State of Maine News Service

[Maine Finn]

Tax cap to go on ballot in November

By TOM BELL, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

AUGUSTA — The Maine House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to put a controversial tax-cap initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot.

At the same time, a leading lobbyist warned that many business owners will bankroll the tax-cap campaign if the Legislature endorses a constitutional amendment that would let cities and towns shift the property-tax burden onto commercial properties.

Many businesses would view the tax cap as "insurance" to protect them from a potential tax shift, said Chris Hall of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce.

A two-thirds majority of the House endorsed the constitutional amendment in a preliminary vote Tuesday. The Senate is expected to take up the tax-shift proposal today.

The proposal would allow municipalities to cap increases in land assessments at 2 percent per year - but only for year-round residents. The land values of commercial, vacation and rental properties could not be capped. As a result, the measure would gradually shift the tax burden onto those properties, Hall said.

The measure was a substantially modified version of a previous bill and drew little attention until Tuesday night's surprise vote. Hall wasn't aware of the proposal until he read about the vote Wednesday.

Meanwhile, lawmakers decided on Wednesday that Nov. 2, rather than June 8, will be when voters take up the issue of the tax cap. The preliminary vote in the House was 102-32.

Gov. John Baldacci told reporters earlier in the day that he supports a November referendum, saying voters need time to study the measure.

Democratic House leaders had advocated for a June 8 referendum. They said the tax-cap plan should be on the same ballot as a Maine Municipal Association proposal to boost state funding for education.

Other legislators worried that a June vote would not give soldiers and other residents working overseas time to mail in absentee ballots.

Carol Palesky, the leader of the Maine Taxpayers Action Network, which gathered the signatures for the ballot measure, said she was thrilled with the date. Turnout for the Nov. 2 election, a presidential election, is expected to be unusually large.

"A November election allows as many people to vote on this as possible," she said.

Palesky's measure would cap property-tax rates at 1 percent of assessed value statewide. It would also roll back assessments to 1996-1997 levels and limit annual assessment increases to 2 percent. It is modeled after California's 26-year-old tax cap, Proposition 13.

Supporters said the measure would prevent escalating home values from forcing people to sell their homes. Most legislators oppose the measure because they say it would devastate the budgets of schools and municipalities.

Democrats in the Senate and House remained at odds over how to raise money to boost state aid to schools and bolster existing programs for property-tax relief.

Senate Democrats announced on Monday that they were prepared to advance a 1-cent increase in the sales tax, which could generate more than $115 million annually.

But House Democrats were being asked to back so-called sin-tax increases, primarily on cigarettes, which would raise more than $50 million, according to estimates.

Both plans were designed to allow higher state funding of education, a recurring municipal demand that has led to a referendum showdown now due to be resolved in June.

They want a tax cap, which is great on the surface. But if it passes, what happens to the already strained budgets of local municipalities? A couple of counties here also want control of housing, which would take away a vital source of money from the cities within the county.

This State is definitely going in circles. I can't wait to see what happens next year, when the tuition hikes are rumoured to take effect.

[Maine Finn]

Sunday, May 2, 2004

Tax cap vote throws town budgets into turmoil


By JUSTIN ELLIS, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

Senior citizens in Scarborough should expect a delay before the town can buy a new handicapped-accessible minibus for community activities. Police and public works employees will also have to make do with their old vehicles before the town can buy new cruisers and plow trucks.

In nearby Saco, residents may find themselves paying a higher fee for sewer and water service next year. New homeowners might also find the cost of a building permit has jumped, as well.

What's happening in Scarborough and Saco reflects a broader trend across Maine, as communities brace themselves for the impact of a property tax reform measure that would slash revenues.

The proposal by the Maine Taxpayers Action Network, headed by activist Carol Palesky, would cap property taxes at $10 per $1,000 of valuation, based on 1996-97 levels. Future increases would be capped at 2 percent a year.

The tax cap won't go to voters until November, and if approved, its provisions wouldn't go into effect until next year. But the proposal is already casting a shadow over municipal budgeting. Some towns have estimated that revenues will be cut by 40 percent to 50 percent. With so much uncertainty swirling around revenue levels, local officials say their ability to make long-range plans and invest in major capital improvements is ruined.

They're responding by dropping or delaying plans to buy vehicles and construct or add to buildings.

"One of the real tragedies is that this forces all the resources, all the thinking into doing things for the moment," said Scarborough Town Manager Ron Owens.

Minimum spending

Towns such as Scarborough are trying to keep their expenditures for fiscal 2005 at a minimum, which means focusing on immediate needs and forgoing long-term improvements. Scarborough is allotting just over $1 million for capital improvements in town, a decrease of $1.3 million from this year.

To deal with potential revenue cuts, the town's finance committee divided capital improvement needs into two phases. The first would meet immediate needs and be funded with the town's general fund or small loans. The second, longer-term phase includes larger improvements and would be paid for with a bond issue.

In phase one, proposed as part of next year's budget, $1 million would be allotted to renovate the library and town hall and fix air quality problems at the public safety building. Phase one also includes repairs to school buildings, particularly the Wentworth School, and making technology upgrades.

The second phase is conditional and would be approved by the council only if the tax cap referendum does not pass. Phase two would mean spending an additional $2 million on projects like storm water and sewer repairs, creating additional storage area for town records, buying equipment for the police department and upgrading fire alarms in schools.

Some towns are applying for state, federal or private grants to help build special projects. In Standish, the recreation department is seeking a grant from the Libra Foundation to create a year-round skate park. The town also hopes to finalize plans for a community center and the possibility of a new public beach on Sebago Lake.


Grant requirements

Standish Town Manager Gordon Billington said the problem with pursuing grants is that they often require a matching amount of local dollars. If the property tax cap measure were to pass, towns would not have the money in their general fund to make the local match, Billington said.

"I just don't know how you deal with it," he said. "You don't want to exacerbate the problems."

The Standish Town Council had wanted to capitalize on low interest rates and bond three years' worth of projects - including road repaving, changing computer systems at the town office and purchasing two new plow trucks. But the council decided against a bond issue. Instead, the capital improvement budget for next year will be increased by a relatively modest $16,000 - to a total of about $400,000 - to cover the cost of purchasing new equipment for the fire, rescue and public works departments.

Supporters of the tax cap proposal say towns cannot continue business as usual and must listen to the demand for relief from high property tax bills.

"At this point we cannot fulfill the expectations we have created," said Phil Harriman of Yarmouth, spokesman for Tax Cap YES!, a pro-tax cap lobbying group. "We've got to focus on buttoning down and being more strategic and more creative on how we spend your money."

Harriman said he does not envy those who have the job of setting budgets. But they need to learn how to budget more effectively and curb unnecessary spending, he said. He said towns must focus more on the best use of funds, not on finding ways to get more money.

He also points out that a provision in the tax cap plan allows towns to increase taxes beyond 1 percent for projects that residents approve by a two-thirds majority vote.

Double budgeting

The Maine Municipal Association is promoting its own ballot measure, which would boost state aid to local schools, thereby providing property tax relief to towns. An MMA spokesman, Jeff Nevins, said the revenue questions have prompted some cities and towns to create two budgets.

One budget is built around existing revenue levels, while the other assumes the 1 percent cap is in effect.

Nevins said that while some towns are fretting over major capital spending in the future, many others have their hands full just dealing with immediate demands.

"People are worried about the long-term planning," he said. "But they're more worried about keeping their doors open."

In Saco, where the City Council is considering boosting fees, Mayor Mark Johnston does not support the tax cap. But he said it has increased public awareness of how money is raised. "It's allowed elected officials to be a little more sensitive on how they spend it, too," he said.

Johnston said the proposed fee increase could make code enforcement, planning and recreation self-sufficient.

The council will amend its local ordinances shortly before the tax cap vote in November. If the cap does not pass, the council will rescind the ordinances after the statewide vote.

Johnston said even if fees were doubled, budgets would be tight for most departments. Without money for regular improvements, communities could be forced to defer repairs until they reach dangerous levels, he said. Saco estimates the Palesky tax cap would reduce revenues in the city by at least $5 million.

Johnston also questioned the provision in the Palesky proposal that allows towns to exceed the cap on spending by getting approval from two-thirds of voters. He said generating voter turnout for bond issues is already difficult, which makes getting the two-thirds majority a very tough sell.

I'm not sure I want to vote this November.

[Fintin]

what the F

[Steve Railsback]

In what way does this tax cap effect you, Maine Finn?

[Maine Finn]

In what way does this tax cap effect you, Maine Finn?

It affects the municipalities, in that their ability to maintain vital services will be put under strain. In many towns, the budgets are stretched so thin that their police and fire departments are undermanned and underequipped. Some towns cannot even afford to have departments of their own, and have to rely on the County for that protection.

Really, while the tax cap looks like a good idea, it's going to hurt a lot of municipalities - the Townships in particular - because it will disallow increases in taxes that might be enacted by local councils to relieve the pressure on the budgets.

In the end, it's all about the money. The State simply does not have any. I believe they have said there is a state-wide budget shortfall figuring in the millions. I'll try to dig up the article and post it.

[Caraway]

Someone has changed her avatar...

[UkrainianAmerican]

Someone has changed her avatar...
According to the latest intel, it is theoretically possible, that she might have something to do with it.

[Maine Finn]

Someone has changed her avatar...

I know. He's cute. :P

[Maine Finn]

From the Bangor Daily.

FRANCIS X. QUINN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Last updated: Monday, May 3, 2004
Legislature ends session, leaving unresolved issues
Summer work likely for lawmakers


AUGUSTA - Getting something done can be complicated by an imperative to get anything done.Exhibit A: the just-adjourned session of the Maine Legislature.


Versions abound of why getting something done did not happen in property tax relief legislation and new state borrowing.

Gov. John Baldacci's closing talks with legislative leaders and his remarks to the full House and Senate - "we may not have accomplished everything we wanted to" - suggest that one way to recast what didn't happen is to say that some things just haven't happened yet.

In fact, something, at least, has happened.

The last-minute passage of specifications for Maine's fledgling essential programs and services school funding system could tighten a link between more state aid and downward pressures on local property taxes.

Now, the governor is looking toward another special legislative session in late summer. That could allow - or necessitate - a fresh look at the state of the so-called tax revolt, perhaps with new requirements for state government.

On June 8, after all, Maine voters will be asked a second time whether they want to approve a citizen initiative championed by the Maine Municipal Association and Maine Education Association that would mandate an immediate state assumption of 55 percent of the costs of local education.

The proposal, which carries a price tag of a quarter of a billion dollars, failed to pass last November but did outpoll a competing measure put forth by the Legislature and backed by Baldacci. The inconclusive outcome set up next month's second vote.

Democratic Senate Whip Kenneth Gagnon, D-Waterville, who is active in legislative tax discussions, says the competing question - which envisioned a phased-in increase of the state's school cost share - lost last fall because it was "too modest."

This time around, Speaker Patrick Colwell, D-Gardiner, came down from the podium in the middle of the night before adjournment to urge House members to boldly answer "the voice out there that property taxes are too high in this state."

The House, however, rejected a sin-tax package designed to raise money for local schools and existing property tax relief programs. Some lawmakers argued it would be unwise to "provide tax relief with another tax," as Republican Rep. Mary Black Andrews of York said.

Colwell's package, in the face of strong GOP opposition, was undercut further by a belief among Democratic House members that the Senate was unlikely to go along even if the speaker's plan began to advance.

In the Senate, by some standards, boldness was almost boundless.

Democrats had coalesced around a 1-cent sales tax hike, explored prospects for a commercial water extraction tax, and finally floated the surprise idea of embracing the MMA-backed referendum proposal, providing it could be changed back to a phased-in process after voter enactment.

That failed to be approved as well, and Republican ridicule of faltering Democratic efforts picked up. So did expressions of an underlying GOP election year message.

"Mainers struggle every day under the highest tax burden in the nation," said House Minority Leader Joe Bruno, R-Raymond, in a statement issued at 2:34 a.m. Friday. "Republicans recognize this challenge and have pledged to not raise Mainers' taxes!"

Obviously, a special session in late summer would occur that much closer to the November general elections. Tax talk would be likely to become even more politically sensitive.

Many Democrats may continue to charge that Republicans, with their stress on constitutional spending limits, are satisfied to help an impasse continue. Lots of Democrats also may continue to argue that property tax relief can't come out of thin air.

"A real honest proposal has to come with real money," Senate President Beverly Daggett, D-Augusta, said last week.

But regardless of Republican policy positions, Democratic divisions persist.

Baldacci has signaled he might countenance constitutional spending caps. In that, he received restrained assent from Colwell. For Senate Democrats, it has been a nonstarter.

By late summer, the MMA-backed provisions on school funding could have the voters' blessing. A November vote will be advancing on the strict so-called Palesky tax cap, named for tax activist Carol Palesky.

If the Legislature returns, there would be new pressure to do something - and new risk that too many somethings may not accomplish anything and add up to nothing.

[Maine Finn]

Also from the Bangor Daily.

By Leanne Robicheau, Of the NEWS Staff
Last updated: Tuesday, May 4, 2004

Prisoner in standoff arrives in Maine
Man swapped for state prison inmate will remain in cell 23 hours a day


WARREN - The Arizona prison inmate whose 15-day hostage standoff was ended by a deal allowing him to be transferred to Maine has arrived for a long stay at the Maine State Prison, the warden said Monday. Steven Coy, 40, is housed in a private cell in the new prison's special management unit, Warden Jeffrey Merrill said.


A prisoner swap with Maine was brokered after a January standoff in which Coy and another inmate took control of a watchtower in the Arizona Prison Complex-Lewis in Buckeye, west of Phoenix. During the 15-day incident, Coy raped one of the two guards seized.

In the trade, Maine sent away inmate Brandon Thongsavanh, the man who killed Bates College senior Morgan McDuffee, 22, in March 2002. Thongsavanh was transferred Sunday to the Arizona prison, Merrill said.

Thongsavanh was serving a 58-year sentence for stabbing McDuffee five times in the chest and back during a random encounter in Lewiston.

On Saturday, Coy was escorted by two Arizona agents and flown to Boston. He then was taken by vehicle to the Warren prison. He was processed into the "high-risk" housing area by 10 p.m., Merrill said.

"Special security precautions are in place by the chief of security that will be implemented every time he's moved," Merrill said.

In the deal to end the standoff, prison officials in both states agreed to Coy's demand for a transfer to Maine, where some of his family lives.

It was not immediately clear why Thongsavanh was sent to Arizona.

In the special management unit are 50 single-person cells where maximum-security inmates are housed. Coy will remain in his cell 23 hours a day and eat all meals there. Once a day, he will be allowed to leave his cell to exercise in a special-security area for one hour.

In March, Coy pleaded guilty to 14 charges stemming from the standoff, which included ****** assault, escape, kidnapping, assault and promoting prison contraband.

Before the standoff, Coy was serving seven life terms, the first of which was for a two-week crime spree involving armed robbery, assault, kidnapping and rape.

Guards have raised concerns about this particular inmate, said Zack Matthews, staff representative for corrections officers. Matthews works for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees labor union.

Receiving inmates convicted of "serious and egregious crimes" is always a concern, he said, and "upsets the delicate balance in the facility."

But he noted the professionalism of the state's corrections officers, whose role is to protect not only staff, but others, he said.

With the number of inmate-to-inmate and inmate-to-guard assaults at an all-time high, concern is even greater, he said.

Last week, the Legislature approved 20 additional corrections staff members statewide, Matthews said. That includes about eight guards for the Warren prison. Forty new positions had been requested.

"We still have some issues for more staff," he said.

"I'm very confident in our staff being trained to handle high-risk inmates," Merrill said, noting there are other inmates at the prison serving multiple life sentences. Coy is in "the most secure center in the department."

According to Matthews, there are 320 corrections officers at Maine State Prison. The prisoner count Monday was 892, the warden said.

Since Coy's arrival, there have been "no problems with him," Merrill said. "He was made aware of the do's and don'ts while he's here."

Thomaston Prison is such a first-rate facility for cowboys like that one. Little wonder why he wanted to do his time here. :roll:

[Caraway]

Someone has changed her avatar...
According to the latest intel, it is theoretically possible, that she might have something to do with it. We are amused. (huvittuneita, ei vittuuntuneita).

[ronin2172]

thanks for the Avatar help maine finn i owe u one! woot

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.


Court upholds conviction of man who aimed laser at police


Associated Press

©Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

An emergency medical technician who was fined $700 for aiming a rifle-mounted laser sight toward a Clinton police officer nearly three years ago lost his appeal Tuesday to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Andrew Higbie, 38, of Clinton maintained that there was insufficient evidence for a conviction, and that the trial judge erred in responding to a question from the jury and in excluding defense testimony by Higbie's mother.

Higbie requested a jury trial after being charged with criminal threatening, reckless conduct and criminal use of a laser pointer in the Oct. 7, 2001, incident involving a police patrol on the Bellsqueeze Road. He was acquitted of criminal threatening and reckless conduct, and was fined $700 after being convicted of criminal use of a laser pointer, a misdemeanor.

Officer Jeremy Buzzell said that after completing a traffic stop, he and a trainee saw a red circle of light moving around inside their cruiser. They then noticed someone near a garage, crouched down, pointing a rifle at them.

After aiming the cruiser's spotlight at the person with the rifle, Buzzell recognized Higbie, who later admitted to acquaintances that he had pointed the laser sight on his rifle at the police cruiser.

At his trial, Higbie testified that he had aimed the rifle and its laser sight behind the cruiser to get Buzzell's attention, and did not intend any harm.

Higbie wanted to have his mother testify about his respect for firearms and concern about gun safety, but the court excluded the testimony after the prosecution objected.

During deliberations, the jury sought clarification as to whether the laser pointer had to be aimed directly at the officer, or simply in the cruiser, to support the criminal use charge.

Rather than provide an explicit answer, the judge reinstructed jurors about the law and indicated it was up to them to determine if the facts supported a conviction.

The Supreme Court found that the judge's response was proper and that the testimony by the cruiser's occupants was sufficient to convict Higbie. The justices also concluded that character testimony by Higbie's mother was not relevant to whether he acted intentionally or recklessly with his laser sight.

Higbie's lawyer, Robert Sandy of Waterville, said his client was a licensed gunsmith and firearms collector who was fascinated by the technology behind the laser sight.

"All he really meant to do was to catch somebody's attention to show them his new and exciting item of hardware," Sandy said.

Sandy said Higbie and the police chatted immediately after the incident and he thought nothing more of it until he learned of the charges six weeks later.

Kennebec County District Attorney Evert Fowle said he was at a loss to explain what motivated Higbie.

[ronin2172]

From the Portland Press Herald.


Court upholds conviction of man who aimed laser at police


Associated Press

©Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

An emergency medical technician who was fined $700 for aiming a rifle-mounted laser sight toward a Clinton police officer nearly three years ago lost his appeal Tuesday to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Andrew Higbie, 38, of Clinton maintained that there was insufficient evidence for a conviction, and that the trial judge erred in responding to a question from the jury and in excluding defense testimony by Higbie's mother.

Higbie requested a jury trial after being charged with criminal threatening, reckless conduct and criminal use of a laser pointer in the Oct. 7, 2001, incident involving a police patrol on the Bellsqueeze Road. He was acquitted of criminal threatening and reckless conduct, and was fined $700 after being convicted of criminal use of a laser pointer, a misdemeanor.

Officer Jeremy Buzzell said that after completing a traffic stop, he and a trainee saw a red circle of light moving around inside their cruiser. They then noticed someone near a garage, crouched down, pointing a rifle at them.

After aiming the cruiser's spotlight at the person with the rifle, Buzzell recognized Higbie, who later admitted to acquaintances that he had pointed the laser sight on his rifle at the police cruiser.

At his trial, Higbie testified that he had aimed the rifle and its laser sight behind the cruiser to get Buzzell's attention, and did not intend any harm.

Higbie wanted to have his mother testify about his respect for firearms and concern about gun safety, but the court excluded the testimony after the prosecution objected.

During deliberations, the jury sought clarification as to whether the laser pointer had to be aimed directly at the officer, or simply in the cruiser, to support the criminal use charge.

Rather than provide an explicit answer, the judge reinstructed jurors about the law and indicated it was up to them to determine if the facts supported a conviction.

The Supreme Court found that the judge's response was proper and that the testimony by the cruiser's occupants was sufficient to convict Higbie. The justices also concluded that character testimony by Higbie's mother was not relevant to whether he acted intentionally or recklessly with his laser sight.

Higbie's lawyer, Robert Sandy of Waterville, said his client was a licensed gunsmith and firearms collector who was fascinated by the technology behind the laser sight.

"All he really meant to do was to catch somebody's attention to show them his new and exciting item of hardware," Sandy said.

Sandy said Higbie and the police chatted immediately after the incident and he thought nothing more of it until he learned of the charges six weeks later.

Kennebec County District Attorney Evert Fowle said he was at a loss to explain what motivated Higbie.

pointing any weapon at a cop isn't smart no matter what the intent.... :cantbeli:

[Maine Finn]

By Rachel Rice, Of the NEWS Staff
Last updated: Wednesday, May 5, 2004

Program increases access at border
Township residents mixed on pilot plan


TOWNSHIP 15 RANGE 15 - Department of Homeland Security officials announced Tuesday a pilot program will be implemented next month allowing residents in two Maine townships to cross the border into Quebec 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whether or not Customs officers are on duty at the stations.While some residents in the sparsely populated Maine townships say they're ecstatic about the program, a few residents in one of the lucky townships said Tuesday that they're not jumping for joy over the news.


"I've got to see what this is first," Rod Sirois, a T15 R15 resident, said Tuesday of the pilot program. "We've had such poor results with Customs so far, that I'm not really excited yet."

"I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude," said Richard Albert, a fellow resident who was fined $10,000 in February for illegally crossing the border to go to church. "After all that has happened to us, we have no reason to trust those people."

Sirois and Albert are two of approximately 15 township residents who drive the mile to St. Pamphile, Quebec, for all their community activities, including attending church, going grocery shopping or visiting the local hospital. Before last May, residents were able to re-enter the United States, even when border stations were closed, under the federal Form 1 pass program. When that program was eliminated, residents were forced to be home by 9 p.m. on weekdays and, before last November, were not allowed to cross at all on weekends.

With the new pilot program, participants will be screened through Homeland Security under a program similar to the Free and Secure Trade program. Residents will be given a security card that they can swipe through a machine to be installed at the border crossings. Their information, including a digital picture, will be routed to the nearest Customs Area Security Center for verification.

Residents will not be charged a fee to participate in the program as Homeland Security is paying for it with existing funding, though a cost estimate was not known at press time.

It was not clear how the program will affect Canadians crossing into Maine.

Miriam Watson, one of two year-round T6 R19 residents who cross the border to St. Aurelie, Quebec, for services, said she is excited about what the new pilot program will mean for her.

"What a difference this is going to make in our lifestyle," she said Tuesday. "We're going to be able to live again. If it works out as we hope, we'll be back in business."

The pilot program is a way for Homeland Security's U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection to allow Maine residents to cross the border any time of day while still staying in compliance with a 1986 law requiring that people only enter the United States through staffed and open border ports and stations, according to Sen. Susan Collins, who has worked closely with Homeland Security to find a long-term solution to better access for Maine border towns.

Though the stations would not be physically staffed, Collins said Tuesday that through new technology, the crossings would be under the surveillance of a manned border station in another location.

"The goal is to make sure our borders are secure while not putting unfair and burdensome restrictions on residents living in border communities," Collins said. "The answer, I thought, has always been technology."

Phase 1 of the program will include St. Pamphile/T15 R15 and St. Aurelie/T6 R19 and should be operational by the end of June. The Department of Homeland Security plans to expand the program, but sites will be limited to those with active Form 1 or Remote Video Inspection System programs prior to Sept. 11, 2001. The program will not be available for crossings lacking Customs facilities or equipment.

T15 R15 residents will meet May 26 with Customs officials to discuss the pilot program. In the meantime, Sirois remains cautiously pessimistic.

"As far as I'm concerned, it's a great waste of taxpayer money. It would be so easy, instead, just to set the gate back so we could get through and they wouldn't have to go through all this rigmarole," he said. "In the end, it's sad because a lot of people have worked really hard, from Senator Collins all the way up through - and we're grateful to them for that. But not one person [with Customs] has asked us what we want."

:cantbeli:

[Fintin]

yeah remember that whats the worst thread ever thread....that is all

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

War widow criticizes U.S. role in Iraq


Associated Press

©Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

EDEN, Vt. — The widow of a Maine National Guard soldier killed in Iraq last month is calling on Americans to question their government's policy in that country.

Lavinia Onitiu-Gelineau said Wednesday it was good for Americans to be patriotic but people need to question whether the things the troops are doing in Iraq are right.

"I am very angry," Onitiu-Gelineau said. "I was angry before but I didn't want to say anything."

Now, both she and her father-in-law, John Gelineau of Eden, said they planned to speak out about U.S. policy in Iraq, which has led to the deaths of hundreds of American service members.

"The funeral is over," John Gelineau said. "Now it's our turn to speak."

Onitiu-Gelineau's husband, Spc. Christopher Gelineau, 23, was killed April 20 when the convoy he was escorting was ambushed near Mosul, Iraq. Gelineau grew up in Starksboro and moved to Portland, Maine, for college. He was one semester short of graduating from the University of Southern Maine when his National Guard unit, the 133rd Engineering Battalion, was called up for duty in Iraq.

"I am very proud of my husband," said Onitiu-Gelineau, a native of Romania. "I am not proud of his reason for being there."

She didn't speak out before because she didn't want to create problems for her husband in his National Guard unit, she said.

Having grown up in Romania, which is struggling to shake off a half-century of Communism, Onitiu-Gelineau said she was amazed at the ability of Americans to speak their mind, yet surprised that so few chose to do so.

And she questioned the reasons President Bush gave for going to war in Iraq, including the search for weapons of mass destruction.

"The president ordered my husband and other husbands to go there," she said. "Have they found anything?

"Is the U.S. going to stay there for 20 more years? ... Iraq is just like Yugoslavia. It's never going to end."

[Fintin]

state of maine...I TOOK A **** ON IT...HAHAHAHAHA

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

Energy giant a huge power

By MATT WICKENHEISER, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


The Canadian company that is considering Hope Island and four other coastal sites for a liquefied natural gas terminal is one of North America's largest energy services companies, with a 24,000-mile pipeline system stretching from British Columbia to Quebec and into the United States.

TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. employs 2,400 in wholly owned and cooperative ventures across Canada and the United States.

It had profits of $851 million in 2003 (U.S. $648 million) and invested $1.2 billion (U.S. $913 million) in various businesses, including deals that gave it majority ownership in a pipeline system that brings natural gas into Maine and New England.

In two separate deals, TransCanada boosted its ownership in the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System Partnership from 33.29 percent to 61.7 percent for $129 million in U.S. dollars, including about $78 million in assumed debt.

The Portland system is headquartered in Portsmouth, N.H., and owns a 290-mile, interstate natural gas pipeline that carries 220 million cubic feet per day and connects with the Trans Quebec & Maritimes Pipeline near Pittsburg, N.H. The Trans Quebec & Maritimes Pipeline is 50 percent owned by TransCanada.

The system joins the TransQuebec line at the Canadian border and the Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline in Westbrook with the Tennessee Gas Pipeline System near Boston.

The Portland system serves delivery points in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, including the Boston area.

"Our increased stake in Portland further bolsters our role as an energy supplier to the U.S. Northeast," said Chief Executive Officer Hal Kvisle in a written statement in January.

The company also has holdings in power generation plants, and began construction of the Grandview cogeneration facility in December, a cooperative development with an affiliation of Irving Oil Ltd. The 90-megawatt, natural gas-fired cogeneration plant will be on the site of the Irving Oil Refinery in St. John, New Brunswick, and is expected to be on-line by the end of this year.

The government created Trans- Canada Pipelines Ltd. in 1951 through an act of Parliament to ensure that the country's vast natural gas resources were captured for Canada's use. It is no longer attached to the government.

A few years later, it was the center of a national controversy, the "Pipeline Debate." The House of Commons used parliamentary procedures in 1956 to push through a bill that gave a controversial loan to the company, allowing it to build a natural gas pipeline from Alberta to central Canada. The Liberal government was defeated in the next election, partly due to the passage of the loan.

Staff researcher Julia McCue contributed to this story.



Hope Island may be site for LNG terminal

By TESS NACELEWICZ, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.



The company that lost its bid to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in Harpswell is eyeing another location: privately owned Hope Island, in the heart of Casco Bay.

The 89-acre island, owned by the New York developer John Cacoulidis, is part of Cumberland. The Town Council voted Tuesday night to hold an advisory referendum on June 8, asking voters whether they want the council to negotiate a special zoning agreement with TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. A yes vote would be just the first step in an approval process that could take years.

Benefits of the so-called LNG terminal would include an extra $4 million to $5 million in annual tax revenue for the town, helping to reduce the tax burden on residential property. Drawbacks cited include potential harm to fishing and lobstering, and fears that the terminal could become a target for terrorists.

The new proposal is the latest twist in the saga of Hope Island, which has been in the news in the last few years for the unsuccessful fights that Cacoulidis and his wife have waged to get Cumberland to reduce their property taxes. The couple, who built a mansion, a horse stable and a helicopter pad on the island after buying it in 1993, tried to have the island secede from the town in 2002, saying they got no town services.

Cacoulidis would say little about the LNG proposal Wednesday, but did say that TransCanada and state officials approached him three or four weeks ago and that negotiations are ongoing. He would not say whether he would lease or sell the island to the company.

The possible development of the terminal on Hope Island is the latest Maine proposal from TransCanada, which was involved in a plan to build a terminal in Harpswell. Voters in that Casco Bay town rejected the terminal on March 9, after a fierce and divisive referendum campaign.

Hope Island is one of five sites in Maine that TransCanada is considering, company spokeswoman Hejdi Feick said Wednesday. She declined to name the other four. Robert Stevens, a Portland lawyer representing the company, said Hope Island is "one site with real potential . . . but it's all preliminary at this stage."

Jack Cashman, the state's economic development commissioner, said state officials have been working with TransCanada to find another site since the Harpswell vote. He said he learned of the company's interest in Hope Island this week.

The state's mission is to match the developer with a community that is interested in the project. "If that marriage is made, we would get involved in trying to get informational hearings set up," Cashman said.

Gov. John Baldacci supports an LNG facility in the state because he sees it as a source of clean energy and new jobs, said his spokesman, Lee Umphrey.

After the Harpswell vote, Baldacci urged towns to get in touch with the state if they were interested in the project.

Communities that responded included Calais and Eastport, but TransCanada dismissed those locations as unsuitable, Cashman said. The company has also said that Sears Island would not be an economically feasible site, he said.

TransCanada approached Cumberland about two weeks ago, according to town officials. A closed-door session between company representatives and the Town Council was set up for Tuesday night, at the end of a special meeting at which councilors approved a new municipal budget.

After listening to TransCanada outline its plans, the council took a public vote to hold the advisory referendum to find out where voters stand on the idea. The town would have to negotiate a zoning change with the company because Hope Island is now zoned residential. Also, state and federal permits would be needed before the terminal could be built.

Town Council Chairman Jeffrey Porter stressed on Wednesday that the council "has taken no action. We're not supporting it, we're not against it. All we're doing is turning it over to the voters."

He said the council wants to fully involve residents, to help prevent the kind of controversy that was generated in Harpswell by the proposal from TransCanada and its partner, Conoco Phillips. The issue divided that town for months before voters rejected the plan. Some residents still are trying to drum up support for a second vote on the issue.

The concerns that residents expressed in Harpswell are the same as those arising in Cumberland: how the benefits, such as added revenues, stack up against negative impacts on fishing and residents' quality of life.

Town Manager William Shane said Wednesday that he doesn't believe the issue "will be any less contentious here."

In fact, he predicted that if the Town Council wins voter approval to draw up an agreement with Trans- Canada, residents will petition to have a townwide vote on the agreement in November. Shane said he would support such a move so all residents could have a say on the terminal.

The proposal already is generating controversy in town. Some residents are complaining that they had no warning that the council was to vote on the issue Tuesday night. The vote was 5-2, with Councilors Donna Damon and Stephen Moriarty opposing the motion.

Moriarty said he supported sending the question to voters but wanted to wait until the next council meeting, on Monday, so residents would have advance notice. The council plans to schedule public hearings on the referendum proposal Monday.

Damon, who represents Chebeague Island, which also is part of Cumberland, said she opposes the referendum.

"I don't think they are going to have enough information to adequately give the people of the town so they can make an informed decision that we would go forward with this," she said.

Damon also predicted that many residents of Chebeague, particularly its fishermen, will oppose the proposal as they did the Harpswell project. Fisherman were concerned about their livelihood with the Harpswell plan because the terminal's underwater pipeline would have stretched from Harpswell to Yarmouth on its path to Westbrook. If built on Hope Island, the terminal and pipeline will be in Chebeague Island's back yard.

"There's a complete lack of understanding of how important this is to people here," said Damon, a lifelong island resident. She said the Harpswell issue "was the only time I've known all the lobstermen to agree on one thing."

But Porter, the council chairman, said the proposal is worth considering because of the tax benefits it could bring - $4 million to $5 million a year over the 35- to 50-year life of the $350 million terminal.

He said that could help islanders and other Cumberland residents who are burdened by high property taxes stay in their homes.

But Damon said the drawbacks of a terminal make it a mistake for the town to push it as a solution to the problem of high property taxes, which she said all towns share and should be addressed in Augusta.

Porter said the terminal could end up helping the environment. He said the hope is that the coal-fired power plant on Cousins Island in Yarmouth would convert to the natural gas the terminal would provide, reducing its air pollution.

"This isn't going to look particularly nice," Porter said, "but it's going to be clean."

Shane said the terminal would take up about 30 to 40 acres on the island and have two tanks, each 275 feet in diameter and about 140 feet tall, as well as four or five auxiliary buildings. The tankers coming to the terminal would be 900 feet long and 145 feet wide, much larger than regular oil tankers, he said.

Porter said the deep water off Hope Island would allow a pier for the tankers to be only 200 to 300 feet long, not 800 feet, as was proposed in Harpswell. With construction and permitting, the terminal probably would not be built for three to five years, Shane said.

Staff writers Grace Murphy and Kevin Wack contributed to this story.



WHAT'S NEXT

The Cumberland Town Council, at its meeting at 7 p.m. Monday at Town Hall, will schedule several public hearings on the proposal before an advisory referendum on June 8.

Cumberland voters will decide on June 8 whether to authorize the Town Council to negotiate a contract zone agreement with TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. regarding siting a liquefied natural gas facility on Hope Island.

If voters approve moving ahead and the Town Council works out an agreement with the company, town residents are expected to petition to put the agreement on the ballot Nov. 2 for a townwide vote.

If the agreement wins voter approval, the project must be reviewed by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the Maine Department of Marine Resources and the U.S. Coast Guard, which send their recommendations to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC maintains that the federal government has sole jurisdiction over the siting and construction of liquefied natural gas terminals.

HOPE ISLAND OWNERS

New York developer John Cacoulidis and his wife, Phyllis, own Hope Island. They bought the 89-acre island for $1.3 million in 1993.

The couple built a compound that includes a boathouse, a six-bedroom guest house, a stable with 14 stalls, a tea room, a chapel, a road network and two artificial lakes.

Last year, Cumberland set the island's value at $3.3 million. But the couple, who complain that they get no services from the town, asked Cumberland to drop their property taxes from $57,000 to $19,000, contending that the property was worth $1.1 million - $200,000 less than they paid for it. The Board of Assessment unanimously denied the request.

John Cacoulidis, who also has an office in Portland, bought a downtown office building there for $14 million last year. For several years, he has been trying to build a waterfront hotel on some property he owns in South Portland's Spring Point area, but his proposals haven't fit city zoning regulations and haven't won public support.

[Maine Finn]

From the Bangor Daily News.


Governor hears fishermen's SOS
As rules kick in, Baldacci may declare state of emergency, seek federal funds


ROCKLAND - Barely one week after strict new federal rules governing groundfishing for such species as haddock and flounder went into effect, Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner George LaPointe said Wednesday that the 300-year-old industry is poised on the brink of disaster.Surrounded by fishing boats at the commercial pier in Rockland Wednesday afternoon, LaPointe joined Gov. John Baldacci and fisherman Vincent Balzano of Saco to explain the state's response to the May 1 beginning of "the brave new world of Amendment 13."


Terming the groundfishing industry "worth fighting for," the governor outlined his plan for responding to Amendment 13, beginning with a look at declaring a state of emergency and pursuing federal funds to offset the losses to Maine fishermen.

No formal request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been made, LaPointe said, but there is precedent among Alaska fishermen for such funding. The emergency is not just Amendment 13, but the whole groundfish decline and resultant string of regulations that have strained Maine's industry in recent decades - more comparable to a long-term drought than a sudden storm, he said.

In 1994, 202 people had permits for groundfishing. This year the number is down to 140, and only 10 of those permits are located Down East or in the midcoast, according to DMR data.

Balzano, who fishes out of Portland, said he had already seen a 25 to 30 percent decline in his income before the new rules even kicked in.

Amendment 13 is the result of a long decline in populations of the 12 species of fish managed jointly as groundfish. Arguing that decision makers in the National Marine Fisheries Service weren't doing enough to prevent overfishing of these struggling species, the Conservation Law Foundation sued the federal government in 2000. The foundation won, and the judge charged federal regulators with drafting new rules to rebuild groundfish stocks and protect habitat - Amendment 13.

LaPointe and Baldacci, citing DMR research data, said Wednesday that groundfish stocks are rebuilding, though at varying rates. The state predicts a threefold increase in fish populations to a potential catch as high as 60 million to 80 million pounds annually over the next three decades.

"I don't understand why we should have to have such great hardship to get there two or three years earlier," Balzano said.

Roger Fleming, a Maine-based CLF lawyer, said in a Wednesday interview that strict rules are necessary to protect the future fishery. Despite average gains in groundfish populations, five species remain at risk of crashing, and federal regulations previously had allowed fishing at levels as much as 50 percent higher than scientists say is sustainable, he said.

"There's plenty of reason to be concerned from a scientific and biological perspective," Fleming said

Regardless of the ecological debate, the short-term economics are clear. Maine fishermen will struggle to follow the new rules.

The state's primary fear is that a few years of hardship will be enough to finish off the industry as fishermen find more lucrative jobs or move from Maine to southern New England closer to the offshore fisheries. Once fishermen leave, the infrastructure - piers, icehouses, even the Portland Fish Market - could close. Bringing those facilities - in fact the entire Maine fishing industry - back to life once the fish stocks have rebounded may not be possible, LaPointe said.

