Portland Phoenix Best Music Poll on WCSH's 207 (with Marie Moreshead)

Aired on WCSH's 207

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.

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.

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.

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.)

 

So little wonder that by the end of his video rant, Humpage’s temper had gotten the better of him. He ended by cutting off his nose to spite his face, all but endorsing any of the Republicans in the race, by virtue of endorsing against every single Democrat: “What does it say about a candidate if he or she makes an important decision without all of the facts and without understanding all of the consequences. Is that really someone you want representing you as your governor?”

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.)

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.)

Her argument led to one fascinating conclusion: a United States of America in which each state had different policies on a whole host of issues, allowing citizens to pick and choose their residences of choice based on public policy. Hypothetically, if someone wanted to live in a no-gun, anti-abortion, same-sex-marriage, single-payer health care state, that could exist; so could an armed-to-the-teeth, no-same-sex-marriage state that offered free abortions but all other health care at market rates. In fact, it sounds like Pettengill, for one, hopes for that.

“People that haven’t been to a Tea Party don’t understand the sheer thrill of being around people with shared ideology,” she said. The Tea Party movement isn’t interested in “things that divide the conservatives,” she said — but rather, it seems, in creating a system in which all the conservative divisions can peacefully coexist, in their own states.

In closing, she expressed disbelief at the Obama supporters lined up across the street, despondent that they were not part of her “shared ideology.”

She shook her head, saying, “I don’t understand it. This is not what they want.”

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.

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.

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."

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.

Sure, Nemitz was on the ship at the pleasure of the owner (he only left it on Monday), but at what point do the accumulated pitfalls, bloopers, errors, and bonehead mistakes suggest being buddy-buddy with a key source isn't the right move for the readers, or the paper?

Mainers got a first-hand, in-depth look at exactly how many things can go wrong on an international relief effort, and how hard it is to get things right. But without the detachment that would have allowed Nemitz and his editors to observe that, and to place blame everywhere it was deserved, the package failed to live up to the facts.

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

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.

We heart these people: Meet Portland's most influential

Published in the Portland Phoenix (an introduction and my segments of a larger piece, which can be found here and on subsequent pages)

We all know Portland is a busy, exciting place to live. It takes a lot of people's amazing energy to keep it going, though. Who's doing the moving and the shaking?

We started with a simple question: Who are the people without whom Portland would be the poorer? But that's not the only criterion. Who is making Portland, and Maine, great for all of us to live, work, and play in today, and even better for tomorrow? Who is spending their time and energy really contributing deeply, in a way we should all notice and appreciate (even if they're too modest — and busy — to seek that publicity themselves)?

We thought about this ourselves and talked about it (quietly) around town. One person we consulted put it perfectly when rephrasing what we had asked her: "Who do I look up to and admire the hell out of?"

Perhaps the best thing, though, is that this list (which we split into categories largely for logistical reasons — many of these people cross the artificial lines we created) could also have been called "Portland's Most Humble," given many of the responses we got after telling people they made the list. "Aw, shucks, thanks," read one e-mail. "Can't be that elite if I'm in it," wrote another PMIer. "Did you mean to send this to me?" and "Are you sure you've got the right person?" were also common responses — even from people with very prominent community roles. But we suspect that most of the people felt like the person who wrote "I'm embarrassed and very, very pleased."

And yes, we know we missed some people — any list like this will never be complete — so if this list is missing you (or someone you know), please let us know.

Activism
Even if you've never met RABBI AKIVA HERZFELD, when you call to introduce yourself, you might be invited to a Portland Pirates hockey game with the BlackBerry-toting leader of Portland's oldest orthodox Jewish community, Congregation Shaarey Tphiloh.

It's that sort of cognitive dissonance that makes him particularly well suited to be here now. While Herzfeld speaks about his elders, Jewish tradition, and the history of his people with deep respect and feeling — not least because his grandparents fled from the Nazis with his infant father — his eyes are clearly looking ahead, not backward. His congregation, he says with a smile, are "traditional, more than orthodox," perhaps "a little bit more liberal" than their fellow believers in larger cities, such as the Staten Island, New York, community where he grew up.

