Barely hanging on: Fraud isn't killing Maine's welfare system — conservative misunderstanding is

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Last week in Ellsworth, Governor Paul LePage renewed his efforts to change Maine's welfare system, calling for increased restrictions on benefits for people seeking taxpayer support to get health coverage through the state's Medicaid program.

This, and a guilty plea the day before of a 26-year-old Andover woman to charges of defrauding the state of $8800 in welfare benefits, are part of LePage's much-ballyhooed move to shift people "from dependence to independence," and are in line with longstanding conservative dogma associated with reducing the number of people receiving welfare benefits. But in fact, these efforts are doing the opposite, increasing the likelihood that people will go on, and stay on, public assistance.

The guiding principle of welfare, from its creation to the present — the one basic idea that all who look at our country's complex public-assistance system can agree on — is that welfare should help people hit by unemployment, domestic violence, illness, or other misfortune (largely outside their own control) to get back on their feet and provide for themselves and their families independently. A common catchphrase is "a hand up, not a handout."

LePage does have some efforts other than fraud investigations that he says are moving toward this end. Many of his ideas find support in a 2010 report from the conservative Maine Heritage Policy Center entitled "Fix the System: Freeing Maine families from welfare dependency."

Unfortunately, LePage is wrong — about the fraud, and about most of the other stuff he's trying to do to Maine's welfare system. It's a problem of conception, as much as of policy.

This renewed focus comes at a time when welfare is indeed in need of massive change. It is staggering under the load of Mainers' need, and straining Mainers' ability to provide for each other. Nearly one-third of the state's residents received some form of welfare aid in September 2011, with $40.1 million — $928 per minute — going from state coffers to needy families.

Perhaps not helped by the state's 7.5 percent unemployment rate, that number is growing. While joblessness is below the 9 percent national average, the MHPC's 2010 report found that "412 of Maine's 488 towns reporting have seen an increase in the number of people enrolled in Maine's welfare system since 2003." The MHPC also correctly observes that in 2008, Maine's state and local governments spent more on welfare benefits than on K-12 education.

While data kept — and provided to the PortlandPhoenix — by the state Department of Health and Human Services does not go back as far as 2003, it does indicate that from August 2006 to September 2011, the number of people receiving assistance from non-Medicaid programs increased from 340,974 to 400,943 — a 17.5 percent increase. (Medicaid participants are tallied separately; Maine's numbers in that program have also been increasing.)

That's a big dollar amount, and a lot of people, but when it gets into the hands of those in need, the help is pitifully tiny. "If a person got the maximum available benefit, they would still be living below the federal poverty level," says DHHS spokesman John Martins. His agency's data shows that the average benefit per person per month was just $100.05 in September 2011. Admittedly, that's up 75 percent from the $57.25 that was the per-person average in August 2006, but gas prices have jumped roughly that much in that time; food and housing costs have climbed steeply as well, while wages have dropped. In 2011, the federal poverty level in Maine is $22,350 for a family of four.

The fraud problem?

Maine doesn't really have a problem with welfare fraud by recipients. It's hard to get data comparing Maine to other states because welfare programs vary so widely, but state officials openly admit they have no evidence of widespread fraud. "It seems like it could be pervasive, but we just don't know," says Herb Downs, director of audit for the state Department of Health and Human Services, and chairman of the state's Fraud and Abuse Work Team.

All of the state's evidence about welfare fraud as a systemic problem is anecdotal. As Downs puts it, state officials "hear a lot of the stories." The largest fraud story the state has is that of Kathleen Schidzig. At $18,000 over three years, Schidzig's is the most prominent, highest-dollar-amount case in recent memory, as far as fraud from welfare recipients goes. Assistant Attorney General Peter Black, using DHHS calculations of the maximum benefits that might ever be issued to an in-school mother of four, tried to revise that number to $49,000 (just over $16,000 a year) late in the court proceedings, but was rebuffed by the judge. (Superior Court Justice MaryGay Kennedy did express significant outrage at Schidzig's case, calling her actions "calculated" and "scheming," and sentenced her to a year in prison, with two more years hanging over her head if she runs afoul of strict rules during her two years of post-incarceration probation.)

The average cost of locking up a Maine inmate for a year is $45,000 — not counting money paid to prosecute and defend the accused. (In Schidzig's case, the state Commission on Indigent Legal Services spent $1918.60 on her defense — paying an attorney $50 an hour, plus mileage to drive between Portland and Auburn. Black's total compensation package cost taxpayers $63,000 in 2010.)

Despite the low dollar amount stolen and the high cost of prosecution and incarceration, DHHS is seeking to hear more stories, launching a new state website and hotline to which people can report their neighbors for alleged fraud. (It's maine.gov/fraud and 866.348.1129.)

DHHS's Martins admits those tips can be more trouble than they're worth. Of 1200 tips received last year, between 12 and 20 resulted in court proceedings, he says. Beyond tips that don't include names, towns, and other identifying details, there are plenty of things the public might think are not allowed, that actually are permitted under the rules of the various welfare programs.

For example, Martins says, when a mother and children live with the mother's boyfriend, the children's father is the one responsible for the kids — not the live-in boyfriend (unless he's also the dad). Or there's the common complaint that someone on welfare has a nicer car than the complainant approves of; Martins observes that federal law allows welfare recipients to own a car — one car — to get to and from work.

When investigators get beyond those tips — which are a large proportion of the total — fraud is still "difficult to prove," Martins says. Much more common is an erroneous overpayment — either a clerical error on the state's part, or an honest mistake on the recipient's part that is quickly owned up to. In those cases, the overpayment is deducted from the next benefit check the recipient would otherwise get, and no criminal charges result.