"People have a tendency to say, 'Oh, they're going to survive just like they've survived in the past.' Well, some people can't," he said.

Balzano had 88 fishing days in 2001. This summer he will be limited to 48. But the third-generation fisherman who made his first fishing trip when he was just 6 years old isn't considering leaving.

"It's my home. It's my culture," Balzano said. Last year under the threat of Amendment 13, Baldacci convened a task force to propose ways of helping fishermen through hard times. There are no easy answers, but helping fishing families with insurance costs and making state taxation more fair for fishermen are both on the table, Baldacci said, citing the tree growth and open space tax incentives designed to help keep farming and forestry businesses alive.

Maine has joined several other states in suing the federal government over the new rules and is working with the congressional delegation to change federal fisheries law so that social and economic impacts of fisheries management rules receive greater consideration.

"We want to put some balance back into it," LaPointe said.

Just five days into the new regime it's too soon to say how fishermen are responding, but DMR is monitoring the situation closely.

"People have more survival strategies today than they did six months ago," LaPointe said. "It's a big change. Gradually people just need to grow their way into it."

:bash: They're trying to strangle this State's few remaining industries. First the farmers, then the loggers, and now the fishermen. I have an idea. Let's all make licence plates like the boys up in Thomaston do.

[Maine Finn]

From the Kennebec Journal.

Violent patient injures 4 AMHI staff; is arrested


By GARY REMAL
Staff Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

AUGUSTA -- Four staff members at the Augusta Mental Health Institute's forensic treatment unit were hospitalized with injuries Tuesday after overpowering a male patient who turned violent, acting AMHI Superintendent Jamie Morrill said.

Morrill refused to identify the patient. But Kennebec sheriff's logs said Deputy Roland LaPierre arrested Raymond Paul Boivin, 26, a resident of AMHI, charging him with probation violations at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday. Augusta police confirmed Boivin was the patient who injured the hospital workers.

Boivin originally came to AMHI from the York County Jail. After Boivin's arrest, he was taken to the new Maine State Prison in Warren, the only place where he could be locked up safely, Morrill said.

"Yesterday, we had a client who was here under a legal hold who became extremely agitated and disruptive," Morrill said Wednesday. "There was an intervention by the staff in what appears to be an unprovoked attack. I had four staff that were injured to some degree in this, all of whom went down to the hospital and were treated and released."

The injured hospital workers were all men, but Morrill refused to identify them. One worker received a bite, another received "considerable bruising" on his head from repeated blows, Morrill said, and a third worker suffered a cut left eye, broken glasses and bruises to the side of his head. Morrill did not know the extent of the fourth man's injuries.

Two of the four were back at work Wednesday and two would be out of work for several days, he said. Boivin was not injured.

Morrill said the man was a voluntary patient because his sentence had expired since coming to AMHI. Boivin was rearrested after the clash with hospital workers for violation of the terms of his probation.

"It's still under investigation, but there's a good possibility charges will be filed," Augusta police Sgt. Michael Toman said.

Tuesday's alleged attack and injuries to AMHI staff members comes in the wake of another incident in which a female patient received a broken leg in February while being placed in restraints. Several hospital staff members were disciplined for that, hospital officials said.

As a result of changes in hospital staffing and procedures by court Receiver Elizabeth Jones, complaints have begun surfacing from AMHI employees who say she has improperly interfered with patient treatment decisions and hospital operations. Some employees said privately before this latest incident that changes instituted by Jones would likely result in staff injuries.

Jones has said she wants to reduce or eliminate the use of patient restraints through training and use of alternatives.

Unlike the earlier use of restraint that resulted in injuries to patient Jennifer Kimbal on Feb. 5 and disciplinary charges against some AMHI staff members, Morrill was full of praise for the response by hospital workers Tuesday.

"They performed incredibly well and exercised a enormous amount of professionalism and tolerance and restraint in all of this," Morrill said. "I was just very, very pleased with how they handled themselves. ... It was a very violent situation and they did everything right. I'm going to have to think of how to thank them personally and let staff on the forensic unit know they performed beautifully," Morrill said.

Union official John Graham Jr. said the public may not realize the risks facing people who work on the state psychiatric wards.

"People need to know that AMHI is not this quaint little place. In many instances, we're dealing with unpredictable and often violent people, although, at the same time, most people with mental illness or developmental disabilities aren't any problem," said Graham, director of field services for the Maine State Employees Association.

Morrill added: "For the protection of staff, I requested this person be transferred to a correctional facility and that was done. I also encouraged staff to file charges in this instance and that is going to be done."

Incidents like this happen, and people wonder why more is not being done to improve restraint procedures and train or hire staff. But there have been so many budget cuts to AMHI and BMHI - and the Statewide mental health system in general - that it's a wonder the facilities are able to function at all. At BMHI alone, they've eliminated somewhere around a dozen or so beds because of lack of funding. The same with AMHI. I'm amazed that both places are still in operation after the hits to the pocketbook they've taken.

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

Suspect in child *** assaults claims insanity


Associated Press

©Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.


LEWISTON — A man accused of hot-wiring an airplane and spiriting away to Canada to avoid ****** assault charges contends he cannot be held responsible for his actions because he is mentally ill.

Jason Begin, 26, entered his plea to theft charges and four counts of ****** assault Wednesday in Androscoggin County Superior Court.

Begin was trying to avoid prosecution for the *** charges when he stole a Cessna 150 from Twitchell's Airport on Sept. 27, police said. Investigators believe he was going to Montreal when the plane ran out of gas and crashed.

Begin survived with minor injuries but the airplane was destroyed. He was held in a Canadian jail for three months.

While in Canada, Begin was taken to a mental institution in Montreal where a psychologist determined he could not be held responsible for any violations of Canadian law, according to court papers.

Begin also has been evaluated by a clinical psychologist, though the evaluation results have not been made public. He entered a plea Wednesday of not guilty by reason of mental illness or mental defect.

Begin's mother told police after the plane crash that her son suffered from depression, and it became worse after he was charged with the *** crimes.

The three charges of unlawful ****** contact and one charge of gross ****** assault stem from two incidents in 1998 and 2001. They involve a girl and a boy, both of whom were younger than 14.

Begin, who is currently being held at the Androscoggin County Jail, had been scheduled to go to trial for the *** charges last November when he allegedly used a screwdriver and pliers to hot-wire the plane.

He told his mother he feared going to jail because he thought the other inmates would beat him up, according to a police affidavit. At Begin's request, his trial will be heard by a judge, not a jury. Defense lawyer Vern Paradie said that may be appropriate given the complicated medical testimony.

"I was insane when I committed the assaults, I didn't know what I was doing, please don't prosecute me."

Bah. That's become such a cop-out. Convict him and send him to the nice place with the barbed wire fences everywhere.

[Maine Finn]

From the Bangor Daily News.

By Jeff Tuttle, Of the NEWS Staff
Last updated: Friday, May 7, 2004

Baldacci signs slot machine legislation
Penn National prepares to move ahead with racino


BANGOR - Midmorning at Bangor Raceway was deceptively quiet Thursday, with the only sound coming from a tractor slowly grading the dirt oval or the occasional plane passing overhead. Under the grandstands, crews busily readied for the racing season - just two weeks away.

But it was on the other side of the city that the historic track's future was being changed.

"This fulfills the wishes of the people," Gov. John Baldacci said before signing a bill paving the way for up to 1,500 slot machines at the racetrack, the only site eligible to host the state's newest form of gambling.

The bill's signing concluded a 30-minute address in front of about 200 people at Bangor's Husson College, where Baldacci reviewed the last legislative session - including the tumultuous passage of LD 1820, which imposes strict guidelines on the new slots industry.

Penn National Gaming, the company poised to run the Bangor facility, had expressed reservations about the bill, particularly its hefty tax rate.

But shortly after the bill's signing, company officials said they would install slots under the bill's current terms.

"While there are a number of issues we're continuing to work our way through ... we are preparing to move forward with a project in Bangor," said Penn spokesman Eric Schippers.

Under the bill, the state must grant a slots license by Sept. 30 if Penn meets all the requirements.

Thursday's outwardly friendly reception for Baldacci in Bangor - which began and ended with standing ovations - marked a change for the embattled governor. Among his most vocal critics of late have been a group of horsemen who accused the anti-gambling governor of trying to derail the Bangor project.

"Actions speak louder than words," Baldacci countered after signing the bill, accompanied by an executive order aimed at speeding up the arrival of slots by creating an interim gambling council to begin crafting needed rules for the new industry.

Baldacci on Thursday also named the interim council's five members: Jean Deighan, a Bangor lawyer; Mike Peters, a small-business man from Dixfield; Larry Hall, a retired state trooper from Dedham; George McHale, a sports broadcaster from Orrington; and Peter Danton, a former state lawmaker from Saco.

Those appointments, he said, likely would become his nominees to the permanent Gambling Control Board, whose members must be confirmed by the Senate.

Baldacci has been faced with the political difficulty of opposing any new gambling in the state and honoring the wishes of voters, who in a November referendum approved slots at the state's harness racing tracks.

Considering the dilemma, Fred Nichols, general manager of the Bangor track, listened intently to Baldacci's Thursday speech.

"He did seem pretty enthused about getting the project up and running," Nichols said. "He should, because it's a big issue for his hometown."

Indeed, there were few places where support for the so-called "racino" was stronger than in Bangor, where 60 percent of voters approved. Local votes in southern Maine prevented Scarborough Downs from being host to a similar facility.

Bangor officials are counting on their share of the slots revenue - estimated at between $2 million and $3 million a year - to help replace the aging Bangor Auditorium.

Penn has made no secret that it eventually plans to pursue another racino at Scarborough Downs in more lucrative - but less receptive - southern Maine market.

But venturing south could prove counterproductive for Penn, said Dennis Bailey, spokesman for the anti-gambling group Casinos No!

"If they make a move to expand beyond Bangor, it will trigger a repeal effort," Bailey said. "It's not an idle threat."

:fork:

Wonderful. We might as well kiss the Raceway goodbye. People will start going there for the slot machines and not the racing. Scarborough Downs might be on its way out, but at least they went out the way they came in - with horse racing.

[Maine Finn]

Also from the Bangor Daily News.

By Beurmond Banville, Of the NEWS Staff
Last updated: Friday, May 7, 2004

Logging industry fears labor shortage


MADAWASKA -Northern Maine logging contractors are increasingly worried about their manpower needs after mud season because they might not be able to get Canadian loggers and truck drivers into the Maine woods.As many as 800 people from other countries work in the Maine woods during the cutting season, which ranges from June to the next March or April each year. This spring, as it is each year, newspaper advertisements seek workers for dozens of logging and trucking contractors.

The alien labor usually can come into Maine under the federal H-2B visa program. The program annually allows up to 66,000 alien workers into the country. The limit was reached in March, and the federal government has not acted on increasing the number of available visas.

In Maine, the annual number for H-2B visas is 4,000 per year. The tourism industry uses 3,200 and the logging industry gets about 800.

While Sen. Susan Collins and other senators have petitioned the president for action, little has come about in the last month or two. There is legislation in Washington to increase the numbers, but the legislation is stalled.

"I may have to curtail some of our operations in logging and trucking," Richard Guerrette, a St. Agatha logging and trucking contractor, said Thursday. "I've even taken one of my trucks out of the woods and equipped it to haul gravel downstate.

"Irving [the landowner] has been asking that we run two shifts a day," he said. "I don't have enough manpower to run one shift."

Guerrette has used as many as five and six foreign workers in the past.

"I believe there is the potential for something to happen [in Washington], but so far nothing," John Cashwell, president of Seven Island Land Co., said Thursday.

"Potentially, there may not be enough operators to go around in the north Maine woods," he said.

He said many logging contractors might need to rethink their operation, unless something happens in Washington.

Vaughn LeBlanc, director of the H-2B program for the Maine Department of Labor, agreed this week that the visa situation will hurt the forest industry.

"Loggers and truckers are in the same category as the tourism industry in southern Maine," he said. "There is a real possibility of not getting visas.

"Most logging visas ended in April or May, and need to be renewed," LeBlanc said. "Everything is on hold until there is congressional or presidential action."

"We seek your immediate assistance in averting a situation that has the potential to negatively impact thousands of American businesses," Sen. Collins wrote to President Bush one month ago.

There has been no response, according to aides in Collins' office Thursday.

Leblanc said the president has said he would sign legislation that comes to his desk. The legislation is still in Congress.

:slap:

It's sad that we need Canadians to do our logging for us.

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

High-speed I-95 crash kills seven


Associated Press

©Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

CARMEL — Seven people, including at least three young children, were killed Sunday when their sport utility vehicle crashed on Interstate 95 after speeding into the breakdown lane to pass two cars, Maine State Police said. The accident occurred around 2:45 p.m. in the northbound lanes about 10 miles west of Bangor.

The Ford Explorer went out of control after clipping one of the cars it was trying to pass, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

The Explorer then turned sideways, became airborne, slammed into some trees in the median and came to rest on its roof, McCausland said.

Two women and a child were thrown from the SUV, while its other four occupants - believed to be two children, an adult and possibly a teenager - were inside.

All of the women were believed to be from Maine, "and the assumption is that so were the children," McCausland said. Three of the children were under age 10, he said.

McCausland said the Explorer had out-of-state plates, but he would not specify which state. He said the vehicle had been rented in Maine by a Maine resident earlier in the day. "We're making progress on the identifications," he said Sunday night.

"We know who rented the vehicle, and the troopers are fairly confident that that person was one of the victims."

Police initially reported the death toll at five, but the number was raised to seven after a wrecker was able to lift the vehicle into a position where troopers could look inside.

A dozen state troopers were at the scene, McCausland said, and medical examiners began removing the bodies.

Firefighters equipped with chain saws cut down some of the trees in which the SUV was wedged so that it could be righted and removed.

Police had no immediate estimate as to how fast the Explorer was going, but McCausland said it was traveling at high speed.

Troopers quoted witnesses as saying one car was in the travel lane and the other was passing it in the passing lane when the Explorer came up quickly from behind.

"They told the troopers that the Explorer came up initially at a high rate of speed in the passing lane and then veered into the breakdown lane and passed both, clipping one of them," McCausland said.

Skid marks from the out-of-control SUV were visible across the highway in both lanes, he said.

The northbound lanes were closed for hours, and traffic was backed up to Newport, at least 10 miles to the west. Troopers were able to ease the tie-up by opening a crossover to allow vehicles to turn into the southbound lanes.

The northbound lanes were reopened to traffic shortly before 10 p.m.

The crash was the deadliest on a Maine public road since seven occupants of a car were killed when it was broadsided and run over by a tractor-trailer in Richmond on Sept. 5, 1958.

The state's worst crash occurred on a privately owned logging road on Sept. 12, 2002, when 14 migrant workers perished when their van went off a bridge in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.



From staff and wire reports

All rights reserved.

UPDATED NEWS

Carmel crash victims identified

AUBURN — Maine state police have identified the victims of Sunday's deadly crash on I-95 in Carmel.

The three women are Kelley Armstrong, 28, of 17 Burnham St., South Portland; Danielle St. Paulin, 29, of 92 Stanford St., South Portland and Hope Gagnon, 29, of 58 Sawyer St., South Portland.

Also killed were Gagnon's three children — Deion Stuart, age 8, Tkeyah Stuart, age 6, and Ariana Stuart, age 4. The fourth child is Kristian Armstrong, age 4, the son of Kelley Armstrong.

Troopers said two of the women — Gagnon and Armstrong — were thrown from the SUV, along with Tkeyah Stuart. The four other bodies were found inside the vehicle.

State police said Armstrong rented the 2004 Ford Explorer from the Hertz rental office at the Portland Jetport at 12:15 Sunday afternoon. The crash took place about 2 1/2 hours later.

Troopers said speed was a factor in the crash. Initial indications from investigators is the SUV was traveling in excess of 90 mph. Investigators believe Gagnon was the driver at the time of the crash.

Witnesses report seeing Gagnon change places with one of the other women who was driving as the SUV was stopped in the breakdown lane about two miles before the crash site.

Investigators began Monday afternoon to examine the SUV at the state police crime lab in Augusta. Investigators also hope they can place where the victims were seated and if any mechanical problems may have played a role in the crash.

News 8 WMTW

[Maine Finn]

From the Bangor Daily News.

By Beurmond Banville, Of the NEWS Staff
Last updated: Monday, May 10, 2004

Governor, N.B. premier sign accords


MADAWASKA - Gov. John Baldacci and New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord on Saturday signed two memorandums of understanding promoting cooperation and sharing between the state and the province at a luncheon during the second Maine-New Brunswick Border Summit. The agreements designated specific areas where the two governments will work together, including international border corridor development, computers in the classroom, pharmaceutical drugs, fish health management, St. Croix 2004, emergency management, the transboundary environment and more border summits.

The state and province share 16 crossings - gateways to New England and Atlantic Canada - along nearly 600 miles of border from northern Maine to the Bay of Fundy. The leaders hope the understandings will promote easier movement of people, goods and services to market.

Held Friday night and Saturday, the conference included work sessions on forestry, energy, transportation, border security, learning technology, online services, cultural development and the St. Croix International Watershed. About 125 people participated in the work sessions Saturday as business and industry leaders from both sides of the border attended, and Baldacci and Lord brought with them legislators, ministers and department commissioners.

"The ties between Maine and New Brunswick run deep," the governor said during the luncheon at the Edmundston Convention Center. "We not only share a border, but we also share a culture, a history and a people.

"Importantly, we are here to discuss ways in which we can expand upon these relationships," he said. "Some of the items we are agreeing to today are tied to the establishment of a North East Atlantic Region [NEAR], which will include New Brunswick, Maine, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island."

NEAR is an economically defined region where growth transcends the limits of borders. The region already works together through several agencies including Business Across Borders, universities, and the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers Conference.

Speaking in French and English, Lord said the mission to increase cooperation between Maine and New Brunswick was accomplished.

"We want to work together," he said at a dinner at the Madawaska Elementary School on Saturday night. "Cooperation between us is very important. It is essential for us to cooperate as neighbors.

"It is beneficial for our citizens," he said. "We have found specific areas to work together, and this promotes regional cooperation."

Supporters of the extension of Interstate 95 north from Houlton to the St. John Valley were disappointed in the session on transportation. Dealing very little with the road, it focused on a new port of entry at Calais-St. Stephen and facilitation of traffic there and at Houlton, Aroostook County's only commercial port of entry.

In 1985, the only other Maine-New Brunswick summit was organized by then Maine state Sen. Paul Violette of Van Buren and New Brunswick Member of the Legislative Assembly Percy Mockler of St. Leonard, New Brunswick. Mockler, New Brunswick's current minister for intergovernmental and international relations, organized the weekend conference with state Rep. Rosaire Paradis, D-Frenchville.

"We committed some time ago to develop economic links with our neighbor Maine," Mockler said at the opening ceremony Friday night. "1842 [the Webster-Ashburton Treaty] separated us, but we have common beliefs and we share much, including our people."

Many at the conference said the meetings should continue, if not annually, at least every two years.

[Fintin]

maine has now been annexed by fintinia....and is now called whogivesa****via

[Maine Finn]

Maine has now been annexed by fintinia....and is now called whogivesa****via

These people do.

From the Bangor Daily News. (Dated)

By Diana Graettinger, Of the NEWS Staff
Last updated: Saturday, May 8, 2004

Mainers make quilts for Iraqi orphans

CALAIS - A Cooper woman patiently sews a quilt that soon will be cuddled by an Iraqi child.Alice Jean Robinson is a member of a Down East quilting group that is making colorful coverlets for abandoned babies in Iraq.

The babies are at an orphanage in the northern part of the country, a place most of the quilters know little about.

But they've had a crash course in the past few months from the Rev. David Sivret, the priest of St. Anne's Episcopal Church.

Sivret has traded his vestments for camouflage fatigues. He is the chaplain of the Maine Army National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion.

On Thursday Robinson, a member of Sivret's church, was working on a multicolored quilt that had at its center a white kitten.

The quilters were seated around a table in the church basement. Two women were cleaning windows nearby; the quilters were laughing and talking as they poked needles through colorful fabric. The quilters have chosen generic themes, animals or colorful strips of cloth, not patriotic or religious symbols.

"We all have a soft spot in our hearts for kids," Lubec quilter Marilyn Ness said quietly. "This is something they can hold in their arms, cuddle to their bodies. Something they can call their own."

Most of the quilters do not belong to the church and have volunteered their time. Some are members of the Tuesday Quilters Group and usually meet in Machias or in Cooper. Others are St. Anne's Craft Day quilters.

Sivret, 47, arrived in Calais in February and left for duty in November. His wife, Sherry, said that although her husband hadbeen in Calais only a short time, he has been in contact with his parishioners.

Robinson agreed. What she knows about the orphanage she has learned through her priest. "They all are undernourished, they are from infant to age 5, and they are very small for their age. That is one of the things he does in his spare time; he goes to the orphanage with a Roman Catholic priest," Robinson said.

The women have nearly completed five quilts, and they plan to make more. They hope to send the quilts to Iraq in about a month. The quilters are picking up the shipping costs.

Last month members of Sivret's battalion were part of a convoy that was attacked in Mosul, Iraq.

Sivret prayed with the wounded and surviving soldiers, while another minister comforted the family of the soldier who died, Spc. Christopher Gelineau of Portland.

"[Sivret] was the one that responded when Gelineau and others were injured and were taken by helicopter - he was there to pray with them. He was there to stand by their side when they left," said Sherry Sivret, who is the church's lay pastoral associate.

While newspapers and television are filled with pictures of exploding bombs and dead bodies, battalions such as Sivret's are trying to rebuild the country.

"He is involved with several different projects over there," Sherry Sivret said, including building a school. "Before he left he asked for school supplies, pencils, paper or calculators that [people] could provide for the school. So we've done service projects around that."

One parishioner, Stephanie Ramsey, who is a Girl Scout, chose to collect school supplies as her service project. "So when they build a school they can put pencils and rulers and crayons and glue tips and colored pencils in the classrooms," she added.

Parishioners also have sent lightweight clothing, including shorts and T-shirts. Then there are the stuffed animals, she said.

After his tour of duty, Sivret will return to his ministry as rector of St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Calais, Christ Church in Eastport, and St. Luke's summer chapel in Baileyville.

Anyone who would like to donate a new quilt can call Robinson at 454-2679, or contact her at Box 3080, Cooper 04657.

School supplies and clothes can be contributed by sending them to Chaplain (CPT) David Sivret, HSC, 133rd ECB-H, APO, AE 09334.

[Fintin]

psst....i wasnt saying i dont care about the news...its just the new name for maine

[Salty Dog]

what's the meaning of all this?... what's going on here?!?!

[Caraway]

I think these news are interesting to read. woot

[Vance]

what's the meaning of all this?... what's going on here?!?!
You fell off the fookin tobin dood!

[Salty Dog]

what's the meaning of all this?... what's going on here?!?!
You fell off the fookin tobin dood!

yeah, i have to catch up on the news after that fall

[Maine Finn]

From the Ellsworth American.

Give and Take
Students Send ‘Home’ to Iraq
By Shannon Chisholm

http://www.ellsworthamerican.com/archive/2004/05-06-04/news3_05-06-04.jpg
Staff Sgt. Randy Mosley of Ellsworth (left) watches seventh-graders from Bucksport Middle School pose for pictures after presenting them a braided rug to show his troops’ appreciation for the youngsters’ regular letters and care packages.

Staff photo by Jennifer Osborn


BUCKSPORT — Students from Bucksport Middle School believe they got a good return on their investment.

Belinda Gauvin and Deana Small’s seventh-grade classes wrote letters and sent shoebox care packages to the Bangor-based 3rd Platoon, 1136th Transportation Company, stationed in Iraq.

Staff Sgt. Randy Mosley took charge of those letters, read each one, and answered all of the students’ questions in his own letters.

“I’m happy because not every school got something back,” said student Erik Raymond.

The students responded to Mosley’s personal letter with gusto, sending baked goods, Kool-Aid and Devil Dogs — some items requested by members of Mosley’s unit.

In return, students received personal letters from soldiers, as well as photographs.

“It made me feel like I’ve done something,” said student Emily Lenor, visibly moved by the experience.

“We appreciate so much what they’re doing, and it’s good to know that they appreciate you,” said student Harley Gray.

Mosley had met some of the students in Bangor during his homecoming a few weeks ago. At that time, he told Gauvin that he had something for the kids.

About 10 of the students and their teachers attended a reception held Saturday at the Ellsworth VFW Hall to welcome home the troops in Mosley’s unit.

During the VFW reception, Mosley presented the kids with a handmade prayer rug embroidered with their names and titled “Operation Iraqi Freedom Support Team.”

“I figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, something they could put in their trophy case,” Mosley said of the rug that he and members of his unit pitched in to buy for the students.

“It was good to shake hands with the people fighting for our country,” said Gray.

“They took the time to get the prayer rug made, invited us to their reception and showed appreciation,” said student Anthony Vincent.

The students recalled one soldier at the reception who said that anything from home helped boost morale and encouraged them to continue their efforts because small things meant so much.

Individual students spoke Monday about their plans to write to soldiers they know through family members or church.

“My brother’s best friend is over there where all the big fighting is, and we plan to send him stuff to cheer him up,” said student Kel Leach.

Mosley, who shipped out in February 2003, said now that he’s home he can catch up on everything, including spending time with his kids, Donald, Randi and Katelyn.

Mosley will start a new job in mid-May as a dispatcher for the Maine State Police.

[Maine Finn]

Also from the Ellsworth American.

121st Legislature
Session Ends; Tax Reform Efforts Flop
By Victoria Wallack
Statehouse News Service

AUGUSTA — Despite Democratic control of the Governor’s office, the House and Senate, the Legislature adjourned April 30 unable to pass a tax reform alternative to Carol Palesky’s proposed tax cap.

http://www.ellsworthamerican.com/archive/2004/05-06-04/state1_05-06-04.jpg
Governor John Baldacci

Palesky is a longtime advocate of tax reduction who lives in Topsham.

Governor John Baldacci said Monday he won’t call back the Legislature to deal with tax reform unless he’s sure there’s consensus.

Baldacci wants to avoid another gridlock such as the one Democrats found themselves in during the special session that ended last week. Democrats split over sin taxes versus an increase in the sales tax, with Republicans countering that they wouldn’t support any tax increase without a constitutional spending cap first.

Baldacci said he would call the Legislature back in August or September to deal with the failed bond package, including $10 million for the Waldo-******* Bridge.

Baldacci insisted he would take no chances on tax relief.

“We will not have a session on this issue unless there’s agreement before then,” he said.

A breakdown among Democrats on tax relief has left the door open for one or both alternative plans: the Maine Municipal Association’s Question 1A on a June ballot; and Palesky’s $10 per $1,000 of value cap on the property tax rate that will go before voters in November.

The House voted last week against a Senate proposal to put Palesky’s plan on the June ballot.

The Blame Game

After an all-nighter that didn’t wrap up until around 8 a.m. April 30, Baldacci tried to put the best spin on the session, calling it “the most productive Legislature in decades.”

But members of his own party had a different interpretation.

During a House discussion the night before, state Rep. Joanne Twomey (D-Biddeford) said what others were whispering in the hallways: “The executive on the second floor is hanging us out to dry.”

For her comment, Twomey was ruled out of order. Twomey and others in the House had supported the Senate’s sales tax increase, saying sin taxes (taxes on alcohol and tobacco) are a tax on the poor.

Earlier in the week, during a Democratic dinner caucus held to rally support for the House’s sin-tax package, the Governor was called a “bureaucrat, not a Democratic leader” by some legislators who criticized Baldacci for refusing to tackle property tax reform.

At issue was the Governor’s reluctance to get involved in negotiations between the House and Senate. In fact, Baldacci did not call the sides together until days before the session ended.

Baldacci said his focus was “more about getting our costs under control” in a supplemental budget that was $135 million short in Medicaid costs alone.

Ultimately, the House’s plan went down in defeat, 76-62, with 14 Democrats voting against and five absent — an embarrassment to House Speaker Patrick Colwell, who implored his members to “Come out of that corner, that safe place, and vote.”

The measure would have increased taxes on cigarettes, bottles of wine and beer and mixed drinks, raising about $50 million for an expanded Circuit Breaker and Homestead Exemption program, as well as a giving a one-time boost to education aid.

Democratic senators, meanwhile, complained that the Governor had cut them out of the discussion by refusing to consider a 1-cent increase on the sales tax that they said would have raised an estimated $115 million for property tax relief and created a three-year ramp-up in education funding.

At one point last week, Democratic senators threatened to go around Baldacci and take the 1-cent sales tax increase directly to voters.

Ultimately, the Senate never voted on the increase, instead rallying behind an amended Question 1A that would have ramped up the state’s share of school funding to 55 percent over four years. The plan, as written, calls for immediate funding at the 55 percent level, costing $250 million.

The motion failed, 14-20, with five Democratic senators voting against it.

“I ran out of steam,” said Sen. Dennis Damon (D-******* County), who voted against the plan.

Sen. Chris Hall (D-Lincoln County) supported the proposal because he said increasing the state’s share of education funding “is the right thing to do.”

A vocal proponent of the 1-cent sales tax increase earlier in the week, Hall said ending the session without a tax reform plan was a “disappointing end after a very productive session.”

“We’ll have to regroup and go back and do it in August,” he said.

Too little, too late

Damon was one of two Democratic senators put on an eight-person negotiating team by the Governor to try and forge a compromise in the final days of the session. It included two senators and two representatives from each party.

“The obstacles in the negotiation became how to fund tax relief and how much were we going to try to do,” Damon said. “We ran out of time.”

“I used all my effort and all my personal skills to try and do more. I realized that there is no one person who makes the process go,” he said.

The Republicans wanted a constitutional spending cap. One was designed by state Rep. Peter Mills (R-Cornville), who also was at the negotiating table.

While the Senate had given up on a sales tax increase, negotiators started splintering over sin taxes. Some wanted only cigarette taxes increased by 80 cents a pack; others pushed for a whole new set of taxes, including ones on bottled water from Maine springs.

In a last-ditch effort to get something passed, the Senate considered a constitutional amendment passed earlier by the House that would allow municipalities the option of limiting property assessment increases on people’s year-round residences to the rate of inflation. The proposal applied only to the land on which a house sits — not the structure itself.

Rep. Walter Ash (D-Belfast) had opposed it in the House, saying it would shift the property tax burden to small business owners. “I don’t think it’s been thought out,” he said. “It’s another big hit for small businesses.”

The Maine State Chamber of Commerce and the Maine Merchants Association also weighed in against the plan because of its potential impact on business.

On April 29, Sen. Richard Bennett (R-Oxford County) called it “the last measure standing” and said it would give tax relief to longtime Mainers whose taxes go up when “Martha Stewart moves in next door and increases their values.”

“This is the last gasp, frankly, that we have in the Legislature, to deal with this measure,” he said.

Sen. Arthur Mayo (R-Sagadahoc County) countered that “this is the last gasp coming before us, but that doesn’t mean we should accept it.”

Baldacci looks like a monkey.

[Maine Finn]

From the Gray News.

"BELIEVE IN ME"... (MAINE)

State Rep. Susan Austin

As state representative to Gray and part of New Gloucester, serving on the Business Research and Economic Development Committee, I have come to sense that Maine citizens do not often hear a good part of the hopeful happenings in our great state. I share these bullets for you to consider and ponder...

Do you recall the film being produced in Bethel I mentioned? It seems "The 12 Dogs of Christmas", a children's film, utilized the historic Odeon Hall above city hall in downtown Bethel to create a 1930s school house look as part of their filming. The children's holiday drama has been on a fast-paced schedule since it chose Maine in February. Filming is drawing to a close now and it appears that local residents, businesses and film producers have been very pleased with this project being shot in Maine.

A bubble helps us visualize something we don't often see-our breath. Breath Print Research being conducted at UMaine-Orono, with support from the National Science Foundation, will help both the medical community and the military develop diagnostic tools that detect disease in a breath sample. This will also quickly detect and identify for emergency respondents, doctors and soldiers exposure to chemical compounds.

The State Film Office is also working with two large photographic productions. One is a team from Lexus Car Company planning a project in the Bar Harbor region and the other is a team from the Nautica clothing company considering Maine locations for a mid-May shoot.

The Office of Tourism has developed a theme of driving tours known as "Trails". Seven trails have been developed around areas of interest such as:Maritime History, Gardens & Landscapes, Golf, Art Museums, Architecture, Fishing and Watchable Wildlife. Information for these "Trails" has started to show up on the state web site and will continue to post more over the next several weeks.

There is a new promotion with Fenway Park, Boston, encouraging Red Sox fans to visit Maine to see the Portland Sea Dogs. "Come see the future Red Sox players in Action" is the theme. Material on multi-day Maine packages, Amtrak's Downeaster, and overnight accommodations will be handed out to those interested at the stadium. As the greater Boston area is Maine's largest market, this promotional will hopefully reach over one MILLION people during the regular baseball season. Be watching the big Fenway screen and also notice the scoreboard sign with Maine logo featuring a text message periodically during the games!

On April 19, the oldest, most mature representative of the house celebrated his 59th wedding anniversary. The 82-year-young Rep. Churchill, from Orland, is retiring after serving in 105th, 106th, 107th, 108th, 109th, and 121st Legislatures.(12 years) As the eldest of the House, it is his responsibility to close the House Session by sine die (Latin for "without day"), that is, without setting a specific date for return. At 7:50 A.M. Friday morning, after an all-night marathon session, Rep. Churchill was still stately sitting in his seat in the House Chambers to fulfill his duty!

[Maine Finn]

From the WGME 13 website.

SAVING BNAS
Supporters of efforts to keep the Brunswick Naval Air Station off the government's base-closure list say they're not reassured by the fact that the Navy's spent tens of millions of dollars fixing up the facility. Retired Rear Admiral Harry Rich is part of a community task force working to save the naval air station. He says all of the spending to upgrade the base won't be a decisive factor in the Pentagon's base-closure decision. Next spring, the Defense Department is to announce the closure of up to one-quarter of its 425 bases. Rich says its strategic significance will be more of a factor than how much has been spent upgrading the Brunswick base. The military has a history of closing bases in which it's invested heavily. During the 1980s, some 300 million dollars were spent on upgrades at the Loring Air Force base in Limestone. But it was closed down in 1994.

**Update on the seven fatalities in Carmel**

The rented Ford Explorer was estimated to be travelling at 90 mph in a 65 mph zone, and attempted to pass two vehicles taking up the driving and the passing lane by veering into the breakdown lane. All were from South Portland. The Gagnons (****ounced "Gan-yon") are a local family.

The remains of the vehicle have been taken to the State Police Crime Lab in Augusta for closer examination.

It's unknown as yet if drugs or alcohol was a factor in the accident.

http://www.wgme.com/images/keys/top/05_10_04.jpg

[Maine Finn]

From the Bangor Daily News.

By Jeff Tuttle, Of the NEWS Staff
Last updated: Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Cheney tells Bangor: It's no time to change


BANGOR - Vice President **** Cheney landed in the heart of politically independent northern Maine Monday, asking voters to stand behind the president's economic and anti-terrorism policies.

"These are not times for leaders to shift with the political winds ... to say one thing and do another," Cheney told about 400 cheering supporters who gathered inside a maintenance building at Bangor International Airport. "We need clear vision and steady determination."

Much of Cheney's 15-minute speech was devoted to the Bush administration's efforts to "turn back the forces of terror," - an effort that until recently afforded the president his highest polling numbers.

But Cheney's visit to Bangor comes amid slumping public support for the Iraq conflict coinciding with damaging allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq. An Associated Press poll released Friday found more than half of Americans now disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq.

Outside the Bangor rally, about 50 opponents to the continued presence of American troops in Iraq raised their signs and voices, also trying to get their message out. Dan Lourie came from Bar Harbor to protest, holding a sign that read: "Cheney = War Criminal."

While Lourie said he was grateful for the ouster of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, he said he believes the war has had the opposite effect on terrorism.

"In fact, we are in a more perilous situation now because of the war," Lourie said, noting that recruitment efforts by terrorists have increased greatly.

Across the driveway from Lourie, but a great divide away politically, were about an equal number of Bush administration supporters. Among them was Chaz Cirame, 25, who came from Portland.

"It's exciting to see so many young people coming out to support the president and Vice President Cheney," he said. Cirame said Bush has been a strong leader in a difficult situation and he said that some great things have come about in Iraq as the United States helps to make the region safer and more democratic.

Beyond the administration's anti-terror efforts, Cheney, in Bangor as part of an afternoon campaign swing through northern New England, also used the speech to predict an end to the economic downturn that has hit much of the country - particularly northern Maine.

"America's economy is moving in the right direction," said Cheney, referencing the addition of 288,000 jobs in April and a drop in unemployment. "Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

But those numbers don't tell the whole story, said Kathy Roeder, spokeswoman for presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

"The legacy of the administration unfortunately has been lower-paying jobs and more expensive health care," she said, seemingly echoing the sentiments of voters, only 43 percent of whom supported Bush's handling of the economy - the lowest since the start of 2002, according to the AP poll.

The Bush campaign hopes to fare better in northern Maine than it did in 2000, when it lost the region by about 5,600 votes.

But despite a banner proclaiming Bangor as "Bush-Cheney Country," redistricting since 2000 could complicate the task, with the northern district adding the Democratic stronghold of Waterville, where Bush lost 2-to-1.

Cheney's visit is part of a focus on Maine, considered one of 17 swing states because of its independent voting history and the narrow margin by which Bush lost in 2000.

The vice president's appearance attracted a spate of local media crews and hundreds of supporters - one of whom was mistaken for a protester.

Joyce Goodwin, 70, of Orono said she is "definitely for Bush and Cheney" and has even offered to work in the local Republican re-election offices. But Monday she and her granddaughter initially were refused entrance, after Goodwin stood in front of a protester's sign, attempting to block it from view.

Goodwin, a troop greeter at Bangor International Airport, eventually was recognized by another organizer who let them in, with his apology for the confusion.

Bush supporter Susan Harmon of Orneville Township made it inside the rally with no problems. She said the personal campaign stop reinforced her support for the GOP ticket.

"They're more like real people that we can relate to," said the 36-year-old mother of two.

[Maine Finn]

From the Bangor Daily News.

ERIC RUSSELL, OF THE NEWS STAFF
Last updated: Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Victims identified in Carmel crash
SUV's speed exceeded 90 mph

http://www.bangornews.com/editorialnews/photogallery/051104statetrooper.jpg
State Police Troop E commander Lt. Wesley D. Hussey on Monday reads the names of the three women and four children who were killed when their sport utility vehicle rolled over and crashed along a section of Interstate 95 in Carmel on Sunday afternoon.