He works to connect the generations — allowing older members of his congregation to continue in aspects of Jewish life they have long found meaningful, while also reaching out to young people — as in his annual college-student get-together at Shaarey Tphiloh, when he invites Jewish students from colleges around Maine and New England to spend a weekend at the synagogue (and attend a hockey game with other congregation members, young and old).

Beyond his own community, Herzfeld is making a name for himself in the civic life of greater Portland. When Shaarey Tphiloh was vandalized by people who painted swastikas on the sign outside the building, he got in touch with a wide range of people — obviously the police, but also community organizations, and other religious groups — and held a rally to condemn hate as a way of responding to the incident. He's also willing to stop and chat when he sees people looking quizzically at his yarmulke, or is approached on the street to talk about Israel or Judaism. And he just gave an invocation at the NAACP breakfast for Martin Luther King Day.

"We try to be involved in every issue" where Jewish perspective can deepen people's understanding, he says. He has written and spoken publicly about issues that may seem far afield from traditional Jewish rabbinical studies, such as the problems with solitary confinement in Maine's prison system and security in the post-9/11 world.

"Jewish tradition and Jewish values have a lot to offer for people in Maine," he says, noting that one of the security issues he discussed was a report that an airplane passenger had become alarmed upon seeing a fellow passenger — a devout Jew, as it turned out — preparing for prayer by putting on tefillin, small boxes containing tiny copies of the Torah that are strapped to the arms and head during worship.

As governments and societies struggle with how to accommodate with such important and ancient traditions in the modern world, it's vital to remember that many people live those traditions daily. Into that conversation, Herzfeld injects a reasonable voice, not to mention a listening ear and an open mind. "I think our state has a lot to learn from diverse opinions," he says.


Business
It's kind of by accident that PHILIP RHINELANDER, owner of XPress Copy, has come by his influence. Once a musician and music teacher in Vermont, he relocated to Maine more than 30 years ago to open a copy shop on the advice (and the financial backing) of a friend.

"The first five employees were all musicians," he recalls, and he and they had "always felt the pinch of the nonprofits, of the musicians, of the arts groups." In the early years, XPress Copy helped them out by interrupting larger corporate jobs to do small reproduction pieces for art students and the like, making them feel taken care of. Rhinelander confesses to not seeing the benefit of this for a little while, but "within a few years, those art students were office managers" and making decisions about where their companies would get copies, enlargements, and other printing jobs done.

In the '80s, Rhinelander's growing firm gave people credit on their accounts for bringing in paper to be recycled, and even trademarked CleanPrint, an ammonia-free method for making blueprints.

And he always gave discounts to non-profits and arts groups. But it wasn't until the early 2000s that some friends and he hit upon the concept that has made XPress Copy's reputation in the arts and entertainment community around town. Bulk discounts are a given in reproduction, but what if they stopped viewing each organization as an individual? They adopted the idea that "if you're a non-profit, you're part of the biggest customer in Maine" and started giving even bigger discounts.

The program has grown — it has an official name (XPress Non-profit Program) and even a targeted-marketing brochure — and is now a sizeable percentage of the company's business, as well as a significant money-saver for countless non-profits and artists. It's now even serving sports booster clubs, an organization of Mayflower descendants, and pretty much any group that is "doing some good for people."

It's a clever arrangement, business-wise, because Rhinelander has structured the price sustainably: the discount is not so low that XPress Copy loses money — it's just enough to give a small profit that means he can keep expanding the service without worrying about hurting the company. Rather, as Rhinelander notes, "we've found our niche." Some of his most recent additions to the business have been inspired by asking — and answering — the question, "What do the non-profits really need?"

And it has been crucial for business overall, because, of course, pretty much everyone — including, importantly, people who make corporate copying decisions — is somehow involved in an organization that qualifies, whether as the parent of a kid who plays on a team, or a church, or some other community group. The discount gets them in Rhinelander's door, but the service and quality, he hopes, brings them back, with corporate accounts in tow.