In fact, Martins admits, what DHHS calls "consumer fraud" — that committed by people receiving public benefits — is far smaller than "provider fraud," most common in Medicaid, in which doctor's offices (or their employees, unbeknownst to the bosses) overbill the state, or bill for services never provided, and pocket the extra. One single case in 2010 resulted in an order for $4 million in restitution from a lone defendant who pled guilty to overbilling that much money from the state's Medicaid program over the course of several years.

"That's really where the money is," Martins says. But it's certainly not where the rhetoric and political attention are.

Philosophical politics

"If the discussion is only about fraud, we miss the entire conversation we need to be having," says Christine Hastedt, public policy director at Maine Equal Justice Partners (a nonprofit working to address poverty and related issues). She believes fraud here is "much less than in most states," and observes that LePage's railing against fraud seems most virulent when targeting the working poor and low-income people. Certainly LePage railing against corporate fraud and excess is so rare that even the idea of it seems laughable.

Hastedt says that at all times — but most urgently in a recession where one in six Americans is either unemployed, working less than they want to be, or has given up even searching for a job — we need to look at whether our welfare programs are working, and fix them when they're not.

This is where the divide happens. To be sure, everyone wants to be confident that taxpayer money meant to be spent on helping people is actually helping those in need. But similarities stop there.

Conservatives tend to think the problem is that too many people are on welfare, so they should be made to get off public assistance. They do this by setting time limits for benefits, restricting eligibility, and terminating benefits abruptly once a recipient begins earning money — even cutting off all benefits if a person earns a single dollar more than a program's income threshold.

Progressives, in contrast, tend to think the problem is that too many people have too many needs, and want to help them meet more of their own needs over time. They do this by expanding eligibility for certain programs beyond those who are extremely poor, offering supplemental services to help people stay off welfare, and providing transitional support for people who have been on welfare and are moving back into the work force.

LePage, for example, took his cues from the 2010 MHPC report last legislative session when he proposed eliminating state subsidies and admission into the Medicaid program for families earning between 133 and 200 percent of the federal poverty level. That cut didn't get through the Republican-dominated legislature, but is already being discussed for reconsideration in the 2012 session.

Taking the conservative line, the MHPC calls that subsidy — which can help provide health insurance coverage to families where parents are working but earning low wages and not getting any employer benefits — a "middle class entitlement" that "encourages dependency."

Maine Equal Justice Partners, by contrast, calls Medicaid eligibility for the working poor struggling to escape poverty an important support that encourages people to get off welfare by reducing their fears of losing insurance once they find work.

Another example is the LePage proposal to terminate benefits after five years of receiving them, with no extensions for any reason, and no exemptions that could pause the clock — not even medical emergencies or intensive job-training classes. Get aid for five years, and on the first day after that, benefits drop to zero. The primary underlying assumption is that a person will be so afraid of benefits stopping entirely that they will take great pains to leave the system. The secondary underlying assumption is that people will be energized by that fear, motivated to get work — and not terrified into inaction, and ultimately dropping off the welfare rolls into even deeper poverty.

MEJP's Hastedt says welfare recipients do fear losing their benefits, but struggle with what to do in a low-wage, low-employment economy where having a job does not mean (and is often staggeringly far from) being able to afford child care, reliable transportation, and health care.

It turns out that while those who accuse welfare recipients of laziness might shudder to hear it, most of those they criticize are actually working very hard to scrape together enough money to house and feed and clothe themselves and their families.

Early struggles

Again we can turn to Schidzig's case for illumination. In many ways, she was a typical Maine welfare recipient. Now 31, she is the first to admit her life has had problems. In an interview at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, she describes herself as the child of a teenage mother, whose youth was supported at least in part by public assistance.

That is part of what many people refer to when they talk of a "cycle" of poverty, but it's actually less reflective of reality than even advocates for the needy expect. A 1995 study found that 64 percent of Mainers on welfare had not grown up in families receiving benefits; 11 percent said their families had gotten aid "most of the time;" 15 percent had received help "some of the time" (as little as once); and 10 percent didn't know whether their families had gotten welfare.

While it's hard to rely on 16-year-old data about a welfare system that differs significantly from today's, the study hasn't been replicated. And the population of welfare recipients has shifted heavily toward people who have some type of disability, which would tend to suggest further departure from successive generational dependency.

A mother at 17, Schidzig finished high school but didn't go on to college; her first child's father was of little help, so Schidzig stayed with her mother. "I was a kid, raising a kid, living with a kid," she recalls. With few qualifications, she worked low-wage jobs, including at a Burger King restaurant in Lewiston.

Single motherhood with little to no support from the father, and low-wage jobs, are common threads throughout Maine's welfare system, according to a January 2011 report conducted by the University of New England and the University of Maine at Orono. Commissioned by MEJP and the Maine Women's Lobby, another nonprofit groups working to promote economic security for Maine families, the study found that nearly 92.4 percent of recipients of TANF, which provides cash assistance to needy families, are women with young children. In addition, just 12 percent of them received child support that was due. Nevertheless, they are used to working outside the home: 97 percent of recipients have work experience (mostly in the sales or service sectors, which are typically low-paying jobs).

Many people Schidzig knew as a child and young adult — and others she would come to know as she grew older — were also on one form or another of public assistance. Food stamps, TANF, unemployment insurance, and Medicaid (called MaineCare here) are the largest state programs. (Disability payments, another major form of help, are handled federally by the Social Security Administration.)

She saw what grinding poverty did, and was determined to be able to provide for herself and her family. She made what experts say is the best possible move: she sought higher education, enrolling in community college.