ORONO - Two mothers, their four children and another young woman set out on Sunday from Portland in a sport utility vehicle rented from Portland International Jetport.

The group stopped at McDonald's to pick up Happy Meals and other food. They listened to reggae and popular rhythm and blues CDs along the way. They were headed north on Interstate 95, but never reached their destination, which Maine State Police said Monday was still unknown.

All seven were killed suddenly when the driver of the SUV - whose license had been suspended since 1998 - made an illegal pass at speeds over 90 mph in the breakdown lane near the Carmel exit at mile marker 171. The SUV clipped another car as it re-entered the travel lane and rolled over 11/2 times before coming to rest in a patch of trees in the median.

One child and one young woman - who were wearing seat belts - were trapped in the vehicle with two other unbelted children. The two mothers and one child were ejected from the SUV. The four young children and three women were all dead at the scene, state police said during a press conference at the Orono police barracks.

Maine State Police on Monday identified the victims of the Sunday accident, the worst to occur on a Maine public road in more than 45 years.

"This ties the deadliest crash on a Maine public road since 1958," Lt. Wesley Hussey, Troop E commander in Orono, said Monday.

"When something this tragic happens, we always look at ways we can re-evaluate our coverage," Hussey said, noting there are long stretches of I-95 state troopers are responsible for covering.

Killed were: Hope Gagnon, 29, of South Portland - believed to be the vehicle's driver; Gagnon's three children, Deion Stuart, 8, Tkeyah Stuart, 6, and Ariana Stuart, 4; Kelley Armstrong, 28, of South Portland, and her son Kristian Smith, 4; and the third woman, Danielle St. Paulin, 29, of South Portland.

Gagnon, her daughter Ariana, and Kelley Armstrong were thrown from the vehicle.

Gagnon's two other children, Deion and Tkeyah, were trapped inside the vehicle, as were Smith and St. Paulin.

Investigators initially believed only two occupants were trapped inside, but then they found two more bodies trapped beneath the vehicle.

Gagnon's license was suspended in 1998 for an administrative violation, Maine State Police spokesman Stephen McCausland said. She had failed to pay a fine for a previous suspension. Armstrong, who rented the car, did have a valid Maine license.

"A lot of work still needs to be done as to retracing their footsteps and trying to determine what happened and why," McCausland said.

Maine Department of Transportation workers on Monday morning finished clearing the accident scene. The bodies were removed Sunday night and taken to a funeral home in Bangor. DOT personnel found evidence of food from McDonald's, a few music CDs and several shoes at the site. Trees lay fallen, some as a result of the accident, others when DOT workers used chain saws to extract the SUV. Evidence flags remained, marking spots where victims were found.

The Explorer was taken on Sunday to the state police crime lab in Augusta and will be examined and inventoried today, McCausland said. It is hoped that investigators will be able today to determine where the vehicle was headed.

"We don't know where they were going at this time," said Hussey. "We've only had preliminary conversations with family members for obvious reasons, and haven't been able to determine the destination."

The exact cause of the accident has not been determined, state police said. Minutes before the accident, at least one witness saw the Explorer pulled over on the shoulder of the highway about two miles south of the accident scene, Hussey said.

The witness told police it appeared as though the vehicle's occupants were switching drivers.

"You can speculate forever," the state police lieutenant said. "We don't name fault in cases like this; we gather facts."

The vehicle was rented from a Hertz distributor at about 12:15 p.m. Sunday at Portland International Jetport, Hussey said. It was due back there Monday.

Hussey pointed out that children ages 4 to 8, or children under 80 pounds, are required by state law to be in a booster seat. No booster seats were used in the Explorer, he said.

Nikki Yawn, 19, of Bangor was driving the 2004 Jeep Cherokee that was clipped in the accident. Police said Yawn was trying to pass another vehicle, driven by Jamie Atkinson, 21, of Etna, when the Explorer came up behind them.

Neither Yawn nor Atkinson was injured. Yawn's vehicle had only minor damage. Attempts to reach Yawn for comment Monday were unsuccessful.

Traffic was backed up in the northbound lanes of I-95 for about seven hours, Hussey said. Cars stretched as far back as 10 miles as state police rerouted traffic southbound through a turnaround near the site of the accident. The northbound lanes opened up at 10 p.m. Sunday.

The crash was the deadliest on a Maine public road since seven occupants of a car were killed when it was broadsided and run over by a tractor-trailer in Richmond on Sept. 5, 1958.

The state's worst crash ever occurred on a privately owned logging road Sept. 12, 2002, when 14 migrant workers perished when their van went off a bridge in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

Low-key debate leading to vote on school aid


By PAUL CARRIER, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

AUGUSTA — A tax-relief plan at the center of a costly referendum campaign last year is gliding quietly toward a second and deciding vote June 8. Expensive television ads were the order of the day last fall before the first statewide vote on a referendum to increase state aid to local schools by more than 25 percent. This time around, though, it looks like the campaign on the proposal, sponsored by the Maine Municipal Association, will be waged at the grass-roots level.

The turnout June 8 is likely to be a lot lower than it would be for the general election Nov. 2. So it makes more sense for activists to focus on getting their people to the polls next month, instead of spending a lot of money to win over undecided voters who may not bother to cast ballots.

Moreover, neither side has a lot of cash on hand because they had hoped the Legislature would settle the issue by coming up with an alternative tax reform plan before June. Lawmakers instead went home empty-handed April 30, leaving no time and little money for a full-blown campaign before the June referendum.

"We were waiting forever to see if the Legislature could come up with a compromise we could live with," said Robert Walker, president of the Maine Education Association, which represents teachers and supports the referendum.

Dana Connors, a leader of the opposition to Question 1A last fall, said his group is in the same situation. "There wasn't a strong attempt to raise money" for the June vote, he said.

The proposal going before voters a second time would immediately hike the state's share of local school costs from about 43 percent to 55 percent of the total.

The tax-relief plan is the only statewide question on the primary ballot next month. Both seats in the U.S. House are up for grabs, but the Democratic and Republican nominations are uncontested. And there are no U.S. Senate or gubernatorial races this year, reinforcing the likelihood of a low June turnout and making get-out-the-vote efforts all the more important.

In 2000, the most recent presidential-election year, only 61,300 voters cast ballots in the uncontested June party primaries for U.S. Senate, which featured Republican incumbent Olympia Snowe and Democratic challenger Mark Lawrence. That November, more than 650,000 Mainers cast votes in the presidential election and more than 634,000 voted in the Snowe/Lawrence face-off.

Question 1A, as the pending referendum is called, got more votes last November than a competing plan backed by Gov. John Baldacci and the Legislature. But Question 1A's win was not decisive enough to push it over the top, forcing a stand-alone follow-up vote on June 8.

State campaign records filed in April, the most recent reporting deadline, showed organized supporters of Question 1A with a mere $5,535 in the bank. A political action committee that opposes Question 1A listed $6,134 in cash on hand. By contrast, the same two political action committees spent well over $2 million last year fighting over Question 1A and Question 1B. The latter plan called for taking several years to ramp up to 55 percent state funding for essential school services.

Citizens to Reduce Local Property Taxes Statewide, the pro-1A political action committee, spent $1.5 million on the 2003 campaign. Mainers for Real and Responsible Property Tax Relief, which backed Question 1B, dished out more than $600,000.

"We're not overloaded with money" right now, said Michael Starn of the MMA. Thanks to last year's intensive campaigning for and against Question 1A, Starn said, "I think people have a pretty good understanding of what it is."

Both MMA and MEA are urging their members to support Question 1A, and that could be an effective strategy. The two groups combined represent municipalities, teachers and other school employees across the state.

Activists on both sides of the June referendum say they are focusing most of their attention on a Nov. 2 referendum and another tax-relief plan. The November ballot question, sponsored by Carol Palesky's Maine Taxpayers Action Network, would roll back property valuations to 1996-97 levels and cap property taxes at $10 per $1,000 valuation, with some exceptions.

The state's political establishment is divided over the merits of the MMA plan, but many on both sides are united in opposing the November tax-cap referendum. Critics of the tax cap claim it will decimate municipal services. Supporters say it will force cities and towns to scale back excessive spending.

"The shadow of Palesky looms over anything that happens in June," said Lee Umphrey, Gov. John Baldacci's spokesman. Baldacci, who opposes both referendums, will make the case against the MMA plan in news conferences and speeches leading up to the June 8 vote, Baldacci said, instead of relying on an ad blitz.

"I think everyone is in agreement that the best thing for the people of Maine is to have a public dialogue," Umphrey said.

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

Mainers guarding Abu Ghraib

By CHUIN-WEI YAP, Blethen Maine News Service

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


The U.S. soldiers who abused Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison were wrong and there is no excuse for their behavior, said a Winslow man currently serving as a tower guard at the sprawling prison.

"(Those soldiers) did not represent the military values that we all must follow," Pfc. Eric Willetts wrote in an e-mail to the Morning Sentinel. "When I heard what they did, I was disgusted."

Willetts is a member of the Maine National Guard's 152nd Field Artillery army unit, which took over the prison's management in March from the 800th Military Police Brigade. The 800th was in charge of the jail when the abuses took place.

Soldiers say they are frustrated that the Maine prison unit has been mistaken for their predecessors.

"My unit was not here when all of this was happening," Willetts wrote. "But we are definitely feeling the backlash from it all."

The abuses have sparked international outrage and, experts say, set back the U.S. military position in Iraq. They have also overshadowed much of the military's rebuilding efforts in Iraq, some soldiers say.

Maine's troops - more than half the state's National Guard has been activated in the last three years - have been unfairly tainted by association, say the soldiers and their parents.

"The boys there guarding the prison now are Maine boys," said Chuck Paradis, the father of Spc. Peter Paradis, Willetts' childhood friend in the 152nd. "The (abuse) cases happened as late as February. Then it stopped. That's because Maine boys are there now." Another 152nd soldier, Spc. Justin Poirier of Old Orchard Beach, phoned his mother to say that the positive work done at the prison has been overshadowed by news of the abuse. Poirier is teaching some prisoners to speak English, and learning some Arabic from them, his mother said. Paradis and Willetts, both 20, have been friends since they attended Winslow Junior High School and graduated together from Winslow High School.

Both soldiers downplay the dangers they endure, but conceded that mortar and rocket attacks continue. "The detainees have been hit hard twice," Willetts wrote.

"Myself and Spc. Paradis . . . were in the middle of it all when we had to treat them. It was a bad experience, but I was glad I could help them."

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

Legislators going to court over thousands in wages


By KEVIN WACK, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


Months of partisan wrangling in Augusta boiled over Wednesday when four lawmakers sued the Legislature's Democratic leadership, seeking thousands of dollars in disputed wages.

The plaintiffs, led by Republican Sen. Tom Sawyer of Bangor, said they are defending important constitutional principles. House Speaker Patrick Colwell, D-Gardiner, called the lawsuit a blatant money grab.

A close observer of Maine politics for more than four decades could not recall another instance when lawmakers have gone to court to settle their differences.

"To have legislators suing legislators is fairly remarkable," said Douglas Hodgkin, a retired political science professor at Bates College. "This is taking the conflict quite a step further."

The dispute started in January, when legislators were trying to bridge a $109 million budget shortfall. After the two major parties were unable to reach a compromise, the Democratic leadership mustered enough votes to pass its own budget.

But because the Democrats did not have the two-thirds majority needed to pass emergency legislation, which would take effect as soon as it was signed, they were forced to take an unusual step - adjourning the regular legislative session and reconvening in special session.

That move allowed the budget-balancing measure to take effect before June 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

However, according to state law, legislators get paid $100 for each day they attend a special legislative session. The Democrats did not want to authorize what would have amounted to a major legislative pay raise - political ammunition for the GOP in an election year - so they passed a rule denying themselves the money.

That further angered Republicans, who sought an opinion from Attorney General Steven Rowe on the legality of the Democrats' maneuver.

On April 7, Rowe wrote that a court would likely rule that a change in the statute - rather than a mere rule change - is needed to deny the wages. The attorney general also noted that the Legislature might pass a retroactive law to avoid paying the money, but added that he could not predict whether such a move would withstand a legal challenge.

Late last month, the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed a retroactive bill denying lawmakers the pay - again on a largely party-line vote.

The lawsuit, filed in Kennebec County Superior Court by two Republicans, one Democrat and an independent, seeks as much as $3,800 in wages for each of the four legislators.

But the money is not the issue, according to Daniel Billings, the plaintiffs' lawyer, who said the lawmakers will donate the lawsuit's proceeds to charity.

Billings said it is important that lawmakers be held accountable when they do not follow the law. "The issues involved are not partisan," he said.

Just hours after the lawsuit was filed, though, a fifth plaintiff, Democrat Rep. George Bunker, dropped out of the lawsuit, saying the issue has been politicized.

Rep. Robert Daigle, R-Arundel, one of the four remaining plaintiffs, blamed the Democratic leadership for failing to strike a deal to head off a court challenge.

"It's very immature of them to not admit a mistake when they've made one," he said. "It could have been avoided. We would have sat down and negotiated something."

Senate President Beverly Daggett, D-Augusta, who is named as a defendant, issued a statement calling the lawsuit a "waste of the court's valuable time and a waste of our tax dollars."

Colwell blasted Republicans for asking to be paid twice for the same work, as he characterized the lawsuit's aim.

"I just don't see how they can justify it to the people of Maine - this strategy of insisting on a $1 million pay raise," Colwell said.

According to statistics provided later by Colwell's office, if every member of the Maine House and Senate were paid $100 per day for the special session, the bill would total around $750,000.

The two sides could not even agree whether money has been set aside in case the lawsuit prevails. Colwell's spokesman, Doug Rooks, denied Billings' claim that the Democratic leadership tucked away contingency funds.

David Boulter, executive director of the Legislative Council, who was also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, backed up Rooks' assertion.

Boulter added that if a court rules that the money must be paid, he will comb through the $19.8 million legislative budget for underspending.

During the regular two-year legislative session, each of Maine's 186 lawmakers is paid $19,515, plus a $32 daily meals allowance and 32 cents per mile driven between their districts and Augusta. They also receive free health and dental insurance.

Hodgkin, the retired political scientist, said the current acrimony may stem from a sense among Republicans that they conceded too much last year, when Gov. John Baldacci enjoyed a bipartisan honeymoon period. But he also assigned partial blame to election-year politics.

"The Republican Party needs to distinguish itself," said Hodgkin, himself a Republican. "Otherwise, why wouldn't the voters simply re-elect all the incumbents?"

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

Baldacci signs law to ease crowding in state prisons


By GLENN ADAMS, Associated Press

©Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.


AUGUSTA — A bill to shorten sentences for some offenses while revamping probation rules to create needed space in Maine's crowded prison system was signed into law Wednesday by Gov. John Baldacci. The new law also gives state corrections officials authority to place some inmates with two years remaining on their sentences in supervised community confinement, provided it does not overtax the probation system.

Among numerous other changes, the bill increases time off for good behavior to nine days per month from five days. But the "good time" provision would not apply to those serving time for murder, *** crimes, or domestic violence.

The lengthy and heavily debated bill is an outgrowth of a special commission's study of prison overcrowding and Maine's ***-offender laws. Under separate legislation signed a day earlier by Baldacci, the prison study will continue.

"We still have more work ahead," said Rep. Patricia Blanchette, House chair of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, which refined the bill and urged its passage.

The Bangor Democrat and other supporters of the legislation warned that someone will be killed in the prison system unless something is done to ease the crowding.

Blanchette said the state cannot continue keeping people in prisons and jails at an annual cost of $37,000 per inmate while doing little to rehabilitate them.

The new legislation calls for a plan of action to address mental illness in the criminal justice system and a policy that gives judges more discretion in making treatment a factor in sentencing.

The latter provision was opposed by some of the state's district attorneys, who said the "diversionary sentencing" authority could weaken their authority to strike plea bargains.

Some of the district prosecutors met with the governor a day before he signed the legislation to express their concerns, said spokesman Lee Umphrey. The governor did not change his position on a bill that had received strong support from his administration.

Crowding will not be eased overnight because the bill is not retroactive and no current offenders will be affected. "It's probably going to be three years or more before we see any impact from this," Blanchette said.

Not all of the provisions make sentences or probation shorter. The legislation sets tougher sentences and increases the period of probation for those convicted of *** crimes against children under 12.

It also authorizes judges to sentence offenders convicted of gross ****** assault of a child under 12 to lifetime probation, if they have a record of similar offenses.

:fork:

The selections in bold:

>The probation system is already overtaxed. There are too few probation officers handling too many cases.

>"Good time" is an admirable idea, but what kind of message does it send to repeat offenders who are going to be released early because of it? "Behave yourself and get out before your sentence is up, and then you're only bound by the restrictions of probation or whatever conditions are placed on your release?" Come on. What are the odds that, once released on "good time", someone won't simply offend again? Especially if he or she is released back into the same circumstances that led to the incarceration in the first place?

>"Three years or more"? Peachy. It's not going to change things that need to be changed because it doesn't affect those who are currently enjoying the view from their eight-by-ten cells. What good is it, then?

>What is this? If you molest a child under twelve, you might get off with only lifetime probation? That's the biggest load of horseapples I've ever heard. Send 'em right on up to the boys doing time. I'm pretty sure the "honour among criminals" is still there and they "welcome" child molesters and rapists and show those sick bastards how things are done on the inside.

I don't feel any pity for anybody who ends up in Warren, but I agree something needs ot be done to remedy the current situation, and it's probably going to take more than just a bill signed by that monkey in Augusta.

[Maine Finn]

This one needs no explanation. It speaks for itself.


From the Portland Press Herald.

Rescue workers feel impact of crash


By DAVID HENCH, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

http://www.pressherald.com/photos/040513gibbons.jpg
Staff photo by Jim Evans

Etna Fire Chief Walter Gibbons was among the first to respond to Sunday's deadly crash in Carmel. "Every time I talk about it I'm back on Interstate 95," he said.


Feelings of self-doubt washed over Walter Gibbons, Etna's 31-year old fire chief, when he pulled the bodies of two small children from the wreckage of Sunday's crash outside of Bangor.

It had been hours since the accident and Gibbons feared that the failure to find the kids sooner in the mangled remains of the Ford Explorer could have cost them their lives.

"I was one of them guys kicking myself," Gibbons said Wednesday. "If I tried harder - tried to dig harder, got the chain saws quicker and cut more trees . . . Did I fail as a firefighter? Did I fail as a chief?"

Questions like that haunt safety workers long after the adrenaline of the emergency response wears off. Coupled with inescapable images of the grisly scene - the broken bodies of three women and four children - the public safety workers who responded to Sunday's crash may well endure waves of stress, anxiety and depression.

The firefighters, police and medical personnel who responded to one of the state's worst accidents ever met Tuesday night at the Carmel Fire Station to talk about the psychological impact of seeing such carnage, and to seek some measure of peace.

"Every time I talk about it I'm back on Interstate 95. But if I don't talk about it," Gibbons said, "that would be worse."

The bodies of the two children were found only after the Ford Explorer was cut free from trees and lifted upright. Gibbons had to find out then and there whether they could have been saved.

"When I did remove the bodies of the victims it was obvious there was nothing I could have done," he said. "That was in itself a little bit relieving. It wasn't anything close to touching the surface of making me feel better."

The rented Ford Explorer was going more than 90 mph when its driver swerved into the breakdown lane to pass two cars that were side by side. Police believe the driver was Hope Stuart Gagnon, 29, of South Portland, mother of three of the children who died. The Explorer went out of control, sliding along the interstate and into the median, where it flipped, landing on its roof wedged between trees.

Authorities released the wreckage of the 2004 Ford Explorer to the rental company Wednesday, after failing to find any clue about where it was headed and why it was being driven 90 mph.

Police said they will wait until after the funerals to interview family members to try to learn the women's destination and any other details that might shed light on the crash.

Police did say that after interviewing emergency responders it now appears that at least three of the children were wearing seat belts.

Trooper Joshua D'Angelo, the investigating trooper, said police will never know if Ariana Stuart, who was thrown from the car, was unbelted or was too small for the belt to work.

"In my opinion, I don't feel there was anything that could have been done. I don't feel seat belts made a difference," D'Angelo said.

There were no booster seats or child restraints, as required for children younger than 8.

One motorist saw Kelley Armstrong, who was wearing a red warmup suit, switching into the passenger's side of the the Explorer, which put Gagnon in the driver's seat two miles earlier, said D'Angelo.

Gagnon's grandmother believes there must have been a medical emergency for her granddaughter to drive that fast and that recklessly. She suspects it may have been her great-grandson Deion Stuart, who suffered form severe asthma.

"I want people to know there must have been a reason for her driving like that," Arlene Stuart said Wednesday.

The boy had been hospitalized as an infant because of his asthma. On the day before the crash, he was at Arlene Stuart's house and had to come indoors because his asthma was acting up. She said a crowded car would have aggravated the problem.

Stuart said she was very close to her granddaughter and her great-grandchildren. "She would give her life to protect them," Stuart said.

"I know without a doubt there was a problem. She felt she had to do that. I don't know it official, but I feel it in my heart and knowing Hope as I do."

A neighbor and friend of Gagnon's said Wednesday that he was surprised to see Deion Stuart's asthma kit left behind in their apartment.

Police said there was nothing to indicate whether there had been a medical emergency. No autopsy was done on any of the occupants.

The question of why the Explorer was going so fast provoked anger among the emergency workers at Tuesday's critical incident stress debriefing session.

"Why did this happen? Where the hell were they going in such a hurry?" Gibbons said. "We looked at the evidence compiled and it was just a whole day of bad choices."

Then, reflecting the anger that many of the emergency responders were left with, he added: "It's one thing if you're one person on an empty road. You sure don't have any right driving that fast when you have someone with you, especially small children who can't control the situation."

Gibbons said he and the others recognize they may never know why the tragedy happened, which isn't unusual.

"There's been several fatals I've been on that I don't have answers to. You just come up with your own answers that seem to fill the void. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't."

The Etna Fire Department was called out to the accident in neighboring Carmel because it has an extrication tool that can pry open crushed steel to let emergency workers get to crash victims. The crew arrived just before 3 p.m., four minutes after the first responders.

"It was pure chaos for a little while. We didn't know what we had," Gibbons said. The first call said there was at least one fatality. It did not mention children.

Even before rescue workers arrived, a passing nurse tried to give CPR to the 4-year-old child who was flung from the car. The nurse worked until others arrived and assured her the child could not be saved.

"It's probably easier in a long-term sense to put it behind you, to know there was nothing you can do," Gibbons said. "We would have liked to have the option to try.

"Our job was to go into the scene and, within the first few minutes, to save viable lives. It soon turned into an investigation of a mass fatality.

"We tried to search the vehicle," Gibbons said. After the initial search revealed only a woman and one child in the middle row of seats, firefighters had to sit on the banking and wait about five hours for police to do the accident investigation.

"When the evidence needed was gathered, then it became our job" to remove the bodies, he said. When the Explorer was rolled onto its wheels, providing better visibility, firefighters found the other two children, one of whom had been thrown into the rear luggage area of the sport utility vehicle.

Twenty-eight public safety and health workers attended Tuesday's critical incident stress debriefing. Gibbons said discussing the incident as a group is important.

"People really need to understand that the emotions they're feeling and the things going through their mind, they're not alone in that," he said. "A lot of us are having those feelings, some more, some less."

Gibbons said it's healthy to talk to someone, a friend, a spouse, clergy or counselor, "if you keep finding yourself seeing snapshots (of the scene) when you close your eyes, if you're restless and can't sleep or notice changes in attitude.

"Sometimes the debriefing may be as simple as the back of the station or running board of the fire ruck, just to hash out what unfolded . . . That's kind of what my guys are doing now, talking about getting on with their lives, spending quality time with their children," Gibbons said.

His somber comments were accompanied at times by the playful laughter of his assistant chief's daughter scampering through the Etna fire station.

The stress of gruesome calls can drive some people out of public safety, especially in volunteer departments like those in the small towns of Etna and Carmel.

"That's a very big possibility, but I'm hoping not, because each and every person at that scene is critical to this department. Take any of those people out of that net and you're going to be in trouble," Gibbons said. "But if it's for their welfare, then I have to support their decision."

The night after Sunday's crash, the crew was called to another serious accident on Interstate 95, this time a drunk driver. Almost every one of the people who had responded the night before showed up, Gibbons said proudly, adding that they allowed a neighboring department to take over patient care.

"We saw the debarked trees and the carnage of the vehicle again, but this time there was a different outcome," he said. "The lady was alive and is going to make it."

[JiJoMacLE45]

Did they pass the bill to set up the casino yet?

[Maine Finn]

Did they pass the bill to set up the casino yet?

That was voted down. But they're allowing slot machines at Bangor Raceway. Scarborough Downs was supposed to get them too, but the town voted against it. Now the Downs are looking for a new home that will allow slot machines at the track.

[JiJoMacLE45]

Thanks, when I was up there last summer that was the big news. Wanted to make sure I didn't have to take extra cash with me this year.

[Maine Finn]

By Misty Edgecomb, Of the NEWS Staff

Last updated: Thursday, May 13, 2004

In T5 R8, fees rise, rules change
Longtime renters pack bags as landowner asserts rights


T5 R8 - Some of the best memories of Muriel Fortier's 89 years are crammed into her 20- by 20-foot cabin on the bank of the Penobscot River's East Branch.


The rough wooden walls are papered with yellowing photographs - Fortier, who is known locally as "Mother Nature," striking poses next to a deer carcass and astride her snowmobile; her late husband smiles over freshly caught brook trout.

On the bathroom door, crosshatches reveal how many pheasants were caught each fall. Near the refrigerator, she has recorded the jars of homemade raspberry, strawberry, and blackberry jam squirreled away for the winter.

For more than 30 years, Fortier has spent every summer in this spot, living off the land and loving her solitude. But for the first time in her life, she's thinking about leaving.

A few weeks ago, Fortier received a lease from her new landlord, Roxanne Quimby, of Burt's Bees fame, informing her that the annual rent will more than triple to $1,500, and that beginning June 1, she will have to comply with new rules regarding the use of the land - no campfires, hunting, snowmobiling or ATVs.

"You can't fight money and power, but by God you can try," she said Tuesday. "I'm kind of hard to be pushed around. I like my independence."

Quimby purchased the 24,000-acre T5 R8 from J.D. Irving Ltd. last year for about $12 million. The self-made millionaire has been buying forest land for preservation since 2000 and has said she hopes the forests will someday be protected as a national park and preserve.

Quimby currently owns more than 40,000 acres of Maine forestland, all bought at or above market value from willing sellers. With the sale of a $180 million stake in her natural cosmetics company last year, she has the funds at her disposal for further land acquisition.

Neither Quimby nor her Maine spokeswoman responded to requests for an interview this week, but she has previously described her effort as giving back to the land that sustained her when she lived in the backwoods of Maine before starting her business. With time, a park could help the faltering economy of rural Maine, she has said.

Quimby has never publicly stated specific plans for her township on the boundary of Baxter State Park, saying only that she hopes to work with local people.

"I think we live in a democracy. I don't think I'm the queen of T5 R8," she told the crowd at a forestry forum in December.

Nine family camp lessees and Bowlin Camps, a commercial sporting camp that operates half its business in T5 R8, know only that for the right price, they can have their camps one more year.

Nothing in Quimby's leases states that she intends to force the camp owners to leave. But the documents don't hint at any security either, and the people who have made this place their second home worry that they won't fit into her plans.

Some families, including Fortier and her children, are paying the rent this year just to buy more time.

The Albert Ellis family has already decided that it can't afford the $1,500 rent, $1,500 security deposit, and the newly required liability insurance coverage - at a cost of about $700 annually - to keep the little brown cabin that's been in their family for years.

Quimby isn't the only landlord who's been raising rents, according to the Maine Leaseholders Association. The new rents are about average for camp leases in the area, association spokesman Stu Kallgren said Monday.

But most leases have gone up gradually over the past 10 years, he said.

This week, Albert Ellis of Patten and his grown son Peter of Houlton cleared their camp out for the final time, having decided that Quimby aims to drive them out.

"It broke my heart to do it," Albert Ellis said Tuesday from his room at Mountain Heights Health Care where he lives in Patten, about 20 miles from the family camp on the East Branch of the Penobscot River in T5 R8. "The people around here are very angry. They feel betrayed."

The Ellises knew the land wasn't theirs, but after hundreds of family memories, it was easy to assume that the camp would always be there to be passed down to his children and grandchildren for hunting and fishing and enjoying the river, he said.

"It's no fun if you can't go up there and use the land," Peter Ellis said Tuesday from the Ellis Family Market, which he operates in Patten. "It's how we all grew up. I find it hard to believe that with all the rivers and land up there, that there's not enough space for everyone."

The loss of hunting and snowmobiling is an annoyance to some camp owners, but for local businesspeople like Terry and Craig Hill of Shin Pond Village or Joe and Sue Christianson of Matagamon Wilderness Camps, both of which are located just a few miles over the border of T5 R8, it means the loss of half their revenue. Without hunting and snowmobiling, that's six months of paying customers gone, Joe Christianson said Wednesday.

"You take a little bit of hunting, a little bit of logging, a little bit of snowmobiling - you put it all in a pot and suddenly it's not a little bit," Craig Hill said.

The local owners of the sporting camps and the hunting guide services that line the road from Patten to T5 R8 keep the local hardware store and the Ellis Family Market in business.

"There will be nothing here. The towns are going to dry up," Terry Hill said.

For Mike Stroff and his partners at Bowlin Camps, the stakes are even higher. Seven of the eight Bowlin cabins and half of the lodge sit on Quimby's land. The rent has grown from $2,000 annually to $10,000, and the income-generating activities - primarily bear hunting and snowmobiling - have been banned.

Initially, Quimby had called the historic sporting camp a "special case" and offered to negotiate. She did, in fact, keep her word and met with Stroff a few months ago, but did not give him an answer until this week.

"She never meant what she said from the beginning," Stroff said Wednesday of Quimby's refusal to sell him 20 acres.

Leaving the camps would mean losing $2 million - the life savings of the business's 10 investors, Stroff said.

The options for Bowlin Camp are limited, but for this year, they're planning to hold tight.

"We're not going anywhere," Stroff said Wednesday.

Faced with the loss of about 12 miles of trails, the Maine Snowmobile Association's Bob Meyers also met with Quimby, hoping to secure the use of ITS 85, a popular trail that connects the Millinocket area with Aroostook County.

Quimby decided not to allow the trail, which local business owners describe as "crucial."

However, she did grant snowmobilers the use of a 10-mile connector trail between Bowlin Camps and Shin Pond Village, about half of which is on her land, for at least the next year, Meyers said Wednesday.

What worries snowmobilers, camp owners and business people the most is the uncertainty of their situation.

"I respect that it's her land and she can do what she wants with it, but she should at least tell the people what she plans on doing," Peter Ellis said. "Tell us straight. Tell us to our face."

:fork:

I'm wiling to bet this lady is a city-kid who has no idea what it means to the locals to have the use of the land.

[Maine Finn]

Thanks, when I was up there last summer that was the big news. Wanted to make sure I didn't have to take extra cash with me this year.

Only if you're planning on watching a race or two at Bass Park.

Go to Miller's Restaurant in Bangor, if you're up that way. The OTB parlor downstairs has a good reputation.

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

Court questions ruling on abuse records


By GREGORY D. KESICH, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


BANGOR — Saying it would have a "chilling effect" on law enforcement, a justice of Maine's highest court led blistering questioning Thursday of a lower court ruling that requires the state to give the public access to ******-abuse allegations against Roman Catholic priests who are now dead. Supreme Judicial Court Justice Donald Alexander was particularly critical of the lower court's order to release files that include the names of the priests' alleged victims and witnesses who reported the abuse.

"What signal is sent to potential victims if the word goes forth from this court that if you come forward today, your name could be splashed on the front page tomorrow?" Alexander asked. "If our message is, 'Yes, we are going to let the newspaper hang people out to dry,' there would be a definite chilling effect."

The center of controversy was a decision by Superior Court Justice Kirk Studstrup, who said the now-deceased priests' privacy rights are outweighed by the public's right to know about the charges and how they were handled. He also ruled that the privacy rights of the people who made the allegations had been "eroded by time, life and the manner in which the information came to the attorney general."

Studstrup's ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Blethen Maine Newspapers, the owner of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, which requested the information under Maine's Freedom of Access Act. The newspaper's request was opposed by Attorney General Steven Rowe, who appealed Studstrup's ruling.

Sigmund Schutz, the lawyer representing the newspaper, said it would be wrong to throw out Studstrup's ruling in an effort to help victims.

"The victims are being used as human shields to protect their perpetrators from being brought to light," Schutz said.

Schutz repeated that the newspaper offered to accept the files with the victims' names blacked out, but that the state refused.

He pointed out that Blethen newspapers, like most news organizations, do not identify the victims of *** crimes without their consent. The decision of what information from the files would eventually be published in the newspaper would be governed by journalistic ethics, he said.

That did not seem to impress Alexander. "You want to publish those names," he insisted.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland collected allegations of abuse against 63 priests and other clergy members during the past 75 years. In almost every case, the allegations were handled by the church and not reported to authorities. According to a report issued by Rowe in February, 20 of the accused men are now dead.

In a lawsuit filed in July 2002, the newspaper argued that the files concerning the dead priests are subject to the state's open records law because they cannot be part of a criminal investigation.

Rowe has argued that the deceased priests have a right to privacy even after death, a right that has never been recognized in Maine courts.

Assistant Attorney General Leanne Robbin argued Thursday that there is no public right to the documents because they were not originally produced by the government.

"The public has a right to know what its government is up to," she said. "It does not have a right to know what deceased priests were up to, or what the diocese was up to, or what any other private organization is up to. There is no credible allegation that the government dropped the ball on investigating these claims."

Robbin said that if the records are to be released, the court should obscure the names of the "victims, witnesses, relatives, parishes, towns and the alleged perpetrators."

Justice Howard Dana asked Schutz if the public interest could be served if the records were released with all of the identifying data removed. Schutz said that much editing could make the records "unintelligible."

After the hearing, Schutz said the documents should be made public. "This is an open society, and part of that means having access to information, even if it is embarrassing or disturbing or even damaging," he said.

The court adjourned after hearing arguments. There is no timetable for its decision, which will be issued in writing.

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

Five telemedicine clinics will assist rural veterans


By DAN McGILLVRAY, Blethen Maine News Service

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


Clinics that use telemedicine techniques to diagnose and treat veterans for their health needs will open in five communities in rural Maine as part of a national effort to modernize care for men and women who served in the armed services.

The plan outlined Thursday also calls for the VA New England Healthcare System to open another full-time clinic somewhere in Cumberland County to serve veterans in the Portland area.

Maine already has full-time clinics in in Saco, Rumford, Bangor, Calais and Caribou to supplement services provided at the VA center in Togus.

Thursday's announcement followed a year of studies throughout the country by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

About 33,000 of the 148,000 veterans living in Maine were treated at Togus and the state's five VA clinics last year.

The new telemedicine clinics will be in Farmington, South Paris, Dover-Foxcroft, Lincoln and Houlton.

The facilities will use computers and digital equipment to assist qualified veterans in rural towns.

Rene Deschene, an administrator at the Togus office of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, welcomed the news but said the new clinics should be open longer hours.

"They're only going to be open part-time. I would have hoped it would be on a full-time basis," he said.

Jim Doherty, the spokesman at Togus, said more information on the clinics will emerge after Congress reviews the national plans over the next two months.

"I think this is really going to benefit the veterans positively," he said. Doherty said he is not sure when the telemedicine clinics will open, but they will probably be located in leased spaces in the five towns.

George Mathis, 59, a Navy veteran who lives in Newport, has been treated with telemedicine procedures by the VA.

He had a digital photograph of a bad rash transmitted to a specialist at the VA hospital in Boston, he said.

Telemedicine is an important health care tool, but seeing a physician in person is much better, said Mathis.

The changes that are coming to Maine are the result of the national Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services plan, also known as CARES.

"In New England, the national CARES plan will provide greater access to care for veterans and bring greater quality of care closer to where most of New England veterans live. . . . In addition, telemedicine will be used across the network to improve access for primary care and specialty care," said Dr. Jeannette Chirico-Post, director of the VA New England Healthcare System.

David Brodeur, state adjutant of the Disabled American Veterans organization in Maine, said he welcomes expanded telemedicine services for veterans.

Establishing more satellite clinics could ease the burden on the 55 volunteer drivers who shuttle veterans to Togus and the five VA clinics in Maine, he said. The CARES plan appears to have little effect on Togus. But the state's five full-time clinics will be expanded to include mental health services.

[Maine Finn]

From the Bangor Daily News.

By Deborah Turcotte, Of the NEWS Staff
Last updated: Friday, May 14, 2004

Eastern Pulp deal falls apart


BANGOR - A Connecticut-based company walked away Thursday from its plans to purchase idled Eastern Pulp and Paper Corp. for more than $23 million, stating it could not accept conditions that were placed on $7.7 million in loans and loan guaranties from the Finance Authority of Maine.Then First Paper Holding was called back to work things out.

A last-gasp effort by Gov. John Baldacci to keep First Paper Holding LLC's partners and FAME board members around a table to reach a compromise was under way Thursday night.

At press time, First Paper Holding still was not willing to accept FAME's request that its partners be held personally liable for a portion of the financial package, along with other stipulations, and FAME was not willing to change its conditions, according to Robert Keach, a Portland attorney representing First Paper Holding.

"I can't say that much progress has been made, but hope springs eternal," he said.

Baldacci, however, said he remained hopeful that the deal could be salvaged and that he was willing to use "every resource available, every power of persuasion" to make the sale happen.

"I'm willing to put my name right out there and say that we need to get this thing done," Baldacci said Thursday evening. "And if it doesn't work out, I'll take responsibility and I'll be held accountable. But they need to make this happen."

Attempts to resuscitate the deal will continue today when FAME staff and First Paper's partners resume negotiations in Portland. State officials are looking into how quickly they can schedule another meeting of FAME's board of directors.

First Paper Holding's primary partners, John Wissmann, a strategic consultant with Fisher International Inc. of South Norwalk, Conn., and Keith Van Scotter, a paper industry executive from Tacoma, Wash., were planning to leave Maine on Thursday night, Keach said.

Baldacci, FAME's chief executive officer and First Paper's partners all said Thursday they were intent on doing their civic duty. That is, they wanted to reopen one of Eastern Pulp's two mills, the Lincoln facility, by Memorial Day and hire back 360 of the more than 500 millworkers who were laid off Jan. 16. The Lincoln mill would be named Lincoln Tissue and Paper Co.

But that remained the only common thread among them.

