As much as we may want to believe governing is all about ideas and policies, personality is always in Augusta. Politics can be defined as the relationship dynamics that play out among the diverse people who share responsibility for governing.
There are real issues at stake in the Bruce Poliquin, Dale McCormick State House saga. But there also is an element of personality conflict, a clash of loyalties and values.
Mr. Poliquin is the state treasurer, elected by members of the Legislature, which is now controlled by Republicans. Mr. Poliquin ran for the GOP nomination for governor, but lost to Paul LePage.
Ms. McCormick was the state treasurer under the Baldacci administration, elected by the Democrats who controlled the Legislature then. The former governor appointed her to head MaineHousing, a quasi-state agency.
Mr. Poliquin has led the charge in changing the nature of the housing agency; specifically, he wants the director to work at the behest of the board, and not be able to stay on until her term expires. In recent months, the treasurer has kept a break-neck schedule of public speaking events and press conferences, blog posts and email blasts, all aimed at highlighting what he says is the housing authority’s wasteful spending and poor results.
Now, Democrats in the Legislature are waging what can only be understood as a retaliatory war against Mr. Poliquin. They have called into question his business dealings which are, it seems, expressly forbidden by the state constitution. Rep. Mark Dion wants the state’s highest court to issue an opinion on the treasurer’s active hand in his business ventures while also being responsible for the state’s finances.
What started this fight, and what’s it really about?
The governor, while on the campaign trail, heard repeated complaints from building contractors about the difficulty of doing business with MaineHousing. Contractors who carried good health insurance for their workers and who paid good wages won points in their bids for MaineHousing projects. Gov. LePage and his supporters believed that approach had more to do with furthering a liberal agenda than with building affordable housing at a good price.
The counter argument, though, is that those standards are set by the board and are within its purview. Since the pressure from Treasurer Poliquin and a change in the makeup of the board — the governor has appointed several new members — the housing authority has changed its standards.
Treasurer Poliquin is ambitious, clearly wants to be a high-profile official and sees himself as a warrior for the governor. Mr. Poliquin and others have been egged on by the conservative Maine Heritage Policy Center in this quest. They may have hoped to find the kind of corruption uncovered at the Maine Turnpike Authority, but to date, that seems not to be the case at MaineHousing.
Ms. McCormick, for her part, is unabashedly liberal and pulls few punches in advocating for the Democratic agenda. She, like Mr. Poliquin, won her job through party loyalty. But she has grown into a strong advocate for the LIHEAP program and for the kind of housing that Maine’s rural poor need.
Democrats in the Legislature — supported by Republicans — now are arguing the treasurer’s business activities put him in conflict with the state constitution. It’s not likely that inquiry would be made had Mr. Poliquin been as low profile as previous treasurers.
Personality, ideology and political point-making are key parts of the Poliquin, McCormick conflict. Regrettably, these have drowned out what could have been an intelligent discussion about what kind of housing we want built through bond funding.
It’s too late to clear the decks for such a discussion. That should be a lesson to the treasurer, who continues to blast out emails about his crusade, driving a political wedge into the debate. And the lesson MaineHousing’s director seems to have learned is that elections do have consequences, and that a new way of doing housing comes with a change in party control.
Both Mr. Poliquin and Ms. McCormick will be personally and politically damaged by this tussle. It didn’t have to be this way.
Good piece. I never heard that MaineHousing required contractors to have higher wages and benefits overall. Contractors probably have to adhere to higher than the lowest possible wages, possibly offer some benefits, or pay the difference, when they get the contract. But before they have it? That explains why the “witch hunt.” Poliquin is embarrassing.
Many government contracts are given on a “prevailing wage” basis, which means that the contractor has to pay the average hourly rate that workers in that job class would earn. Prevents contractors from bringing in low-wage workers from other states.
Moe, Larry and Curly…
Equating a democratically elected chief executive and his legislatively elected constitutional officers with the Three Stooges is a very immature thing to do. What is your next act, blowing a booger into someone’s face?
If the shoe fits….
Freedom of speech means the freedom to disagree.
But if you equate maturity with dishonesty, I say “Bring on more immaturity.”
Slick Dale’s carbon credits have cost Maine $5.5 million and counting. Her solar energy for low income housing cost us $1 million and we would have gotten more energy out of it if she’d have converted it to $10 bills and burned it. How can the BDN continue to defend this incompetent political hack? How much LIHEAP oil could that $6.5 million have provided? Just goes to show that the Maine Dems only care about the poor as votes to give them power, not as people who need help.
She got involved in the carbon credits as a result of recommendations from a Republican official’s report. Do you not believe that the suns provides heat, and that the benefits eventually repay the cost of the installation? Because if you don’t, you’re just woefully uniformed.
Solar is good supplementary power, but that’s about it. If you want to live on just solar power, you had better be ready to not use the computer for more than an hour if you wants lights on that night. More things are powered by electricity in your home than you think. Not even with wind and solar combined could you sustain baseboard electric heating, unless you had an oil furnace which still uses electricity.
Carbon credits is a scam, a pyramid scheme, for something that isn’t controllable. CO2 isn’t even close to water vapor as a “greenhouse gas” at all.
Supplement!