Letters
The husband-and-wife team of TRISTAN GALLAGHER and MICHELLE SOULIERE could qualify for this category solely on the basis of creating amazing business names: "Fun Box Monster Emporium" and "Green Hand Bookshop" are not stores in JK Rowling or Roald Dahl books, but rather places exploring, from different angles, the fun, fantastic, pulpy, popular side of literacy.

Gallagher, drummer for Covered in Bees and frontman of Man-Witch, and co-founder of the We Hate T-shirts screen-printing company, also has five unpublished books (including illustrated books), some based on his Sam and Timmy zine.

Souliere, who used to work at the Portland Public Library and the University of Southern Maine, runs the Strange Maine blog and Gazette, and has a Strange Maine book in the works, too. She also runs a blog for her bookshop, and somehow manages to find time to work on the Portland Art Horde and any number of other projects she dreams up.

She reports that much of what she and Gallagher do comes from sentences that start with, "Wouldn't it be cool if . . ." and finish with some crazy scheme. For some of those plans, "it just happens."

Gallagher's latest project, the Fun Box Monster Emporium pop-culture trinket shop, has its beginnings in what he calls a "destructively stifling job" that he left to start the screen-printing company in some extra space in their apartment. But then they moved to a much smaller apartment.

"I had to find a place to put the stuff," Gallagher says wryly. He reinvigorated an old eBay business selling toys — which he had also stored around the place but had to relocate when they moved. Inspired by the crazy collective shops like the East Village's Toy Tokyo and Love Saves The Day (which recently moved to Pennsylvania), Gallagher decided to open a store like that here.

Like her husband's business, which shares space with Coast City Comics and lets each side benefit from the other's traffic, Souliere's effort, the Green Hand Bookshop, also pairs up with a complementary endeavor: Loren Coleman's International Cryptozoology Museum (which explains the giant Bigfoot figure in the front window of the store).

Her next idea is to hold events at the shop that are less directly related to books than typical bookstore events, such as a get-together where people use nice pens and nice paper to hand-write letters, encouraging people to focus on the written word.

And after that? Almost anything for Portland's busiest dreamers — who have a knack for turning their crazy concepts into reality. "We've just always been astonished by people being bored," Souliere says with a laugh.

Politics
Portland's police chief, JAMES CRAIG, arrived last May and wasted no time in telling us the often-unpleasant truths about life and crime in the Forest City. A transplant from Los Angeles with years of experience dealing with gang violence, drug-related crime, and people who can't get proper mental-health services, he has publicly announced that these and other problems exist in Portland, and asked for help dealing with them. That move removed the scales from many Portlanders' eyes and outright demanded that we look those and other challenges directly in the face.

But he's no "Media Mike" Chitwood — he's far less inflammatory, and much more thoughtful, than the last chief many Portlanders remember (the two in the interim were quiet, if not silent) — and he's not even close to declaring his efforts a success. "I'm optimistic," Craig will admit, but he knows there is a lot of ground yet to cover. He has more ideas, seemingly all the time, to help achieve these solutions, and, for a man whose career has been spent wearing a gun and carrying handcuffs, almost none of them involve arresting people or creating new laws. Rather, they're about drawing different groups of people — including immigrants and students, two groups that have traditionally had difficult dealings with the police — into discussions and activities with the police, sharing time together.

It is true that he has brought aspects of big-city policing to our small burg. Having seen how well Tasers can help defuse situations with distraught people, he introduced them, complete with a trial run and among the strictest guidelines in the country. It was not a slam-dunk proposal, but his moderate approach — including his insistence that no officer would carry a Taser without special training — quieted many potential critics long enough for the officers to demonstrate that they would not Taser people willy-nilly, as we might have feared from watching trigger-happy cops on television.

Craig brought in CompStat, a computerized tracking system that shows when and where crimes occur, and meetings at which he and other department leaders regularly review the information. It helps him decide where to allot resources, and gives the senior lead officers in each neighborhood (also a Craig idea) a real leg up in spotting trouble and stopping it before it gets out of hand.