As one attorney - who asked not to be identified - put it, Eastern Pulp's former employees were the only ones among creditors, buyers, lenders and politicians whose objectives were clear during months of complex sales negotiations. They wanted to return to work and they were willing to make concessions in wages and hours to secure a future of employment instead of unemployment checks.

Everyone else, the attorney said, was trying to protect his interests.

Eastern Pulp, bankrupt since September 2000, shut down operations Jan. 16, displacing 750 workers at its three facilities - Lincoln Pulp and Paper Co. in Lincoln, Eastern Fine Paper Co. in Brewer and its headquarters in Amherst, Mass. A federal bankruptcy judge in early February ordered that the company be liquidated after its owner could not secure a $3.5 million loan to restart operations.

On March 12, after sales negotiations with interested buyer Paper Acquisition Corp. of Massachusetts broke down, the judge ordered that Eastern Pulp's facilities be liquidated and that creditors lay claim to their liens on real estate, personal property, parts, inventory and other assets. Apparently some creditors began contacting professional liquidators Thursday afternoon.

Financial package

To complete its purchase of Eastern Pulp, First Paper Holding wanted FAME to guaranty - or agree to pay back - a $6.7 million loan from ING Prime Rate Trust to First Paper if First Paper defaulted on the loan. Historically, FAME could only guaranty $4.5 million on any loan but raised that amount for the Eastern Pulp deal. Plus, First Paper wanted a $1 million direct loan from FAME.

The $7.7 million package was almost one-third of First Paper Holding's $23.725 million offer, which primarily is composed of loans or long-term promissory notes to Eastern Pulp's primary creditors.

Eastern Pulp's creditors have liens on the company's personal property, real estate and other assets, and their debts need to be satisfied to release those assets to First Paper.

But before FAME's meeting even started Thursday morning, there were concerns that the board's conditions on the financing package could be deal-breakers. First Paper Holding had stated that without FAME's backing, it would terminate its deal to buy Eastern Pulp.

"We were abundantly clear and had been for a long time with FAME about what was and was not impossible as a condition," Keach said. "Unfortunately the FAME staff chose to ignore that in large part, and that's why we're where we are."

FAME's board conditionally approved First Paper's loan application, but called it a "high-risk transaction" that required the company's partners to assume some personal risk in it, according to David Cyr, FAME's senior risk manager.

Among the conditions, FAME wanted a personal guaranty from First Paper's partners on the $1 million direct loan if it defaulted. Initially, FAME sought the personal guaranty also on the $6.7 million loan guaranty, but the board "backed down" on that request, Witherspoon said.

Also, FAME asked that First Paper's creditors not seek balance-due payments if First Paper's operations fell below a certain cash threshold. The idea behind the request was to ensure that the company remain running without having to fight off a creditor seeking payments that could result in the mill's closure, Witherspoon said.

"We approved the loan fully expecting it would result in an up-and-running paper mill," he said. "If they don't want to accept it or approve it, that's certainly their choice."

Cyr said the conditions were requested because FAME's staff questioned whether First Paper had enough actual cash in its hands to stabilize the business and bring it to maturity.

"We're a little concerned about their aggressiveness to get to that optimal operating point," Cyr said.

But Van Scotter, a First Paper partner, said it was unfair of FAME to state that he and Wissmann did not have enough of their money invested in the deal. Both men and their partners have spent nearly $500,000 to buy Eastern Pulp, he said.

"Everything we heard from the FAME staff is that we don't have enough in the deal," he said. "We've put in everything we've got to do something worthwhile here."

'Impossible'

Keach, First Paper's attorney, said some of FAME's conditions were "commercially impossible," and that it was unlikely that any other lending institution would have told First Paper that it wanted to control the relationships it has with its other creditors.

"They want what could only be described as an inordinate level, and that's probably a polite phrase - an inordinate level of control over other creditors," Keach said. "I don't know what commercial universe they operate in, but I can tell you that in a normal commercial deal these things do not happen, ever."

Witherspoon disagreed.

"These conditions are not unusual in lending situations," he said. "I think they're fairly standard in any lending situation."

Van Scotter said it took weeks of tough negotiations to reach payment agreements with Eastern Pulp's creditors, and that it was unfair of FAME to request that First Paper go back to the creditors and change those agreements.

"The reality is they were asking for major changes with the deal that we couldn't accommodate," he said.

Fallout

If the deal cannot be salvaged today, Eastern Pulp will remain abandoned, according to Bangor attorney Gary Growe, who is Eastern Pulp's trustee.

"The proposed sale order the court approved on April 30 contemplates that the mill sites would remain abandoned until the sale was consummated," he said. "Absent a sale, the mills remain simply abandoned."

Besides the FAME package, First Paper Holding had other conditions to complete the sale. Among them, the company sought a $1.3 million loan guaranty from the Small Business Administration but backed by Eastern Maine Development Corp., in addition to a $450,000 loan from EMDC.

That financial package, considered the largest such transaction in EMDC's history, was approved Thursday, according to EMDC President Jonathan Daniels.

"We certainly felt this was an economic development opportunity that needed to be approved," Daniels said.

Also, First Paper needed to reach an agreement with the state Department of Environmental Protection on how to address historic environmental contamination on Eastern Pulp's mill sites. DEP Deputy Commissioner David Littell said that the agreement was near completion, but that DEP was notified Thursday afternoon that those talks were off for now.

The hardest hit by the deal's collapse will be the 360 people who expected to return to work at the end of the month, said Ray Hinckley, international representative for Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers union, which was represented at the Lincoln and Brewer mills.

"It's all over a million bucks," Hinckley said. "A million dollars is keeping 360 people from going back to work. I'm extremely disappointed in FAME because they're playing Russian roulette with 360 people's lives. That's how I feel about it. I've done my complaining."

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

Tax cap? Been there


By TOM BELL, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

FORT BRAGG, Calif. — Andy Johnston's million-dollar home commands a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He built the house in 1977 after inheriting a five-acre parcel from his father. But thanks to Proposition 13, California's landmark tax-cutting measure, he doesn't worry about escalating property values pushing up taxes beyond his means. His tax bill this year is a paltry $978.

"If it hadn't been for Proposition 13, I wouldn't be living here," said Johnston, who figures his spread is worth $1.2 million. "It would be the home of some rich dude who could pay $20,000 in taxes."

Twenty-six years after it was enacted by California voters, Proposition 13 remains popular and continues to keep property taxes low, especially for longtime homeowners.

In Fort Bragg, Proposition 13 means people who haven't moved in 30 years typically pay less than $1,000 a year in taxes. Newcomers who live in nearly identical homes pay nearly three times as much - but still less than many homeowners in southern Maine.

But the benefits have come at a cost - diminished local services, overcrowded schools and a loss of local control. Proposition 13 also means more fees for the average resident, from $1 a day to ride the school bus to $30,000 for permission to build a large house.

For Maine residents preparing to vote on a Nov. 2 ballot measure that is a virtual copy of Proposition 13, the experience of people in this small city on California's north coast provides both real life lessons and a possible glimpse of Maine's future.

This is not the California of freeways, street gangs and celebrity mansions. This is rural America, with a landscape of fruit orchards, organic farms, wine vineyards and spectacular fir and redwood forests.

This is more rural than many places in Maine. The 86,000 residents in Mendocino County live in area that is larger than Maine's seven southernmost counties combined.

Fort Bragg, a city of 7,000 on the county's western edge, is the largest coastal settlement north of San Francisco, 177 miles to the south.

Whites first settled here in large numbers in 1850. That's when the schooner Frolic, laden with silks, china and silver, ran aground in shallow water at a nearby point. Salvage crews - including Maine lumberjacks lured to California during the gold rush - were dispatched from San Francisco to recover what they could from her battered holds as she lay a few feet from shore.

The crews found even greater treasure - 1,500-year-old redwood giants. Sawmills sprang up all along the Mendocino coast, and several were built in Fort Bragg, which offered a harbor for shipping the boards to market.

Home prices bid up

Once covered with towering trees, Fort Bragg today is bald as a desert. The downtown's centerpiece is a log from a 1,728-year-old tree that was cut down in the nearby forest in 1943. The tree was 21 feet in diameter. The custom-made, 22-foot-long saw that brought the monster tree down is fastened to the log.

The old-growth forest is mostly gone now, except for a few areas protected by the government. The logging industry today is pretty much dead. Fishing has been in decline for years. Tourism now dominates the economy.

The city's last sawmill, the sprawling Georgia Pacific mill, employed 2,500 people at its peak 50 years ago. It shut down for good last year. Laid-off workers have either retired or taken lower-paying service jobs, such as mowing lawns or working in restaurants.

Even as good-paying jobs are vanishing here, people who made their fortunes elsewhere continue to bid up home prices to levels never imagined, especially for land with ocean views. Even small, rundown homes cost more than $200,000.

Many Fort Bragg families have been here for two or three generations. Old-timers here, with their plaid shirts, suspenders and skeptical views of city people, would fit in at any Maine bean supper.

At the Fort Bragg senior center, the old-timers at the daily luncheon were almost unanimous in their support for Proposition 13. They said the measure protects them from the explosive growth in the state's real estate market.

"It's been very good to me," said Lucile Prince, who has lived in the same home for 60 years and pays about $700 a year in property taxes.

But some said they worry about Proposition 13's other legacy, the perpetual lack of adequate funding for services. "I like it for myself but not for the schools," said Wilma Gromer, 83, a retired teacher. "I know they need more money."

Libraries take hit

In 1978, shortly after voters approved Proposition 13 by a 2-1 margin, Dennis Huey attended a Sacramento forum along with hundreds of other county and municipal officials to learn how to cope with the new law.

"A lot of them were in tears," said Huey, the assistant auditor for Mendocino Country at the time. He said the measure punctured the atmosphere of "lulled complacency" that had been prevalent in county government.

Before its passage, property tax rates statewide averaged 2.7 percent of a property's assessed value. Proposition 13 set a statewide property tax rate of 1 percent, with exceptions for existing debt. The measure provided $7 billion in immediate property tax relief.

Statewide, about 100,000 public sector jobs were eliminated, mostly in California's public schools. Seventy-five branch libraries were closed.

"It lit a firestorm of controversy and dissension" in the county, Huey said, adding that it took five years for local officials to figure out how to survive under the new ground rules.

Proposition 13 rolled back the assessment value of homes to their 1975 value and capped the property tax rate at 1 percent. It limited annual assessment increases to 2 percent. The same rules apply to vacation homes and commercial property.

Proposition 13 not only lowered people's property taxes but also protected people from rising property taxes as long as they continued to own their homes. Property is reassessed only when the title changes hands.

After Proposition 13 passed, the state picked up most of the cost of education. But the state also became more reliant on other sources of revenue, such as the state income tax, that are more volatile. California's staggering $17 billion budget gap can in part be blamed on the sharp declines in income tax collections and levies on capital gains and stock options.

Locally, new fees and taxes were introduced. Because new property taxes could not be based on a property's value, a new tax was levied on every parcel based on the parcel size. Other new fees included property transfer fees, school impact fees and development fees. Special assessment districts were created to pay for public improvements that directly benefited a property.

Fort Bragg parents pay a $1 a day so their children can ride the school bus. Booster clubs pay the travel expenses of the district's sports teams. Unable to spend tax money to build a football stadium, community leaders and parents raised more than $1 million in cash and in-kind donations.

Today, governments have learned to live under the rules of Proposition 13, Huey said. "We learned to cope financially."

But services deemed unessential, like recreation programs and libraries, have taken the biggest hits.

Compared to the late 1970s, funding for the region's library system is down 35 percent, said Annette Milliron, administrator of the North Bay Cooperative Library System. Moreover, the latest state budget shortfall means another round of layoffs and a reduction in public hours. Officials are looking at cuts that would allow each of the county's five libraries to remain open one day a week. There is no money for new books, she said.

Robin Watters, manager of the Fort Bragg library, said all public services have suffered under Proposition 13. "I would give anything to have Proposition 13 undone," she said.

The new tax system changed the way local government approached development. Today, cities in urban areas compete with each other to attract big box stores like Wal-Mart, auto dealerships and strip malls, all of which provide sales tax revenue.

Development shunned

Bob Christofferson, Fort Bragg's interim city manager, said cities have become less interested in attracting industrial and office development and new housing.

Before Proposition 13, he said, all the taxpayers in the city shouldered the cost of new development, such as extending utility lines or expanding school facilities. Today, developers pay the cost. In Fort Bragg, developers pay from $15,000 to $30,000 for each house, depending on its size.

The result, Christofferson said, is higher home prices. Also, because property taxes don't generate enough money to pay for services, cities are less interested in approving new housing, thus restraining the supply of housing and driving up prices even more.

Some say the measure has produced an unfair tax system. Two identical houses on the same street can have drastically different tax bills, depending on when the owners bought the houses.

In Fort Bragg, some people who own modest ranch houses pay more in taxes than people who live in seaside estates. It's not the market value that counts, but how long the owner has lived in a house.

Ted Kidwell, who bought a 1,700-square-foot house in Fort Bragg last year, pays $2,614 in property taxes, seven times more than the previous owner would have paid under normal circumstances. The $260,000 home had previously been assessed at $38,000, its value in 1975 plus an annual 2 percent increase. However, in this case, the previous owner was a disabled veteran and actually paid no property taxes at all.

"It's entirely out of balance," Kidwell said.

State has upper hand

For local officials, though, the measure's biggest impact was the way it changed the relationship between local governments and the state. They say the measure has allowed the state to gain control over many of the budgeting and policy issues that used to be the domain of local school boards and city councils.

Proposition 13 left it up to the Legislature to decide how the 1 percent in property taxes would be distributed.

The tax cap proposed in Maine would do the same, predicts Fred Silva of the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research group. The Maine measure even copies the same language - stating that property taxes must be "apportioned according to law."

The Legislature makes the law, Silva said. "Proposition 13 gave control of the property tax to the state," he said.

To cushion the ballot measure's initial blow, the California Legislature, which had accumulated a $5 billion budget surplus at the time, was able to craft a set of bailout bills. The net effect was to give cities and counties the property tax revenues that used to fund schools. To replace the schools' lost property tax revenues, the Legislature backfilled with state funds.

In California, the counties collect property taxes. Except for schools, much of the money is distributed to local agencies based on how the money was distributed between 1975 to 1978. Because Fort Bragg before 1978 had kept taxes low, the city today receives a low share of the property tax revenues raised in the county.

New threat to schools

Until 1978, property taxes provided the bulk of revenues for Fort Bragg.

Today, the city's biggest revenue sources are $1.5 million from its 1 percent share of the 7.25 sales tax and $1.3 million from a 10 percent hotel tax. A tax on motor vehicles brings in $415,000.

Fort Bragg property owners pay $4.5 million in property taxes, but only $250,000 goes into city coffers.

Next year, because of the state's budget crisis, the state wants to take $1.3 billion from local governments and give it to schools, reducing the state's education spending by an equal amount. The city would end up with less than half of what it gets today, Christofferson said.

"Proposition 13 has changed local government as we once knew it," he said. "It has shifted the power to the state capital, so local agencies are at the mercy of the state, and that mercy has not been very good."

Before Proposition 13, the Fort Bragg City Council decided what the property tax rate should be. There were budget hearings where residents voiced their preferences for local services and whether taxpayers could afford them or not.

Proposition 13 changed that scenario.

Now, rather than deciding how much money the city needs to raise, city officials and residents decide how to spend a fixed amount of money, an amount that is adjusted upward or downward each year by complicated formulas and the decisions of state officials.

As a matter of local politics, the property tax rate has now become meaningless.

Christofferson, Mayor Jerre Melo and Schools Superintendent Steve Lund were all unable to identify the city's tax rate when asked by a visiting reporter.

The answer, 1.015 percent, was found in a folder in Huey's office in the county administration building, located on the other side of a mountain range in Ukiah, the county seat.

Huey said Californians' tax system is now so convoluted that he has no idea how his own property taxes are spent.

When it was passed in 1978, the supporters of Proposition 13 sold the measure as a way to make government more accountable.

But the resulting funding formulas and financial relationships between cities, counties, schools and the state have become so entangled that voters are increasingly unable to determine who is responsible, said Kidwell, a former developer who owns a bed-and-breakfast.

Because the system is so convoluted, Californians are unable to link the taxes they pay to specific services, he said, and are less likely to support higher taxes.

"Taxes have become a dirty word," he said.

Because of California's huge population, 34.5 million, people here have little sense that they can influence the Legislature. A member of the California Assembly - the equivalent of the Maine House of Representatives - represents nearly 500,000 people. The state Senate seats actually represent more people than the state's 54 congressional seats.

At that scale, the entire Maine Legislature would consist of two or three people.

Perhaps that's why Californians have taken matters into their own hands and have embraced initiatives. Proposition 13 started the trend. Between 1980 and 2000, 626 statewide initiatives were circulated; 123 qualified and 52 passed.

And they keep coming. California's cities are gathering signatures for an initiative that would require voter approval before the Legislature can take additional tax dollars from local governments.

At a shopping plaza last month, Mayor Melo and City Councilor Dan Gjerde were gathering signatures for an initiative.

The sign on the card table read: "Keep local taxes, fire, hospital, vehicle fees, property, recreation, cemetery, water, development, sales. Local!!!"

Thanks to the initiative process, Gjerde said, the financing of local and state government in California has become completely dysfunctional.

"Everybody is forced to go the initiative route," he said, "to protect themselves from other initiatives."

The two men gathered 80 signatures in an hour and a half. Before they signed, people often asked if the measure would affect Proposition 13. When Melo says it won't, they pick up the pen and sign it.

"Here we are," Melo marveled, "almost 30 years later, and that proposition has very strong support."

Indeed, while policy experts and academics are critical of Proposition 13, the public still likes it and is unlikely to change it anytime soon.

In a poll last year by the Public Policy Institute of California , 57 percent of respondents said they thought that Proposition 13 has turned out to be "mostly a good thing for California."

"I tell you what, this guy is not going to step forward and propose major changes to Proposition 13," Melo said. "It is very popular with the voters."

Even Anne Burham, a part-time art teacher who will likely lose her job because of the state's current budget crisis, said she has mixed feelings about Proposition 13.

The art program in the city's schools has "gradually dwindled away" since she first started working here in 1988. Yet she and her husband enjoy low property taxes because they have lived in the same house since the 1970s.

"Maybe deep down I wouldn't mind paying a little more in property taxes," Burham said. "But our land and property is the most important thing to us. We don't want to be taxed out of our home and land."

Proposition 13 delivered what it promised, said Johnston, who owns the waterfront home. It provided permanent protection from a government that didn't care about the tax burden it imposed.

"Every time the bureaucracy needed something, it raised taxes," he said. "So many people just couldn't keep up."

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

Tearful wife accepts degree USM awards to slain soldier


By KEVIN WACK, Staff Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

http://www.pressherald.com/photos/040516gelineaugrad.jpg
Staff photo by Herb Swanson
Lavinia Onitiu-Gelineau, center, and Vicki Chicoine, left, are comforted Saturday by USM faculty members after accepting a posthumous degree for Gelineau's husband and Chicoine's son, Christopher, the Guardsman who was killed April 20 in Iraq.

Before Christopher Gelineau was killed in Iraq, the Maine Guardsman and his wife were making plans for Saturday.

Lavinia Gelineau, a graduating senior at the University of Southern Maine, was going to bring a digital camera to commencement. She planned to send the recording to Mosul, where her husband was stationed with the Army National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion.

But tragedy altered those arrangements. Chris Gelineau, who was just one semester short of graduating himself, was awarded his degree posthumously during USM's 124th commencement at the Cumberland County Civic Center.

Choking back tears, Lavinia Gelineau accepted the diploma on behalf of her slain husband.

"I just hope that wherever he is, he saw me," she said afterward. "I hope that he would hold my hand because certainly in my mind I held his."

Also on stage to accept the industrial technology degree was Chris Gelineau's mother, Vicki Chicoine of Starksboro, Vt. "He wanted so much to go to college and graduate," Chicoine said. "That's why he joined the Army National Guard."

Specialist Gelineau, 23, was killed April 20 when a roadside bomb destroyed his armored Humvee. Twelve days later, at a memorial service in Portland, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant and awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

And on Saturday, the audience of around 7,500 stood and applauded for more than a minute when Gelineau's name was read.

But all the accolades could not diminish the grief felt by his widow, a native of Romania.

Standing in a crowd of smiling graduates, Lavinia Gelineau said she planned to visit her husband's grave site at Portland's Evergreen Cemetery with photos from the event. Around her neck hung his military dog tag; a button with his picture was pinned to her gown.

During the ceremony, she crossed the stage three times, accepting her own two degrees in English and business administration.

The ceremony's keynote address was given by Ray Anderson, chief executive officer of Atlanta-based Interface Inc. The company, which manufactures carpeting, flooring and fabrics, has a reputation for environmentally sustainable business practices.

Anderson's speech to about 1,000 of USM's 1,545 graduates focused on the planet's deteriorating health.

"You must continue to redesign the economic and industrial system," Anderson said. "You have the power. Change the system - from the inside for the better."

USM awarded honorary degrees to Anderson and Ruth Lepper Gardner, a 98-year-old artist and cartographer from Southport.

UNE commencement

A few hours later at the Civic Center, the University of New England awarded more than 900 degrees at its 34th commencement ceremony.

Chief Justice Leigh Saufley of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court told graduates they are entering adulthood in an age when ethical scandals are plentiful, mentioning Martha Stewart and Enron.

The 49-year-old chief justice told graduates that their generation should strive to be remembered, 20 years from today, for making ethical choices.

"You have the chance to turn the tide," she said in a speech that invoked Rosa Parks and Abraham Lincoln. "Stand by your convictions."

Saufley also shared stories from her early days on the bench, when there were few female judges in Maine. She recalled one lawyer who told her, in a botched offer of praise, "You try a case just like a man."

Honorary degrees were awarded to Saufley, who is Maine's first female chief justice, and Aziz Mekouar, Morocco's ambassador to the United States.

Commencement ceremonies were also held Saturday at the University of Maine's campuses in Farmington and Presque Isle.

Rhea Cote Robbins, director of the Franco-American Women's Institute in Brewer, gave the keynote address in Farmington. John Hatch, who started a foundation that provides financial services to the world's poorest families, spoke in Presque Isle.

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

New garage staff may aid police on Westbrook streets


By GRACE MURPHY, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


WESTBROOK — Attendants in the city's new Dana Court parking garage could end up writing tickets, instead of taking them. In addition to keeping the garage clean and safe, attendants would enforce parking laws in spots throughout the downtown.

For years, there were few consequences for people who parked illegally downtown, and no incentive to pay tickets.

With new businesses moving into the area, the city is cracking down on scofflaws. Having garage attendants help police with parking enforcement would be Westbrook's latest attempt to free up parking spaces downtown.

The Police Department this winter began consistently enforcing parking laws for the first time since 1996, and City Hall began billing for unpaid fines.

There is an increased demand for parking spaces downtown, and city administrators recommend using parking attendants to help enforce the laws, according to Director of Public Services Paul Boudreau.

The parking garage is expected to meet the demand created by the 450 jobs that disability insurance provider CORE Inc. is bringing downtown.

Some insurance employees are already working downtown, and construction on the garage is expected to wrap up in early June, Boudreau says.

Annual operating costs of $131,000 would include funding for one full-time employee and two part-time employees, who would tour the garage once an hour and help patrol for parking violations downtown, according to City Administrator Jerre Bryant.

Reaction to the prospect of increased parking enforcement has been mixed downtown.

Sarah Anthony, program director at Mission Possible Teen Center, says parking was always a problem when the center was located in the Dana Warp Mill building on Bridge Street.

"It was a horrible situation for the staff, and people would drive by to drop off donations and they wouldn't do it because there weren't spaces available," she said.

Across the street from the mill building is a deli, where cars zip in and out of 15-minute parking spots. Owner Steve Lam**** says the current system seems to work well.

Chicky Stoltz, co-owner of Chicky's Fine Diner on Bridge Street, says parking hasn't been an issue for him in the few weeks since the restaurant opened.

"There's free city parking in the lot behind us, there's a lot behind Warren Furniture Co., and a lot behind CVS," he said. "I don't have any complaints at the moment."

[Maine Finn]

Cape men stranded on Rainier


By DAVID HENCH, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


with staff reports

Rescue climbers hope to reach two Cape Elizabeth men today near the summit of Washington's Mount Rainier, where one of the men suffered a serious head injury in a fall.

Peter Cooley was being cared for by his climbing partner, Scott Richards, after falling Saturday on Liberty Ridge, one of the mountain's most difficult climbs. The pair huddled on the steep slope of ice and rock at an altitude of 12,300 feet, where Richards was able to pitch a tent and boil water.

Whiteout conditions slowed rescue climbers and thwarted attempts to reach the men by helicopter.

Cooley and Richards are veteran climbers who were well-prepared for their ascent, and have plenty of food and fuel for melting snow into drinking water to keep from dehydrating, according to the National Park Service. Both are competitive runners and are in top physical condition.

"If there is anybody you'd want to be in this situation with, it would be Peter or Scott. People have a lot of faith in their abilities," said Virginia Hanson of Cape Elizabeth, a friend of both men. "These are experienced climbers in peak condition and this trip wasn't taken lightly, and the proof of that is the fact that Scott was able to get to Peter and protect him and they're hanging in there."

Cooley and Richards are highly regarded among a wide circle of friends in Cape Elizabeth, many of whom gathered for a prayer vigil Sunday night at St. Alban's Episcopal Church, where Cooley is a former treasurer.

"They're both highly competitive runners, but they're not competitive men," Hanson said. "They are not in-your-face macho kind of guys. They're both very compassionate men."

Cooley, 39, is married and the father of two boys, who are in kindergarten and third grade, and a fifth-grade daughter. He coaches youth soccer and his son's T-ball team. Originally from Connecticut, Cooley has a master's degree in business administration from Stanford University in California and works for Idexx Laboratories.

"He's brilliant without being show-offy," Hanson said. "You'd never know he went to Stanford. He's not a guy who would ever mention it."

Cooley, who has lived in Cape Elizabeth for about 10 years, serves on the board of the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust and is a volunteer with the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Portland.

Richards, 42, is married and has a son in fifth grade and a daughter in third. He went to Calhoun Engineering School in Easton, Md. He was an engineering officer with the merchant marine for many years and now is co-owner of a business called Maine Automation.

Richards grew up in Cape Elizabeth and graduated from Cape Elizabeth High School, where his father served as principal for many years. He coaches girls and boys soccer, serves on the board of Casco Bay Soccer, coached Little League and volunteers with the Boy Scouts.

Friends say he is cheerful and smart, and an ideal person to be caring for his friend in a crisis. "He's an engineer and his mind is incredible," said Tim Queeney of Cape Elizabeth, also a friend of both men.

Cooley once worked as part of a search and rescue team on Mount McKinley in Alaska, the highest peak in North America, and has solo climbed it. This was his fourth ascent of Mount Rainier, which is the fifth highest peak in the 48 contiguous states.

Richards started climbing in junior high school and has climbed Mount Blanc and Mount Chamonix in the French Alps and climbs Mount Washington every winter, according to friends.

The two had set out in 2001 to climb the Liberty Ridge ascent, a challenging mix of glaciers and steep faces of ice and rock, but had to opt for an easier route because of bad weather. The two men left Maine on Thursday, and began their climb the same day, friends said. After two days of hiking, they woke early Saturday to make their final push for the 14,400-foot summit.

Richards called 911 at 6:10 a.m. to report that Cooley had fallen, the Park Service said. Cooley was leading the climb, setting anchors, when he fell about 30 feet. His fall was stopped by a safety rope and he was wearing a helmet, but the impact still dealt him a serious head injury and hurt his leg and arm.

Richards pitched a tent on Liberty Ridge at the base of a structure called the Black Pyramid and waited for help to arrive.

"Where they're at is probably one of the worst places to have to be rescued from," said park spokeswoman Patti Wold. "It's very steep, very icy. It's some of the more difficult terrain in the park."

A pair of National Park Service climbing rangers set off Saturday, in hopes of climbing through the night and reaching the men before dawn Sunday. But bad weather slowed them down and they were only able to make camp about 8,800 feet into the climb.

Other rescuers were climbing an easier, southern trail in case it turned out to be quicker to go over the summit and down the north side to where the men are waiting.

"If the weather conditions improve, certainly we will get to them as quickly as we can, even if that means climbing through the night," said Kevin Bacher, spokesman for the National Park Service. "The number one priority is the saftey of the rescue personnel. We do not want to add to the problem. Once night falls, it becomes very difficult to climb safely, especially in the weather conditions they're facing up there." Temperatures on Sunday were 16 degrees with occasional snow.

An Oregon National Guard helicopterhas been unable to penetrate snowy and rapidly changing weather conditions, though Park Service rangers hoped the weather would break. "Every time we've tried to approach them with a helicopter, it's been just whiteout conditions," Bacher said. A small helicopter found an opening in the clouds late Sunday and dropped supplies to the stranded climbers, including water, food, extra sleeping bags and coats and a park radio with extra batteries. The helicopter was unable to attempt a rescue, the Park Service said.

Rescuers also spoke with Richards Sunday night.

"Peter continues to be in serious condition but doesn't seem to hae gotten any worse. Everything is stable," Bacher said. "He is experiencing a little bit of dehydration. It's been hard to get water into him given his condition."

The injury is considered life-threatening and Cooley was drifting in and out of consciousness, was delirious and had become combative when Richards would try to help him.

Carrying Cooley down the mountain would be one of the most technically challenging rescues to occur on the mountain in years, Bacher said. "It's going to be more than just carry them out. The slopes they are on are often more vertical than horizontal."

[Maine Finn]

From the Bangor Daily News.

By Bill Trotter, Of the NEWS Staff
Last updated: Monday, May 17, 2004
Woman dies in fall near Sand Beach



ACADIA NATIONAL PARK - A Mount Desert woman has become the park's third fatality this year after she fell on Saturday off rocks near Sand Beach, park officials said Sunday.The body of Joanne Demartini, 50, was spotted around 2:30 p.m. Saturday at the bottom of a 45-foot drop near the shore path that follows the Park Loop Road, Ranger Neal Labris said Sunday. A passer-by who spotted her body and park personnel unsuccessfully tried to revive Demartini before she was ****ounced dead at the scene, he said.


Labris said an autopsy to determine the woman's cause of death likely will be performed this week at the state Medical Examiner's Office in Augusta.

Park officials believe Demartini was walking by herself along the shore when she fell, the ranger said.

"Nobody saw her fall," he said. "We're not sure if she slipped and fell or got dizzy."

Foul play is not suspected in Demartini's death, according to Labris. The woman, who has relatives in New York state and in California, is believed to have moved recently by herself to Mount Desert Island, he said.

Labris said there are short paths that lead from the maintained path along the road to viewing points at the top of the steep rocky shore. Park officials believe Demartini fell around 2 p.m., not long before another park visitor took the same side path and saw her body near the high-tide mark.

"Somebody walked out on a trail and saw her at the bottom of the rocks," the ranger said.

Labris said that because park officials have not determined why Demartini fell, the fatality has not highlighted any specific safety concerns about using the park. He said park visitors, as a general practice, always should be careful when they are near cliffs or steep grades.

"There are areas like this throughout the park," he said.

Demartini's death is the third reported fatality in Acadia National Park so far in 2004.

Stephen Kennedy, 63, of Washouga, Wash., died April 3 after he flipped over the handlebars of a bicycle he was riding on Park Loop Road and struck a locked metal gate near Otter Cliffs.

The body of Benjamin A. Ellis, 21, of Granville Ohio, was found March 7 on top of Great Hill near Route 233 in Bar Harbor. Ellis apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, park officials have said.

My mum was called out to this one.

[Maine Finn]

Cape climber dies after rescue


By DAVID HENCH, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

http://www.pressherald.com/photos/040518climber.jpg
Associated Press
Seriously injured after a fall, Peter Cooley of Cape Elizabeth is rescued off Mt. Rainier Monday by an Oregon National Guard helicopter. Cooley, 39, fell 30 feet early Saturday. His climbing partner, Scott Richards, 42, also of Cape Elizabeth, is descending with park rangers.

A Cape Elizabeth mountain climber died Monday night at a Washington hospital several hours after a helicopter lifted him off the upper reaches of Mount Rainier. Peter Cooley, 39, had fallen 30 feet and injured his head two days earlier.

"We have been advised he has passed away," said Mary deTracy, a medical investigator with the Pierce County medical examiner's office in Tacoma.

Several attempts to reach Cooley by helicopter earlier Monday failed because of foul weather, but the massive Oregon National Guard Chinook helicopter was finally able to get through the clouds and snow and lower a basket that was used to hoist him off the exposed mountain face. His climbing partner, Scott Richards, planned to descend with park rangers who climbed almost nonstop for two days to reach the pair.

National Park Service rangers at a command post watched the rescue on television as a local TV station had sent its own helicopter to the area with a film crew. Rangers watched anxiously as the litter was hoisted up into the belly of the helicopter.

"We all waited til it was completely in and then there was a big cheer," said Patti Wold, spokeswoman for the Park Service at Mount Rainier. "It was just an excellent feeling to know he was on his way to the hospital."

Their elation was short-lived.

Cooley was declared dead after being taken to Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma. He was to be transferred to a smaller helicopter and taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, the state's most advanced trauma center with specialists in head trauma.

Cooley was reported in stable condition Monday afternoon but was exhibiting signs of a life-threatening head injury and appeared to have shoulder and leg injuries, Wold said. He was in and out of consciousness, incoherent and agitated.

Two Park Service climbing rangers reached Richards and Cooley at noon, Pacific time, Monday after setting out Saturday. They were communicating with doctors at a local hospital for guidance in caring for Cooley and loaded him into the litter raised by the helicopter.

"It's a huge process. It takes two hours to get him in the litter and get him packaged. Then they have to go up and over this vertical wall to get him to a place where they can actually start lowering him," Wold said.

A final attempt with the Yakima-based helicopter was successful about 5 p.m. Pacific time.

The parents of Cooley, 39, had just arrived at a Park Service headquarters at Longmire when the helicopter rescued their son.

Cooley fell early Saturday while climbing a steep portion of Liberty Ridge, which is one of the most difficult ascents of Mount Rainier. A rope stopped his fall and his helmet spared him from further head injury, though he also injured an arm and a leg.

Richards, 42, pitched a tent where Cooley fell, at an altitude of 12,300 feet, and was dripping water into his mouth to keep him hydrated. He called for help on his cell phone. Cooley remained delusional and combative for two nights while waiting for help to arrive.

Cooley and Richards, both veteran climbers, had previously scaled Mount Rainier as well as other major peaks in North America and Europe.

Both men have families in Cape Elizabeth and coached youth sports. They left town Thursday to climb Mount Rainier, the fifth-highest peak in the contiguous 48 states.

"He's an excellent mountain climber," said Cooley's aunt, Kristi Witker, of New York. "But . . . my last conversation with him, I said, 'Please give up mountain climbing. You're just getting to that point where you've been so lucky and nothing's ever happened, but luck runs out.'

"All of us wanted him to stop mountain climbing," she said.

Wet, cold and snowy weather made the rescue slower and more difficult than hoped.

The lead team of rescue climbers had planned to hike through the night Saturday and arrive before dawn Sunday, but whiteout conditions and heavy snow left them 2,000 feet below the two men as Sunday night fell.

Although weather initially improved Monday, a large, twin-rotor Oregon National Guard helicopter had to turn back to its staging base in Yakima because of poor visibility.

A smaller, private helicopter hired by the Park Service was unable to get to the site Monday. It did drop food, water, extra cold weather gear and a radio to the men Sunday evening, but the single rotor helicopter lacked the capability to hoist someone from the ground.

Jess Hagerman, a head pilot with Worldwide, the company working with the Park Service, said it is impossible to fly a mountain rescue mission when a pilot cannot see.

"It's crummy, raining and lots of clouds, and whiteout conditions when you get farther up in the mountains or up on the mountain itself," Hagerman said. "The weather is so unpredictable up there and it changes from moment to moment and you have to be able to see to fly."

Even though Worldwide's A-Star helicopter was able to get close enough to drop supplies, even one of its top pilots couldn't land there, Hagerman said.

"Liberty Ridge is such a jagged little piece of property going up the north side of the mountain, there just isn't room at all to land," he said. "There are very few flat spots on the sides of Mount Rainier, and they're probably a couple thousand feet below the summit."

Pilots can land on an incline with just one skid touching the mountain, but the maneuver can't be done on steep slopes because there is not clearance for the helicopter's rotors, he said.

The men were camped on one of the most difficult spots on the mountain to perform a rescue - a 45-degree slope of ice and rock.

Mount Rainier, an active volcano encased in more than 35 square miles of snow and ice, is a popular climbing destination. Though it is not the highest peak in the contiguous 48 states, it is one of the most dramatic, rising alone far above the surrounding landscape.

The attempt to rescue the Maine climbers was the first of the popular climbing season on Rainier, which runs from late April to September. Roughly 5,000 to 6,000 climbers reach the summit each year.

In 2002, Mount Rainier had six climbing-related fatalities and 18 major upper-mountain rescues. There were eight major accidents last year, but no fatalities.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Maine Finn]

Yarmouth shooting kills man in vehicle


By JOSHUA L. WEINSTEIN, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


http://www.pressherald.com/photos/040518yarmouthshooting.jpg
Staff photo by John Patriquin
Yarmouth police Sgt. Daniel Gallant, officer Roger Moore and Lt. Dean Perry check the parking lot of the visitors center where a shooting took place Monday. The victim's SUV is across Route 1 in the background.

YARMOUTH — A man died after being shot Monday, possibly by a stranger, while he sat in an SUV in the parking lot of the Maine Tourist Information Center in Yarmouth. The man, whose name was not released, drove across Route 1 after the shooting and crashed into a tree just north of the DeLorme map company headquarters.

Witnesses told police that the suspect and a passenger drove away in a small black sedan, which may have had front-end damage.

Police offered few other details Monday, saying they were investigating to determine motive, identity and other details, including whether the suspect and the victim knew each other.

Maine State Police Sgt. Matt Stewart said the shooting happened about 4:10 p.m., that the victim was "an older gentleman" and that the gunman was a younger man with a large or muscular frame.

The victim, he said, was dead on arrival at Maine Medical Center. His vehicle had a New Hampshire registration.

Investigators from the state police and the Yarmouth Police Department were at the scene through the afternoon and most of the night.

Lois and Martyn Allen of Tampa, Fla., were in their car in the parking lot when the shooting happened. Lois Allen said she heard a single shot.

"I asked my husband if he thought it was a shot," she said.

Just then, a man who had been mowing the lawn in front of the visitors center shouted to call 911.