Seeking education

The UNE-UMO study found that "higher educational levels are strongly correlated with less time spent on TANF and lower frequency of return to cash assistance." Recipients with less than a high-school diploma averaged 21 months on TANF, while the "relatively small number of college graduates" who received TANF stayed on the program for an average of just eight months.

Sixteen percent of the survey respondents applied for and enrolled in a state program called Parents as Scholars, in which TANF recipients can get help with child-care and transportation costs while enrolled in classes at accredited colleges and training programs. Hastedt says "it's not promoted as effectively as it should be" by state workers handling applications for aid.

Indeed, between 2005 and 2011, TANF participation has increased, reflecting growing need that is at least partially related to the ongoing recession. But during that same period, Parents as Scholars participation has dropped. "These are the times when people should be going back to school," Hastedt says. With high unemployment, they'd have trouble getting a job anyway, and can take advantage of assistance to learn new skills, thereby increasing their chances of finding work as the economy improves. "What a lost opportunity," Hastedt says.

Schidzig was in the PaS program; she specifically needed help with child care, because she had three more children in rapid succession between 2007 and 2009, and they needed looking after when she was in class.

Schidzig says she applied for additional aid immediately following each birth; she was unable to work for short periods because all three babies were born by cesarean section. She received aid for at least some of the period between October 2007 and February 2010, according to court documents.

From time to time she got into trouble with the law, accumulating several misdemeanor convictions from 1998, the year she turned 18, through February 2011. The Lewiston Sun Journal reported that she served a total of six days in jail and paid $900 in fines connected with the various small-time crimes, ranging from disorderly conduct to carrying a concealed weapon.

But she was able to live on her own in Lewiston, with the help of Section 8 housing supplements, when — according to state allegations — her boyfriend, the father of her three youngest children, moved in. (Schidzig says he stayed over from time to time but was away a lot, working elsewhere in the state.) Then real trouble began.

In April 2010, she and her family were forced out of her Lewiston rental house because sewage backed up into the basement, leading the city to condemn the property. Adding to the disaster was a bedbug infestation that caused them to leave all of their belongings behind, including photos on the walls, her children's toys, and even pots and pans, theSun Journal reported at the time. They moved to Portland, starting over with used furniture donated or bought cheaply at discount stores.

While these particular circumstances are unusual for public-assistance beneficiaries (or anyone else, for that matter), in terms of financial impact it closely mirrors divorce, separation, or fleeing domestic abuse — which are all major factors in sending people to seek TANF assistance. Nearly 25 percent of the respondents to the UNE-UMO study said they applied for help because of divorce, separation, or escaping an abusive relationship.

A few months after the newspaper coverage of her residential disaster and her accompanying threats to sue her landlord, Schidzig found herself indicted by an Androscoggin County grand jury for two felonies and three misdemeanors relating to "misuse of approximately $25,000 in TANF and ASPIRE benefits," according to a statement from the Maine Attorney General's office. Schidzig claims the charges resulted from the newspaper article's description of her boyfriend as living with the family when he in fact did not; the prosecution disagreed. If he was, he would be assumed to be contributing to household income, meaning she would be eligible for less aid.

Schidzig and her court-appointed attorney, Amanda Doherty of the Portland firm of Strike, Goodwin, and O'Brien, say they proposed a deal in which Schidzig would plead guilty to taking less than $10,000 (an amount that would mean her crime was a misdemeanor rather than a felony), but assistant attorney general Peter Black refused. Black, whose full-time job is investigating and prosecuting people suspected of welfare fraud, did not return multiple phone calls seeking comment for this story.

Schidzig ultimately pleaded "no contest," in which she did not admit guilt but did accept that the state's case was likely to prevail if it went to trial. At her sentencing hearing, she was stunned to learn that the state was suddenly alleging she took $49,000; Justice Kennedy refused the state's new estimate and ordered Schidzig to pay $18,000 in restitution, serve a year in prison, and be on probation for two years after her release.

Fewer prospects than ever

This is not where she expected to end up, Schidzig says through tears in a small meeting room near her cell. "I have worked all my life and I've gone to school for many years," she says. She teaches her kids to work hard and be honest. Looking at her file of paperwork chronicling the case against her, the court proceedings, and her prison records, she shakes her head, frustrated that rather than plea-bargaining (a common practice in criminal cases), she was accused of stealing more money than she says she even received in benefits.

"I didn't do that and it's ruined my life and it's ruined my kids' lives," she says, composing herself, and turning philosophical. "Maybe I had to lose one year of my life to gain the rest."

Her personal situation may be beyond significant repair, but she certainly knows how to fix the system — and it involves better targeting the help that is provided, so it actually meets parents' needs.

"It's a domino effect," she says, describing how failures in the education, welfare, and job support systems can leave people who want to work and provide for their families unable to meet basic needs of both home and work.

Observing that welfare benefits, according to both state and federal guidelines, expire after a person uses five years' worth, she suggests making people enter some sort of job training or degree program during that period — the full five years is plenty of time in which to make real progress, and most programs are far shorter, particularly non-degree job-skills courses.

Why should we listen to Schidzig's advice? For one, because it's hard-won insight from a life in the trenches of poverty. She says openly what many who know the system well say privately: "You can't cut it on welfare, even if you have housing." That $100 per person per month average benefit is a long way from making ends meet, and if it isn't targeted exactly right, it misses the need.

Another reason to listen to Schidzig is because her prescription is exactly the same as those who propose various ways to fix welfare. This is not to defend a convicted fraudster. But in human terms her situation is nothing like what even conservatives who target welfare for major overhauls want to see: A former teen mother, now 31 and the mother of four, is in prison for a year. Her employment prospects, with just a high-school diploma and a few community-college classes, were negligible to start with. Now they are ruined forever, meaning she and her children are likely to remain on taxpayer-funded assistance for many years to come.