He has announced that this year the department will focus on gangs, graffiti, and drugs, linking them not only to each other but to street robberies and car and home burglaries that dramatically increase people's fear of crime.

Which gets at the question that seems to be on Craig's mind all the time: Having assured himself that the department is working hard at keeping people safe, he wonders whether the public perception is changing: "Do people feel safer?" If not, he suggests, then the police have to work all the harder.

Look for upcoming efforts including expanding the Police Athletic League to non-sports activities for kids and teens (including possible a late-night cybercafe during the summer), and a play by Portland officers about relations between them and community members — inspired by a similar play put on for Craig and others by Portland High School students.

Press Releases: Protecting liberty

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Newspapers need to be stronger watchdogs about government attempts to intrude on individual rights.
Let's look at how five local newspapers (the three weeklies covering the city, and the two Portland-based dailies) covered a recent civil-liberties debate.

The South Portland Police Department purchased a car-mounted system that can take digital images of every license plate it passes (whether the cars are parked or moving) and compare them to an electronic database, immediately alerting officers if a nearby vehicle has been reported stolen or otherwise involved in a crime. The system will store all the images — not just those it alerts on — in a searchable electronic database for up to 30 days.

Proponents say the technology will help make people safer, by helping cops identify wanted cars instantaneously, and by allowing them to search through past records to find vehicles that were not flagged in real time, but are later being sought for some reason.

Opponents (including Democratic senator Dennis Damon of Hancock County, who has introduced a bill that would outlaw use of the system) say this kind of monitoring, and especially the storage of the data collected, amounts to excessive government surveillance, mostly of innocent citizens.

Most of the papers had the same basic information, but reading them all revealed useful information that reading any one would have failed to provide.

The CURRENT offered the most substantive coverage, including lengthy interviews with parties on all sides, and even sending a reporter to ride with police to observe the system — with a bonus for getting the cops to scan her license plate as a demonstration of what personal information would and would not be recorded or accessible to police. Nevertheless, the piece downplayed the police's desire to keep data on innocent drivers.

The PORTLAND DAILY SUN distilled the question most clearly and simply: whether the technology simply allows police to improve performance of a routine task, or whether it amounts to a massive new surveillance program. The paper also, in a quote, pointed out that people give massive amounts of personal information to corporations (such as Facebook), but did not note that they do so willingly, and that those corporations don't have the power to lock you up, as cops do.

The PORTLAND PRESS HERALD put out the first story on the issue, and explained it clearly, noting importantly — and exclusively, as it turned out — that the police want access to more data on cars and drivers, to expand their ability to do real-time searches.

The SOUTH PORTLAND SENTRY offered anemic coverage, quoting five people and a Web site. The story was published a week later than its competitors' versions, and omitted important facts that had been previously reported and that could be easily verified (such as the fact that a lawmaker the paper quoted supporting the system had initially co-sponsored the bill to outlaw it).

The SOUTHERN FORECASTER, despite being third to press (after the PPH and the Current), broke the news that Democratic senator Larry Bliss, who lives in South Portland and represents part of the city, had originally co-sponsored the bill banning the use of the system, but had seen a demonstration and reversed his position. However, it failed to capitalize on that scoop, allowing Bliss to explain his change of heart with vague platitudes rather than specific things he saw during the demo. ("I think people will be safer," the paper quotes him as saying, without detailing what he learned that changed his mind 180 degrees.)

Time to step up the skepticism, people.

(Two disclosures: I live in South Portland. And from 2001 to 2005, I worked for the Current, whose ownership remains the same but whose editorial staff is entirely different than when I was there.)

Not a modest proposal: The US Supreme Court has saved us from financial ruin

Published in the Portland Phoenix

There has been powerful criticism of the recent US Supreme Court ruling that corporations are truly people, and deserve all the rights people have, including the right to spend as much as they wish to support or oppose candidates in elections. But we should stop this sniping and thank the justices for their guidance: They have offered us a way out of this financial disaster we are in, with state spending plummeting, taxes rising, and an increasing federal debt load. Here's how it works:

-According to the recent Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission ruling, corporations are people.

