Portland's cruise ship terminal finally complete, but still in the red

Maine's largest city has finally completed its cruise ship terminal at a cost of nearly $30 million. While political leaders were smiling at the ribbon cutting ceremony, I asked if the facility is paying for itself yet. The answer -- in the new issue of Working Waterfront -- is "not yet."

Its certainly a positive development that, with the "megaberth" completed, proper cruise ships are finally able to use the city-owned terminal. As the article notes, its not clear if it should have been built in the first place.

For more background on Ocean Gateway and the Portland waterfront, start here, and continue here.

Not so public public testimony at Maine's legislature

One lesson of the DeCoster bill scandal: there's not enough transparency in regards to the public testimony given before Mainers' elected representatives at the State House.

The only way to obtain written testimony submitted at legislative committee hearings by stakeholders, lobbyists, and other interests is to drive to Augusta, find the responsible clerk, and borrow a manila file long enough to make photocopies. Why, one might ask, are these things not posted online as PDFs, just as their equivalents everywhere from the committees of the City of Portland to those of the United States Congress?

I probe this question in my latest Parallel 44 column in Working Waterfront, available online.

Two novels present Maine as it is

In my bimonthly Working Waterfront column, I discuss two new novels that seek to present Maine as it is, rather than as it should be: Jim Nichols' Hull Creek (Down East Books) and Crash Berry's Sex, Drugs, and Blueberries (Maine Misadventures). The piece is in the new issue, out last week, and just posted online. Read and enjoy.

And, while on the topic of books, my wife and I have the first-ever-signed-by-author copy of The President is a Sick Man (Chicago Review Press), the new book from Matthew Algeo. Mainers may remember him as a past host of MPBN's Maine Things Considered, Americans as a past reporter for American Public Media's Marketplace, and readers everywhere as the author of Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure. My wife's had time to read it and gave a thumbs up.

Maine ports: if you build them, will ships come?

In my bi-monthly column in Working Waterfront, Parallel 44, I look at the latest round of public investments in Maine's struggling shipping ports. State and federal taxpayers are investing millions in this once-crucial infrastructure. So what's the plan?

Maine's media being what it is, I've also managed a "scoop": Maine's only container port shut operation down back in August, when the longstanding scheduled barge service ceased all New England operations. Funny thing: the Portland Press Herald always prints a sunny piece whenever container operations resume at the city owned port, but rarely reports when those operations fail. (The paper never misses a story celebrating their own owner/editor, though; and they wonder why their circulation is plummeting faster than any other daily in the state.)

After reading, those with an unhealthy interest in Maine ports may find more details in the state's federal grant application.

Mayflower: the real story

On account of new fatherhood, I took a short hiatus from writing the Talk of Maine column in Down East, but the new issue has my review of a new book on the Pilgrims: Nick Bunker's Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History.

As you'll read in the review, Mr. Bunker's account sheds new light on the Mayflower voyagers and the role early Maine played in their successes. As Bunker is from England -- not New England -- his book is liberated from the tropes of the Bay State's historical myth makers, giving us a refreshing and more accurate perspective on the Pilgrim experience.

(By contrast, here's what I've said of Nathanial Philbrick's popular Mayflower, a more readable account that failed to break with the Mass-o-centric paradigm handed down by Harvard's Victorian Era dons.)

I have a feature in the next issue of the magazine, but I'll be back at Talk of Maine in the January issue of the magazine, which hits the racks the second week of December.

Maine story updates, June 30 edition

Some updates on Maine stories I've been following:

Good news (for once) from Portland's waterfront: Regular readers have gotten an earful about deception, incompetence, and political back-scratching in relation to cruise-ship related development decisions on Portland's Eastern Waterfront. In Parallel 44 - my bi-monthly column over at Working Waterfront -- I've finally got some positive news, as the city makes the first steps towards cleaning up their mess.

Maine. The (understaffed?) Magazine.: A month ago I wrote about eyebrow-raising developments over at the magazine previously known as Port City Life, including the sudden departure of the senior editor Peter Smith and art director Jennifer Muller. Now, with the July issue out, managing editor Chelsea Holden Baker has been reassigned as a contributing editor, which is magazine-speak for "valued contributor." (I have this title at Down East which, I ought to point out, is a competitor.) According to the editorial box, neither Baker nor Smith have been replaced, which makes one wonder who's putting the magazine together. [Update, 4/5/11: Ms. Baker contacted me today to clarify matters: "I resigned as managing editor of my own volition," she wrote, adding she would leave it at that. She's still a regular contributor to the magazine.]