Seeking real fixes

We have already discussed the universal goal of those addressing the welfare system: getting people off welfare and into positions where they are able to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their families (and keep everyone healthy).

There is another goal, though, that many fail to see: reducing the likelihood that people will need welfare in the first place. It's here that welfare reform can make the most difference; it's no coincidence that many of these steps are ones that will also help people who are on welfare transition off of public assistance.

Fixing what's wrong, and smoothing the road off welfare (as well as keeping others out of the program) requires "recognizing the kind of jobs that people leaving TANF are going into," Hastedt says. They're typically low-wage, low-security jobs without significant schedule flexibility or benefits.

That means the working poor — and those people who are poor and looking for work — are missing three things, she says: "access to child care and transportation" and health coverage.

State supports — including the subsidized Medicaid coverage for the working poor — helps what she calls "the people who don't have to go on TANF" because they get help with medical coverage, she says. Similarly, helping people with car repairs and supplements for child care can keep some people off welfare entirely, while providing a smooth landing for those who find work and move toward independence.

Federal rules also need to change, to allow welfare recipients to continue to qualify for benefits while enrolled in degree-granting programs. One reason state officials may not be promoting the Parents as Scholars program, despite how well it works, is that federal rules don't consider post-secondary education that lasts beyond 12 months as meeting recipients' required work participation while getting benefits.

Looked at closely, even conservatives support this change in policy. The 2010 MHPC report recommends more aggressively enforcing job-training requirements on welfare recipients. Such a change could include something like Schidzig's suggestion that people be required to get job training or go back to school. (The MHPC's specific recommendation focuses specifically on job training; it doesn't mention degree programs, but the data on reduced welfare dependence for degree holders is strong.)

Another MHPC proposal, however, differs from Schidzig in a key way, regarding "diversion" programs designed to help people avoid having to enroll in welfare. Schidzig puts it this way: "If a mother can't get a bed . . . help her get a bed." Maine has a program like this, called Alternative Aid, which is intended to give a one-time cash injection to a family so that the providers can keep working and not have to enroll in welfare programs. For example, if a car breaks down and needs an expensive repair before its driver can get to work, Alternative Aid can help cover the cost of the fix.

MHPC would add job-search requirements and other eligibility restrictions as conditions of receiving Alternative Aid, turning it into something that looks more like a traditional welfare program than a supplemental support for a parent who is already working. But that runs counter even to MHPC's description of its proposal as a "diversion" keeping people off welfare.

Finding 'a path out of poverty'

Another thing that needs to change is the political rhetoric, which at present tends to demonize the poor, turning people who need help from their fellow Mainers into some sort of leeching aliens selfishly hoarding cash. (Never mind that when averaging $100 per month per person, the benefits could hardly help anyone get rich.)

Now what happens? Schidzig is slated to be released from prison on June 1, 2012, and her two years of probation will begin. During that time, she will be expected to pay back the $18,000 restitution. She will likely be unable to find work — a felony conviction involving financial fraud isn't exactly attractive to employers, who are already seeing as many as 20 applicants per job opening — when there are jobs that are open. "I don't think I could even get a job at Burger King," she says with typical directness. (She knows what it takes to get a BK job; she's worked at one in the past.)

Which means she'll be back seeking help from the state. If she is able to get welfare benefits — people convicted of welfare fraud usually, and rightly, find it hard to get approved again — she likely won't qualify for help for herself, but only for her kids.

Therefore, her benefits will be lower than they were in the past, and she'll have little choice but to dip into that money to pay her probation officer to cover the cost of supervising her ($10 monthly), as well as all that restitution.

She's looking at a very similar picture to people who are on welfare. Hastedt describes it as difficulty "seeing a path out of poverty." What it looks like to Schidzig, and to other Maine welfare recipients — especially if LePage gets his way in next year's legislative session — is staring off a cliff.

Press Releases: Moving around

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The day before Richard Connor resigned his position as editor and publisher of thePortland Press Herald and head of MaineToday Media (as well as departing his leadership posts atop a Pennsylvania newspaper company), he moved $3 million worth of real estate holdings in Maine into a trust held by his wife.

While all the facts surrounding his departure aren't yet known, Connor resigned October 28 in the wake of what appear to be questions about the financial record-keeping at both companies, including mixing the two firms' income and expenses; the companies share some owners but not others. Also departing abruptly were MaineToday president Dale Duncan and advertising chief Michelle Lester, both Connor imports from the Pennsylvania paper.

A move such as Connor's real-estate shift could be seen as an effort to protect his assets should the companies' internal financial inquiries result in litigation.

Records on file at the Cumberland County Register of Deeds show that on October 27, Richard L. Connor and Deborah K. Connor transferred a four-acre parcel at 113 Foreside Road in Falmouth — including a 6000-square-foot six-bedroom, six-bathroom house with attached six-bay garage — valued by the town at $2.7 million and purchased on May 3 by the Connors for $2.4 million from their joint ownership into the Deborah K. Connor Revocable Trust, which had been established on October 4.

On the same day, in a nearly identical document notarized by the same attorney, Michelle Santiago of the Portland firm of Hopkinson and Abbondanza, Connor and his wife made the same transfer with a $500,000 one-acre parcel with a 4000-square-foot seven-bedroom, six-bathroom house at 49 High Street in Camden, according to records in Knox County.

Connor, who is listed as a co-trustee (with his wife) on his wife's trust, didn't return multiple e-mail and phone messages. Santiago has changed employers; reached at her new office, she declined to comment.