-People can be charged with crimes. Let's use murder as an example.

-Corporation-people can be charged with murder (and not just negligence or wrongful death).

-When people are convicted of murder, they are typically imprisoned. (Though sometimes they're put to death, and other times involuntarily committed to mental institutions.)

-When a corporation-person is convicted of murder (it's only a matter of time before a smart prosecutor uses the bizarre logic of the Citizens United ruling to accomplish this) it will launch a new sub-specialty in the practice of law: Arguing about how to imprison a corporation. We can hardly lock up every employee, so who do you choose? The CEO? The board of directors?

-This is where we can learn from the Supreme Court's Citizens United logic: People have the right to speak without restriction from the government, and money equals speech, so corporation-people can spend unlimited amounts of money to directly influence elections.

-Following this argument, money equals freedom, so we should not bother arguing about whom to lock up when a corporation-person is convicted, but simply fine the company an amount appropriate for the crime committed.

-And now let's do as the Supreme Court did one more time, and take this logical progression to its logical conclusion, no matter how ridiculous it might sound: If corporation-people can pay fines in lieu of imprisonment, there's no reason people-people shouldn't be able to.

This presents us with the glorious situation that will extract us and our governments from this horrendous financial disaster. Not only can we abolish the prison system, which costs billions in taxpayer dollars every year (with little actual rehabilitation to show for it), but we can use the new revenue from all these criminals' fines to cover all sorts of wonderful programs, like schools, roads, and police officers.

Thanks, justices! Who would have thought that among all the people in Washington and around the country wringing their hands about the state of the economy, that you would turn out to be the geniuses who showed us the way?

Show Your Work: Nickelodeon to screen local flicks

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Eddy Bolz, a projectionist at the Nickelodeon Cinemas, wants local filmmakers to send him their feature-length movies for possible showing on the big screen.

He's shown a couple — David Camlin's documentary about the 48-Hour Music Festival, and Allen Baldwin's Up Up Down Down — and gotten good response, so now he reports the Nick's management have given him the green light to solicit more.

It won't be a regularly scheduled feature — "every two months roughly," Bolz reports — likely a double-showing on a Thursday evening, in the Nick's largest theater, which holds 220 people.

David Scott, whose family owns the Nickelodeon and affiliated cinemas around New England, says the company has in the past shared box-office proceeds with the filmmakers (or, as with last weekend's Maine African Film Festival screening of a movie about Haiti to benefit earthquake relief, donated all the money to charities).

We'll keep you posted as the films are scheduled. In the meantime, drop them off or mail them to Bolz at the Nickelodeon, 1 Temple Street, Portland ME 04101.

Mapping the Internet: Starting to clear Maine’s broadband backlog

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The biggest obstacle between Mainers and more, better, faster broadband Internet access (or, in many rural communities, anything better than dial-up) is actually a very basic one: there's a lack of information about what kind of Internet service is already available where. But $1.3 million in new federal money may help solve the problem.

The public has an interest in knowing as much as possible about the state's Internet infrastructure — where it is, how fast, who offers it — because of how much that information can affect the spending of tax dollars and economic-development efforts. It's almost a truism among business and state-government leaders that high-speed Internet access is key to saving what remains of Maine's economy. (For example, Democratic 

Governor John Baldacci said back in October, "As we work to grow Maine's economy and provide opportunities to our people, improved broadband access is critical.")

But big businesses like TimeWarner Cable and smaller ones like Maine Wireless in Waterville know where their own coverage areas are, but keep it to themselves as proprietary information that could help competitors.

Last year the state's ConnectME Authority began a two-part project to map the companies providing Internet access in Maine and the types of service they provide. The first part, worth $450,000, was to be paid for with state funds over three years beginning in September, with James Sewall Company, an Old Town-based mapping and engineering company, compiling a list of Maine providers, getting basic information from them, and updating the records every six months.

The second phase, which was contingent upon the $1.3 million in federal funds just awarded to ConnectME as part of the Obama administration's stimulus package, will expand the amount of data gathered and make the maps far more detailed.