Hiding the Money, Made Harder: The shadowy group that provided most of the funding for the campaign to repeal Maine's same sex marriage law -- the National Organization for Marriage -- has been refusing to disclose its donors as required by Maine's clean elections laws, and even tried to sue out state to avoid playing by the rules. They appear to be running short of options, however, with the Maine Ethics Commission denying yet another request to abandon their investigation and the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling that same-sex marriage opponents have no constitutional right to hide their donors' lists. The attorney on the losing side of the Supreme Court case? NOM legal counsel and spokesman James Bopp, Jr.

Maine parties avoid caucus reform

Remember the hotly contested 2008 presidential caucuses? Here in Maine, Republican caucus-goers discovered they have no say at all in who would be their nominee; Democrats found their system wasn't based on one person, one vote, but on an effectively arbitrary system that gave some caucus goers more than twenty times the voting power of others.

Guess what? The parties have no plans to change any of this for 2012.

As my column in Working Waterfront reveals, the Maine GOP intends to slip the status quo past the rank-and-file when rules are endorsed at their May 7 convention. Democrats ignore an obvious solution to their deeply flawed delegate-allocation system. The chairs of both parties don't want to talk about any of it.

Those wanting a little more background will find it here.

Science expands on Portland waterfront, with taxpayer help

Here in Maine's largest city, the waterfront's been having a tough go of it. For nearly two decades now, the fishing industry has been reeling for lack of sufficient fish in the sea, the container port is hostage to the fate of a single paper mill, and fuel prices have just scuttled the high speed ferry service.

But one entity, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, has been thriving. They've just absorbed the distressed Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System and scored the funding needed to secure (by repairing) the pier behind their building from the U.S. Coast Guard. How do they do it? With federal-level political savvy, lots of public money, and an eye for synergetic opportunity.

As you can read in my column in the new Working Waterfront, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does show just what it takes to get the really big thunderclouds to rain these days.

[Update 2/27/10: Bad link fixed.]

Maine: Tidal Power steps forward

Tidal power is expected to take a jump forward next month when a Portland-based company puts a large turbine prototype in the waters off Eastport.

I was in the area recently and wrote this piece in Working Waterfront on the project and the industry's prospects in Maine and Canada's Maritimes.

Maine: inflating repair costs, cruise ship benefits

For the past couple of years I've been trying to play the role of journalistic watchdog on two large waterfront projects here in Portland, Maine. Regular readers are aware of the city's troublesome handling of the construction of Ocean Gateway (a cruise ship terminal without a cruise ship berth) and a massive development project to "save" the city's primary deep water berth, the Maine State Pier.

Last month two separate studies confirmed what many have long suspected: that the economic benefits of cruise ship tourism were oversold and that the Maine State Pier never needed to be "rescued" by private developers (who happened to include the governor's brother, his cousin, George Mitchell, an ex-mayor, and a number of donors to certain city councilors' campaigns.)

The studies are the subject of my column in September's Working Waterfront, now available online, which includes an analysis of the city's assumptions about cruise ship benefits, and responses from city officials and former transportation director Jeff Monroe.

Obviously there are two meaty investigative stories here, ones one would hope larger newsrooms than mine would be interested in exploring.

The Oak Island Treasure Mystery : a 19th century hoax?

Buried treasure enthusiasts may be interested in my column on the famous Oak Island "money pit" across the water in Nova Scotia in the current issue of Working Waterfront. The article airs the case for this -- perhaps the most famous "buried treasure" mystery of them all -- having been a 19th century hoax gone wild.

As others have noted before me, the legends surrounding Oak Island -- rehashed in a shelf's worth of books -- bear many of the characteristics of those in circulation in New England and New York in the 18th and 19th centuries, when thousands were afflicted with treasure digging mania, digging up islands, fields, and hillsides from Manhattan to Mount Desert.

The piece has only been out for two days, but I'm already getting mail from Oak Island cognoscenti. One, who runs this website, notes that technically the current owners of Oak Island don't yet have permission to resume digging and, due to last month's provincial elections in Nova Scotia, may have difficulty securing it. (Nova Scotia's Treasure Trove Act -- yes, there really is one -- allegedly has enemies within the new ruling party.)