The ex-news-exec wrote in a farewell column that he's going to stay in media, and is looking to buy more newspapers. However, he'll have to do it without his major financial backer, HM Capital of Dallas. That company, which was central to both his 2006 deal to buy the Times Leader newspaper in northeast Pennsylvania and his purchase of thePress Herald and its sister publications, told Citizen's Voice (a competing publication in the Keystone State) that it will "no longer invest in media," calling that sector a "troubled area."

• The more lasting question, of course, is what will happen to MaineToday Media. Connor has said he'll retain his ownership stake in the company; whether his other backers do remains to be seen. None of them have experience with media companies or the news business; all of them have been largely silent partners, at least from the public perspective.

They now find themselves owning — and attempting to find a leader for — a newspaper group that, if possible, is even more troubled than when Connor and his crew bought them from the Blethens in 2009.

Last month's significant layoffs and buyouts have decimated the Press Herald's newsroom staff, who remain headed by a Connor crony, Scott Wasser. The Morning Sentinel and the Kennebec Journal are reeling from two major blows in a single week.

On November 4, editor and publisher Tony Ronzio wrote a groveling public apology because the KJ had, the day before, run a year-old story from another newspaper without updating it, verifying it, or seeking comment from its subject.

Four days later, the Sentinel ran a front-page story saying the newspaper had been caught discounting political advertising for a candidate who works in the ad department. Dana Sennett, a long-serving Waterville city councilor who became mayor in a June special election to fill the slot vacated by Governor Paul LePage, got employee discounts totaling $3800 for his political ads. After a rival candidate (Karen Heck, who ousted Sennett and became mayor) found out by looking at campaign-finance reports, the paper asked him to pay the full amount.

More questions than answers, really.

Occupy Watch: Portland’s Occupation preps for winter

Published in the Portland Phoenix

OccupyMaine's Portland branch has a plan for winter survival and overall camp safety that includes using the people's mic for emergency warnings, round-the-clock warming huts, and shifting to hotels or other dwellings in times of extreme cold.

City officials will review the plans, as well as possibly tour the camp to identify potential safety hazards, according to city spokeswoman Nicole Clegg, and will work with the Occupy residents to address any remaining problems.

On November 1 the city had sent the Occupation a letter asking about the group's plans for dealing with the increasing numbers of campers in the park (some nights it's over 50 people there), congestion where tents are erected close to each other, and the soon-arriving winter weather.

"The (October 29-30) snowstorm was a good reminder that weather can be severe and we want to make sure everyone's safe," Clegg says.

The Occupy group had promised a response by Tuesday, November 15; that response was delivered on time, and a city reply is forthcoming. In the correspondence is mention that the Occupy group may at some later point ask for permission to have an enclosed wood-burning stove on the site, but at the moment the group is abiding by the city's ban on open fires and burning wood or wood pellets.

The group has also established an on-site medical team, received training in outdoor survival and treatment of cold-weather injuries, equipped itself with fire extinguishers (and is working on getting carbon-monoxide detectors), posted several key areas as non-smoking locations, and is working on insulating and weatherizing tents and other structures in the park. As far as park stewardship, the group is keeping the place clean and putting down straw on muddy areas, as well as promising to shovel all walkways within the park as needed to keep them clear to all passersby.

Denny Junkins, a member of the OccupyMaine media team, says he expects relations with the city to continue to be productive and peaceful, in stark contrast to the Monday-night eviction of the original Occupy Wall Street camp in New York City, which involved more than 70 arrests, police in riot gear, demonstrators being targeted by ear-splitting sound cannons, officers slicing open tents with knives, and many protestors' belongings — including thousands of books — being destroyed or thrown away.

The concerns expressed in New York and Portland, though, are similar: sanitation and safety. When asked if those concerns might reach a point where they could trigger a forcible eviction in Portland, Clegg audibly bristled, saying the city and the Occupy group have been working well together and expect to continue to do so. When the city has concerns, officials will "give them a chance to address it" before determining what, if any, further action is needed, she says.

The Portland group is indeed addressing safety and sanitation issues on their own, talking in recent general assemblies about ways to ensure people feel safe in camp, as well as the high demand for the two porta-potties that have been on site at the park for a few weeks now.

Their efforts appear to be falling on sympathetic ears here. Clegg says the Occupy group was originally given permission to stay in Lincoln Park, including overnight, so long as they abide by city ordinances and act as stewards of the 2.5-acre park.

Clegg notes that the city has brought concerns to the attention of the group several times since the Occupation began on October 1, and that the group has been responsive and cooperative in addressing those issues and in maintaining open communications with the city.

"Our respectful approach and their respectful approach is part of the reason we've been able to work well together," Clegg says.

She adds that the city has offered to have building and fire inspectors visit the encampment to make sure everything is arranged properly, and to help the group make any fixes that might be needed. That seems a likely next step; for its part, the Occupy group has invited city officials "to come to the OccupyMaine encampment at any time to see our operations and talk to folks who are part of that community of self-governance, sustainability and mutual respect and concern for one another."

Portland 101: Portland schools are 'learning to succeed'

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Portland's public-school employees and leaders are working hard to meet the needs of every student in the system, but when asking themselves whether they've accomplished that, "the answer is 'Not yet,'" according to School Board chairman Kate Snyder, who spoke to the League of Young Voters' Portland 101 class last week.

Snyder is just finishing the first year of her second three-year term as an at-large member of the board; she was elected in the fall of 2007, just a few months after the school department reported that it had overspent its budget. In the aftermath of that, the superintendent and business manager left the district. Also, in 2008, a new state law took effect requiring voter approval of the school budget in an annual referendum (in Portland, that's in addition to approval by the City Council, because the local charter requires it).

That meant big-time public scrutiny of school spending, and a real need for the district to rebuild the trust of the community it serves. Snyder says that effort has gone well, though she noted (in the words of the district's semi-recent new motto) "we're learning to succeed."