The goal, according to ConnectME executive director Phil Lindley, is to get "granular data" on where Mainers do — and don't — have high-speed Internet access. The idea is that a person could come to a state Web site, enter their home address, find out what companies provide what types of service, and even connect directly to those companies to learn more details, such as monthly cost and installation fees.

Lindley's organization (he's the only staffer, but he has a board of advisers) is primarily focused on giving state money (collected from Internet and telephone users in their monthly bills) to projects that extend broadband services to areas presently without it. He doesn't have much money — over the past three years he has given out less than $3 million, and is accepting grant applications for roughly $1 million in new money to be given out later this year.

So far, he has been limited to areas where there's no doubt about a lack of Internet access. But as the work progresses, those areas shrink, and a map becomes more necessary to determine where future projects should receive public funding. (The authority is barred from funding projects that would be built independent of public money.)

He's not sure how much of the information the survey gathers will be public in the end — those companies are often quite secretive about the actual equipment and speeds they offer, not wanting competitors to know or guess their plans for the future.

No laws require the companies to cooperate — unless they receive federal funds to expand their own broadband operations. And federal and state laws and rules allow lots of protection of company data. "A lot of it's going to be moral suasion on my part," Lindley says. But apart from some basic questions about the rules for confidential and proprietary information, "we haven't gotten any pushback yet."

A key piece of information is about the actual speeds available to customers. While at the moment, state efforts are focusing on getting broadband to where people are still suffering with dial-up, at some point state efforts will need to boost broadband speeds too. (And there's no time like the present, in the wake of the latest Akamai "State of the Internet" report, which shows that other countries — even non-tech-mecca places like Romania and the Czech Republic! — are boosting broadband speeds far faster than the US, which actually saw speeds fall in 2009.)

Lindley is hoping to get very detailed information that will at least be available to state officials planning where to spend public money, even if it's not available to the wider public.

He expects preliminary results before summer, which will give a taste of how much Maine's 21st-century utility companies support openness. What info there is will be online at www.maine.gov/connectME.

Quake Response: Boston organization fighting good fight in Haiti

Published in the Portland Phoenix and the Boston Phoenix

Good news from Haiti: the catastrophic earthquake that struck this Caribbean nation last week did no damage to the 10 Haitian-run hospitals and clinics aided by the Boston-based charity Partners in Health (PiH). Each of the 10, which offer free care to all comers — and were founded by Paul Farmer of Harvard's medical school, in conjunction with Haiti's health ministry — swung into action immediately after the quake struck.

Bad news from Haiti: those clinics and hospitals, which are staffed almost entirely by Haitians, are in the rugged rural interior of the country, hours — and in some cases days, on rough roads and mountain paths — of travel from the hard-hit capital city of Port-au-Prince.

Even worse news from Haiti: conditions in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere are so terrible, and medical help so scarce, that quake victims, some with grievous injuries requiring amputation, have no choice but to make the difficult overland journey to the PiH centers.

"It's been a horrifying catastrophe," says Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tracy Kidder, whose 2003 best-selling book Mountains Beyond Mountains (Random House) introduced the world to the dauntless, tireless Farmer and his organization.

Many outlets offering relief and support to Haitians were headquartered in Port-au-Prince and were effectively decapitated by the January 12 quake, which struck just 16 miles west of the capital city and measured 7.0 on the Richter scale. But PiH, which employs more than 100 Haitian doctors and thousands of community health workers, is intact — its major hospital is in Cange, several hours northeast of Port-au-Prince.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, that hospital has expanded to make use of space in a neighboring church and a school. "There are patients all over the place," says Kidder of the reports he and PiH are getting from the clinics, adding that PIH is also striving to send medical workers to the urban-relief efforts even while handling the massive influx of new cases.

Kidder, who lives in Massachusetts and Maine, is adamant that Haiti needs not just relief money, but a societal change in which its people have more of a say in how the nation develops. He has argued that the international aid now pouring into one of the world's poorest countries be the start of a new chapter for Haiti, rather than just a temporary boon to assist with rescues.