Lois Allen called authorities and then she and her husband went to check on the victim, who had managed to drive the short distance across Route 1 before crashing into the tree.

"He was a little bit coherent," she said.

She described the man as at least in his 50s and bald.

Allen said the man who had been mowing the lawn told her that he saw two men apparently urinating in the parking lot. Just after that, she said, one of the men walked up to the SUV and fired a single shot through the window.

She wondered whether the victim had admonished the men before being shot.

Stewart said police had not determined whether the victim and the suspect had spoken.

Allen said the circumstances are frightening.

"It's scary," she said. "It makes you wonder about ever saying anything."

She said it was frightening, too, because the shooting happened on a lovely, sunny afternoon in a fairly busy area.

"You don't think that anybody will shoot," she said. "It's broad daylight."

Anyone who was in the area at the time of the shooting and might have information should call state police at 800-228-0857.

The killing was the first in Yarmouth since 1998.

In August of that year, a man pushed a woman off the Cousins Island Bridge. Everett Ashby, who lived in Portland, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the killing of Amy Gaines, who lived in Westbrook. In 2001, Ashby was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Four o'clock update.

From staff and wire reports.


State police investigating parking lot shooting death

YARMOUTH — State police were searching Tuesday for a car believed to have been used by a gunman accused of fatally shooting a New Hampshire motorist in broad daylight in the parking lot of a tourist information center.

Witnesses told police that the suspect and a passenger drove away in a small black sedan with front-end damage late Monday afternoon.

The victim was shot inside his parked sport utility vehicle. Afterward, he drove across U.S. 1 and his SUV crashed into a tree. He was ****ounced dead at the Maine Medical Center, troopers said.

An autopsy of the victim, who was from New Hampshire, was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, and Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Steve McCausland said.

The victim's identity was not released Tuesday morning as authorities continued to try to contact family members.

State Police detectives, who continued to search for the assailant whose vehicle was last seen headed south, were investigating the motive, and whether the victim knew the assailant.

McCausland said the car's driver was described as a white male with a rugged build who was wearing a long, light colored shirt. No description was given of his passenger.


Associated Press

:cantbeli:

:(

[Maine Finn]

Now some good news from the Bangor Daily.


MAINE SOLDIERS COME TOGETHER IN IRAQ

http://www.bangornews.com/editorialnews/photogallery/051804maineiraqsoldiers.jpg

Six men from Maine who are serving in Baghdad pose earlier this month at their compound with a U.S. flag that was mailed from maine by friends of one of the group. "It is certainly a unique phenomenon to find among the 200 or so soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen in the CJTF-7 Joint Operations Center (Forward) - six Mainers workering together," wrote U.S. Army Spc. Neil Redman of Searsport in an e-mail to the Bangor Daily News. "It took a couple of months for all of us to figure out we wer all from Maine - one person randomly talking to another, and then someone would say, 'Hey, I know someone else from Maine!' And so the photo happened." From left are Lt. Greg Badger, U.S. Navy, of Brunswick; 1st Lt. Roger Kennedy, U.S. Marine Corps, of Steuben; Lt. Craig Speer, U.S. Navy of Topsham; Redman; Lt. Col David Knapp, U.S. Army Reserve, of Fryeburg; and Maj. Ed Radgowski, U.S. Army Reserve, of Portland. (Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army Spc. Neil Redman)

[Maine Finn]

Froom the Portland Press Herald.

Screeners uncover dozens of knives


Associated Press

©Copyright 2004 Associated Press


BANGOR — Used for the first time at the Penobscot County Courthouse, X-ray machines and screeners found nearly three dozen knives and a box cutter, underscoring a need for greater security, officials said.

Court security was bolstered last week when the Maine Supreme Judicial Court used the Penobscot County Courthouse to hear cases for two days. An X-ray machine sitting idle since last year was put to use.

Screeners removed 34 knives from people, as well as a pair of scissors and eight utility tools over the course of two days, scanning more than 700 items, Penobscot County commissioners learned Tuesday.

Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross said people often carry knives, but the concern is that pocketknives or even scissors could become weapons inside a courthouse, where emotions and tensions rise with judges' rulings.

Such security lapses that allow them to enter a courthouse mean security at state courts is not good enough, said state Court Administrator Ted Glessner.

The first phase of improving security in Maine's courts was purchasing the X-ray equipment, Glessner said. Phase two will call for staffing the equipment.

While machines can find weapons, they cannot contend with the situations such as disputes, violent outbreaks, even drugs being passed to and from inmates, Ross said.

''There's no substitute for the experienced officer,'' he said.

Finding money to pay for added security has been a daunting task, Glessner said.

It was only in the waning days of the latest session that the Legislature approved $100,000 for handling the security equipment.

Glessner said the money will only go so far and could likely mean rotating security staff and equipment from court to court.

It's about bloody time they woke up. :cantbeli:

[Maine Finn]

From the Bangor Daily News.

By Misty Edgecomb, Of the NEWS Staff

Mars Hill wind project nears next phase

The construction season has begun, yet a proposed wind farm in Mars Hill still hasn't received its permits to place 33 turbines atop Mars Hill Mountain in Aroostook County. The developer and town officials anticipating economic gains have been waiting as the Department of Environmental Protection seeks a solution to some biologists' worries that the turbines could harm birds and other wildlife.

That wait could soon be over, a DEP spokeswoman said Wednesday.

The project's developer, Evergreen Wind Power LLC, had initially expected to start construction soon after mud season and be producing electricity by November.

But two months ago, state and Maine Audubon biologists opposed the permit on the grounds that Evergreen had not sufficiently researched the effects on birds and bats. The area is not known to be a major migration route, but previous studies have indicated that more than 70 species of birds and bats may live or pass through the area.

The company argued that its modern turbines are designed to rotate more slowly and pose far less risk to birds than older models. However, DEP delayed granting the permit to resolve the issue. In recent weeks, both the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and Maine Audubon sent additional letters to the DEP.

Changing his department's earlier position, DIF&W Commissioner Roland "Dan" Martin said in an April 23 letter that the developer should be granted the necessary permits so long as the company agrees to future research and other conditions.

However, a Maine Audubon biologist argued in a May 12 response, that although no permit should be approved without DIF&W's conditions, Evergreen's application won't really be complete until studies on bird and bat populations -particularly during migration periods - are completed.

Data about the migration routes of birds and bats across inland landscapes just isn't available, said Sally Stockwell of Maine Audubon.

"Since this is likely to be the first project to be sited [in Maine], we think it's important to set the standard for the type of research we'd like to see before a project is approved," Stockwell said.

DEP project manager Robin Clukey said Wednesday that she expects Commissioner Dawn Gallagher to rule on the permit within the next month. The project will most likely be approved, but with conditions, Clukey said.

The conditions proposed by DIF&W include the requirement that a $100,000 fund be set aside to fund spring and fall bird migration research using radar, as well as a two-year graduate research project to evaluate the effects of the turbines.

Also, the lighting at the site should conform to minimum Federal Aviation Administration standards, and the developer should agree to address any wildlife problems discovered during the research, Martin wrote.

Finally, Martin states that the Mars Hill project is not to be taken as precedent, and that future projects should require pre-construction studies.

Evergreen has not opposed the conditions. And Peter Gish, general counsel for Evergreen's parent company, UPC Wind Partners, said Wednesday that the bird discussion has not altered the project's timeline.

Rather, Gish worries that debate over a federal tax credit being considered by Congress might push the project into next year. The $68 million project's financing hinges on approval of the tax credit, and although the Senate voted for the measure earlier this month, the House of Representatives may not take action until mid-summer. If the credit isn't approved by next month, Evergreen could need an additional season to complete its construction work, he said.

"We're starting to bump up against the time frame," Gish said. "We're keeping our fingers crossed."

One of my friends is from Mars Hill. I think I'll pass this one along.

[Maine Finn]

Interesting little bit I found in the Press Herald about my college.

From the Portland Press Herald.

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

SMCC plans campus overhaul


By MARK PETERS, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


SOUTH PORTLAND — Officials at Southern Maine Community College are planning a decade-long overhaul of the waterfront campus that includes new and renovated academic buildings, an additional residence hall and more parking. The improvements, costing $50 million to $60 million, would address the college's strong growth, aging buildings and outdated equipment. The plan would answer a demand for more parking by adding 300 spaces, and eliminate a waiting list for on-campus housing.

"We have almost 1,000 more students than we had a year ago. . . . Growth has really been pushing it," said SMCC President James Ortiz.

Almost all of the planned improvements would take place on the existing 64-acre campus at Spring Point, with only four properties on Pickett Street targeted for acquisition. SMCC officials said, however, that they do not plan to aggressively pursue the lots.

Progress on the long-term plan, college officials said, will depend on money. The college already has $300,000 in federal funding and $4.2 million from a bond package that Maine voters approved in November. Ortiz said the college will do fund-raising, look for further state borrowing and consider revenue bonds repaid with housing fees from the new dorm.

All seven community colleges in Maine are putting together campus plans for building and renovation projects over the next decade. The Board of Trustees of the Maine Community College System will review the plans this fall and start to determine how much money to propose borrowing.

"The needs continue to grow. It is a big issue for us," said Alice Kirkpatrick, director of public affairs for the community college system.

Kirkpatrick said a tuition increase at the seven schools would not be tied directly to building projects. But system officials would consider a tuition increase as they look at the overall financial demands of Maine's community colleges, she said.

SMCC's plan, which will be completed in the coming weeks, is receiving praise from South Portland leaders. They like that the college does not plan to expand into surrounding neighborhoods or limit community access to the campus. They also applauded SMCC's goal to preserve the campus' past as a military fort and make any new buildings compatible.

"There was a sense of relief that there was a reasonable plan," said City Councilor David Jacobs, who represents the neighborhoods surrounding the college.

Jacobs said the process of writing the plan could have included more public participation, but he said the college administration is doing a better job of communicating and working with the neighborhoods.

"I don't get the impression that what they are doing will have much impact on the neighborhood at all," said South Portland Mayor Linda Boudreau.

Ortiz, the college's president, said work could start this fall. Early projects would include repairs to existing buildings, renovation of six science labs and construction of four new labs. Students in SMCC's construction program would build a new day-care facility for training students in the early childhood education program.

Work over the next five years, Ortiz said, should include converting the campus rotunda that now houses the day-care program into a new dining hall. The old dining hall would be converted into classrooms. Construction would begin on a new dormitory around the same time.

The final projects include construction of three new buildings, one for the marine science and plant and soil technology programs, and two for the applied trade and technology programs.

The plan also includes smaller projects such as a building addition for a new bookstore and cafe, and the construction of additional parking lots.



FACILITIES PLAN FOR SOUTHERN MAINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE


SMCC's building and renovation plan, expected to take a decade, would address the South Portland campus' growing enrollment, aging buildings and outdated equipment.

A new day-care center for the early childhood education program.

Renovation and expansion of science labs.

Renovation of rotunda building into new dining hall.

Conversion of existing dining hall into classroom or studio space.

Repairs to existing buildings, including new roofs, doors and windows.

Construction of a 240-bed residence hall.

Renovation of the 50-bed Surfsite residence hall.

Addition of 300 parking spaces at various locations on campus.

New buildings for applied trade and technology programs.

New building for marine science and plant and soil technology programs.

[Maine Finn]

18 departments fight Topsham fire

By JESSICA DURKIN, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


http://www.pressherald.com/photos/040714rainbow.jpg
Associated Press Photo by Robert F. Bukaty

Lisbon Falls firefighters, working under a rainbow created as light disperses in their spray, soak the remains of several buildings that were destroyed by a fire Tuesday morning at Grimmel Industries in Topsham. The metal recycling facility has had four fires in the past nine years. The company said its recycling operation would continue.


http://www.pressherald.com/photos/040714chibroski.jpg
Staff photo by Gordon Chibroski

Firefighters douse the smoldering remains Tuesday at Grimmel Industries. The blaze took more than three hours to control because of water supply problems and the fact that it involved material inside buildings at the metal recycling facility.


TOPSHAM — An early morning fire Tuesday reduced three buildings at a metal recycling plant to a smoldering pile of debris. Eighteen fire departments fought the fire at Grimmel Industries, along the Androscoggin River in the village of Pejepscot. The fire, which began in a pile of metal scrap, was the fourth at the plant in nine years. No one was working when the fire started, and no one was injured.

Firefighters arrived at the plant, just off River Road, shortly before 3 a.m. Officials said firefighters couldn't control the blaze immediately because of water supply problems during the first hour.

"We couldn't keep the gallonage going to control the fire - we'd flow water, then we'd lose it," said Topsham Deputy Fire Chief Shawn Larrabee.

He said tank trucks couldn't pump water fast enough to control the blaze, and the flames prevented firefighters from getting hoses into the river to provide additional water.

Topsham firefighters were joined by departments from 17 other communities, ranging from Falmouth to Richmond.

Traffic on nearby Route 196, which connects Topsham and Lewiston, was disrupted several times during the morning as truck tanks were refilled from hydrants near the fire.

The blaze, which took more than three hours to contain, was extinguished by 11 a.m. Two tanker units, one from Lisbon and one from Topsham, remained at the site at midday. All that remained were smoldering piles of metal.

The state Fire Marshal's Office went to the scene to investigate, but listed the cause as undetermined, mainly because the damage was so extensive, officials said.

The fire woke up neighbors in Pejepscot village.

"It was peaceful last night, but then I heard the explosion at 2 a.m.," said Wilbur Wilson, who lives a few doors from the site. "Smoke was going downriver. It didn't come up this way at all."

A spokesman at Grimmel said the fire did not damage equipment, and that the recycling business would remain in operation.

Grimmel Industries bought the property from Pejepscot Paper Co. In 1995, recyclable material on the site burned in a fire that was attributed to arson. Fires also broke out in 1998 and 2002, causing damage to piles of recyclable materials.

Larrabee said previous fires at Grimmel were easier to control because they occurred in outdoor piles of scrap metal. This time, the fire involved material stored inside, increasing the challenge.

"When the buildings got going, it became difficult for us," Larrabee said. "Usually it's the materials they grind up there (that burn). This time, it was the materials that got into the buildings, so it was more difficult than the last two fires."

[A Soldier]

Yawn anything else

[Maine Finn]

Yawn anything else

Hey, man, what's your problem, anyway? What have I done to you to warrant this sudden disrespect? If you don't want to read the articles I post here, don't bother wasting bandwith by commenting. If you have something intelligent and constructive to say, then by all means, say it. Otherwise, don't bother.

~Emily

[A Soldier]

Last time I checked this wasn't Maine News Forums so I was wondering what warranted 4 pages of it. Didn't mean the disrespect. p-)

[Maine Finn]

Last time I checked this wasn't Maine News Forums so I was wondering what warranted 4 pages of it. Didn't mean the disrespect. p-)

Sure.

Last time I checked, this was the Off-Topic Forum. Meaning I can post articles from Maine newspapers if I want, when I want, about anything that I feel interesting.

If you have an issue with that, tough luck.

There's an old saying I heard again a while back. "As Maine goes, so goes the nation."

What affects some can and often does affect all. Something to think about.

~Emily

[Fintin]

Last time I checked this wasn't Maine News Forums so I was wondering what warranted 4 pages of it. Didn't mean the disrespect. p-)

yeah buddy...but that big off-topic at the top...that should give you a clue... ;)

[Maine Finn]

I believe that this article may prove my point.

From the Portland Press Herald.

Labor shortage cuts wood supply


By EDWARD D. MURPHY, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc

The way Ron Lovaglio sees it, wood should be fairly flying out of Maine's forests. The weather hasn't been too hot; it's been fairly dry; and prices for wood have been strong.

The only thing missing, said Lovaglio, the regional manager for Sappi Paper, is enough workers to cut the wood. Canadians represent nearly a quarter of Maine's loggers, and they aren't being allowed into the country. The resulting shortage of wood fiber could ripple across Maine, according to a new paper-industry study, causing temporary mill shutdowns, layoffs and hundreds of millions of dollars in lost wages.

Maine usually relies on Canada for 700 of the 3,000 loggers who work the Maine woods, cutting trees for sawmills to process into lumber and for paper mills to turn into paper. But in March, the federal government determined that a cap on the number of visas for foreign non-agricultural workers had been reached, and that no more would be allowed into the country until Oct. 1.

Lovaglio said paper mills are starting to see tighter supplies of wood and pulp.

"The trends are not looking good," he said, adding that the situation comes at a difficult time for mills. The market is just starting to recover from a long slump, and American manufacturers are being helped by a weakening dollar that makes U.S. goods cheaper overseas.

"To have to fight and claw your way back in (to the market), it's just the worst time for this to be happening," Lovaglio said.

A bill in Congress would raise the number of visas allowed annually, but that legislation has not made much progress. Maine's two senators also have been seeking help from the departments of Labor and Homeland Security.

One step would be to reclassify the loggers as agricultural workers.

Loggers now get visas under the classification that has the 66,000-worker cap. But if they were considered agricultural workers, there would be no limit on the number allowed into the United States.

A second route would be to get an exemption from Homeland Security, which oversees immigration services. Thomas Ridge, secretary of the department, has the power to allow temporary exemptions to the visa requirement.

Spokeswomen for Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both Republicans, said the letters seeking the changes went out early this week. Neither senator has received a reply.

Neither the Department of Labor nor Homeland Security had any comment on the situation Wednesday. Spokesmen said they could not say when the departments might respond or act on the requests.

The senators also are considering a change in the law that would allow workers who received the visas in the past to get them again, without falling under the cap.

The stakes are huge.

A study by the Maine Forest Products Council, the Maine Pulp and Paper Council and the Forest Resources Association said a failure to get the Canadian loggers into the country soon could cut wood production by 4.4 million tons, more than a quarter of the statewide harvest.

The loss of production, coupled with already-high prices for wood, could lead to mill shutdowns and layoffs, and potentially cost the state an estimated 2,921 jobs directly, with a payroll of $154 million.

The loss of those jobs could snowball through the economy, particularly in the rural areas that are most reliant on the mills, the study said. That could mean another 6,000 jobs lost, with a payroll of $150 million.

Even a less dramatic cut in wood production would have serious consequences, the report said, since it could lead mill owners to shut down individual machines or order temporary layoffs as a result of high prices and a low supply of wood.

Lovaglio said the solution isn't to simply entice people to sign up for logging work. The industry is heavily dependent on technology, he said, and the Canadian workers who can't get visas run complex machinery that can cost as much as $500,000.

"The problem is, this equipment is specialized," he said. "You can't pull somebody off the street to operate it."

Lovaglio said timing worked against the Canadian workers, and the industry was unaware that the cap was being reached in early spring.

Most workers get 11-month visas and take off most of April, mud season in the Maine woods. When they reapplied for visas to return to work in May, they found the limit had been hit and visas wouldn't be available.

Waiting until the new federal fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 to get the visas will be too late, Lovaglio said.

"For us, this can't wait for November or December for a solution," he said. "We need something now or else there will be a serious impact on the economy in Maine and jobs."

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald

Portland planning flu shot lottery

By ANN S. KIM, Portland Press Herald Writer


Portland, which has received less than 10 percent of the flu vaccine it expected to have this year, announced Wednesday that the city will hold a lottery to administer flu shots to its most vulnerable residents.

The city ordered 3,000 doses for this flu season but has only 290 doses on hand. The 23 city-sponsored clinics that were to have started this week have been canceled.

City residents who fall into one of several high-risk groups - adults age 65 and older, pregnant women, and adults between the ages of 19 and 64 who have chronic medical conditions - are eligible for the lottery.

Vaccinations of other high-risk groups - nursing home residents, children between the ages of 6 and 23 months and children up to age 18 with underlying health conditions - will not be handled through the city lottery. The state is working with nursing home populations and distributing pediatric doses to doctors' offices.

Gerald Cayer, director of the city's Health and Human Services Department, proposed a lottery after hearing a radio report Saturday about one in Bloomfield, N.J. Also contributing to the decision were reports of people waiting in lines for hours at clinics and still being unable to get a shot.

"It became clear it really is a fair - probably the fairest - way to administer flu vaccine," Cayer said.

The idea may be catching on. Bloomfield officials have heard from at least 10 other health departments wanting to know more about using a lottery to distribute vaccine, said Karen Lore, the supervisor of the township's Division of Human Services.

"We're kind of flying by the seat of our pants," she said. "It's not anything we had anticipated having to do."

The township has an auditing company involved in the process and is considering what sort of security issues may arise, she said.

The United States faces a shortfall of about 46 million doses this year. The license of Chiron Corp. was pulled because of problems with its plant in England and will not provide any shots this year.

The other manufacturer for the U.S. market, Aventis Pasteur, is expected to produce about 58 million doses.

Portland is putting 250 doses it had originally intended for city employees into the lottery. Another 40 were donated by Maine Medical Mutual, an insurance company.

This year's order was increased by 900 doses to 3,000 based on demand last year, said Marty Sabol, manager of the city's infectious disease program. It's not known what percentage of people who participated in city clinics last year belonged to high-risk groups.

The city hopes to get an additional 300 to 600 doses through the state supply and private donations. More people will be selected through a lottery if those shots become available.

About 80,000 additional doses may become available to the state next month through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Gov. John Baldacci and Dr. Dora Anne Mills, director of the state Bureau of Health, announced Wednesday.

"The good news is we are anticipating additional vaccine supply. However, it is far lower that what we would need to vaccinate all those for whom it is recommended," Mills said.

The state supply now stands at 15,000 doses, compared with the 150,000 Maine had ordered from the CDC.

Flu is known to contribute to the death of between 50 and 100 people in Maine each year. Mills said most of those people are elderly or had severe underlying medical conditions. No flu-related deaths of children have been recorded in the past 10 years, she said.

"The vast majority of people, even unvaccinated, do not get the flu," Mills said. "And the vast majority who do get the flu fully recover at home."

[Maine Finn]

On a lighter note...


From trust to suspicion
by Bill Nemitz


MOSUL, Iraq ‹ The one-word sign on the door to Danialla's Store, a tiny commercial outpost in the heart of Forward Operating Base Marez, speaks volumes.

"Close," it says.

"The two sisters who ran it want to come back, but I told them, 'No, not now. It's not safe,' " said Sgt. Roger Jones of Portland, whose job with the Maine Army National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion, until recently, was to serve as a liaison between the soldiers and the Iraqis who for months came here to work each day.

But no longer. The 49 civilians on Jones' payroll and the handful of independent merchants have dwindled to none. Mosul's ever-expanding legion of insurgents now threatens them and their families with death - the more grisly, the better - if they continue to work for the Americans.

Jones, who has opened the store from time to time himself in recent days, in what passes in these parts for a clearance sale, came to call many of the Iraqis his friends.

"I miss them. I think about them every day," the often jovial sergeant said last week, one day before a suicide bomber infiltrated FOB Marez and self-detonated inside the base's crowded dining facility.

Now, with 22 dead and scores more wounded - two of the dead and 13 of the injured were with the 133rd - a chill has enveloped FOB Marez.

From the civilians who are long gone to the Iraqi National Guard battalion that still trains immediately adjacent to the 133rd's encampment, wary cooperation has given way, for many soldiers, to blatant suspicion.

"There's more vigilance. There's more of a guarded stance," said Capt. Mike Steinbuchel of Buxton, commander of the 133rd's Headquarters Support Company. "People just don't have the same sense of trust that they once did."

Nor, after what happened last week during a routine mission by Steinbuchel's HSC, do some Maine soldiers have any confidence in their Iraqi counterparts.

The mission was as straightforward as they come: A 16-vehicle convoy from HSC was assigned to drive deep into downtown Mosul to Forward Operating Base Blickenstaff, a former U.S. military base that was turned over recently to the Iraqi National Guard.

Once there, the 40-odd soldiers were to deliver 400 mattresses, 800 blankets, 400 pillows and four 10-foot-by-10-foot pallets of food and water to the Iraqi forces.

From the moment his convoy pulled into the compound and "circled the wagons," Steinbuchel was worried. Some Iraqi soldiers stood ready to help with the off-loading, but others were coming and going from a firing range on the base - their AK-47 rifles locked and loaded with live ammunition.

"The problem is, they don't have real good 'fire discipline,' " Steinbuchel said. "So they're all coming off the range with their weapons still loaded . . . and it's a dangerous combination - to give an Iraqi a loaded gun. Particularly one who, in all seriousness, hasn't been trained."

The delivery was barely under way when, just outside the base perimeter, a police station came under attack by 40 to 50 insurgents armed with machine guns and mortars. The Iraqi guardsmen looked around nervously, Steinbuchel said, while the U.S. soldiers just picked up their pace.

Then, a stray mortar came over the top of the perimeter and exploded in an "air burst" inside FOB Blickenstaff. Suddenly, Iraqi soldiers up and down Blickenstaff's perimeter opened fire on the insurgents outside the base.

"When one of them gets excited, they all get excited," Steinbuchel said. "And when one of them begins too shoot, they all began to shoot."

"So," he continued, "we had a live-fire range, we have people opening up on the perimeter, everybody (on the base) has a magazine in their weapon - and the (weapons are) loaded. All of that, in and amongst all this excitement . . . and we're in the middle of it, trying to remain calm."

Within seconds, the Iraqis on the mattress and food off-loading lines dropped what they were doing, grabbed their weapons and scattered. In the mayhem, one Iraqi soldier stumbled, his finger on the trigger of his AK-47. The gun was set on automatic. A quick burst, maybe five or six rounds, erupted from the barrel and ripped into the stomach of one his comrades a few feet away.

Frantic Iraqi soldiers carried their wounded comrade over to the Americans. Spc. Jared Libby of Jefferson, a 133rd medic, did what he could before packing the soldier onto a Humvee and dispatching it, along with another medic, to the 67th Combat Support Hospital at Camp Diamondback.

Along the way, the Iraqi soldier died.

At this point, I said, 'I want this stuff delivered and I want the heck out of here,' " Steinbuchel said. The Iraqis, their loaded weapons pointing every which way, were clearly "in a state of excitement."

"And then you've got my guys, who are very nervous about (the Iraqis') muzzle awareness," he said. "And rightfully so."

The Maine soldiers finished unloading the trucks and quickly set about reforming their convoy - all the while keeping one eye on the Iraqis, Steinbuchel said, for two reasons.

The first?

"We just saw they're ****e to accidents," he replied. "And it's not their fault - they just don't have the training."

The second?

"Frankly," said Steinbuchel, "we're not sure which ones are on our side and which ones aren't. I think last Tuesday (the attack on the dining hall) showed us that."

The two forces separated. The American soldiers, their rifles pointed slightly downward at "low ready," hollered repeatedly for the Iraqis to "Put your weapons down! Put your weapons down!"

The Iraqis nervously backed off.

Finally, the Maine soldiers climbed aboard their trucks. The convoy cleared the gates of FOB Blickenstaff and made it safely back to FOB Marez.

"Just another day at the office," Steinbuchel said with a shake of his head.

So whom does one trust? In this murky world where soldiers divide the local populace into the "good guys" and the "bad guys," how does one ultimately tell the difference?

Sgt. Jones, the liaison to the on-base workers, made many good friends during the months when they came to FOB Marez in the morning, worked all day and then, often after dark, nervously headed home for the night.

They came for the money: The $8 to $11 that the lowest-paid worker earned here per day was five times what they could make doing the same menial labor in and around Mosul - assuming they could find work there at all.

But, Jones said, taking a job here also required courage. And that is what he came to respect.

"They'd bring their food in with them and share it with us," he said. "We'd laugh and joke and they'd talk about how their families were. We'd talk about their lives."

Jones paused and looked at the closed store and the deserted grounds around the 133rd's headquarters that a few months ago teemed with Iraqis.

"There was a lot of trust," he said. "More than probably should have been given."

Nobody among the Americans knows what help, if any, last week's suicide bomber may have received from workers who could have done reconnaissance while they worked for the 133rd. Even Jones concedes that as time passed and the frequent mortar attacks on FOB Marez became more accurate, "It was clear there were some informants in the camp."

But who were they? And now that the workers are all gone and the Iraqi and American soldiers no longer eat side by side in the dining hall, how many steps backward has Operation Iraqi Freedom taken on this hardscrabble base where just over a week ago trust literally went up in smoke?

It depends, as always, on your perspective.

"Guarded," said Steinbuchel when asked to describe his company's overall posture toward Iraqis these days. One of the two Maine soldiers who were killed last week, 20-year-old Spc. Thomas Dostie, was from Headquarters Support Company.

"This is what it comes down to," the company commander continued, leaning back on a wooden bench where the Iraqi workers once sat and ate lunch. "I'm bringing as many of my soldiers home, hopefully all of them (he knocked twice on the wood), alive. Period. That is the stance we're now taking."

Jones, also a member of HSC, would not disagree with that. But when asked after last week's attack if he feels the same way about his long-lost Iraqi friends, the sergeant with the big heart nodded without hesitation.

"There are good people," Jones said. "And there are bad people."

And in the middle stand Maine's soldiers.


http://www.pressherald.com/photos/041229iraq1.jpg
Staff photo by Gregory Rec
Capt. Mike Steinbuchel of Buxton talks about the tension that erupted when he and his troops witnessed the accidental shooting of one Iraqi soldier by another at a base in Mosul last week.

http://www.pressherald.com/photos/041229iraq2.jpg
Staff photo by Gregory Rec
Sgt. Roger Jones of Portland laughs with a patron Monday while Sgt. Thomas Robinson of Brunswick peruses the shelves in Danialla's Store at Forward Operating Base Marez. Monday was the first time the store had opened since its Iraqi owners stopped coming about a month ago out of fear for their safety. Jones plans to forward any sale proceeds to the owners.

http://www.pressherald.com/photos/041229iraq3.jpg
Staff photo by Gregory Rec
Spc. Ronald Cyr of Augusta walks past the closed Danialla's Store. Iraqis who were contracted to work at the Mosul base stopped showing up after insurgents threatened them because they worked for U.S. forces.

Source (http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/041229nemitz.shtml)

[Maine Finn]

From the Kennebec Journal.


Augusta-based company to deploy

By DANIELLE GAMIZ
Staff Writer

AUGUSTA -- As many as 130 members of the Augusta-based 152nd Maintenance Company will be called to active duty at the end of January, Maine Army National Guard officials said Tuesday.

The deployment, expected to last 18 months, was ordered Thursday by the Department of the Army -- setting in motion a series of predeployment steps to prepare 120 to 130 of the company's 221 soldiers for departure, Guard spokesman Maj. Peter Rogers said.

"We don't know exactly where they're going," Rogers said. "What we do know is that their mobilization station will be Fort Bliss, Texas."

The 152nd was placed on alert for six months in February 2003 -- but no deployment occurred, said 152nd Company Commander Cpt. Christopher Moody, of Appleton.

The company is going through the same preparations now as then: training exercises, getting medical records in order, arranging power-of-attorney documents and writing wills.

"We went through the whole process," Moody said. "It's like deja vu all over again."

Moody said the soldiers were relieved when the previous alert was lifted and they knew they wouldn't have to leave their families -- but that there had been an underlying feeling of disappointment after all the preparation.

Not all members of the 152nd will deploy at the end of January. Moody said several of the company's younger members in basic training or specialty schools will stay behind to finish. Others will remain home because their jobs are not among those needed for the deployment.

The company also will draw mechanics of wheeled vehicles and construction equipment who are attached to other Guard units to fill gaps for those specialists.

Moody said 42 members of the 152nd deployed with the Guard's Gardiner-based 133rd Engineer Battalion last January. Two of them -- Spc. Thomas J. "Tom" Dostie of Somerville and Sgt. Lynn Poulin Sr. of Freedom -- were killed last week after a suicide bombing inside a dining hall in Mosul, Iraq.

With detachments in Bangor and Limestone, the 152nd has members scattered throughout Maine, most living between Bangor and Augusta, said Lt. Col. David Turner, commander of the 286th Quartermaster Battalion that oversees the 152nd and other Maine Guard companies.

They range in age from 18 to 58 and come from various professions, including physician assistants, bus drivers and teachers. About 30 members of the 152nd are full-time employees at Camp Keyes in Augusta.

The vehicle-repair specialists repair engines, transmissions, transfer cases and other mechanical parts from military supply systems throughout the world, Moody said.

"We work on basically anything in the military that runs. We're a lot like a big Ford garage, like Wiscasset Ford. But we don't sell cars," he said.

Earlier this year, the Guard assigned the 152nd to serve as a special reaction force to help civil authorities set up roadblocks and protect essential facilities in the state during a major emergency such as a terrorist attack. Rogers said those duties will be assigned to another unit while the 152nd is away.

This company is not the same group as the Guard's Aroostook County-based 152nd Field Artillery unit, which was deployed earlier this year. That unit has batteries in Waterville and Calais.

Maine has one of the nation's largest National Guard deployments in the war on terrorism, according to Guard officials.

I wonder why NG unit deployments aren't more equal from State to State.

[Maine Finn]

DHS investigating wandering child

The Department of Human Services is now involved in the investigation of a young girl found wandering the streets in Portland.

Workers near Munjoy Hill found the girl, believed to be four or five-years-old, near the Shipyard Brewery this week. Police put out a media alert which led them to the girl's parents.

They say this is the third time a child who lived at that apartment has been found wandering the city unattended.

News 8 - WMTW/Associated Press

The third time? If DHS doesn't do anything about this, it'll only further convince of what a useless agency it really is.

Then again, it did happen near the Hill. :roll:

[Maine Finn]

Affidavit describes grisly slaying
Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

By Beurmond Banville, Of the NEWS Staff

CARIBOU — The pretty, young night supervisor at the Tim Hortons restaurant was savagely beaten and left to die in the employee bathroom Sunday night while her alleged assailant waited on customers at the counter and drive-through window, according to a court document.

After Erin Sperrey, 20, of Presque Isle was beaten to death, her body was dragged from the bloody bathroom of the Bennett Drive doughnut shop and placed in the back seat of her car.

Shortly after midnight, her body was found by police in the abandoned car 120 miles south on Interstate 95 near Lincoln.

The state medical examiner’s office said Tuesday that an autopsy determined Sperrey had died of “multiple traumatic injuries.”

According to a court affidavit presented Tuesday morning to Justice E. Allen Hunter in Aroostook County Superior Court, Christopher Shumway, 19, of Caribou told police he had beaten the young woman with his hands and feet and strangled her, leaving her to die in the bathroom while he waited on customers.

The court document points to robbery as a motive for the slaying, although police would not speculate on that possibility. Shumway admitted taking the cash box from the restaurant, according to the affidavit. Another employee verified that $1,200, including currency and rolled coins, was missing from the employee office.

Shumway made his initial court appearance on charges of murder and violation of probation. He was ordered held without bail.

A hearing to determine bail, if any, will be held within five days. During Tuesday’s court session, which lasted about 10 minutes, Shumway was told he wasn’t expected to enter a plea and that he shouldn’t make any statements. Justice Hunter also told Shumway that an attorney would be appointed to represent him.

Shumway tried to hang himself while police waited outside his motel room on Monday in Bangor, where he was apprehended, according to the affidavit. Jim Foss, Aroostook County Jail administrator, said Tuesday afternoon he could not say whether Shumway was on a suicide watch while in jail because of the confidentiality of medical records.

Aroostook County Sheriff James Madore said later that Shumway is “being watched closely.”
In court

During the hearing, Sperrey’s parents, Johna Lovely of Presque Isle and Kevin Sperrey of Mapleton were supported by 22 family members and friends. Lovely, with the hands of her husband, Kim Lovely, around her shoulders, sobbed and cried during the short hearing, her face showing the strain of the previous 36 hours.

Kevin Sperrey, sitting in a side seat, also showed the strain of losing his daughter. His face was drawn and flushed red.

“She was just a great person,” Amanda Sperrey, Erin Sperrey’s sister, said outside the courtroom. “I just don’t know how anyone can do something like this to another person.”

No family members apparently were in court to support Shumway.

Shumway, his hands and feet shackled, was subdued during his initial appearance. Dressed in Aroostook County Jail garb of gray T-shirt and pants, he was nearly inaudible when he answered “yes” when asked if he understood the charge against him. His dark hair was cropped within a half-inch of his scalp.

The young man stood motionless in front of Justice Hunter, lifting his eyes only a couple of times from the floor and his canvas prison shoes.

Security in the courtroom was tight. Six plainclothes detectives stood in the courtroom, while three uniformed Aroostook County deputy sheriffs stood next to Shumway and between him and the exit from the courtroom.

Lt. Dennis Appleton, head of the Maine State Police Criminal Investigation Division in northern Maine, said just before the court hearing that there was nothing new in the investigation of the case.
Both Sperrey and Shumway had been working at Tim Hortons for several months since late summer. She was the night shift supervisor, and he was a staff member.

Shumway was on probation in connection with a misdemeanor charge of harassment by telephone sometime last year. The charge didn’t involve Sperrey, according to authorities. Shumway lived with his mother in Caribou.

Sperrey, who was unmarried, was a lifelong resident of the Washburn-Mapleton area and was living in Presque Isle.


She was described by a former teacher as a warm person who worked hard in life.

“She always had a smile and was a very warm person,” Dave Bartlett, director of the Alternative Education School at Presque Isle High School, remembered Tuesday morning. “She was one of our success stories here. She was self-motivated, a very hard worker,” he said. “She worked with prekindergarten children during her senior year on a program she developed, and the kids loved her.”
She took a college-level course on childhood development to help herself with that program, he said. Sperrey graduated from the school in 2002.

He said her death was hard on faculty who knew her and on her classmates, some of whom had called Bartlett since the news of her death surfaced Monday morning.

The affidavit
The police affidavit filed by state police Detective Darryl J. Pelletier describes Shumway’s alleged killing of Sperrey.

Shumway reportedly told his grisly story to state police Detectives Anna Fizel and Jay Peary after he was arrested at 6:45 a.m. Monday at Motel 6 on outer Hammond Street in Bangor.

According to the affidavit, Shumway’s attack started when Sperrey went into the shop’s freezer during the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. Shumway followed her, pushed her down, and Sperrey struck her head.
He took Sperrey’s car keys from her before they left the freezer. Outside the freezer, Shumway told police he apologized for his actions and gave Sperrey back her keys. Sperrey said she had to leave, and the two struggled. Sperrey was screaming, according to the affidavit.

Shumway told police he started to strangle Sperrey: “She was fighting for her life,” the document stated.
“The fight moved into the bathroom. Shumway kicked Sperrey in the head, mouth and chest. Blood came out of Sperrey’s mouth,” the statement reads.

“Shumway left Sperrey in the bathroom to wait on customers at the counter and drive-through. When Shumway left Sperrey she was breathing and when Shumway returned, Sperrey was not breathing. Shumway dragged Sperrey out to her car and put her in the back seat,” according to the statement.
Shumway then took the store’s cash box from the office, drove to Fort Fairfield for gas and cigarettes and continued to drive south.