Admitting that only 80 percent of high-school-age students actually graduate from Portland schools (which is roughly the statewide average), Snyder spent a decent amount of time talking about some of the problems the district has; it was largely as a way to talk about what she sees as the big successes. For example, as recently as two years ago, the district "collected no meaningful data on student performance" — and what was known was almost useless because "each school did different assessments," so comparing student performance between schools and throughout the district was impossible.

Now, though, the district is "more data driven," she says, with standard testing and other assessments in every school, which allows administrators to see on-the-ground specifics, such as the low level of minority students in Advanced Placement classes at Portland High School. They can also see broader views: Not surprising, since it follows a national trend over many decades, is the fact that "student test data largely reflects socioeconomic data in the neighborhoods," Snyder says.

The district is working on improving access, largely by "creating teacher-student relationships," which increase the amount of time students get individualized or small-group attention. It's an incremental process, she says, with new programs often being phased in over several years to keep costs from increasing too rapidly.

Taking a stab at explaining #OccupyWallStreet #OWS #OccupyMaine

Published online at thePhoenix.com

Based on my observations, conversations, and reading of Occupation reports from around the globe: 

Despite mainstream media incomprehension, the message of the Occupy movement is extremely clear and lucid. It is creating a parallel, alternative society that cares for humans, represents humans, and provides for humans - using systems free of corporate influence and corruption. The message is that such a world is possible, and need not rely on politicians or corporations to exist. Rather, it can be created by regular people, supplied by donations, and duplicated widely in communities around the globe.

Naturally, corporations, governments, and media outlets want to obfuscate this possibility, to hide it from the masses, because their very existence relies on the continuation of our existing nonrepresentative democracy. Many of their drones, indeed, likely cannot even see what is directly in front of them, and therefore claim it is hazy. It's not.

The Occupiers are building a world adjacent to and yet fundamentally different from our existing. By example they are highlighting the gross inequalities and inadequacies of our existing governmental structure.

They are providing social services: feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, providing free basic medical care, and offering educational training sessions. This is all happening with no budget, made out of individuals' assets - clothes, food, money, knowledge, supplies - that are donated to the effort.

They are operating a government: gathering as local decision-making bodies to discuss the local, regional, national, and global issues of the day, and making decisions on how to take action in a process in which every individual's voice can be heard - and they are carrying out those actions. This is happening in public, with no administrative staffers and no lobbyists.

They are about to embark upon a trade infrastructure: The Occupy Wall Street group, flush with donations that fill a warehouse, is talking about renting at least one truck, fill it with surplus supplies, and drive around to other Occupy locations, dropping off whatever they have that is in need there. This is happening funded solely by donations of items and money.

Their efforts are, admittedly, laid over the basic foundation of roads and public-safety protection. But nearly everyone agrees those things are a real, necessary function of a common government.

In their creation of this parallel society from the ground up, they have already demonstrated the failures of our existing governmental system, which is focused not on the well-being of the people but on protecting the privileges of corporations.

The Occupiers are saying to the public: Look at what government does, and look at what we're doing. We can do this ourselves, in what amounts to our spare time away from being students and part-time workers and homeless veterans, better than our government is doing it, and that has to change. Government must serve the people, answer to the people, meet the needs of the people.

Right now, as is very obvious to anyone who takes even the barest glance at the Occupy movement, a group of part-time volunteers are performing the basic functions of government on donated money, donated time, and donated energy - and at times surpassing the quality, scope, and breadth of service provided by professional lawmakers and career civil servants.

They are not only calling for change, or asking whether change is possible. They are demonstrating how to execute the changes we need. Every day the Occupation lasts, it grows stronger, and its counterexample to our failed American system gets clearer.

All that remains is for each of us to choose: In which of these parallel societies do you wish to live?

Finding - and preserving - unheard voices: Speaking with Howard Solomon about his years of LGBT research

Published in Out In Maine

When Howard Solomon's name was submitted as a nominee for the Catalyst for Change Award, the highest honor given by the Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine at the University of Southern Maine, the center's board agreed very easily to bestow it upon the well-known LGBT historian.

"He has an outstanding record in Maine," says Susie Bock, the center's director, who has worked with Solomon for many years preserving papers, records, and items shedding light on Maine's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. (The Sampson Center also has significant holdings on the history of Maine's Jewish and African-American populations.)

"He has played a part in educating people in Maine since he moved here" in 1987, Bock says, writing essays to accompany numerous exhibitions, speaking with school and non-profit groups, as well as teaching LGBT history classes at USM.

Solomon, a longtime history professor at Tufts University outside Boston, first moved to Maine as a result of his relationship with Ron Clark, who worked in Portland. "We moved to Kittery, which was equidistant, and so we were both miserable," Solomon recalls with his characteristic wry humor. Shortly thereafter, Clark was diagnosed with AIDS; the couple bought a home in Gray and lived there together until Clark died in January 1989. Solomon lost his partner, but found a home, welcomed by the Quaker community (Solomon, a Jew, and the Methodist Clark were pleasantly surprised by that)

Solomon also got involved with groups giving diversity workshops around Maine, and so he stayed, commuting to Tufts and doing a lot of organizing and activism here. Out In Maine spoke with him about the evolution of his career and life's work, and the importance of preserving records of ordinary people's lives for future generations.