Perhaps the treasure really is defended by evil spirits.

Maine: the latest (postive) developments on local campaign finance disclosures

For those following the saga of L.D 1100, the bill that would fix Maine's municipal campaign finance disclosure mess, I've posted an update at Working Waterfront's website.

In summary: the bill's sponsor expects it to pass both houses as early as next week, which would be good news for Maine.

If you have no idea what this is about, the full saga is laid out here.

Maine: On the Waterfront (in Portland)

Last month the developers tapped to build a controversial hotel and office complex on Portland's city-owned Maine State Pier pulled out, the morning after my public presentation of the background to the deal (the timing was surely a coincidence.)

Now Portland will have to return to the drawing board, rethinking how it might best ensure that our port possesses at least one large deep-water berth. Several readers have expressed an interest in my past reporting on relevant waterfront issues here. So....

The following stories provide a primer on the shortcomings of the past decade of waterfront planning in Maine's largest city:

First, my cover story in the local alternative monthly, The Bollard, on how the city managed to build a new cruise ship terminal without (a) doing a study to determine the economic benefits of such an investment and (b) building a cruise ship berth, so the ships could actually use the facility. An examination of evidence suggests the actual benefits of the cruise ship industry are far less than its proponents have been claiming. (The story starts on page 14; a sidebar on the city's cruise ship partners on page 20, and a companion story on the container port on page 21.)

Next: the new terminal is now losing Portland taxpayers over $300,000 a year, but that number would skyrocket to nearly half a million if its only real customer -- The Cat ferry service to Nova Scotia -- were to cease operations. As this story shows, high-speed ferries like The Cat are extremely vulnerable to changes in fuel prices. (Fortunately, the fall in oil prices that accompanied the global financial crisis has saved The Cat for now; it's returning this season.) The city will continue to lose money until they build a $7 million deep-water berth for the terminal.

The Cat used to tie up at the city-owned International Marine Terminal, Maine's principal container port. This Working Waterfront story shows how IMT's dependency on the pulp and paper industry led to a suspension of operations nearly a year ago.

(After this story came out, Maine Port Authority director John Henshaw claimed that IMT had not seen merely "modest growth" in container traffic over the past decade. With the help of Maine's "right to know" laws, I procured the actual data from the city: as I reported here, IMT actually saw a modest decline over the decade, undermining part of the city's rationale for moving passenger operations to the eastern waterfront.)

Part of the reason the Maine State Pier development has been so controversial is that no other property owners are allowed to build such things on the waterfront, on account of zoning rules designed to protect the working waterfront. As my 2007 Bollard feature showed, such a development would have knock-on effects for the entire waterfront (the feature starts on page 8.) Note also that in this story, Ocean Properties' Bob Baldacci admits that his company had been trying to build a hotel on another property before bringing the idea to the city. (In other words, the Maine State Pier project has been developer driven from the outset.)

Most Portlanders probably know that Bob Baldacci is the governor's brother; they may not realize that he is also closely related to his Maine State Pier partner, former U.S. Senate majority leader (and current Middle East peace envoy) George Mitchell. This piece in Working Waterfront sketches out the genealogical relationships between these families and major development deals proposed in the state.

Last year, Baldacci and other Ocean Properties officials. family members, and hirelings also made campaign donations to campaigns of several city council candidates who subsequently supported their bid to develop the pier. (Tracing their past relationships with city councilors is now impossible because the city clerk has destroyed campaign finance disclosures prior to 2006) Baldacci is a member of the team seeking to buy the Portland Press-Herald and the rest of Maine's largest newspaper chain.

As the city considers future developments on the eastern waterfront, they might wish to draw on the area's enormous historical significance. As this Bollard feature shows (pp. 18-25), the area is arguably the most historic in all of Portland.

Finally, for those writing the fishing sector off: be aware that many experts say U.S. fisheries policy has finally turned the corner. In the long-term, we may be one of the world's few sources of high-end fish.

Maine: update on destruction of campaign finance reports

Last month I broke a story on how Maine towns and cities have been destroying the campaign finance disclosures of local elected officials within as soon as two years after an election....and doing it on the advice of state officials.

This story is also the subject of my bi-monthly column, Parallel 44, in the new issue of Working Waterfront. Since that piece was filed, I understand some state lawmakers are working on a bill that would prevent the destruction of these documents. [Update, 4/30/09: legislators oppose efforts to fix the problem.]