Crime unravels
The murder and robbery started to unravel hours before Shumway lost control of Sperrey’s car on I-95 just north of Lincoln and ended up in the median strip down a 20-foot embankment.
Shortly before 8 p.m., Corey Searles and his girlfriend, Laura Cyr, stopped at the drive-through of the Caribou restaurant. Getting no response at both drive-through windows, Searles entered the doughnut shop and called out without getting a response. Cyr contacted her father, Joe Cyr, a retired U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Joe Cyr called the Caribou Police Department, and Officer Douglas Bell searched the restaurant, finding no one. He observed blood in the bathroom and the disarray of the office and then called restaurant manager Marie Possocco, who ascertained that $1,200 was missing. She told police that Sperrey and Shumway were working the shift.

Later, state police Detective Joshua Haines and Trooper Chuck Michaud found blood splattered on the floor by the drive-through window and on the floor behind the counter in the main lobby. Blood was found on the floor of the rear storage area hallway that leads to the employee bathroom, on the bathroom floor, on the wall under the sink and on the toilet seat.

“The blood appeared to be a high velocity, very fine, spatter particles,” according to the affidavit. The investigators also found footprints in the blood on the bathroom floor.

The detectives found drag marks on the bathroom floor and in the rear hallway leading to the rear exit of the building. A crumpled contact lens was found on the bathroom floor along with a single silver earring. Inside the freezer, they found bread rolls on the floor and a silver earring matching the one in the bathroom.

A friend of Shumway’s, Darlene Dubois, told police that Shumway had talked about robbing a place and using the money to flee to Massachusetts.

Trooper Barry Meserve found the lifeless body of a female in the rear seat of Sperrey’s 1999 green Kia at about 12:30 a.m. Monday in the southbound lane of I-95 at mile 231 in Township 2 Range 8.
“The female’s face showed signs of a severe beating,” according to the affidavit.

Police learned Monday that after Shumway left the restaurant, he headed south in Sperrey’s car, losing control of the vehicle in a snowstorm on I-95. A Dedham family driving home from Presque Isle picked up Shumway and gave him a lift to Bangor.

Other detectives with the Bangor Police Department and the state police found out that Shumway had registered at Motel 6 at 2:23 a.m. Monday, just 15 minutes before police inquired. He paid in cash, including rolled coins.

The room was kept under surveillance until 5:08 a.m. when police tried to make contact with the young man. Getting no response and concerned about his well-being, the police made a forced entry.
Shumway was sitting on the bed wearing a shirt and pants, smoking a cigarette, and he had his hands in the air.

He told police they needed a warrant. Police left, keeping the room under surveillance. They returned at 6:45 a.m. and arrested him for Sperrey’s murder.

In the interim, according to the affidavit, Shumway tried to hang himself by wrapping the telephone cord around his neck and tying it to a clothes rack. He also inflicted superficial wounds on his forearms with a box cutter.

Funeral services for Sperrey will be held Friday afternoon at a Presque Isle funeral home.
In lieu of flowers, the family has requested donations to establish a fund for businesses to use to install security devices to protect young people working at night for them.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.



http://www.bangornews.com/absoluteig/gallery/News/010505_CaribouMurder.jpg
Christopher Shumway (center), 19, is surrounded by sheriff’s deputies during his initial court appearance at the Aroostook County Superior Court on Tuesday morning. He was formally charged with the murder of Erin Sperrey, 20, who was killed at a Tim Hortons restaurant in Caribou on Sunday. Bangor Daily News Photo by Gabor Degre

http://www.bangornews.com/news/articlefiles/r.aspx?f=gallery/News/010505_CaribouMurder3.jpg
Jessica Sperrey (center), the sister of murder victim Erin Sperrey, is comforted by relatives during Christopher Shumway’s initial court appearance at the Aroostook County Superior Court on Tuesday morning. At left is her aunt Deanna Simpson, and on the right is Jessica Lovely, a cousin. Bangor Daily News Photo by Gabor Degre

...

My mother was called out at three AM Monday for this.

That's just seriously f***ed up. :(

R.I.P., Erin.

[Maine Finn]

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

New Hampshire tries a land grab - of neighbors

By BEVERLEY WANG, Associated Press

CONCORD, N.H. — Not content to Live Free or Die within current state borders, some lawmakers are looking to spread the New Hampshire advantage to neighbors in the east and west. Two border battles - one old, one new - are getting a boost from bills proposing that New Hampshire envelop two towns in Maine and one in Vermont.

Whether those moves are welcome, however, is a different matter.

In Killington, Vt., where residents voted resoundingly last March to secede, Town Manager David Lewis calls a New Hampshire bill - to establish a commission to negotiate the terms - a serious, important step in the long process of cutting ties with Vermont.

"It's not a flippant request so we hope the New Hampshire Legislature will give it serious consideration," Lewis said.

IT'S NO JOKE

Establishing an island of New Hampshire in Vermont is no joke to the bill's main sponsor, state Rep. David Currier, R-Henniker.

"Just because they are not contiguous doesn't make it an unfeasible thing to consider," he said. "Puerto Rico and Guam are not connected to the United States of America, yet they are involved in the United States of America."

Even if the bill passes, Killington would need approval from the Vermont Legislature and Congress before it could join New Hampshire. Neither is likely to happen, though the town does have roots here. It was chartered in New Hampshire in 1761, during a period when both New Hampshire and New York claimed jurisdiction over Vermont.

In Maine, officials say the notion of lawmakers in Concord declaring Kittery, Berwick and the Piscataqua River part of New Hampshire is good only for a laugh.

"That is absolutely ridiculous," said Ann Grinnell, chairwoman of the Kittery Town Council. "Do they think they can just get in a motor boat and go up and down the Piscataqua River and point to towns that they can just take from the state of Maine? It's just so farfetched."

Berwick Town Manager Keith Trefethen agrees.

"I think it's utterly ridiculous myself that they're wasting time on that kind of issue," Trefethen said. "I'm really not giving it a lot of thought."

One Maine lawmaker answered the New Hampshire bill with legislation to have his state look into annexing Portsmouth and the Isles of Shoals. Sen. Ethan Strimling, D-Portland, says he doesn't expect his bill to pass.

For decades, the states battled over title to the Piscataqua River island that is home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Maine said it was in Kittery and collected income taxes from shipyard workers. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling that the yard is in Maine.

State Rep. Richard Marple, R-Hooksett, is the main sponsor of the bill eyeing Kittery - and Berwick. He doesn't give the decision much credence. "The Supreme Court is subservient to the acts of Congress," he said.

Nor does he much care whether the people of Berwick and Kittery want to be claimed by New Hampshire. "Feelings mean nothing, the law is the law," he said.

LOOKING TO MAPS

Marple and supporters cite Colonial maps and 18th-century congressional bills to make their case. Included is a U.S. Senate bill from the 1790s that proposed annexation of Kittery and Berwick by Portsmouth.

State archivist Brian Burford says a 1774 map of New Hampshire's port illustrates the age and ambiguity of the argument about whether the boundary between the two states is in the middle of the Piscataqua River or along the Maine shore.

The map, drawn by a British naval surveyor, shows Portsmouth, the river, Seavey Island - site of the shipyard - Kittery and Berwick, but no boundary line.

"The fact that his job was to map the state of New Hampshire, and the fact that he doesn't show a boundary line on either side of the river is significant," Burford said, because it leaves open the possibility that the river - and the islands within it - belong to New Hampshire.

TAX REVENUE

A House committee will hold a hearing on the bill Thursday.

Currier says helping Killington secede would help New Hampshire as well by bringing in tax revenue. A ski resort town 25 miles west of New Hampshire, Killington gets back only about one-fifth of the roughly $10 million in property taxes it contributes to schools each year. Lewis says economists have calculated that Killington would save about $6 million a year by joining New Hampshire.

"I took some major campaign heat for signing onto (the bill)," said Currier, who was enlisted to sponsor it because of his experience in the ski industry. Currier is a former manager of Pat's Peak and past executive director of what now is Ski New Hampshire.

"It's humorous but the people of Killington aren't considering it humorous," he said. "People have the right to self-determination."


WHAT the f***?! New Hampshire wants Kittery and South Berwick? What's next? North Berwick? Wells? F*** that! Keep your grubby little hands OFF MY STATE!

Pick on Vermont if you want territory, goddammit.

"Live Free or Die" my ass.

This (http://www.city-data.com/city/maps3/cms3485.gif) is how far from the Maine-New Hampshire border that the Berwicks are.

This (http://www.city-data.com/city/maps2/cm6125.gif) is Kittery. I can somewhat understand how both States claim the city as on it's side of the border, but KITTERY IS ON THE MAINE SIDE, YOU MORONS! New Hampshire can suck it.

[Maine Finn]

Maine, N.H. proximity invites many tax comparisons
Saturday, January 22, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

The Piscataqua River is not the only thing dividing Maine and New Hampshire. In the recent debate over tax reform, these neighbors - respectively among the highest and lowest taxed states in the nation - have made for natural and plentiful comparisons.

For conservative activists like Mary Adams, the Granite State is a parsimonious paradise where relatively few public dollars buy respectable results on a host of measures - education, health and safety, among them.

"I've thought about moving [the New Hampshire state line] sign farther inland to fool people," said Adams, joking that living in the central Maine town of Garland, she is almost jealous of a New Hampshire lawmaker's recent attempt to annex Berwick and Kittery in southern Maine. "I think everyone would be glad to go."

But when it comes to tax burden, a direct comparison between the states is difficult, experts in both states say, citing the vast differences in the incomes of their residents and the greater percentage of Maine's population living outside the state's larger cities.

While the tax systems differ in many respects, it's more than a balance sheet that defines the two states. Many say it's a philosophy of government, with critics on both sides - and in both states.

While New Hampshire's libertarian legacy might appeal to reformers like Adams, some say the state is slowly - but rightly - growing out of its "Live Free or Die" mentality, at least as it pertains to the delivery of public services.

"Little by little I think we're blending in with the rest of the Northeast," said Guy MacMillin, the longtime editorial page editor of the Keene Sentinel, a small daily newspaper in southwest New Hampshire. "We will always have our distinctness, but it's becoming more and more difficult to characterize."

Any characterization, analysts say, would include the state's penchant for limited government, a byproduct of its voters' dislike for taxes. Unlike Maine, there is neither a sales tax nor personal income tax.

There are other differences, and there are some similarities.

Both states have roughly the same number of people: 1.3 million. Both have about the same number of public school students: Maine, 204,337; New Hampshire, 207,661. Maine, however, has 199 more schools and 1,860 more teachers. New Hampshire doesn't mandate - and many towns do not offer - public kindergarten.

New Hampshire has 424 lawmakers in its state Legislature, and Maine has 186. For each two-year term, Concord lawmakers make $200, while their Augusta counterparts make $18,000 - more typical of other New England states.

When it comes to transportation, Maine - more than three times the size of New Hampshire - has twice as many miles of public roadways. Maine's coastline is about 3,500 miles long. New Hampshire's is 13 miles.Despite all their differences - not to mention their current border dispute - the two states are more alike than not when it comes to government spending, a Bangor Daily News analysis found.

New Hampshire spent roughly $2 billion - when factoring in money from the state's educational trust fund - to pay for its state programs in 2003. Maine, by similar measures, spent $2.4 billion that year, according to a National Association of State Budget Officers State Expenditure Report.

The vast majority of Maine's general fund money came from its sales and personal income taxes. New Hampshire, having neither, relies more heavily - to its detriment, some say - on business and property taxes to fund major programs.

Roland Routhier, a 79-year-old retired businessman from Derry, N.H., counts himself a critic of New Hampshire's over-reliance on the property tax - and tax dollars in general. He lamented what he believes to be his home state's departure from its frugal past.

"We pride ourselves on not having a sales tax or an income tax, but it doesn't matter. We're paying it in property taxes instead," said Routhier, whose taxes on his small ranch home reached nearly $4,000 this year.

Routhier, a self-described "Yankee conservative," said he never thought he'd support the creation of a sales tax or an income tax to help ease the property tax burden. Today, he wouldn't rule it out.

Concord politicians, however, have been steadfast in their opposition.

While candidates from the state's more liberal southwest - where MacMillin's paper circulates - might get away with floating the idea of a small income tax, voters' tolerance has ended there.

Throughout much of the rest of the state, there's an inherent wariness about turning on another spigot of government revenue, Joe McQuaid, president and publisher of the Union Leader newspaper in Manchester, told New Hampshire Public Radio this week.

"My big concern is that we will have a large tax that will generate large revenue going to a large government that is farther and farther removed from the people," McQuaid said Wednesday on the NHPR program The Exchange.

Politicians have taken note.

Last year, both gubernatorial candidates vowed in writing to forgo any new taxes - a necessity for victory, according to University of New Hampshire political scientist Thomas Schuman.

"There's an awareness that if you're going to hold office, you're going to have to figure out something else," said Schuman, who lives in Berwick, one of the Maine towns eyed - albeit fruitlessly, by most serious accounts - for annexation to New Hampshire.

Like many, Schuman laughs at the takeover attempt and jokes with his New Hampshire colleagues that he lives in Maine "because he wants some services for his tax dollars."

While officials in both Kittery and Berwick have called the annexation various degrees of ridiculous, Adams is not alone in her - at least symbolic - desire to join Maine's only U.S. neighbor.

The Free State Project, a libertarian movement looking for a home, in 2003 picked New Hampshire as its destination, citing its low taxes and even lower tolerance for big government. Maine placed sixth in the group's vote.

Members of the project promise to move to New Hampshire and become politically active within five years of 20,000 people joining the movement. Dan Dargon, who signed up with the group while attending Bates College in Lewiston, made the move in June.

"It doesn't feel as desperate," Dargon, 23, said in a telephone interview from his apartment in Concord, where he is planning to go to law school. "It feels more like home."

MacMillin, who called the free state group "creepy," warned those moving to New Hampshire that life there should not begin and end with the "Live Free or Die" motto, which has been used - and overused - over decades of political debate.

"You can't say death is not the worst of evils - broad-based taxes are," he said on the public radio show. "There has to be some balance."

"Live Free or Die", huh?

[Maine Finn]

Plan: Expand role to save BNAS


By DENNIS HOEY, Portland Press Herald Writer


BRUNSWICK — To save itself, the Brunswick Naval Air Station might work with other naval bases in danger of being shut down. A task force that is trying to keep BNAS off the federal list of bases targeted for closure has come up with a plan that would give Brunswick's P-3 Orion squadrons an expanded role in helping the Coast Guard fulfill its homeland defense mission.

The task force presented its proposal to Coast Guard officials at a meeting in Boston this week. Also present were staffers for Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Task force members hope their plan will make Department of Defense officials see value in keeping Brunswick open.

Ralph Dean, a retired Navy captain from Yarmouth, developed a "four-point" plan for the task force. His proposal would have P-3 Orions based in Brunswick and on other bases threatened with closure - Jacksonville, Fla., and Whidbey Island, Wash. - fly long-range reconnaissance and surveillance missions over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego, which has the capability to add active-duty squadrons, would complete the alignment. The four facilities would give the Coast Guard the ability to intercept or detect ship-borne weapons from the four corners of the continental United States.

"The Navy has been doing long-range surveillance for a long, long time," said Rick Tetrev, chairman of the Brunswick task force. "If you've got P-3s out there, flying over the ocean, they can also serve as a visible deterrent. We are working really hard to sell this."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wants to close bases to save money, perhaps one-fourth of the 425 bases nationwide. In May, he will propose a list of bases to close. That list will be reviewed by a nine-member base closure commission to be appointed by President Bush.

The committee will have until Sept. 8 to forward its list of recommendations to the president, who must accept or reject the list in its entirety. If President Bush accepts the list, Congress will have 45 days to reject the entire list or let the bases close.

Brunswick's proposal would enhance homeland security because the P-3 Orions can fly missions as far as 1,500 miles from the continental United States. Tetrev said the Coast Guard's offshore patrols only go as far as 200 miles.

"By partnering with the Coast Guard to perform long-range patrols, Brunswick Naval Air Station could help paint a more complete intelligence picture of maritime traffic in the North Atlantic. Given the ongoing homeland security threat of weapons of mass destruction being transported by ship to the United States, Brunswick is perfectly positioned to assist in essential intelligence-gathering to better protect our nation," Snowe and Collins said in a joint statement.

Dean said an increasing number of companies are redirecting their shipments from Asia directly to the Northeast. He said container traffic to New York City has risen 65 percent in the past five years, and that calls for more intense monitoring of shipping to the region.

"The ports and shipping lanes to the northeastern region of the United States deserve the protection which can only be provided by maritime interdiction forces operating from a base within that region," Dean said in his report. "The nation cannot afford to close irreplaceable military facilities."

Coast Guard officials who attended the meeting could not be reached for comment, but Tetrev said they expressed support for the plan. Tetrev said he has not spoken with base officials or support groups in other areas of the country about expanding the P-3 Orion's role in homeland security.

Snowe and Collins said the meeting in Boston was part of an ongoing effort to tell Department of Defense decision-makers about Brunswick's potential.

In the event that BNAS does close, the town of Brunswick is taking no chances. It is reviewing proposals from four firms that have expressed interest in developing a plan for converting the base from a military installation to something else.

Assistant Town Manager Patricia Harrington said the town will choose a firm by the end of this week. It will use a $157, 000 Department of Defense grant to fund the study.

I hope they can save BNAS.

[FallenAngel]

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

New Hampshire tries a land grab - of neighbors

By BEVERLEY WANG, Associated Press

CONCORD, N.H. — Not content to Live Free or Die within current state borders, some lawmakers are looking to spread the New Hampshire advantage to neighbors in the east and west. Two border battles - one old, one new - are getting a boost from bills proposing that New Hampshire envelop two towns in Maine and one in Vermont.

Whether those moves are welcome, however, is a different matter.

In Killington, Vt., where residents voted resoundingly last March to secede, Town Manager David Lewis calls a New Hampshire bill - to establish a commission to negotiate the terms - a serious, important step in the long process of cutting ties with Vermont.

"It's not a flippant request so we hope the New Hampshire Legislature will give it serious consideration," Lewis said.

IT'S NO JOKE

Establishing an island of New Hampshire in Vermont is no joke to the bill's main sponsor, state Rep. David Currier, R-Henniker.

"Just because they are not contiguous doesn't make it an unfeasible thing to consider," he said. "Puerto Rico and Guam are not connected to the United States of America, yet they are involved in the United States of America."

Even if the bill passes, Killington would need approval from the Vermont Legislature and Congress before it could join New Hampshire. Neither is likely to happen, though the town does have roots here. It was chartered in New Hampshire in 1761, during a period when both New Hampshire and New York claimed jurisdiction over Vermont.

In Maine, officials say the notion of lawmakers in Concord declaring Kittery, Berwick and the Piscataqua River part of New Hampshire is good only for a laugh.

"That is absolutely ridiculous," said Ann Grinnell, chairwoman of the Kittery Town Council. "Do they think they can just get in a motor boat and go up and down the Piscataqua River and point to towns that they can just take from the state of Maine? It's just so farfetched."

Berwick Town Manager Keith Trefethen agrees.

"I think it's utterly ridiculous myself that they're wasting time on that kind of issue," Trefethen said. "I'm really not giving it a lot of thought."

One Maine lawmaker answered the New Hampshire bill with legislation to have his state look into annexing Portsmouth and the Isles of Shoals. Sen. Ethan Strimling, D-Portland, says he doesn't expect his bill to pass.

For decades, the states battled over title to the Piscataqua River island that is home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Maine said it was in Kittery and collected income taxes from shipyard workers. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling that the yard is in Maine.

State Rep. Richard Marple, R-Hooksett, is the main sponsor of the bill eyeing Kittery - and Berwick. He doesn't give the decision much credence. "The Supreme Court is subservient to the acts of Congress," he said.

Nor does he much care whether the people of Berwick and Kittery want to be claimed by New Hampshire. "Feelings mean nothing, the law is the law," he said.

LOOKING TO MAPS

Marple and supporters cite Colonial maps and 18th-century congressional bills to make their case. Included is a U.S. Senate bill from the 1790s that proposed annexation of Kittery and Berwick by Portsmouth.

State archivist Brian Burford says a 1774 map of New Hampshire's port illustrates the age and ambiguity of the argument about whether the boundary between the two states is in the middle of the Piscataqua River or along the Maine shore.

The map, drawn by a British naval surveyor, shows Portsmouth, the river, Seavey Island - site of the shipyard - Kittery and Berwick, but no boundary line.

"The fact that his job was to map the state of New Hampshire, and the fact that he doesn't show a boundary line on either side of the river is significant," Burford said, because it leaves open the possibility that the river - and the islands within it - belong to New Hampshire.

TAX REVENUE

A House committee will hold a hearing on the bill Thursday.

Currier says helping Killington secede would help New Hampshire as well by bringing in tax revenue. A ski resort town 25 miles west of New Hampshire, Killington gets back only about one-fifth of the roughly $10 million in property taxes it contributes to schools each year. Lewis says economists have calculated that Killington would save about $6 million a year by joining New Hampshire.

"I took some major campaign heat for signing onto (the bill)," said Currier, who was enlisted to sponsor it because of his experience in the ski industry. Currier is a former manager of Pat's Peak and past executive director of what now is Ski New Hampshire.

"It's humorous but the people of Killington aren't considering it humorous," he said. "People have the right to self-determination."


WHAT the f***?! New Hampshire wants Kittery and South Berwick? What's next? North Berwick? Wells? F*** that! Keep your grubby little hands OFF MY STATE!

Pick on Vermont if you want territory, goddammit.

"Live Free or Die" my ass.

This (http://www.city-data.com/city/maps3/cms3485.gif) is how far from the Maine-New Hampshire border that the Berwicks are.

This (http://www.city-data.com/city/maps2/cm6125.gif) is Kittery. I can somewhat understand how both States claim the city as on it's side of the border, but KITTERY IS ON THE MAINE SIDE, YOU MORONS! New Hampshire can suck it.

Mobilize the Maine NG and invade NH ;) Then after that, invade Canada :D

[Maine Finn]

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

New Hampshire tries a land grab - of neighbors

By BEVERLEY WANG, Associated Press

CONCORD, N.H. — Not content to Live Free or Die within current state borders, some lawmakers are looking to spread the New Hampshire advantage to neighbors in the east and west. Two border battles - one old, one new - are getting a boost from bills proposing that New Hampshire envelop two towns in Maine and one in Vermont.

Whether those moves are welcome, however, is a different matter.

In Killington, Vt., where residents voted resoundingly last March to secede, Town Manager David Lewis calls a New Hampshire bill - to establish a commission to negotiate the terms - a serious, important step in the long process of cutting ties with Vermont.

"It's not a flippant request so we hope the New Hampshire Legislature will give it serious consideration," Lewis said.

IT'S NO JOKE

Establishing an island of New Hampshire in Vermont is no joke to the bill's main sponsor, state Rep. David Currier, R-Henniker.

"Just because they are not contiguous doesn't make it an unfeasible thing to consider," he said. "Puerto Rico and Guam are not connected to the United States of America, yet they are involved in the United States of America."

Even if the bill passes, Killington would need approval from the Vermont Legislature and Congress before it could join New Hampshire. Neither is likely to happen, though the town does have roots here. It was chartered in New Hampshire in 1761, during a period when both New Hampshire and New York claimed jurisdiction over Vermont.

In Maine, officials say the notion of lawmakers in Concord declaring Kittery, Berwick and the Piscataqua River part of New Hampshire is good only for a laugh.

"That is absolutely ridiculous," said Ann Grinnell, chairwoman of the Kittery Town Council. "Do they think they can just get in a motor boat and go up and down the Piscataqua River and point to towns that they can just take from the state of Maine? It's just so farfetched."

Berwick Town Manager Keith Trefethen agrees.

"I think it's utterly ridiculous myself that they're wasting time on that kind of issue," Trefethen said. "I'm really not giving it a lot of thought."

One Maine lawmaker answered the New Hampshire bill with legislation to have his state look into annexing Portsmouth and the Isles of Shoals. Sen. Ethan Strimling, D-Portland, says he doesn't expect his bill to pass.

For decades, the states battled over title to the Piscataqua River island that is home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Maine said it was in Kittery and collected income taxes from shipyard workers. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling that the yard is in Maine.

State Rep. Richard Marple, R-Hooksett, is the main sponsor of the bill eyeing Kittery - and Berwick. He doesn't give the decision much credence. "The Supreme Court is subservient to the acts of Congress," he said.

Nor does he much care whether the people of Berwick and Kittery want to be claimed by New Hampshire. "Feelings mean nothing, the law is the law," he said.

LOOKING TO MAPS

Marple and supporters cite Colonial maps and 18th-century congressional bills to make their case. Included is a U.S. Senate bill from the 1790s that proposed annexation of Kittery and Berwick by Portsmouth.

State archivist Brian Burford says a 1774 map of New Hampshire's port illustrates the age and ambiguity of the argument about whether the boundary between the two states is in the middle of the Piscataqua River or along the Maine shore.

The map, drawn by a British naval surveyor, shows Portsmouth, the river, Seavey Island - site of the shipyard - Kittery and Berwick, but no boundary line.

"The fact that his job was to map the state of New Hampshire, and the fact that he doesn't show a boundary line on either side of the river is significant," Burford said, because it leaves open the possibility that the river - and the islands within it - belong to New Hampshire.

TAX REVENUE

A House committee will hold a hearing on the bill Thursday.

Currier says helping Killington secede would help New Hampshire as well by bringing in tax revenue. A ski resort town 25 miles west of New Hampshire, Killington gets back only about one-fifth of the roughly $10 million in property taxes it contributes to schools each year. Lewis says economists have calculated that Killington would save about $6 million a year by joining New Hampshire.

"I took some major campaign heat for signing onto (the bill)," said Currier, who was enlisted to sponsor it because of his experience in the ski industry. Currier is a former manager of Pat's Peak and past executive director of what now is Ski New Hampshire.

"It's humorous but the people of Killington aren't considering it humorous," he said. "People have the right to self-determination."


WHAT the f***?! New Hampshire wants Kittery and South Berwick? What's next? North Berwick? Wells? F*** that! Keep your grubby little hands OFF MY STATE!

Pick on Vermont if you want territory, goddammit.

"Live Free or Die" my ass.

This (http://www.city-data.com/city/maps3/cms3485.gif) is how far from the Maine-New Hampshire border that the Berwicks are.

This (http://www.city-data.com/city/maps2/cm6125.gif) is Kittery. I can somewhat understand how both States claim the city as on it's side of the border, but KITTERY IS ON THE MAINE SIDE, YOU MORONS! New Hampshire can suck it.

Mobilize the Maine NG and invade NH ;) Then after that, invade Canada :D

Good plan. I like it. :D

[Maine Finn]

More than 1,000 at guardsmen's sendoff
Monday, January 31, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

AUGUSTA - Alpha Williams, a 22-year-old mechanic from Hallowell, admitted he was both nervous and excited on Saturday, the eve of his deployment to the Middle East. A third-generation guardsman, Williams was among nearly 120 members of the Maine Army National Guard's 152nd Maintenance Company who left Augusta Sunday morning for what's expected to be an 18-month deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The unit is headquartered in Augusta and has detachments in Bangor and Limestone.


"I'm really looking forward to it," Williams said Saturday, during a sendoff ceremony in Augusta. "It'll be a challenge. This will be a new experience. I'll get to see a new country and part of the world."

After flying out of the Portland Jetport on Sunday, the 152nd will report to Fort Bliss, Texas, and from there will go on to the Middle East, where the unit will perform support maintenance on military vehicles.

The guardsmen got a sendoff to remember Saturday at the state armory in Augusta, where more than 1,000 family members, friends, employers and other well-wishers gathered to bid farewell and pay their respects.

The event drew double the expected turnout, as a sea of red, white, blue and camouflage green filled the lobby and the gymnasium-sized room in which Saturday's mobilization and departure ceremony took place. There was no shortage of tears, as Guard members spent their last few hours before leaving with their mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, spouses and sweethearts.

The family of Sgt. Gerald Fortin of South China was among those bracing for what will be a long separation.

"We're going to miss him - a lot," said Bernadette Fortin, the soldier's mother.

His wife of 20 years, Lynn Fortin, said she was doing "so-so. We'll see tomorrow." Two of the couple's three children were on hand, but their oldest daughter was in New York attending college.

"She called her father today," Lynn Fortin said. "She's with us in her heart."

Effie Tillson of Sidney came to the armory to see off her son-in-law, Randall Truman of Augusta. At 45, he is one of the older guardsmen being deployed.

"I know this is not fun and games," Tillson said, struggling to hold back tears. The tragedy of war already has touched her family. Sgt. Lynn Robert Poulin Sr. was among the Maine soldiers killed in the Dec. 21 attack on a mess hall in Mosul. Poulin was 47.

"He was my granddaughter's uncle," Tillson said. "I think this gives you a greater respect for life and how short it can be."

In all, 17 soldiers from Maine have died thus far.

Gov. John Baldacci, some of Maine's top military brass and members of the state's congressional delegation also turned out Saturday to thank the troops and their families for the sacrifices they are making in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"This is just amazing," said Bill Card, who delivered greetings from U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe. Card, who has attended similar events, thought attendance Saturday was "unprecedented."

"This is touching and very moving," added Deb McNeil of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins' staff. "It's just an enormous show of love and respect."

Baldacci remarked on the outpouring of respect for the deploying troops in his address.

"This is something that will live with them as they do their jobs," he said. To the departing troops, he said, "Your state stands behind you and supports you. God bless you all and God bless the state of Maine."

U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud, a member of the Veterans Committee, said he would do everything in his power to make sure Congress kept its commitment to current and future veterans.

"Our country has asked you to make a great sacrifice and you have not hesitated to respond," he said. "Have faith in one another. Have faith in your officers. And have faith in your country. We salute you for your courage and your honor and we thank you for your service to our country."

Don Wilson of Farmington, who at 60 is retiring today from the Guard, was sent to Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm more than a decade ago.

"This is a lot more dangerous," he said of the current conflict. His advice to deploying troops?

"Take care of one another. Look after one another. You basically become one big family. If you do that, you'll be fine."

Good luck over there, guys.

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald, Dispatches section.

South Paris: Medical worker charged with impersonating police officer

SOUTH PARIS — Maine State Police charged a South Paris man with impersonating a police officer after an incident in which a woman was pulled over on Route 118 last month.

Stanley Larson, 36, an emergency medical technician at Tri Town Rescue Service in West Paris, will appear in South Paris District Court late next month.

State police said a woman driving on Route 118 near Waterford on Jan. 3 was stopped by a car with a flashing red light. The man got out of his car, but when the woman asked him for identification he got back into his car and drove away. The car was described as dark blue, similar to a police cruiser.

State police impounded Larson's 1994 dark blue Ford Crown Victoria at the state police barracks in Gray. Officers also searched Larson's home in South Paris.

:bash:

I wonder if the state will pull his EMT licence.

[Maine Finn]

Could Maine sites bounce back?

By MATT WICKENHEISER, Portland Press Herald Writer


Industrial ghosts dot Maine: Textile mills shuttered long ago; machines that once made shoes standing idle; paper mills that supported entire communities for generation after generation, now closed.

Today, some observers warn that Maine's naval defense industry could be the next traditional sector to wither.

Defense analysts say two facilities, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery and the Brunswick Naval Air Station, are likely Pentagon targets in the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure round. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will send recommen- dations for realignments and closures to the BRAC Commission by May 16.

"I would say the probability of Brunswick and Portsmouth closing is above 50 percent in both cases," said Loren B. Thompson, defense analyst for the Lexington Institute.

Both bases were geared toward fighting the Cold War, and the world has moved on, he said. The Portsmouth shipyard specializes in submarine repair, and Brunswick supports anti-sub warfare. Soviet and U.S. subs no longer chase each other around the North Atlantic.

Then there's Bath Iron Works. The Navy can't close the shipyard because it's owned by a corporation, but recent Pentagon cuts in the number of destroyers to be built over the next decade make the shipyard's future uncertain.

"BIW is not going to shut down, but if current plans go forward, they're going to be on kind of a roller coaster - they may be down 2,000 jobs for a couple of years then up 4,000 jobs for a few years and then back down again," said Charles Colgan, an economist at the University of Southern Maine's Muskie School of Public Service.

Local communities, state officials and Maine's congressional delegation are fighting to keep BNAS and the Portsmouth shipyard open, but the closure of both bases is a real possibility, with potentially dire consequences.


BNAS employs 5,227, with a total payroll of $147 million. That's more than one in seven jobs in the Bath-Brunswick labor market.


The Portsmouth shipyard employs 4,803 with an annual payroll of $318.3 million. That represents nearly a quarter of the Kittery-York labor market.


If BIW's work force of 6,200 enters an up-and-down cycle as Colgan suggests, the region's labor market would gyrate.

If both BNAS and the Portsmouth shipyard close, Maine would lose at least two years of economic growth, said Colgan. Roughly 10,000 jobs would be gone at the two naval facilities, and another 5,000 to 10,000 jobs would be lost as the economic impact rippled through support industries. Some losses would be in New Hampshire, but the bulk would be in Maine.

Other areas have survived losses of this magnitude, caused by previous defense cuts, and even thrived in their aftermath.

In 1996, Charleston, S.C., lost 22,000 jobs when a submarine base, a shipyard and some other small Navy facilities closed. That was about 15 percent of the area's work force.

"Our economy here is almost supercharged right now. We had a 5.25 percent job growth rate last year and a record low of unemployment," said Al Parish, professor of economics and director of the center for economic forecasting at Charleston Southern University. "You can look back on it now, and (the closures) turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to us."


LOSS OF A SHIPYARD EXPECTED

President Bush's budget package, released last week, added to the uncertainty and concern in Maine's naval-defense sector. The spending plan called for major cuts in the next-generation destroyer program.

Some defense analysts say Navy shipbuilding plans could easily force at least one of the shipyards in the United States to close. That possibility is a worry that keeps state Sen. Arthur F. Mayo III, D-Bath, awake in the early morning hours.

"If Bath Iron Works ramps down and for whatever reason has to close, what happens to that facility? Is it a usable facility? I question its use by any other industry that is non-shipbuilding," said Mayo. "It is so geared to the type of ship it constructs. What do you use it for, if not for building the DD(X) and the current (destroyer)? And that is scary."

The community impact would be enormous, Mayo said. Bath has much larger police and fire departments than a community of 9,500 would normally need because of the 6,000 or so BIW workers traveling in and out daily, he said. The shipyard paid Bath $4.4 million in taxes last year. Brunswick, where BIW has several large facilities, received about $708,000.

Mayo said he thought state and community leaders were considering how to deal with the worst-case scenario - a shutdown of BNAS, the Portsmouth shipyard and BIW.

"I think, over time, we would attract jobs, just as they have at Loring, but they're not going to be the same type of jobs, paying the same wages, having the same benefits," said Mayo, referring to the former Air Force base in northern Maine. "Nothing against the call-center situation, but call centers by and large are not paying what the paper mills paid. The same thing will be true in this."

BROADER HISTORICAL TREND

Thompson said the impending danger to BIW, BNAS and the Portsmouth shipyard is part of a much broader historical trend.

"In many ways, the migration of manufacturing out of New England and the end of the Cold War are working in tandem to harm the Maine economy," he said. "The whole economy has become distinctly unfriendly to blue-collar workers, and the Pentagon is simply reflecting that trend."

The BRAC commission has until Sept. 8 to send its report to President Bush. He must accept or reject the recommendations in their entirety by Sept. 23.

If Bush accepts the recommen- dations, Congress will have 45 days to reject them in their entirety or they become binding.

Thompson said the Pentagon wouldn't "cross-reference" its decisions in the coming BRAC round; shipbuilding plans for BIW won't be considered as it looks at whether to close BNAS or the Portsmouth shipyard.

Colgan said the closings of BNAS and the Portsmouth shipyard present different challenges.

In Brunswick, most of the workers are military personnel, so job cuts wouldn't flood the labor market. The personnel would move elsewhere. Even so, the $147 million payroll is largely spent in Maine, and that would drain out of the economy.

The base's economic impact on the state is estimated at $333.6 million, through payroll and expenditures. About 2,400 active military personnel live off base; if they left the region, there would be a housing glut. There are 643 military dependent children in Brunswick's schools, and the town gets more than $800,000 in federal subsidies to teach them.

The 3,400 acres of total space the base has around Brunswick would probably become a mixed-use development, said Colgan. Housing, light industrial, office space and parkland would likely be developed there, he said.

The Portsmouth shipyard is a different situation.

"Portsmouth carries such a large skilled work force that it's going to dump (people) on the local labor market with no place to go," said Colgan.

The shipyard has 4,800 employees, mostly civilians. Of that total, 2,771 live in Maine, 1,878 in New Hampshire and about 150 in other New England states.

The yard is located on Seavey Island, a location that could be prime real estate, said Colgan. However, he suspects there would be some serious environmental contamination on the island that would have to be cleaned up.

"I doubt if the Navy has been meticulously clean in its dealings with nuclear matter over the last 50 years there - that's just a guess," said Colgan. "On the other hand, once it's cleaned up, it will become extremely prime real estate."

If the land becomes developable, said Colgan, he predicts upper-scale housing, a marina, a hotel and possibly some light office space as new tenants.

"When you look at each of the three locations, Kittery, Bruns- wick and Bath, the location that is best able to absorb the economic impact from something like this is Kittery, due to the more rapid economic growth in the southern part of the state," said Daniel Innis, dean of the University of Maine's School of Business, Public Policy and Health.

"The impact on Brunswick would be huge," he said. "I do think the economy is somewhat resilient down there and might be able to absorb it, but it would take some years."

The loss of a military base or shipyard echoes losses felt around Maine when shoe factories, textile mills and, most recently, paper mills pulled up stakes. When a blue-collar business that supported an entire community for generations suddenly goes, the town is left to somehow fill in a massive void.

"It again points to the importance of diversifying our economy in the state of Maine," said Innis.

Federal studies show that communities bounce back after bases close, said Richard Gsottschneider, president of RKG Associates Inc., a Durham, N.H., company hired by Brunswick to develop a plan should BNAS close.

One of the best success stories in Maine is the former Loring Air Force Base in rural Aroostook County. When the base closed in 1994, 1,100 civilians lost their jobs. Today, 1,242 people work at redeveloped Loring, with an annual payroll of $27 million and further growth projected.

"It doesn't happen overnight, but it can happen," said Gsottschneider.


PREPARING FOR THE WORST

Of course, southern Maine's economy is far different from that of Aroostook County. And different, in turn, from Charleston. Still, there are lessons from that Southern success story.

