Welcome fishermen
Here in the Lakes Region, we should never forget our economic bread and butter – Sebago Lake. In case we didn’t know that already, another crop of outdoor enthusiasts is coming to test our waters next week, and we couldn’t be happier to welcome them to our home.
From Sept. 15 to 17, the New England Team Bass Championship is taking place at Point Sebago in Casco. Teams have spent $400 or $450 to compete, and compete they will, with the top fishermen taking home $25,000 for first place. What a haul!
It’ll be interesting to see how many sign up for the tournament. Organizer Wayne Hooper said he’s received a significant amount of entries, some from as far away as Arizona. What’s exciting about the event is that it could be the start of something really big for the Sebago region. In simple terms, the competition has the look of another Sebago Lake Rotary Ice Fishing Derby, which would be excellent since this area needs a significant summer event.
And towns should work to promote this bass tournament. Maybe chambers of commerce can help advertise the event? It may not be a benefit tournament similar to the Rotary ice derby, but it still could draw a significant amount of fishermen, people we’re sure our local establishments would enjoy serving.
Read the bills, Augusta
In a story this week on the State House page entitled “Deluge of reports swamping legislators,” it’s alarming to hear that legislators don’t know what they are voting on, and proceed with their vote despite, oftentimes, not having read the bill.
How can we have a properly functioning government when our governors don’t know what they’re voting on. No wonder pork barrel spending both nationally and locally happen with such frequency. It’s a shame, a sham, and it’s amazing this broken system is allowed to persist.
The problem with part-time legislators producing a full-time Legislature’s number of bills, is that they are the ones driving the system. To put it ironically, our Legislature is working way too hard. They need to ease up a bit with their law making. They need to catch their breath, slow down, at least to the point where they can absorb and completely understand what they themselves are producing. What we have now is a part-time Legislature producing laws at a full-time Legislature’s rate.
Here’s an idea: Each legislator can’t vote until they’ve read the bill. They can’t call their favorite lobbyist and ask him or her how to vote. They can’t call their leadership and ask for the party line on the day’s votes.
This would solve two growing problems in state politics. One is out-of-control spending. Imagine if bills were written with the lawmaker, rather than paid lobbyist, in mind. We wonder if the people writing the bills have the legislature as their main audience. Or are they writing to convince the lobbyists? If these bills were written for lawmakers, they’d probably be easier to understand and involve fewer loopholes. And the average citizen would be more prone to read bills because of it. That would promote more citizen involvement.
Secondly, the fact that each representative and senator would be required to read each bill in its entirety would ensure fewer bills successfully making their way through the system. That’s right, fewer bills. State governments – including Maine’s – are not full-time bodies. They work for a few months and then return to legislate another day or another year. That’s a good system. It ensures government stays part-time, both in terms of session length and in terms of how involved they become with the workings of the state.
We don’t want a legislature making a rule for each and every facet of life. That’s oppressive government. And if they have enough time, they’ll use it to write more laws for us to obey. Let’s make them read their own laws because that, in the end, will allow them to produce fewer laws, which in the end will benefit all of us.
When citizens realize this is happening on a regular basis, maybe someone will speak up and say enough’s enough. We want a quality governing system, not one that wings it session in and session out.
-John Balentine
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