Angus no king
House Speaker John Richardson is taking issue with comments made by former Gov. Angus King that the state should look ahead to redeveloping its military bases rather than fighting what appears to be an impossible battle with the Pentagon to keep them open.
“Governor King was sometimes wrong around here, but never doubted,” Richardson said during an interview at the Statehouse last week. This time, he said, King should have done more homework, “before jumping into this arena.”
Richardson said Brunswick was “in the worst of all alternatives” because the Naval Station is “neither closed or open” and therefore can’t be redeveloped. The Pentagon is recommending the Air Station be downsized and its planes removed, while Portsmouth Naval Shipyard would be shut down entirely.
“We shouldn’t lie to people,” Richardson said, but do everything possible to reverse the Pentagon recommendation before conceding defeat because “it will have a devastating impact on the Mid-coast.” Both Richardson and King call Brunswick home.
Your own keeper
A bill that would block people who eat too much and gain weight from suing Maine restaurants over their obesity was approved in committee last week and will now be considered by the Legislature.
The bill was pushed by the Maine Restaurant Association to prevent suits – like those being filed against fast-food chains across the country – from being filed here.
“I hope it allows Maine restaurants to sell food that his honestly presented without fear that over-consuming customers can sue them for making them fat,” said Dick Grotton of the MRA.
“If we’re in the business of selling pastries, it shouldn’t be our concern if that’s all you eat is pastries,” Grotton said.
He said there have been 100 or so lawsuits filed around the country based on claims that people ate too much at certain food outlets and that overeating made them obese.
Grotton said it should be up to the customer to realize he has to put a limit on his food consumption or risk gaining weight.
“That rates right up there with the warning ‘don’t brush your teeth with a chainsaw,'” Grotton said.
Calling Wall Street
Sen. Peter Mills, the head of the people’s veto petition to overturn borrowing in the budget, was chastised on the Senate floor last week for directly calling the Wall Street bond rating houses about the state’s credit rating.
Sen. John Martin, D-Aroostook, said it had come to his attention that a member of the Legislature had independently called the bond houses to offer information about the state’s fiscal shape.
“The bond houses were contacted directly,” Martin said. “I want to know if it’s true that a member of this body did that.”
Mills, whose name has been floated as a possible Republican candidate for governor, admitted he had called the bond houses to set the record straight on the people’s veto petition. He told them it was designed to “preserve our bond rating…to salvage it,” by blocking deficit spending funded by floating revenue bonds, he said.
Mills said the administration may have caused its own problem on the bond rating by talking about the people’s veto and “soliciting the opinion” from the bond houses that the veto would hurt Maine’s rating.
“In an effort to find political cover for this embarrassing (revenue) bond,” he said, “they themselves” could be responsible for the bond-rating drop because their plan backfired.
Mills then went on to attack Gov. John Baldacci’s handling of the state’s finances, saying, “The incompetence is unspeakable.”
Lee Umphrey, a spokesman for the governor, said, “the administration has never solicited any endorsement that the people’s veto is the cause of anything.”
He said the phone calls from Mills to the bond houses were “inappropriate” because “phone calls from individual legislators would be disruptive to the state’s presentation.”
Standard and poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch have downgraded the state’s bond rating in the past week. The state is still waiting word from Standard & Poors.
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