When the federal government announced the shipyard and sub base would close, business activity in Charleston stopped, said Mary Graham, vice president of public policy at the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce.

"It was like the business community was frozen in indecision for 12 to 18 months. People were afraid of what the impact was going to be, so they didn't want to make a move one way or the other," said Graham.

Parish, the Charleston economics professor, said the psychological effect was devastating.

"The advantage to having a military presence is that it helps your community be recession-resistant," he said. "It's subject to the political cycle, if you will, but it's not subject to the business cycle."

The unemployment rate hit 5.2 percent the year the bases closed. Charleston, like other communities with threatened bases, found itself with dual roles.

"You have to prepare for it. Sure you have a committee (fighting the closure), that's fine, but you also need to be preparing for 'What if they do?' " said Parish. "It is funny in that way - you're hoping for the best and preparing for the worst."

One thing Charleston did was market its unemployment rate - the city suddenly had a highly skilled work force available.

"The one thing you will have is that pool of available labor that is hard to find in almost any community," said Graham. "You have to sort of play up on the things you have."

About 18 months after the decision to close was made public, a major steel company announced it would open a $600 million plant in the city, providing 500 jobs. That was only a fraction of the jobs lost, but the psychological effect was important, said Graham. The announcement combined with a rising economic tide nationwide and low interest rates. "All the stars were aligned on Charleston," she said.

The Pentagon put Charleston workers who lost their jobs on a priority list for Defense Department positions around the country. About 2,500 people took those positions. To a degree, Charleston exported its unemployment.

The political clout of Sens. Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings also proved key, said Graham. Navy operations that were shut in other locations moved to Charleston, said Graham, and those units have flourished. The military employs about 27,000 people there now.

Also, she said, once a base is on the closure list, it opens the door to federal resources, grants and experts to help survive the shuttering. "It's not like they're saying, 'We're closing it. See ya,' " she said.

GOING AFTER JOBS

Parish suggested that Maine should have one group working on attracting jobs to both Brunswick and Kittery, in case the facilities close. A company might move in that could provide jobs in both locations.

He said a redevelopment/business attraction group should be put together that includes people who normally don't get along. Labor leaders would need to work with business owners, as would politicians with opposing political views.

If these people can get along, it sends a strong signal to the community that the redevelopment will happen, said Parish. That necessitates a strong chairman for the group, he added.

"You've heard of stepping on toes? Your chairman needs to break feet," said Parish.

Most importantly, said Parish, communities should focus on replacing the jobs lost, not necessarily on redeveloping the sites. For instance, if a company wants to open and provide 100 jobs in the greater Brunswick area, a redevelopment group should embrace that, rather than try to shoehorn the business into the old military base.

"That's what crucial, for the community to realize it's the jobs they need to replace," said Parish. "We still have not completely reused (the Charleston base). It may take you a long time to redevelop that property."

While Charleston is eyeing this BRAC round nervously, said Graham, its economy is much more diversified than it was in the early 1990s. The economy continues to grow there, said Parish, pointing to the recent ground-breaking for a $350 million facility to make fuselages for Boeing.

"Our economy is less resistant to recession, certainly. We do get affected more by the business cycle, but our growth has really revved up," said Parish. "Our employment growth rate doubled the month the Navy closed, and it hasn't turned back since."

[Maine Finn]

Welcome home
Monday, February 14, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

The men of the Maine Army National Guard's 152nd Field Artillery Battalion are active-duty soldiers no more. As of Sunday afternoon, they are once again husbands, brothers and sons; college students, social workers and farm laborers.

With a call of "dismissed" that could barely be heard above the joyous din of the hundreds of friends and family members who packed the Bangor Civic Center, these 112 men's service in Iraq drew to a close.

The crowd surged forward in a whirl of tears and flags and best Sunday dresses. Those first hugs lasted minutes, not seconds, as mothers clutched their sons as though they would never let go, and wives reached up to touch their husbands' faces, perhaps convincing themselves that the long-awaited moment was real.

These young guardsmen, the vast majority of whom had never before served overseas, had walked into one of the most difficult situations imaginable - guarding the infamous Abu Ghraib prison after allegations of prisoner abuse by former guards surfaced.

It was, as one guardsman in the 152nd said, the best and worst year of their lives.

"Regardless of what was going on, they stood strong. They did their job," said Sgt. 1st Class James Tash of Hodgdon.

Tash served eight months in Iraq with the 152nd, then flew home in September after the death of his young son in an automobile accident.

On Sunday, he was among the first to welcome home his troops.

"They'll be telling their grandchildren about this," Tash said, moments before the men walked back into their families' lives. "I've got butterflies just being here."

Many of the families who spilled into the lobby of the Civic Center hadn't seen the men of the 152nd for 13 long months. As the time of reunion drew nearer, time seemed to slow down for many of these National Guard families.

"I haven't been sleeping much," said Peggy Gilmer of Presque Isle, awaiting the return of her husband, Terry, on Sunday. "I started counting the hours."

Tina Babbin of Fort Kent walked into the Civic Center Sunday afternoon with an antsy tabby cat in tow. The cat, known as H.P., was an Iraqi stray, adopted by the unit as its mascot at Abu Ghraib, then flown home to Maine a few weeks ago.

Babbin soothed the frightened cat while she waited for her fiance, Jesse Cote of Caribou, to walk off the plane.

"I'm proud that he went there, but it's just time to come home and get back to a normal life," said Babbit, who plans to marry Cote in the summer of 2006.

Lori DeMerchant of Caribou spent the Sunday trying to calm her three small children, dancing around with excitement that their dad, Kent, was finally coming home. She has missed her husband but knew he would serve, and serve well, if the 152nd was called, she said.

"If he's asked to do something, he's going to do it 100 percent or more," DeMerchant said.

Three past state commanders of the Maine Veterans of Foreign Wars fulfilled a pact they made last January when they watched the 152nd deploy for Iraq.

Veterans of the Korean and Vietnam eras, the men place a tremendous value on giving those who have served in Iraq a grateful welcome.

"They were kids," said Peter Merburg of Caribou. "We're watching them coming back as men. ... Wherever these young soldiers are, we're going to be there to greet them."

There's no question that the members of the 152nd got a warm welcome as they traveled to their homes all over the state Sunday. Snowbanks along Interstate 95 were spray-painted with messages, and several small towns in Aroostook County had planned big celebrations and motorcades to mark hometown boys' safe return.

The excitement started building hours before the troops appeared, with the announcement that their flight had landed, eliciting screams and chants of "One-five-two, we love you."

The room was still electric when the men, holding fast to their wives' and children's hands, walked out of the Bangor Civic Center and back into civilian life.

"Oh, my God, ... they made it!," exclaimed a mother from Limestone and a wife from Presque Isle, embracing in the lobby.

The 152nd made it home, and at kitchen tables all over Maine, that's all that matters this morning.

Welcome home, guys. Thank you.

[Maine Finn]

Navy chief, delegation discuss bases


By BART JANSEN, Portland Press Herald Writer

WASHINGTON — Navy Secretary Gordon England met Monday with Maine's congressional delegation as the region's lawmakers try to prevent the closure of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery and the Brunswick Naval Air Station. The meeting was closed to the public, and England could make no decisions concerning base closures. But lawmakers from Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts stressed the Kittery yard's ability to routinely repair submarines faster and cheaper than the Navy expected.

"The Navy can't afford to jeopardize its low-cost producer," said U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a member of the Armed Services Committee.

U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who hosted England in her offices, said the meeting offered an opportunity to reinforce the value of the "spectacular yard" in Kittery and the geographic value of Brunswick, the last naval air base in the Northeast.

"I think he indicated he understood the depth of our concern," Snowe said.

Lawmakers also focused on the particular value of the two bases. For example, U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, cited Portsmouth's nuclear license as difficult to replace if the yard were closed.

"The best yard should not be the first to close," Allen said.

Although the meeting didn't lead to decisions, U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, echoed others in saying that England appeared responsive to the pleas to keep the bases open.

"I think it went very well," Michaud said. "I think we got a pretty good hearing. Hopefully, it will work out well."

The meeting occurred as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld assembles a list recommending closure of perhaps one-fourth of the country's 425 military bases. He'll release his list by May 16, which is why Maine base advocates are working aggressively now.

The list will be reviewed by a presidential commission, which will make recommendations to President Bush by Sept. 8. Bush could reject the list and ask the commission for revisions by Oct. 20. Congress will have 45 days after he accepts a list to either reject the entire list or let the bases close.

England and other officials have toured the bases in recent months to familiarize themselves with the facilities. New England lawmakers have written 20 letters in the past two years promoting the bases to military officials. Staffers for lawmakers have met more than 50 times to organize support.

Military analysts consider both Maine bases vulnerable to closure because they have been geared to fight the Cold War, with Portsmouth repairing U.S. submarines and Brunswick aircraft chasing enemy subs.

Bush's latest budget proposes to cut submarine construction in half.

The loss of the bases would hurt Maine's economy. Portsmouth employs 4,800 workers with a payroll of $318 million. Brunswick has more than 5,200 workers earning $147 million.

But because the communities surrounding all military bases are expected to emphasize the economic loss they would suffer, advocates are promoting the military value and flexibility of their bases. For example, Brunswick planes are flying over Iraq and Afghanistan and could help protect the country against airborne weapons heading for U.S. shores, lawmakers said.

From 1995 to 2004, Portsmouth stacks up well against the other three government shipyards, according to figures that Collins collected.

One type of submarine overhaul takes 24.5 months at Portsmouth, compared with an average of 28.6 months at the other three yards. The average cost at Portsmouth was $234 million, compared with a $320 million average at the other yards.

Despite the performance, the Navy workload at the Kittery yard is projected to drop 29 percent through 2020, while another yard would lose only 15 percent of its work and the two others would lose 1 percent to 2 percent.

"We don't want any decisions made that could trip the wire and hurt the base's position," Snowe said.

Here's hoping the bases stay open.

[Maine Finn]

USS Maine remembered in Bangor
Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

BANGOR - Gunshots rang out Tuesday in the city, but local authorities didn't seem to mind. After all, the noise signified remembrance, not strife. Amid gray skies and soggy ground at Davenport Park, a small group of veterans and passers-by remembered the USS Maine, a naval ship that sank on Feb. 15, 1898, in Havana Harbor, Cuba.

Tuesday marked the 107th anniversary of the ship's sinking, an event that claimed 267 American lives, helped spark the Spanish-American War and provided U.S. soldiers with the famous rallying cry, "Remember the Maine."

"We fulfill a pledge and a covenant not for the brass or metal, but for life she held within her," said Lt. Cmdr. Brian Emory, U.S. Navy Reserve.Emory and fellow staff from the Armed Forces Reserve Center on Hildreth Street joined members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4917, the University of Maine Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps and others in a short ceremony.

The group gathered in front of the ship's triangular monument, which sits in Davenport Park at the corner of Cedar and Main streets.

"We gather to recognize those times when the sacrifice of lives is necessary," said the Rev. Adam Soderberg of the East Orrington Congregational Church, who led prayers.

Representatives from the offices of U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins also were on hand to preserve the memory of a ship that "proudly carried our name," Snowe's staff assistant Mark Kontio said.

Emory gave a speech that detailed facts about the USS Maine, a battleship introduced at the end of the 19th century that would lead a new class of boats into the new century.

The Maine was 320 feet long, 50 feet wide and nearly seven stories high. The ship carried 355 Americans to Cuba on Feb. 15 more than a century ago, but less than one-third of those returned with their lives.

Emory reminded those attending that while investigation into the ship's sinking didn't reveal how it happened, the event spurred an outpouring of compassion.

"Events of history cannot be changed," he said. "But this should serve as a remembrance to all fallen service men and woman as well as those who are still serving."

As a wreath was placed below the plaque that details the sinking of the Maine, gunshots broke the silence, followed by a single musician playing taps.

A few walkers passing by Davenport Park stopped briefly and watched. They may not have known why, but they stopped anyway.


Katheryn Viner of the Bangor High School Junior ROTC Honor Guard raises her rifle to fire during the 21-gun salute at the USS Maine Memorial in Bangor on Tuesday. The ceremony commemorated the 107th anniversary of the sinking of the ship in Havana Harbor, Cuba. (http://www.bangornews.com/news/articlefiles/r.aspx?f=gallery/News/021605_USSMaine.jpg)

[Maine Finn]

Teen snowmobiler hit by van injured
Thursday, February 17, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

LEVANT - A Levant teenager, who authorities said was trying to elude family members and police, was struck by a van as he crossed Union Street on a snowmobile Wednesday. The 16-year-old wasn't wearing a helmet and was thrown from the snowmobile, hitting the van's windshield, said Maine State Police Trooper Michael Johnston who is investigating the accident.

The teenager, whose name was not released, suffered a broken ankle and abrasions and lacerations to his face, Johnston said.

Lee White, 74, and his wife, Gertrude, 70, of Exeter were in the van heading toward the center of town and were shaken up but not injured, Johnston said. After it was struck by the van, the snowmobile spun around and hit the cruiser of a Penobscot County Sheriff's deputy who had been looking for the youth.

Deputy Mark Lloyd said he had stopped by the side of the road and was talking to the teenager's mother when he saw the snowmobile pull up to the road. Lloyd said he turned on his blue lights in an attempt to get the teenager to stop. The teenager had other plans.

"He looked at me and just gunned it across the road," Lloyd said Wednesday.

The snowmobile made it only about 3 feet into the road when it was struck by the van, Lloyd said. The accident occurred a few tenths of a mile after Merriman Road and about a half-mile from the C&K Variety store at the bottom of a hill.

Before the accident, Lloyd was called to the family's Merriman Road home after the boy's parents called to say that the teenager had been combative.

On the way to the home, Lloyd learned that the teenager had fled on a snowmobile. The boy's father was in pursuit on another snowmobile.

Because the accident involved a sheriff's department cruiser, state police troopers were called in to investigate at about 5:15 p.m. To avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, it is the department's policy is to have other agencies investigate accidents in which its own officers are involved.

State police troopers took measurements along the road. They checked for marks left by the skis of the snowmobile. Lights from a Levant firetruck and from a mobile tripod light illuminated the scene as the afternoon gave way to night.

The accident remains under investigation and charges could be filed, Johnston said. The trooper said the teenager failed to yield to oncoming traffic in a public way as is required.


Deputy Lloyd requested backup from dispatch immediately after the snowmobile struck his cruiser, but the only units available were troopers. Other units (both County and local) were too far away or assigned to other calls. Yes, the County's "conflict of interest" policy came into play eventually, but the first uniformed officers on-scene were troopers anyway. Levant Fire responded and was on-scene ahead of troopers, and handled traffic-control until the troopers arrived.

[Maine Finn]

Baldacci slips on ice, cracks ribs

By PAUL CARRIER, Portland Press Herald Writer

AUGUSTA — Gov. John Baldacci broke three ribs Wednesday morning when he slipped on a patch of ice outside the Blaine House while retrieving his newspapers. A member of Baldacci's security detail rushed the governor to Maine General Medical Center in Augusta, where he was X-rayed before being released.

Baldacci, 50, spent the rest of the day working and recuperating at the Blaine House. He stayed away from his State House office all day, granted no interviews to reporters and canceled his public schedule for the rest of the week.

"He's sore and he hurts," said spokesman Lynn Kippax. "The headline is, 'He's fallen and he did get up.' "

The accident happened about 5:30 a.m., and had Baldacci returned to the Blaine House from the hospital by 7 a.m., according to staffers. The governor did not hit his head when he fell, and he never lost consciousness during the ordeal.

"He's in a lot of pain, but he's his usual focused self," said Lee Umphrey, an aide who briefed Baldacci at the Blaine House Wednesday morning and delivered some paperwork to him there.

Senate President Beth Edmonds, D-Freeport, told the Senate about the accident at the close of Wednesday's session. But a similar announcement was not made in the House of Representatives.

The Senate president is the first in line to succeed a governor who dies or is incapacitated. But no one planned for that contingency Wednesday because Baldacci never lost the ability to perform his duties as governor.

Nervous staffers feared early in the day that Baldacci might return to the State House prematurely instead of taking their advice to stay in the Blaine House, the governor's official residence across the street from the Capitol. Their fears proved to be unfounded - Baldacci ran his office from the Blaine House Wednesday and plans to continue doing so for the rest of the week.

Kippax said the governor is anxious to get back to work, despite the broken ribs. He said the governor's office had received dozens of calls and e-mails from Mainers wishing Baldacci a speedy recovery.

The governor's office declined to identify the state trooper who took Baldacci to the hospital. His aides released no additional information about the governor's injuries, such as which ribs he broke and what kind of pain medication he might be taking.

"They're not discussing the specifics of his injury," Kippax said.

The poet T.S. Eliot described April as the cruelest month, but February has to place a close second for Baldacci, who was injured Feb. 4, 2004, when a sport-utility vehicle in which he was a passenger crashed in Bowdoinham. The crash sent Baldacci and his State Police driver to the hospital. Baldacci suffered a mild concussion, a broken rib and several bruises in that accident.

Kippax deflected reporters' questions about the similar timing of the two accidents, saying "there's some people trying to put things together that need not be put together."

Still, once state legislators had determined that Baldacci would recover from his injuries, some of them joked that the governor should take extra precautions during the winter months because February is proving to be unlucky.

"Maybe he ought to consider turning the Cabinet Room into a little efficiency (apartment), and then he wouldn't have to leave the building at all," joked Sen. Joseph Perry, D-Bangor.

Perhaps the governor "should go to Florida in February . . . like the rest of us old folks," said Sen. Peter Mills, R-Cornville.

Mills recalled that his grandfather, Sumner Mills, had a German shepherd named Max back in the 1940s. The dog was smart enough to carry the outgoing mail more than a block to the post office. Perhaps, he said, Baldacci could train his springer spaniels, Murphy and Sam, to fetch the newspapers on icy mornings.

"They could handle it," Mills said.

http://www.pressherald.com/photos/050217governor.jpg
Associated Press Photo
Groundskeeper Randy Glidden chips away at ice on a brick path in front of the Blaine House, the governor's residence, in Augusta on Wednesday.

rofl

[Stormy]

Jeez! Maine I'm going to start calling you Maine 007! :P

[Maine Finn]

Jeez! Maine I'm going to start calling you Maine 007! :P

Why thank you. You can call me whatever you want... p-)

[Maine Finn]

From southern Iraq to the heart of Maine

By ANN S. KIM, Portland Press Herald Writer

Five-year-old Noor Abd Al-Hady Hassan captured the hearts of Utah Army National Guard soldiers stationed near her home in southern Iraq so much that they arranged for the little girl to come to Maine so doctors can evaluate her own, damaged heart.

Noor was born with a ventricular septal defect, a hole in the wall between the left and right sides of her heart, according to the soldiers of the 115th Engineer Group who worked to get her to the United States for treatment. The problem cannot be corrected in Iraq, they said, and her life could be cut short if her condition goes untreated.

Noor and her father, Abdul Al-Hady Hassan Hesab, are expected to arrive in Portland today. If she has an operation, her surgeon will be Dr. Reed D. Quinn of Maine Heart Surgical Associates. Quinn, who has ties to Utah, learned about Noor from a member of the National Guard there.

Any care provided by Quinn and his colleagues will be free, said Rick Morrone, chief executive officer of Maine Heart Surgical Associates. Noor's team will include a doctor from Maine Pediatric Cardiology and possibly staff from Maine Medical Center, where open heart surgery is done.

Money from the Maine Foundation for Cardiac Surgery, formed by Maine Heart Surgical Associates, will go toward the pair's travel and stay in Maine, Morrone said, and Arabic speakers have donated their services as interpreters.

"There's an enormous amount of coordination," Morrone said.

The effort began after Noor's father, a security guard at a school in Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, approached the 115th in July. A chain of connections led to Quinn, who went to college at Brigham Young University and earned his medical degree at the University of Utah.

Maj. Joel V. Miller, the 115th's chaplain, and Sgt. Ronald Hammond worked through red tape to get Noor and her father visas to come to the United States. They worked with the U.S. embassy in Kuwait, traveled between there and Iraq and made sure the necessary paperwork was in place.

Their work continued even as the 115th, based in Draper, Utah, began preparations to return to the states.

Hammond wrote in an e-mail from Kuwait this week that working with Noor has helped him through the deployment.

"This is great that we could accomplish this just as we leave," he wrote. "It has been a long haul, with a lot of roadblocks, but it is really going to happen."

[Stormy]

Jeez! Maine I'm going to start calling you Maine 007! :P

Why thank you. You can call me whatever you want... p-)


Oh really :P

[Maine Finn]

Jeez! Maine I'm going to start calling you Maine 007! :P

Why thank you. You can call me whatever you want... p-)


Oh really :P

Yes.

[Stormy]

I dunno, don't want to get a women with guns upset, I don't want to end up at the short end of the straw. :lol:

[Maine Finn]

I dunno, don't want to get a women with guns upset, I don't want to end up at the short end of the straw. :lol:

Bah, nothin' to worry about here. I don't own 'em anyway. :D

[Stormy]

Well, Who is the owner of the mighty collection ??? :|

[Maine Finn]

Well, Who is the owner of the mighty collection ??? :|

My father the police sergeant. :D

[Stormy]

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

[Maine Finn]

I hope he don't dislike badboys from the big city, I'd better stay out of the state of maine :lol: If you wanna play it's gonna take place in Massachusetts. deleted
j/k

Sure thing. I love Boston! :P

Nothing to fear from him, either. He's your typical laid-back small town cop.

[Stormy]

Yeah, Boston is a nice town, My cousin lives in that city.
But...but..but... What if he gets me in Boston with his M4a1 :|

[Maine Finn]

Yeah, Boston is a nice town, My cousin lives in that city.
But...but..but... What if he gets me in Boston with his M4a1 :|

My father? Pfft! He can't even run! :P

[Stormy]

hehehe yes, But perhaps you will have to, Can you handle me :lol:

[Maine Finn]

hehehe yes, But perhaps you will have to, Can you handle me :lol:

That I don't know. Maybe I should find out? :D

[Stormy]

:lol: you're a wild one I tell ya!

[Maine Finn]

:lol: you're a wild one I tell ya!

When the mood takes me, yeah. :P

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.


Bill calls for close look at secession

By PAUL CARRIER, Portland Press Herald Writer

AUGUSTA — A legislator from Aroostook County who says northern Maine should become the 51st state to protect its rural character and revive its economy has filed a bill to research the idea, seven years after he first made a failed push to split Maine in two. Sponsored by Republican Rep. Henry Joy of Crystal, the bill calls on the State Planning Office to "study the feasibility and effects of dividing Maine into two separate states" and report back to the Legislature next January. The bill says the new state would encompass the 2nd Congressional District, but Joy says that boundary would have to be reworked because the 2nd District cities of Lewiston and Auburn are neither northern nor rural.

"There's a lot of feeling that there very definitely are two Maines, even though we're acknowledged as one state," said Joy, who filed similar legislation in 1998, when he also proposed a moratorium on development in southern Maine.

"There would be a chance to start over and not have all the regressive anti-business policies that exist" now, he said, including what Joy views as over-zealous environmental safeguards.

Joy has suggested that the new state be named Acadia or that it continue to call itself Maine. In the latter case, he said with a smile, the rest of the old state of Maine could rename itself Northern Massachusetts, because southern Maine has become little more than an extension of the Bay State.

Although the Legislature did not go along with his idea seven years ago, Joy said he is more serious about it now. Back then, he saw secession as a symbolic gesture to call attention to the economic disparities between what are often called the two Maines.

"At this point in time," he said Tuesday, "I don't see any chance of ever turning our situation around so rural Maine will ever really have a voice" in shaping state policies or its own destiny.

"Something needs to be done or rural Maine is going to die" as it becomes increasingly difficult to make a living in farming, forestry and papermaking, he said.

Joy argues that northern Maine, with its sparse population, rural self-reliance and resource-based economy, has much more in common with the Canadian Maritimes than with southern Maine. He supports closer economic ties to eastern Canada.

"I think you would see a blossoming of the economy" once northern Maine started fending for itself, he said.

Joy said he decided to renew his quest for independence at the request of constituents, who routinely raised the issue while he was campaigning for his House seat.

"There are some up there who are really dead serious" about the idea, he said. Still, the proposal has plenty of critics in northern Maine.

"The idea of the two Maines comes up every once in a while" but there is little talk of splitting the state in two, said Madawaska Town Manager Fred Ventresco. Democratic Sen. John Martin of Eagle Lake, a former speaker of the House and arguably the most powerful politician in northern Maine, said secession is not realistic because his region does not have the economic base to go it alone.

"In order for northern Maine to survive, we'd need foreign aid," Martin said. "The (state) money that comes to run schools (in the north) is not originating in northern Maine," Martin said.

"We've got to work on making things more equitable, but that's not the way to go," said Rep. Rosaire Paradis, D-Frenchville.

Fort Kent Town Manager Don Guimond described any talk of separation as frivolous.

Merit aside, the idea poses logistical problems, because secession would not come easily.

The U.S. Constitution says a new state cannot be formed without the consent of the Legislature that has jurisdiction over the affected area - in this case, the Maine Legislature.

If Joy got a state study that ultimately recommended a split, the Legislature would never go along without proof that northern Maine truly wanted to secede. And even if the region's voters and the Legislature eventually said yes, the Constitution says Congress would have to sign off as well.

The Legislature's State and Local Government Committee has yet to hold a hearing on the bill.

Link (http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/0503022maines.shtml)

:fork: :backhand: :slap: :-*$ :bash:

There will never be two Maines.

[Maine Finn]

An avoidable death?
Saturday, March 05, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

Marie Gabriel's face was rough - just as her
life has been.

Her dark eyes didn't dance. She didn't smile until the conversation came around to her children.

Gabriel, 36, lost her husband in August 2002. Peter Gabriel, 41, had been serving time on a probation violation at the Washington County Jail. He had been isolated in the room for juveniles because his wheelchair didn't fit through the doors of the ordinary cells.

An amputee, Gabriel's medical complications worsened during his sentence. Suddenly, after the jail released him to one hospital, which airlifted him to another, he was alive only because of life support. His wife made the decision for him to be taken off the support. She says she has had nightmares since because of that. Speaking publicly for the first time in the 21/2 years since her husband's death, Marie's eyes watered. She stopped talking to take a break for a cigarette.

A few minutes later she returned to the interview at a friend's house on the Passamaquoddy reservation at Pleasant Point.

"People need to know," she said.

"I believe Peter would be alive today if he had received medical attention at the jail."

Asked about Gabriel's months as an inmate at the jail, Joseph Tibbetts, the Washington County sheriff, declined comment on Thursday.

"We can't risk saying anything," he said, referring to the possibility of the widow filing a wrongful death suit.

Marie Gabriel said she is considering such action.

Gabriel's death was a trigger point for a community that cares about its own. Many community members are jailed, but Gabriel didn't live past his sentence to return home. Of the 500 tribal members who live at Pleasant Point, 16 percent of them have been incarcerated in the last two years - 47 men and women at the Washington County Jail in Machias, and 36 more within the Maine Department of Corrections or federal prison.

Those numbers shocked Pleasant Point's Tribal Council and governor on Feb. 22, when a presentation by the tribe's Criminal Justice Committee served as a call to action. A commission was formed to study the impact of the county and state's criminal justice system. It also seeks to identify solutions to the related problems of rampant drug abuse within the tribal community at Pleasant Point.

Commission leaders feel too many lives are being damaged by the time behind bars.

Peter Gabriel was one of those Passamaquoddy members who did time. He made his first courtroom appearance at 22, and had been in and out of jail and prison before he met and married Marie.

They lived in Eastport and had four children together. Being a dad seemed to put him on a better path, she said.

But he was jailed again in 1999 for selling OxyContin tablets, and again for a probation violation. He died in August 2002 at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. He had arrived there from the Down East Community Hospital in Machias.

His funeral service at Pleasant Point fell on Aug. 20, his oldest son's birthday.

He had been transferred to the Machias hospital from Washington County Jail on a medical release. His family had been anticipating his release in January 2003.

A diabetic, Gabriel had a stump for a leg. When his condition went bad he asked his jailers for help and medical attention numerous times, but to no avail, his wife and others described on Thursday.

He called his wife every Saturday. He told how he was getting no help in taking a shower, and that no one was coming to bathe him. Yet when she pressed him, he always said he was "all right."

"He probably didn't want to worry her, but it was bad," said another Pleasant Point man who was in the jail at the same time as Gabrieland didn't want to be identified. "He didn't have any help. He wanted to go to the hospital. He stunk bad as his infected leg turned to gangrene."

Marie could not visit her husband because of the jail's rule that anyone who recently had been released from the jail could not return to visit another inmate within six months without special approval. She fell under that regulationbecause she had been in jail on a drug-related offense. When she questioned guards by phone, she was told that, "Peter hasn't put in a medical request."

Other jailed tribal members who knew of Gabriel's condition asked family members in phone conversations to make contact with the jail administrator from the outside about the situation.

Annette Newell had known Peter Gabriel on the reservation because she delivered Meals for Me to him as a homebound disabled man. He had been confined to a wheelchair since a stroke in 1999 weakened one side of his body.

She became closer to Marie during Gabriel's incarceration, especially after she heard from her husband - also jailed -- of Gabriel's worsening condition.

"The inmates had to walk past where he was, and they all talked about the stench of rotting flesh," Newell said on Thursday. "If my husband could smell the problem, why couldn't the guards?"

One guard named Ed, Marie said, took notice of Gabriel's situation. He had been on vacation during the time that Gabriel's leg had worsened considerably. When that guard was back on the job, he asked to see Gabriel's leg. The guard's response got Gabriel released to the hospital. He was admitted in critical condition.

Gabriel had failed to call Marie as usual the Saturday before he was hospitalized. Marie scrambled to get a ride to Machias to see him in the hospital the next day. She took one of their children, Peter Jr.

"When I finally did get to see him, he was really, really swollen, with sores like boils," she said. "And he was so messed up with his medications."

Without transportation of her own, Marie scrambled again to find a ride, this time to Bangor. He had been airlifted to Eastern Maine Medical Center. She saw him once long enough to tell him, "Hang on," before he needed life support.

She doesn't remember how many days he was in either hospital. What happened at the end of Peter's life is still a blur to her. She remembers how she hurt when Peter's son, her stepson, noted, "Daddy's going to be buried on my birthday."

She knows that the Little Eagles, the reservation's young drummers, honored him at his funeral. She has not been to his grave since the funeral. Nor has she attended any other funerals, she said.

She remembers how much care was shown by Joe Dragon, a registered nurse working in the intensive care unit at Eastern Maine Medical Center. Dragon helped Marie through the trauma of the final days. She said her life "fell apart" after Peter's death.

The children were devastated, too. They missed their dad who, fluent in Passamaquoddy, spoke to them in their native language.

"There were days when I just cried," Marie said. "I have nightmares about how he died. How could he go from jail to the hospital, and then die? I thought that me and Peter were going to grow old together. We were together for 11 or 12 years.

"Maybe if they got him to the hospital sooner, he wouldn't be dead now."

There has been some closure for Marie, who finds joy in her children, a new relationship and a new baby, born in December.

There has been closure, too, in the Peter Gabriel records on file at the Washington County Courthouse. The final entry, dated April 7, 2003, is a memo signed by Superior Court Justice E. Allen Hunter.

"The defendant is deceased," it reads. "The victim fee of $25 is waived."

[CG51]

MF...why did vik get banned?

[Maine Finn]

Their mission complete

By JOSIE HUANG, Portland Press Herald Writer


A family shivered outside the Stevens Avenue Armory in Portland late Friday afternoon, waiting, hoping for Sgt. Warren Lee Parker.

Wife Susan couldn't wait to tell him to his face how much she loved him. Eleven-year-old Chelsi just wanted to tell him everything.

Jami, 15, held out for a fresh beginning. Before his father was deployed to Iraq, he said, "we weren't on the same page."

"When he comes back," said Jami, sporting a shadow of a mustache, "I want to start over with him, start brand new."

After more than a year of waiting to be reunited with loved ones, more than 200 families got their wish when another wave of Maine Army National Guard soldiers attached to the 133rd Engineer Battalion were bused to sites in Portland, Lewiston and Augusta.

"Maine or Bust" and "Mosul, Iraq to Maine: 5,000 miles" were some of the ebullient messages scrawled onto the grimy windows of three buses that traveled from Fort Drum, N.Y., to the Portland armory, where Friday's biggest celebration was being held.

Nearly 100 soldiers belonging to the 133rd's Headquarters Support Company were met with whoops and cheers when they entered the armory, where balloons floated to the rafters. But the soldiers could not run into the arms of friends and family quite yet.

They stood at attention, their backs to loved ones so they could face their commander, Capt. Michael Steinbuchel.

"To my soldiers: Mission complete and job well done," Steinbuchel said. A room turned silent, waiting for his cue.

"Dismissed!" Steinbuchel said.

The room erupted into a roar, as the smiling soldiers slowly made their way through the maze of people, looking for familiar faces. Tears fell as soldiers met the gaze of loved ones.

Sgt. 1st Class Alicia Wilkinson of Standish said she was overwhelmed by the sight of her daughters, Olivia, 5, and Emily, 3. Each had grown by several inches since both she and her husband, Sgt. Maj. David Wilkinson, were deployed on Jan. 2, 2004.

"I just want to go home and plop down on a couch and hug them," she said, as she held Emily in her arms.

Many were also emotional as they said goodbye to their colleagues.

Members of the 133rd had shared a unique experience. With more than 500 soldiers, they represented the biggest Maine unit in Iraq and the largest deployment of Maine guardsmen since World War II.

They bonded as they rebuilt schools and roads. They sustained mortar attacks. Together, they lost four soldiers, most recently Sgt. 1st Class Michael Jones of Unity, who died Thursday at a New York hospital from an intestinal blockage.

Going from her tight-knit family in Iraq to her parents' home in Pittston struck Spc. Rhonda Richards as surreal. "It's nice but it's strange, too," Richards said, with a faint smile.

About 100 more soldiers will return to Maine today. Only 22 soldiers of the 133rd are still stationed in Kuwait.

As some Mainers return home, others will leave for the Middle East. About 120 soldiers attached to the 152nd Maintenance Company are in Fort Bliss, Texas, awaiting word of whether they will be supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom from a post in Kuwait or Iraq, said Maj. Peter Rogers. Another 14 Maine soldiers will be mobilized to Afghanistan as part of the Mountain Infantry Company for at least a year, he said.

A year, families of the 133rd found out, can feel like an eternity. Birthdays pass; so do wedding anniversaries and holidays.

Sometimes the loss doesn't hit until the last minute. Chelsi Parker, who had promised not to cry, flew into her father's arms as soon as she saw him, and sobbed into his chest. Father and son gave each other firm hugs.

Jami said he wanted to spend more time with his dad, maybe playing their favorite games like Monopoly and Pictionary.

His father, whose legs were wobbly from the excitement, said his time in Iraq will help him appreciate every moment in life.

"You don't want to take things for granted," Parker said.

He repeatedly told his wife how beautiful she was, and hugged the dozen or so people who came to see him. Encircled by loved ones, his neck draped with a plastic lei of red, white and blue, Parker finally headed for the armory exit. They were eating catered food that night - seafood, Italian - anything he wanted, his wife said.


http://news.mainetoday.com/war/050305troopreturn03.jpg
Staff photo by Gregory Rec
March 4, 2005: Spc. San Pao of Portland, left, Spc. Richard Shackley of Falmouth and Spc. James Leblanc of Buxton whoop it up in celebration of their homecoming Friday. The men served with the 133rd Engineer Battalion, which represented the biggest Maine unit in Iraq and the largest deployment of Maine guardsmen since World War II.

http://news.mainetoday.com/war/050305troopreturn01.jpg
Staff photo by Gregory Rec
March 4, 2005: Soldiers with the 133rd Engineer Battalion wave out the windows of their bus as it nears the Stevens Avenue Armory in Portland on Friday. In the foreground from left are Spc. Rhonda Richards of Pittston, Lt. Todd Crawford of Bridgton and Sgt. Roger Jones of Portland.



Link (http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/050305133rd.shtml)

Welcome home, boys.

Safe passage to the 152nd, wherever they end up.

[Maine Finn]

MF...why did vik get banned?

Somebody whined about the stuff she said and Hood gave her the boot. Caraway's gone too.

[CG51]

i don't remember her saying anything bad, just cursed alot...what did they say that was so bad?

[Maine Finn]

i don't remember her saying anything bad, just cursed alot...what did they say that was so bad?

From what I've heard, Viktorin was banned because she was fond of using racist slurs and "didn't contribute" to the board. As for Caraway... man, that banning was just a long time in coming.


Edit:

rofl

Apparently the dearly departed Viktorin has an issue with the above statement.

For the record, allow me to clarify. Ladies and gentlmen of the jury, the highlighted portions of the above statement - showing here


...Viktorin was banned because she was fond of using racist slurs and "didn't contribute" to the board...

may be thought to be said in a serious tone, but in fact, it is the fault of the author for failing to denote the intended sarcasm with a supporting device - one of these: :roll:

Furthermore, the words in quotation marks - "didn't contribute" were written by a third party and were merely re-quoted here.

It can be hoped that all misinterpretations will be resolved now and complaints need not be made using outside means.

Thank you.

[CG51]

i see, i can assume who was bitching...

[Ria]

Their mission complete


What a great article..welcome home Maine soldiers. :hug:

[Maine Finn]

i see, i can assume who was bitching...

Feel free. You'd probably be right.

Is it safe to bring the vodka out again? I haven't seen Jani around, so I think it is. :D

Anybody want a shot?

[Maine Finn]

Their mission complete


What a great article..welcome home Maine soldiers. :hug:

Yeah. Kinda too bad that as they're coming home, others are leaving.

Hoah, boys. :hug:

[Maine Finn]

Patriots of all stripes to be honored

By JEN FISH, Portland Press Herald Writer

It's not often that sports heroes are overshadowed, but on April 8 members of the New England Patriots will share the stage with some real American heroes - Maine soldiers, firefighters and policemen.

Portland officials confirmed Wednesday that a celebration of the Patriots' third Super Bowl victory will be part of "A Heroes Parade," a tribute to Maine soldiers who have served in Iraq, veterans of past conflicts and local police and firefighters.

City Manager Joseph Gray said the players who will attend have not been confirmed, but team owner Robert Kraft will come to Portland with the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

"It is a privilege to be invited to participate in a parade of thousands of patriots and true American heroes," Kraft said in a written statement. "We are flattered to be included and graciously welcome the opportunity to team up with our troops during this event.

Gray said the football-playing Patriots and Maine's own patriots are a natural fit, calling the team "a class act . . . on and off the field."