I WANTED TO FIND OUT HOW YOUR HISTORICAL INTERESTS EVOLVED; YOU STARTED LOOKING AT SOCIAL HISTORY IN FRANCE AND THEN SHIFTED INTO GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES. When I went into 16th, 17th, 18th century French history, one of the things that fascinated me from the very outset of that research was not what was happening in the throne rooms and among the diplomats but what was happening among the people who were silent in the historical record, i.e., the people in the kitchen, the people in the stables, the people in the gutters, the people in the streets. Which also coincided with an interest in France in that period, in the late '60s, which then of course exploded in the 1968 student revolution — what the French were referring to asmarginalité et pouvoir, "marginality and power," looking at the relationship between the center and the periphery. When I came to Tufts in the early '70s, I was doing as it were, the "straight French history" — but I was really more and more interested in, what in those days was called, either "marginality and power," which is a loaded term; or, even more loaded, "social deviants," i.e., women, the poor, children . . .

THE USE OF THE WORD "DEVIANT" OF COURSE BEING USED TO DESCRIBE THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE . . . Exactly! All the losers. All throughout history, it's about the winners — what we used to call "maps and chaps," white men on white horses. My own intellectual development coincided with what was happening in the historical profession, but there was a way in which my own personal journey was animating my teaching and research. I was struggling at that time, late '60s-early '70s, trying to understand who I was as somebody who was not heterosexual. I didn't even know the other words, "homosexual," "gay," "queer" — I didn't know what they meant; no one really knew. I taught those courses — the social deviants, the margin — it was all the same course but increasingly, the whole issue of sexual minorities was becoming larger and larger. I left teaching for a few years and went into administration. I took a sabbatical in 1981-'82, and I came back to the university and came out. Before that, I was out to friends but not publicly. I came out in my classroom, I came out to my colleagues, I came out in my writing. I then spun off, from the sort of generic social deviants/marginality courses, to specific courses on what today we would call queer history.

That also coincided, the early '80s, '81, '82, '83, with the emergence of AIDS. I had even from the beginning, in addition to the French history, a parallel interest in the history of community public health. I’d written my dissertation on health issues in early modern Europe.

When AIDS exploded in the early ’80s,  I was doing an awful lot of teaching, both in the classroom and increasingly out of the classroom, on the history of AIDS, the history of disease, the way in which again it's about power and language. Who controls the dictionary, who controls access. Every physician uses diagnoses, but it's also a dictionary game of how things are labeled and who gets the money and who gets the treatment, and who controls the dialogue.

When I think of what I tried to do in teaching, and certainly up to and through my work with the Sampson Collection, it's about listening to the voices, finding the voices that have been systematically silenced. That's what the LGBT Collection is about, finding a place where previously unheard voices can be heard, by collecting everything that is and has been a part of LGBTQ life. Ranging from the obvious public documents of legislation, and the papers of important people, to what archivists call "ephemera." I love that word. The "unimportant," insignificant stuff of our lives like T-shirts and bumper stickers, buttons and ticket stubs, and love letters, the "flotsam and jetsam" of daily life, which, when they're put into a context, tell a story which otherwise cannot or otherwise is not heard.

I’m a recovering historian. The real passion of my life right now is art. In the last four years I’ve been doing found-object sculpture. It’s taken over my life and I’m realizing that I’ve been a Dumpster diver all my life; I was Dumpster diving for subjects in the late ’60s and ’70s, looking into as it were the gutters and garbage for subjects and then I was doing that in a sense with the collection. Going through people’s attics and basements and now I’m the king of yard sales and recycling barns, so it’s all of a piece.

It really is about finding the ephemera, the forgotten, the otherwise dispossessed and rejected. “Discarded” is a better word, and putting into a context and once it’s put into a context, into a frame, it has extraordinary meaning. Things have meaning only when they’re put into a context and if the only context is of the traditional “winners,” straight versus gay, men versus women, the powerful versus the powerless, those stories never never never can be told.

That brings us up to the present. In ’93, ’94, when the first conversations were happening about setting up what was then being called a “gay archive” at USM, I was involved with those conversations from the beginning, along with others.

AND THEN BEGAN THE SECOND PART OF THE DUMPSTER DIVING. Yeah, rural Dumpster diving, right. In 2001, ’02 I took an early retirement from Tufts. I was at an annual meeting of the advisory group for what was then the Gay-Lesbian Archive. USM Provost Joe Wood had just introduced Susie Bock, she had just come to Maine. Joe was saying we’ve got great stuff going here, but we need somebody to help.

All of a sudden it hit me, I could do that. In fall ’02 Joe appointed me scholar-in-residence of the collection, and an adjunct professor of history.

WHAT WAS THE STATE OF THE COLLECTION IN 2002 WHEN YOU JOINED THE CENTER AS SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE? The story I like to tell is I had a colleague at Tufts who taught Chinese history, and whenever we'd have these long conversations making a proposal or curriculum and getting more and more complicated, she would suck on her cigarette and in Mandarin say something. And we'd say, 'What the hell is that?' She'd say, 'Old Chinese expression: A sparrow is a very small animal, but all its parts are there.' In '02 there were the elements of what had the potential to be a really exciting collection. The first issue was the space that was the library then — the university had just bought that old bakery building, and there were absolutely inadequate facilities. So number one we needed facilities, which eventually happened. They're really state of the art now, Library of Congress standards in terms of all the things that are important.

Number two, I — with the help of an advisory board and others — was able to do a more concentrated project of talking to LGBT activists, organizations, allies, on the importance of creating a really vibrant archive. Not only for our community, but for the benefit of the quality of life in Maine in general. So we did that.

Number three, as more people within the community became aware of what archiving is about and why a community needs to have a history, more and more people have given their materials and understood that even the most mundane pile of old T-shirts and bumper stickers and love letters has a real historical value.