Many people — worried about the looting and civil disorder in Haiti in the wake of the earthquake — are skeptical of giving aid and about Haiti's future, but Kidder asks, "how would New Yorkers, or any Americans, respond" in identical circumstances, with no food, shelter, water, and only the clothing on their backs — and with no certainty that loved ones were safe, or even alive?

The relief effort has also been hindered by the racism and religious intolerance of those like evangelist Pat Robertson, who blamed the tragedy on a "pact with the devil." Kidder's response to Robertson? "If there's an Antichrist, then he might be it. You can quote me on that."

Kidder remains hopeful about Haiti's future, but only so long as international support is both generous and concerned about the long term. He recalls the Haitian proverb that inspired the title of his book on Farmer, PiH, and Haiti: "Beyond mountains there are mountains." Haitians use this proverb in two ways, he says: "There is no end to obstacles — but there is no end to opportunities."

To make a donation to Partners in Health, visit http://www.pih.org/.

Good starts: Maine journalism shows some promising new lights

Published in the Portland Phoenix

It's a new year, and Maine journalism is worse for the battering it took in 2009. But there are some new lights appearing on the horizon that might just make things a little brighter.

The first is a new endeavor founded by yet another of those recently-unemployed daily-newspaper journalists, the MAINE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEREST REPORTING, led by former Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel publisher John Christie.

From his first story, published last week, it appears Christie will be resurrecting a journalistic endeavor long missing from Maine's mainstream press: holding powerful people accountable for their actions.

The debut story was based on an age-old premise: money and personal connections drive politics. But exactly how that happens in Maine has been under-covered, thanks to pols' and journos' often-friendly relations (see "Our Journalism Echoes Our Politics," by Lance Tapley, August 3, 2009).

In a story posted online at PineTreeWatchdog.org and printed in the Bangor Daily News, the Lewiston Sun Journal, and two weekly papers in the midcoast, the Ellsworth American and the Mount Desert Islander, Christie made clear how Governor John Baldacci thanks his friends.

Specifically, people who raised money for Baldacci's political campaigns and have known him for many years can get special favors from him, even — indeed especially — in tough budget circumstances.

Christie fills his story with quotes from State House players asserting that, as we all know, politics is personal. And when Baldacci weakly protests claims that he made a political decision — carving out an exemption to a new sales-tax expansion — to help his friends and benefactors in the skiing and real-estate businesses, Christie not only quotes his anemic reply ("the facts don't bear it out") but shows those facts clearly, as they do bear out the very allegation Baldacci denies.

It is a bit sad to be singling out this effort. It is basic, straightforward, workaday journalism that should never have been missing from Maine's daily newspapers. It should not have taken a startup nonprofit to ask why the governor's demands were so specific, and limited to inside players. But it did, and we're glad it's back.

And while the Portland Press Herald and its sister papers are not publishing Christie's work (Christie was let go when Richard Connor took over the company), there are small signs of a NEW WATCHDOG MENTALITY at Maine's largest newspaper company, too. It's not just that Connor has added one more capitol reporter — which he has done.

Over the past week, the Press Herald newsroom has been on top of a small-potatoes story, but in a way that portends better government scrutiny than officials have been used to of late.

Starting on January 5, with a front-page story entitled "At Deering Oaks, That Familiar Sinking Feeling," the PPH has demonstrated an institutional memory many feared lost. That first story reported that a snowplow machine had sunk in Deering Oaks Pond the previous day. But it went much deeper, digging up PPH archive photos from three previous times Portland's public-works department had done the same thing, all the way back to 1987. Two days later, the paper reported that the estimate for fishing the Bobcat out of the pond was not the $500 city officials initially claimed, but rather $5000. One day after that, the paper reported that the city's policy for clearing snow from the pond requires the ice thickness be checked before the plow sets out, and quoted city sources saying that hadn't happened. It's not government waste or incompetence on a grand scale, but it's a beginning.

These are excellent signs, and we look to a bright future in which we learn who else is courting our governor (and the candidates to replace him), and the discipline meted out to whomever it was who violated Portland's snow-clearing policies and cost taxpayers $5000 they don't have.