Gray added that the city was sensitive to the concern that the Patriots may overshadow the soldiers. "The real focus is on the men and women in uniform," he said.

Military officials were similarly excited to learn that the Patriots will be included.

"We think it's fantastic," said Maj. Peter Rogers, spokesman for the Maine Army National Guard. "It's a really good mix, especially since a lot of these (soldiers) weren't here for the Super Bowl."

The parade will take the same general route along Congress Street that previous parades have taken. Staging and preparation will probably be at High and Spring streets, Gray said, and a rally will be held in Monument Square at the end of the parade.

Gray said the event is expected to cost the city $4,000 to $5,000, with most of the money spent on overtime for police and fire officials who will be on duty.

"That's not a lot of money, given the amount of community spirit" these events generate, he said.

City Councilor James Cohen said that having parades never gets old, and that combining the Patriots and the soldiers will be a "terrific celebration."

"I'm thrilled to have the troops come home and I'm thrilled the Patriots have won three (Super Bowls) in four years and I hope they'll win four in five years," Cohen said.

Luckily, Gray said, the city has become accustomed to giving parades, so officials have most of the logistics down.

Officials aren't sure how many military personnel will be at the parade, but Rogers said he expects all of the branches of the military - not just the National Guard - to be represented.

More than 1,400 members of the Maine National Guard have served in Iraq, in addition to troops in the Air National Guard and other reserve units.

The U.S. Air Force band of Liberty, a 75-piece marching band, has already agreed to lead the parade and perform a concert. Other bands may be added in the weeks ahead, Gray said.

"I think it's going to be absolutely huge," Rogers said of the event. Parades, he said, are not just about honoring the soldiers.

"It's a way for the troops to say thanks," he said. "The citizens of Maine have really been so supportive."

woot

Reason #3523 why I love Portland.

[Maine Finn]

Something with a happy ending, to balance the sorrow of the Gelineau tragedy.

From the Bangor Daily News


BANGOR - Two canoeists were rescued from the rushing, icy current of the Kenduskeag Stream on Wednesday night by state game wardens using a hovercraft after rescue efforts on the ground and in the air were delayed. The two canoeists, identified as Patrick and Daniel Davis, apparently cousins, spent five hours standing knee- to waist-deep along some rocks, buffeted by the fast-moving water at Six Mile Falls, a notorious area for dumping paddlers.


At times they shouted that they were OK, that wet suits were keeping them warm, with the exception of their fingers and toes.

"We are fine, but how are we going to get our boat across?" one shouted shortly after 9 p.m.

But officials worried that the more time they spent in the water the likelier they would suffer harm.

"It was getting down to a very serious situation," Maine Game Warden David Georgia said. "It was starting to get very grave."

With plans scuttled to bring a ladder truck closer to the stream and extend its ladder to get rescuers closer, organizers pinned their hopes on a helicopter from the Army National Guard's 112th Medical Unit or a Maine Warden Service hovercraft arriving.

The hovercraft got there first and was quickly put to work and severely tested on its maiden rescue.

Officials strung ropes across the frothing water downstream near the bridge as a safety net in case the paddlers were swept away.

"We had a lot of contingency plans, but the last thing we wanted to do is put people in the water," Assistant Bangor Fire Chief Rick Cheverie said.

"Scary" is how Warden Ron Dunham described his efforts to steer the hovercraft through the choppy waters, weaving in and out of the harshest parts of the stream and surging through others by sheer power. Dunham had to dodge rocks and ledge outcroppings.

And there were other things to worry about.

Debris, including ice and tree limbs, were carried down the stream which was flowing as fast as 15 to 20 mph, Cheverie estimated.

As the hovercraft approached the two men, Dunham said he signaled for both to jump in, realizing, he said later, that he probably wouldn't get another chance up the stream. After both jumped in, a small crowd of people who had gathered along the stream's edge applauded.

The rescue was only half done, however.

Dunham turned about and headed ashore. But the return trip, despite going with the flow of the stream, was equally dangerous, if not more so.

"I'm not sure which was worse, the trip up or the trip down," Dunham said after the rescue. He had to contend with a ledge and the water swirling around it below the island of rocks where the canoeists had been moments earlier.

The hovercraft plunged deep into the water, and Dunham said he saw large waves of water coming at him. Water sprayed everywhere, but the hovercraft, floating on a cushion of air, continued forward.

Once ashore, both men were treated in ambulances - apparently for hypothermia - before being taken to St. Joseph Hospital for further assessment.

Authorities were first alerted to the stranded paddlers about 7:30 p.m. after Charlie Cox, a passing bicyclist, heard cries for help coming from the stream. One of the canoeists shouted to rescuers on the shore that they had been there since 5:30 p.m.

Scanning the water near the bridge, Cox, 43, of Bangor couldn't see where the calls were coming from so he rode farther down past the trees that line the stream.

"Help, help us," the shouts continued, Cox said.

Spotting them and their canoe along some rocks, Cox said he signaled that he was going for help. He ran to the nearby home of John and Lee Birmingham and found John. Lee and their son Jacob were just arriving home.

The Birminghams called emergency 911 and went to the stream with a flashlight, as it was becoming darker.

Cheverie said the Fire Department was called at 7:51 p.m. and arrived within five to six minutes. The number of firefighters grew as officials weighed their options.

The department's Technical Rescue Team, which is trained for difficult extrications, suited up as did members of the Penobscot County dive team. One dive team member tried to cross the stream near the bridge where conditions weren't as severe, but Cheverie said the waist-deep water threatened to carry him away.


Maine Warden Service Search and Rescue personnel retrieve two paddlers from the swollen Six Mile Falls section of the Kenduskeag Stream on Wednesday night. (http://www.bangornews.com/news/articlefiles/r.aspx?f=gallery/News/040705_Rescue4.JPG)

A canoeist sits wrapped in a blanket in an ambulance after he was rescued at Six Mile Falls on Wednesday night. (http://www.bangornews.com/news/articlefiles/r.aspx?f=gallery/News/040705_Rescue3.JPG)BDN photos by John Clarke Russ

The group that I go paddling with was out on the river just before this happened. If they'd have stayed on for another twenty minutes or so, these two would've been out of the water and home in no time. Bangor Fire Technical Rescue, Penobscot County SO's Dive Team, the Warden Service, and a National Guard Huey were dispatched to the scene.

If these two had had any training, they would have known not to stand up in that current. The 'Keag has been flowing strongly for over a week. The risk of foot entrapments is just far too high for anyone to even consider planting their feet on the bottom.
Self-rescue comes before anything else. Forget the boat. Forget any gear that might be in the water with you. Get yourself out first. All these two had to do was tuck up into a ball and go over the Falls and swim for the nearest eddy. Their boat could have been picked up somewhere downstream without any problem.

Basically this whole incident could have been avoided.

[usm2b]

Im just using this reply as a test basis for typing something in the subject line.

Im not responsible for what might happen.

[Maine Finn]

From the Bangor Daily News.


BIA alerted to plane with no-fly passenger
Saturday, April 09, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

BANGOR - Airport officials were alerted Friday that a plane from Amsterdam carrying a passenger on the federal security no-fly list might be diverted to Bangor International Airport, although ultimately it returned to the Netherlands. Officials were told about 3:30 p.m. that KLM Flight 685 headed to Mexico City, Mexico, might make an unscheduled stop at BIA after a passenger was identified as being on a federal watch list, Assistant Airport Director Tony Caruso said Friday afternoon.

Federal Department of Homeland Security officials apparently had determined that the plane's passenger manifest included someone barred from entering the country.

But about 4 p.m., as the 747 was 650 miles from BIA, the plane turned around and returned to Amsterdam, airport officials said.

No information about who the person was or the number of passengers on the plane were available.

Other planes have been diverted to BIA because of passengers being on the watch list.

Last fall, a plane from London and headed to Washington, D.C., was diverted to BIA for a passenger on the watch list who turned out to be Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, a popular singer of the 1960s and 1970s.

Yusuf Islam later claimed he was the victim of an unjust and arbitrary system. He said that he and his daughter had been on their way to Nashville to look into a music project when the flight was diverted.

Two months later, in November 2004, an Air France flight diverted to BIA after it was determined that one passenger was on the no-fly list.

Come on, Haiw, you know they don't want you here. Stop trying. :D

[Haiw]

:oops:
Stupid 'no clogs allowed'-policy in the KLM planes. :cantbeli:

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald.

30,000 cheer for their heroes

By DAVID HENCH, Staff Writer

Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

Thousands lined Portland's Congress Street on Friday to cheer for the state's servicemen, its emergency workers and the NFL champion New England Patriots.

Billed as the city's biggest ticker-tape parade, the event featured hundreds of soldiers, sailors and other members of the military marching in front of an enthusiastic crowd, estimated at 30,000.

Onlookers bellowed excitedly as each contingent of soldiers paraded into view. The marchers were met by shredded paper, a multitude of small U.S. flags and signs that read: "Welcome Home Heroes" and "America Rocks!"

Soldiers said they were overwhelmed by the response, calling it a tremendous show of pride and support.

From the sidelines, Peter Smith was equally emotional.

"It kind of gives me chills," Smith said, shouting to be heard over the tumult.

Helicopters flew over the parade route, and a P-3 Orion from the Brunswick Naval Air Station seemed to skim the rooftops as it made a few loud passes over Congress Street.

Many in the crowd wore the red, white and blue jerseys of the New England Patriots. Some painted their faces to show the depth of their dedication, shouting themselves hoarse when three fire engines carrying members of the football team bearing the New England Patriots passed by in as the parade's finale.

Team owner Robert Kraft and six players, including All-Pro and captain Richard Seymour, joined in the parade to honor Maine's the nation's servicemen and women and to celebrate their recent Super Bowl victory.

"It was a great welcome home," said Sgt. Chris Boyce, dressed in the desert fatigues of the Maine Army National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion. "It couldn't be any better, having the Patriots here."

Link One (http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/local/050409parade4.shtml#nugget)
Link Two (http://news.mainetoday.com/war/patriotsparade/)


http://www.mainetoday.com/photos/050409parade07.jpg
Staff photo by Shawn Patrick Ouellette
Pam Maxom of Wells holds her 7-month-old son, Brody, as they watch soldiers march Friday during the parade on Congress Street. Her husband, Capt. Shane Maxom, is serving in Iraq as company commander with the Army's 844th Engineer Battalion.

http://www.mainetoday.com/photos/050409parade10.jpg
Staff photo by Gregory Rec
Staff Sgt. Richard Butler of the 1st Battalion, 25th Marines, prepares to march down Congress Street in the Maine Heroes Parade.

[Stormy]

MY Goodness!!! Finn Look at that picture at page 7... OMFG.. Edit your **** fast!!! rofl

[CG51]

MY Goodness!!! Finn Look at that picture at page 7... OMFG.. Edit your **** fast!!! rofl

Bro, I saw that and I fell on the floor laughing my ass off... rofl rofl rofl

[Stormy]

Thanks for the warning.. It's freaking nasty! :lol: :|
I hate when websites do that with their bandwidth!

[CG51]

Thanks for the warning.. It's freaking nasty! :lol: :|
I hate when websites do that with their bandwidth!

thats some sick ****, that comes from the now shut down site goatse.cx

the only reason I know is someone here posted a link to it as a joke in the OT section...*shudder*

[1Cie GevGn]

Maine, maine............

Isn't Maine a communist republic somewhere in the Bahama's? Or am I mistaken?

[Stormy]

Thanks for the warning.. It's freaking nasty! :lol: :|
I hate when websites do that with their bandwidth!

thats some sick ****, that comes from the now shut down site goatse.cx

the only reason I know is someone here posted a link to it as a joke in the OT section...*shudder*


It gave me some heartburn just looking at that :lol:

[Maine Finn]

MY Goodness!!! Finn Look at that picture at page 7... OMFG.. Edit your **** fast!!! rofl

I saw that the other day but haven't had a chance to edit it out. Doing so now.

[Maine Finn]

War widow eulogized as a 'treasure'
By TESS NACELEWICZ, Portland Press Herald Writer


In April 2001, Lavinia Onitiu met and fell in love with Christopher Gelineau. In April 2002, they married. In April 2004, he died in Iraq.

And on Saturday - an achingly beautiful April day - Lavinia Gelineau was buried next to her soul mate in Portland's Evergreen Cemetery.

Over the past year, 25-year-old Lavinia Gelineau was in the media spotlight for two reasons. When an explosion in Mosul killed Maine Army National Guard Spc. Christopher Gelineau, 23, on April 20, his beautiful widow made headlines because of her inconsolable grief and because she spoke out against the war.

Then, just over a week ago, Lavinia Gelineau was the victim of a horrific domestic violence homicide in the Westbrook home she had just bought to start a new life. She was brutally beaten and strangled by her father, who then hanged himself.

But at her funeral on Saturday, Lavinia Gelineau was remembered in a different way - as a young woman mature beyond her years who was not only courageous, vibrant and accomplished, but also so giving that she touched the hearts of virtually everyone she met.

About 500 people attended the service, including her relatives, National Guard families and the many friends of all ages that the Romanian native had made since becoming an exchange student at the University of Southern Maine five years ago.

"She lived her life as the treasure she was," said the Rev. Constantine Sarantidis of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church on Pleasant Street. He led the service, which was held at the Woodfords Congregational Church to accommodate the crowd.

During the service and in interviews beforehand, friends and family recounted Gelineau's remarkable achievements in her short life. She graduated magna *** laude from USM last May with two bachelor's degrees, which she earned in the four years it takes most people to earn one.

She had multiple talents, among them singing beautifully and playing the guitar to entertain her friends. Last May, at her husband's funeral, she played the guitar and sang "Right Here Waiting" by Richard Marx to him. It was their song.

On Saturday, Mark Miller, a family friend who lives in New Gloucester, accompanied himself on the guitar at her funeral and sang another song she liked to sing after her husband's death: "Amazing Grace." Weeping mourners in the pews joined in the chorus.

In the celebration of her life, friends and family tried not to dwell on the circumstances of her death.

"I don't even want to speak about the act that ended her life," Sarantidis said at the service, in which he used the same Scripture readings he used at Chris Gelineau's funeral, saying they so aptly applied to Lavinia's life, too.

Lavinia Gelineau died the evening of March 31 or the morning of April 1 at her new home on Central Street in Westbrook, police said. She lived there with her mother, Iuliana Onitiu, who had escaped an abusive relationship with her husband in Romania last spring by coming to live in Maine with her widowed daughter.

Nicolae Onitiu, 51, had threatened suicide after his wife left. In fact, he tried to hang himself last fall but called a family member beforehand to announce his plan and survived, according to friends. Gelineau had gone back to Romania in the fall to be with him as he recuperated, leaving her mother safely behind in Maine.

When Onitiu recently asked to visit, Gelineau allowed him to come, hoping he had changed. However, she sent her mother out of state as a precaution. A day or two after his arrival, Onitiu brutally beat his daughter and strangled her with a clothesline. He then smoked a cigarette, police said, and hanged himself.

News of the tragedy shocked Mainers. Many people felt as if they had come to know Gelineau through media accounts after her husband died.

SOLDIER'S DEATH REVERBERATES

The death of Chris Gelineau, a member of the National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion, in April 2004 reverberated throughout the state. Gelineau was not only a well-liked and dedicated young soldier, a technical wizard whose computer skills were a vital asset to his unit, but also the 133rd's first combat casualty since World War II.

The deep, raw grief of his bride also brought the war home to Mainers in a personal way. "I went to bed on April 19 a happy woman with hopes and dreams," Lavinia Gelineau said in an interview shortly before her death. "Then I woke up the next morning to nothing."

Theirs was a storybook romance. They met in Portland Hall on Congress Street, a USM dorm. Willowy, dark-haired Lavinia Onitiu was a scholarship student who had arrived in 2000 from the University of Sibiu in Romania. Handsome, blond Chris Gelineau came from Vermont and also had enrolled at USM in 2000 to major in computers.

Chris, who had joined the National Guard after high school to pay for college, had a job cleaning and painting dorm rooms. Lavinia had a problem with her computer, Chris offered to fix it, and the spark was lit.

Lavinia's brother, Marius Onitiu, 23, was studying computer science at the time at the University of Maine. He recalled last week how Chris gave him and his sister a ride to the bus station when they returned to Romania a couple of weeks later.

"I could see in his eyes there was something between them," Onitiu said. He said his sister later asked him, "What do you think about him? I think he's a great guy." Then, said Onitiu, who remained in Romania while his sister returned to USM, "the next thing I knew, they were together."

Marius Onitiu, as tall and elegant as his sister, stood Saturday before his sister's casket at the graveside, his arm around his slender, petite mother. He had rushed here from Romania after learning of the deaths of his sister and father.

Earlier in the week, he shared memories of Lavinia's life in Sibiu, a small town in Transylvania, a beautiful, historic and mountainous province of Romania. She was a kind and supportive big sister, Marius said, "who loved music, definitely."

She was thrilled to get her first guitar when she was 14, he said. She started a band and composed songs, setting the writings of a famous Romanian poet to music, he said. She also loved to sing and was part of a children's choir.

She was very close to her mother, friends have said. Maj. Andy Gibson, a Maine Army National Guard chaplain who assisted in the funeral service, addressed Iuliana Onitiu during his eulogy, saying it was she who taught her daughter to be a loving person.

"She learned love, she learned strength, she learned courage from you," Gibson said. "There was no one else in your household who could have given that to her but you."

Marius said Lavinia did not have a close relationship with their father, but he became too upset during an interview last week to speak in detail about it. "Their relationship was not as good, but I would never have thought something like this could happen," he said.

Few details have emerged about what it was like for Lavinia Gelineau to grow up with her father. Romanians here say it is the custom in that country to try to work out problems in the family rather than talking about them with others. Lavinia would say only that her father was strict and that she didn't have much freedom growing up.

However, since her death, American friends have said that she told them he was abusive toward her mother and that she was afraid of him.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

One thing that is known is that winning a scholarship to USM opened a world of new opportunities for Gelineau, who her brother said was restless in her small town, known for its cobbled streets and pastel houses. "She liked change," Onitiu said. "She liked big experiences."

She was skilled at learning languages - she spoke fluent French, English and Spanish in addition to Romanian - and was excited to come to the United States to study and hone her English.

Corina Teodorescu, 26, of Portland met Gelineau when both were exchange students from Romania at USM. "We clicked and became good friends," Teodorescu said.

The two would share special occasions, such as attending the Greek Orthodox church for Easter.

And of course, Teodorescu heard all about it when Lavinia first met Chris Gelineau. "She was so in love with Chris," Teodorescu said.

She said Chris would visit Lavinia at a USM learning center where she worked as an English and math tutor. Lavinia knew English so well that she was able to help American students with their writing, grammar and spelling.

The minute Chris Gelineau came to the center, Teodorescu said, "he would have this big, friendly smile on his face, and you could tell that he's a good person and what a wonderful kid."

Chris and Lavi, who would kiss before and after every class, became inseparable. "He became all my family here," Lavinia later said. "You know, my mother, my father, my husband, my best friend, everything."

They married just one year after they met, on April 6, 2002.

But as central as her romance was to her life, Gelineau did not let it distract her from her studies. She was a "brilliant" student, said Andrea Thompson McCall, USM assistant dean of student life, at the funeral Saturday.

ENCOURAGING OTHERS

Gelineau worked hard and expected her large circle of friends - many of them international students like her - to do the same.

"Lavinia always made sure that everybody did their homework," said Teodorescu, who is now a nurse. "She would always be on my case: 'Did you study, Corina? Did you do your homework?' I was more of a socialite, but she was very serious and focused. . . . You need to be focused and determined to reach the goals that Lavinia reached."

Last May, Gelineau graduated with dual bachelor's degrees: one in business administration and one in English. She also went up to the stage a third time during commencement - to accept Chris' posthumous industrial technology degree.

"We were going to graduate together last May," she tearfully recalled in a recent interview. "It was just so hard seeing all the people in his computer science department marching. . . . It was so hard seeing them graduate, seeing them dressed in robes and Chris had just been buried."

Last May also was when she and her father-in-law, John Gelineau of Vermont, publicly criticized the war in Iraq, saying that Americans should support the troops but question their government's reasons for starting it. "I am very proud of my husband," Lavinia Gelineau said at the time. "I am not proud of his reason for being there."

She was attacked by some as unpatriotic. One e-mail she received bore the message "Love it or leave it," saying she had no right to speak because she wasn't from this country.

"I gave my husband for this country," Gelineau fired back.

'MORE AMERICAN THAN MANY OF US'

At her funeral, Chaplain Gibson said: "She was very American, maybe more American than many of us." In fact, Gelineau became an American citizen two months ago in a special private ceremony in Portland.

Although against the war, Gelineau was devoted to her husband's fellow soldiers and their families.

She attended the funerals of the other Maine soldiers killed in Iraq and comforted their grieving relatives. "She just wanted to share the experience with people and try to help them," her brother said.

She didn't forget those who were still fighting, too, mailing them a stream of packages filled with everything from shampoo to chocolate.

"She worked late at night packing box after box, two or three at a time," said Miller, the family friend who played guitar at her funeral. Miller, 49, forged a friendship with Gelineau, her mother and her in-laws after sending her a condolence message upon learning about Chris Gelineau's death.

Bonnie Tallagnon, 64, of Biddeford Pool also became close friends with Gelineau and her family in the same way.

"She was a delightful person to know," Tallagnon said. "She was able to look beyond her own grief and comfort other people. It was amazing."

One time Gelineau reached out was when a young man with Down syndrome died suddenly of a heart problem in December. Jake Shapell, 21, was a client at STRIVE, a nonprofit agency in South Portland where Gelineau worked as an administrative assistant, and she sought to comfort his family.

"I had to do something for his family so I wrote a poem," Gelineau said in an e-mail to a friend. The poem read:

I tried to follow close and catch you

Before you fell into the light;

But who am I to be so selfish

And bring you back into the night?

They say that "there" you feel no sorrow,

No weight, no pain - just pure bliss;

I'm selfish, still, and hope tomorrow

You'll wake me up with your warm kiss.

The poem was for Jake, but she could have written it for Chris Gelineau. Lavinia's fierce grief seemed not to have abated at all when she spoke of him during an interview just seven weeks ago.

COPING WITH GRIEF

She visited his grave almost daily to talk to him and sweep it clean of leaves and snow. Evergreen Cemetery also functions as a park where people walk and jog, and Lavinia said it made her so sad to watch happy couples go by while she sat before Chris' heart-shaped red gravestone.

"Why in the world did it happen to me?" she asked, tears streaming down her face throughout the interview. "What did I do? What did Chris do? Oh, my poor baby. I don't even know sometimes who is more unfortunate - him, that he was robbed of everything, or me, that I'm stuck here without him trying to somehow go on."

But she was going on, "very heroically," as Sarantidis said at her service.

Gelineau was not only making a new home but had become a cherished daughter to her in-laws. She planned to attend graduate school to become a French teacher.

She was hopeful about the future, said McCall, the assistant dean. She said Gelineau wrote in her graduate school application: "A broken 'I' gives way to a new 'me.' "

Still, Gelineau was grieving. Her mother-in-law, Victoria Chicoine of Vermont, said Saturday that she takes comfort in knowing that is no longer true.

"Lavi and Chris are part of each other for eternity," Chicoine said. "She's happy now."
Source (http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/050410gelineau.shtml)


http://www.pressherald.com/photos/050410funeral2.jpg
Staff photo by Gregory Rec
Iuliana and Marius Onitiu grieve beside the casket of Lavinia Gelineau at Evergreen Cemetery in Portland on Saturday.

http://www.pressherald.com/photos/050410funeral1.jpg
Staff photo by Gregory Rec
About 500 people attended the service Saturday for Lavinia Gelineau at Woodford's Congregational Church in Portland.

Rest easy.

[Maine Finn]

ANDREW G. BROUNTAS
http://www.bangornews.com/a/classifieds/images/412929i_1.jpg


BREWER - Andrew George Brountas, 19, passed away before his time April 7, 2005. He was born April 7, 1986, in Bangor, the son of George and Kimberly Brountas. All who knew and loved Andrew will remember him first and foremost as a kind, loving, and caring young man who was profoundly sensitive to the natural world around him. From a young age he was a lover of all creatures, great and small. Throughout the years he was busy caring for all sorts of pets, and then busier catching those same pets when they escaped. Andrew was truly in his element at the ocean. Whether it was the coast of Maine or the sunny beaches of Florida there was always a new discovery to be made. Another one of his favorite places was his family's camp on Phillip's Lake. He spent a lot of time there relaxing, fishing, and jet-skiing. As Andrew entered his teenage years, his passion became physical fitness. Hockey, skiing, and weight-lifting were among his favorite pastimes. Spending time with Andrew was always an enjoyable experience and life without him will be extremely difficult for all of those left behind. Andrew will be sadly missed by his sons, Drew and Niko; his fianc?e, Keeley Peasley, of Brewer; his parents, George and Kimberly Brountas of Brewer; his brothers, Nik Brountas of Jeju, South Korea, and Howie Day of Veazie. He was predeceased by his grandfather, Charles Brountas of Bangor; and is survived by his grandmother, Anne "Nana" Brountas of Bangor; his grandfather and grandmother, Kern and Marion Feeney of Brewer; his Godparents, Arthur and Maria Brountas of Bangor; an aunt, Frances Hardy and her husband, Mac, of Mount Vernon, and their son, Aaron of Rockland; an uncle, Charles Brountas and his wife, Carol and their children, Michael, Ryan, Chris, Jason, Tyler, and Travis of Orono; an aunt, Susan Brooker and her children, Robbie and Deanna and an uncle, Paul Macleod of Venice, Fla.; an aunt, Julie Heffernan and her husband, Mike, and their children, Brenton, Mark, and Chris of Roswell, Ga.; an aunt, Barbara Saint-Amor and her husband, John, and their children, Barrett and Will of Yarmouth; an uncle, Andy Feeney and his wife, Samantha, and their children, Lucy, Phillip, and Shawn Michael of Brewer; numerous special friends and his pets. Friends may call from 5-8 p.m. Monday, April 11, 2005, at Brookings-Smith, 133 Center St., Bangor, where a Trisagion service will be held at 7:30 p.m. A funeral service will be held 11 a.m. Tuesday, at the St. George Greek Orthodox Church, 90 Sanford St., Bangor, with the Rev. Fr. Adam P. Metropoulos Presbyter, officiating. Interment will be in Mt. Hope Cemetery, Bangor. Relatives and friends are invited to share conversation and refreshments at the Bangor Elks Banquet Center, 108 Odlin Road Bangor, immediately following the interment. Memorial donations for Niko and Drew's future can be sent to Peoples Heritage Bank, 77 Exchange St., Bangor, ME 04401. Checks may be made out to Kimberly Brountas "In trust for" Niko and Drew Brountas.

I heard about this on Friday when I stopped by Brewer High School to talk to a buddy. Andrew died of an overdose. He was going through treatments at the methadone clinic in Bangor to kick his drug habit. I was told that his girlfriend had had twins and were due to come home either the day or the day after he died.

He was in the class behind mine in high school and was well-liked by most. This is the fourth death my high school has had in two years.

Rest peacefully, Drew.

[Maine Finn]

Maine ranks tops in taxes in U.S. again
By A.J. Higgins, Of the NEWS Staff

AUGUSTA - The smell of rawhide was in the air Monday at the State House as Mary Adams pulled out a horse bridle to convince the Legislature's Taxation Committee her Maine Taxpayer Bill of Rights was the best hope of bringing state spending under control.

“I have a little pony named Stormy who's not particularly agreeable to going where the rider wants until we put this bit in her mouth and grab the reins — then Stormy behaves,” said the Garland tax activist as she dangled the leather and steel bridle toward the panel.

“State government is much like Stormy. It'll get away with what it can until you put a bit in its mouth and give the reins to the people of Maine [in the form of] the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Maine people are ready, they want discipline and they mean business.”

Even as Adams was touting the benefits of her proposal Monday, the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation released its latest findings placing Maine as the highest-taxed state in the country with a combined state, county and municipal tax burden equal to 13 percent of the average Mainer's disposable income.

Citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis collected through Dec. 31 of last year, the Tax Foundation said Mainers will work until April 23 to pay all of their taxes while the national average will be April 17.

Maine has held the top slot on the conservative think tank's tax analysis for the last three years and has been even higher, coming in at 13.3 percent in 2001, according to the organization's Web site, www.taxfoundation.org.

By comparison, neighboring New Hampshire came in 49th with a tax burden of 7.4 percent. In a prepared statement, Bill Becker, executive director of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, said the report should “come as no surprise.”

The entire article can be found here. (http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=111949)

Surprised? I'm not.

[disabled1]

thats sad about those 2, and the overdose victim. hope they are in a better place now

[Maine Finn]

Many locals lament harbor's loss of Prince

By TOM BELL, Portland Press Herald Writer


The grand and luxurious cruise ships that visited Portland Harbor always could upstage the smaller and plainer Scotia Prince. But it was the Prince that captured people's affection.

"The cruise ships are aloof," said Chris Rosengren of South Portland. "You didn't know them. But the Scotia Prince is like an old friend."

Now, the old friend sits in a dry dock in Charleston, S.C. It's up for sale, while its owner, Scotia Prince Cruises, is locked in a legal feud with the city of Portland over toxic mold in the city-owned terminal.

The Prince had sailed in and out of the harbor every summer evening since 1982. Its loss has left an economic and emotional void for people along the waterfront.

It came and went like clockwork, arriving daily at 7 p.m. and departing an hour later. At night, as it made its way to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, its lights could be seen along much of the Maine coast, from as far away as Boothbay and Monhegan Island.

John Coolidge, who has a cabin in Harpswell, says his family would compete to see who could see the ship's lights first. Foggy days made the game more challenging.

In Portland and South Portland, people would gather on the shoreline just to see the car ferry arrive or depart.

A few years ago, when Shirley Barnhouse lived in a South Portland apartment, her 2-year-old son was so crazy about the ship that she would structure her evening around its schedule. Just before 7 p.m., she would take her son to the harbor.

A few minutes after 8 p.m., they would drive over to the campus of what is now called Southern Maine Community College. There the ship moved faster as it headed out to sea.

She said the other cruise ships that visit Portland Harbor in the summer never had the same appeal.

"The big boats would come and go," she said. "The Prince was local. It was more about us."

The Scotia Prince generated an estimated $30 million to $54 million in local spending every summer. The money went to businesses such as Union Oil, which supplied the marine diesel fuel, and Sysco Food Services of Northern New England, which supplied most of the food.

Waterfront restaurants, particularly Becky's Diner, which is near the ship's terminal, also enjoyed a good business in the hours before the ship's departure. Becky Rand says the ship would bring 300 to 400 customers a week to her waterfront restaurant.

"It was a fixture in Portland," said Greg Otterbein, the president of Sysco. "We are saddened as anybody to see it go."

It's not just the Scotia Prince that people remember, but the ferry service itself. The ferries that operated on the Portland-to-Yarmouth route all looked alike, and many people get them mixed up, said Colin Woodard, author of "The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier."

Lion Ferry Ltd. began the service in 1970 with the Prince of Fundy, which carried 1,000 passengers and 200 cars. Hundreds of people watched from Portland's Eastern Promenade and from Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth when it first arrived from Sweden. In 1973, when the ferry operated year round, the Bolero was added to help out during the summer months. In 1977, the Caribe took over the run. In November of 1981, the company bought the Scotia Prince for $20 million.

Woodard says he rode the Caribe as a boy on a trip with his parents. He remembers it as an exotic adventure.

As a girl, Millie Norton of Falmouth spent her summers at the family cottage on Harpswell's Bailey Island. In the evenings, she and her friends would walk to Little Harbor to get a view of the ferry as it passed by. A few years later, when she got married, she and her husband, Brian Norton, took a honeymoon cruise on the Scotia Prince. That was 19 years ago, and the couple now has three children.

"We planned to go on the ship for our 20th anniversary," she said. "But that's not going to happen. It's kind of sad."

Built in 1972 in Yugoslavia, the Scotia Prince was originally called the Stena Olympica and carried passengers between Sweden and Germany.

It is 485 feet long, half the length of the Queen Elizabeth 2. It can accommodate 1,130 passengers and up to 220 cars. Beyond being a car ferry, it has features associated with cruise ships, such as a show lounge, dance floor, hot tubs and a massage parlor. Its main draw was its casino, which has gaming tables and 200 slot machines.

"It was a little city going by," said Rosengren of South Portland, who enjoyed bobbing in the ship's wake while riding in his motor boat in the harbor. When the ship turned after leaving the dock, it would create a whirlpool, which was even more fun to ride in, he says.

The ship was a throwback to the day of the great trans-Atlantic ocean liners, only in miniature, Woodard says. The 11-hour trip across the Gulf of Maine to Yarmouth was a real ocean journey, he says.

"You sailed across the Gulf of Maine rather than the North Atlantic," he said. "But you arrived in a foreign country across the waters."

While modern cruise ships are floating hotels shaped like giant blocks, he says, the Scotia Prince had the classic lines of an ocean liner.

Portland officials are waiting to hear from Bay Ferries Ltd., which runs a high-speed catamaran ferry from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth, about whether it will expand to Portland.

A catamaran would get across the gulf twice as fast, but it evokes a Boeing 757 rather than an ocean liner, Woodard says.

A catamaran ferry will never capture people's hearts, said Richard Lafavore, 71, sitting on a park bench at Portland's Fort Allen Park, where he often came to watch the Scotia Prince as it passed.

"The catamaran," he said, shaking his head. "It's an ugly ship compared to the Prince."


Staff photo by John Patriquin
The Scotia Prince, pictured here in 1997, prepares to pass Ram Island Light as it makes a return to Portland.


Portland Press Herald (http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/local/050425shipwatchers.shtml)

That's a real shame. The Prince has been a part of Portland for years. A couple of times while on the way home from work, I'd see her coming into the harbour and I'd stop on the bridge to watch. There was a bagpiper there once, greeting passengers as they disembarked. I saw her once from Willard Beach as well, on her way to sea.

She really is a piece of the Portland waterfront. The Prince will be missed. :(

[Maine Finn]

From the Portland Press Herald 4PM Wire Report.


Turnpike closed in Wells after truck hauling explosives crashes

WELLS, Maine - A tractor-trailer hauling explosives crashed along the Maine Turnpike on Thursday, prompting an evacuation of the immediate area and a four-hour shutdown of an 18-mile section of the busy toll road.

There was no explosion after the 12:15 p.m. crash and no injuries were reported, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety.

State police quoted the driver, whose name was not immediately released, as saying that a gust of wind slammed his truck into a Jersey barrier and that it ended up on its side in the median.

The truck, from Maine Drilling & Blasting in Gardiner, was carrying liquid ammonium nitrate to New Hampshire, and a half-mile area around the crash site was evacuated as a precaution.

A hazardous materials team was called to the scene to assist police and fire personnel.

The load was stabilized soon after the crash and emergency crews removed blasting caps to eliminate a potential source of ignition, McCausland said.

The tractor was destroyed, but the tanker portion of the rig was not seriously damaged. It was righted and will be towed to its original destination, McCausland said.

The turnpike was closed in both directions, from Exit 7 in York to Exit 25 in Kennebunk, forcing motorists through much of York County to find alternate routes. The highway was reopened in time for evening commuter traffic.


Source (http://news.mainetoday.com/midday/index.shtml#10)

what the hell is this thread about

[A Soldier]

yeah it seems like its always updated, but yet still............. no one cares :roll:

[disabled1]

woooooo i bet that was a blast

[Maine Finn]

yeah it seems like its always updated, but yet still............. no one cares :roll:

Would you rather that I made a new thread for every article? I can do that, just for you.

[disabled1]

i think you do a great job with this maine, keep up the good work and yes i do read the articles

[Jack Mehoff]

i think you do a great job with this maine, keep up the good work and yes i do read the articles

x2.

You're doing a good job, MaineBabe. We love ya!

[Maine Finn]

Today's the day.


WASHINGTON — The anxiety among workers and communities surrounding the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery and Brunswick Naval Air Station will surrender to certainty today when the Pentagon announces which military bases it aims to close. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is scheduled to reveal his recommendations at 10:30 a.m.

An independent commission will spend until Sept. 8 considering whether to endorse his list or make changes. Then President Bush and Congress can either accept or reject the entire list.

"At this point, everyone is anxious to see the list. It's been like a sword of Damocles hanging over our head for a year or more," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine and a member of the Armed Services Committee. "At least on Friday we'll know for certain where we stand and can act accordingly."

The Kittery shipyard specializes in maintaining nuclear submarines. More than half of its nearly 5,000 workers live in Maine. BNAS, with about 4,700 workers, monitors the Atlantic Ocean with P-3 Orion aircraft.

Both functions could be consolidated at other bases to save money. But local advocates contend the shipyard's skilled work force won't move to a different state, and that Brunswick's geographic advantage for flights can't be replaced.

Portland Press Herald full article (ttp://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/050513pentagon.shtml)

Complete with locals' comments.


KEY DATES IN THE BASE-CLOSURE PROCESS

Today: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announces his recommendations to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

By July 1: Congress receives a detailed analysis of Rumsfeld's recommendations and the selection process.

By Sept. 8: The commission forwards its report on the recommendations to President Bush.

By Sept. 23: Bush must accept or reject the recommendations in their entirety. If accepted, the commission's decision becomes final in 45 legislative days unless both the House and Senate pass a resolution rejecting the recommendations in their entirety.

[Maine Finn]

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to close.


Maine hit hard by base closings

By BART JANSEN, Washington Correspondent


WASHINGTON — Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery would close and Brunswick Naval Air Station's would lose about half its total active-duty military personnel under a proposal unveiled Friday by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Maine is expected to lose nearly 7,000 military and civilian jobs as a result of the Pentagon's recommendations, making the state among the hardest hit in the nation.

The recommendations, which must be reviewed by an independent commission, are part of a massive, nationwide effort to rival savings from four previous base-closing rounds combined. Portsmouth would lose 4,510 jobs, more than half of which are held by Mainers. Brunswick would lose 2,420 * nearly half the active duty military personnel at that base * and its mission would be changed, according to the list.

Northern Maine would also see a hit. The Defense Finance and Accounting Service at the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone would close, with a loss of 241 jobs. The Naval Reserve Center in Bangor would lose seven jobs.

"Obviously, this is a stunning and devastating decision," said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. "It is a very unwarranted loss and flies in the face of reason, logic, strategic value and it certaily is a blunder of epic proportions, nothing short of a travesty."

The only increase in military related work in Maine would be at the Bangor International Airport, where the Air National Guard Station would gain 240 jobs.

Portland Press Herald Midday Report (http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/050513baseclosingslive.shtml)

Words fail me. :(