Then fourthly, and Susie's been great at this, we did an increasing amount of public programming and partnering with other organizations. Key in that, in 2004 we did a 20th anniversary retrospective of Charlie Howard's death. Charlie died in 1984, so we did a three-day-long conference. We also put together a traveling exhibition, which is still traveling through the state, so literally thousands and thousands of people have seen it.

In the last couple of years, organizations like the Rainbow Business and Professional Organization and Down East Pride Alliance and obviously EqualityMaine and so on are partnering with the collection all the time. Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network is really, really, really using the resources. Susie brings in school groups regularly; she's doing great work.

It’s a collection that must integrate its work with the work of the other two major pieces of the Sampson Center, the Judaica collection and the African-American collection, so they are of a piece.

THEY CERTAINLY ARE VOICES THAT HAVE GONE UNHEARD AND FOR A LONG TIME, DESPITE THEIR NUMBERS. GLBT PEOPLE, OR JEWISH PEOPLE, OR AFRICAN AMERICANS AREN'T ACTUALLY MAJORITIES IN MAINE, BUT THEY'RE VERY SIZABLE MINORITIES. When you're away from Maine, people say 'What, they've got gay people in Maine?' Part of the real contribution of the LGBT collection is regionally and nationally. There are and have been LGBT archives in New York, San Francisco, San Diego, Minneapolis, the big cities. Part of the stereotype which was also ingrained among scholars, many of whom were LGBT scholars, was that the whole LGBT thing is fundamentally an urban phenomenon. What we have shown in the collection, what makes it a national treasure, is that it documents and celebrates a rural statewide phenomenon. There were LGBT groups organizing and active in rural Maine in the late '60s and early '70s; we have the documents of that. That's part of the history. That's a real contribution.

It helps break down the urban-rural thing; it also helps break down the gay-straight issue, because much of the collection is about the ways in which LGBT issues have been and are inextricable from larger issues of community formation, identity politics, politics and spirituality in Maine.

Let’s talk a bit about the use of the collection as a historical record. Susie and I were just talking about the trans and bi communities; we need more of their documents and history in the collection. We have it, but we need more. It’s about not only the content of our lives, but how we, and others, understand and describe those lives.

The thing you have to do is to say, ‘I want to hear them,’ and then you’ve got to devise questions which enable you to find those places where their voices can be heard and if you don’t do either of those, they’re never going to be heard. For us, even asking those two questions has been the luxury of privilege. People in places of privilege, whether they’re historians, or prime ministers, or white, WASP males, have the privilege of not having to ask.

IN MY OWN READING ABOUT 17TH-CENTURY ENGLISH HISTORY, I OBSERVE WHAT I SOMETIMES CALL THE PEPYS PROBLEM, WHERE ENGLISH DIARIST SAMUEL PEPYS IS REALLY THE ONLY VOICE HISTORIANS HAVE OF “REGULAR PEOPLE” OF THE TIME. IN THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS HE SPEAKS FOR ALL WHITE MALE LONDONERS; IN THE WORST, HE SPEAKS FOR ALL BRITONS, OR FOR ALL EUROPEANS, AND IT REALLY BECOMES A PROBLEM BECAUSE THERE’S SUCH A LIMITED ARCHIVE FROM WHICH TO DRAW. It’s part of the takeaway that I always try to leave, whatever presentation I make, is that there are documents out there which are vulnerable to disappearing. There are flooded basements and mice in the attics and moving companies which every day are destroying materials that need to be preserved. We take for granted that the Gutenberg Bible is going to be taken care of, but the handouts that we get on Monument Square at some demonstration, or the ordinary photographs that we have in a shoebox in our basement about the Fourth of July picnic 20 years ago — the LGBT archive can protect those and enable them to speak 50, 100, 200 years from now. We have those in the collection and they speak volumes.

ONE OF THE THINGS I'VE ALWAYS LIKED ABOUT HISTORY IS SEEING, IN SOME CASES, HOW LITTLE HAS CHANGED, BUT IN OTHER CASES HOW MUCH HAS CHANGED. In the media 20 years ago, let alone the 50 or 60 years ago when I was coming up as a younger person, the presence of LGBT issues was — there was no presence. Or if there were presence, it was the most painful, inaccurate, frightening, pathologic presence one could imagine. When I was 12, 13 years old — I was born in '42 so that is '53, '54 — there were no queer presences on TV other than Milton Berle in drag. There was a nationwide, Senator Joseph McCarthy purge of liberals and homosexuals in all areas of the government. That was filtering down to a 12- or 13-year-old kid in western Pennsylvania. It was on the radio.

I remember I hung out in the school library looking around, making sure nobody was looking at me as I looked in the big dictionary under the word "homosexual," and saw that it was described as a pathology. It's still a tough world and people are being bashed. Andthere has been progress. I would like to think that the collection is a piece of that.

When the Charlie Howard collection is going around the state, we'd set up in a school and you'd see the civics class come in and the history class, and they'd look at it. It would be 20 or 30 students. Then an hour later, maybe during a break or in between class, you'd see two or three students come in and look at it more closely. Those were the ones that really touched me. It's tough enough being a gay teenager. But their awareness perhaps that somewhere else in the state of Maine there were some other gay people, and there were resources and possibilities and promises for us today that may not have been there before, and I am not alone.

RIGHT, AND HERE ARE PEOPLE YOU CAN TALK TO, AND THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO WILL HELP. AND THAT'S A REALLY POWERFUL THING. Had there been a gay-straight alliance in Bangor High School, Charlie might still be alive. When Susie has the school groups and provides resources to teachers, that trumps just about everything in my mind. How do you measure the benefit of something as amorphous as a library? You can count the number of people coming in the door, count the number of people who show up at a presentation. But one has to trust that's what culture is about. One trusts that the preservation and publication of documents in their broadest extent is an act of faith, an investment in the future.