these changes remains to be seen; Galluzzo says she is hoping to help students gain more marketable skills and produce more "sellable" pieces. While many Salt students have gone on to work as staffers or freelancers for local media outlets (including the Phoenix), since the demise of the school's own book, few of the students' actual projects for their classes have made it into wider publication. (For a rare exception, see, "Portland's Islamic Center Avoids National Debate," by Maura Ewing, August 27, 2010.)

Galluzzo has expressed interest in coordinating more with local publications and journalism organizations (including the Maine Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, a group I serve as president). It's a fair bet that with Salt's new blood and a refined focus, not only the students and school but also Maine media outlets and their audiences could be real winners.