Now you get it!
When the fossil fuels are gone what good will renewables be then, without the back up?
Better to reduce oil use with a supplement ( While we can!)
Every barrel of oil that renewables save us today is a barrel of oil that will help stabilise volatile renewable energy later.
But what to worry?
We will totally destroy the world by then anyway!
The world has been around long before humans, and will be here long after we’re all gone. I’m more worried about giant asteroids, personally.
Oh and petroleum products might very well be a natural process taking place below the surface of the earth. We have yet to fully understand how water operates, but what we do know about water is that it doesn’t compress very easily. Maybe under immense pressure somewhere under the crust of the earth combined with heat, water is being chemically altered into petroleum, or some other kind of process involving water.
I say it has something to do with water only because of the bizarre properties of water that science has discovered so far, plus the fact that large amounts of salt water is found wherever oil is drilled. I also read a Popular Science article about a scientist creating crude oil by melting various chemical compounds (like old tires, plastic, etc.) with radio frequencies. Fascinating stuff, really.
If you think McCormick’s solar energy program wasn’t a complete and utter failure then you are the one who is woefully uninformed. 90% of the systems installed by mcCormick would NEVER repay the cost of installation. How long would a $7,500 water heater have to last to pay for itself?
http://bangor-launch.newspackstaging.com/2010/12/21/news/stateinstalled-energy-systems-fail-to-pay-way/
“The details of the report conclude that in all but one of the five
alternative systems put in the homes of poor families the energy use —
primarily electricity — went up or down too little to justify the cost
of the new energy systems.”
“In half of the households, energy use INCREASED (emphasis mine) while the panels were in use.”
You are definitely the one who is woefully uninformed. McCormick has cost the state of Maine millions. She is nothing but another worthless political hack given a job far beyond her abilities. She should be fired before the sun rises tomorrow.
If Mz McCormick was such a stalwart advocate for the LIHEAP program, she should have used the $110,000 dollars given out to MSHA employees in non performance bonuses instead, for heating assistance.
Furthermore, Maines needy don’t require $300,000 plus per unit rental housing, but with all the liberal, feelgood, “green” add ons, and socially correct employer standards, that’s what they are costing.
One wonders how many more low income units could have been produced if someone that actually understood the economics the housing industry was at the helm of MSHA.
Treasurer Poliquin is not a warrior for the governor.
He is a warrior for the taxpayers of this state that elected a new slate of managers to inject some fiscal sense into what has become a sure trip towards bankruptcy under the democrat leaderaship of the last 30 plus years.
Keep up the good work, Bruce Polquin.
LIHEAP is federally funded and the bonuses that are the equivalent of < $100 per employee (particularly after taxes) did not come from state taxpayer money.
Arithmetic isn’t your strongest suit is it?
And you have trouble with facts!
Facts are funny things.
Take for instance the $1000 per employees of record as of dec 2009 non performance bonuses………………
Although he has been corrected numerous times by both Maine Housing and the Press, Poliquin continues to lie about the $300,000 per apartment. Further, the “someone”s who actually understand the economics of the housing industry -namely architects and contractors – and are working with Maine Housing to build low-income housing. Build on the cheap and get cheap. Bruce Poliquin is not a warrior for anyone, he is an egomaniac who needs his name in the paper.
The only correction was that AFTER Polquin questioned the $329,000 per unit cost, the contract mysterously came back with more units in order to lower the per unit cost.
Do you know what CYA means?
Im looking at the picture and thinking… A Don with his Capos
Dewey Cheatum And Howe
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cnd6-Fn0Umc/TWuhbet1cXI/AAAAAAAAANU/7ZOdhrvIguQ/s400/Dewey%2BCheatum.jpg
Equating a democraticly elected chief executive and his legislatively elected constitutional officers with the Mafia is a very immature thing to do. What is your next act, tugging on some eight-year-old’s ponytails?
When LePage starts acting more like an elected official and less like an all powerful Don (a dictator analogy would work too), and when his cronies stop flouting the law because they think they have their Don’s protection, then maybe we can call it something different, But when the shoe fits…
Bravo!
“I have built my organization upon fear.” -Al Capone
If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.
-Jimmy (James Earl) Carter
Perhaps, but if the Governor can lawfully run the State of Maine as well as La Cosa Nostra ran the crime syndicates, then I say ……go get ’em Don LePage!
I’m sure that when the BDN puts work out to bid, these factors figure largely in it’s choice of contractors.
gee , its so bad that a government entity requires contactors to pay a living wage and some benefits instead paying minimum and no benefits
you people are a hoot and more than a little jealous
Right! After all, when you’re spending someone else’s money, there’s no sense exercising restraint! $300,000 for a one-bedroom apartment is very reasonable…don’t you agree?
its my money too , laddie, and probably a lot more of my money than yours. with them getting a living wage and benefits, we aren’t paying for additional medical ,welfare etc, like we do for most of the walmart workers
After reading some of the drivel that Eric Russel and Nick Sambides have written, I have a sneaking suspicion that they have been hiring from the methadone clinics.
—
The BDN editors are most uncomfortable with this kicking over of their comrades’ chamber pots. They are firm believers in the Augusta mantra:
“You steal a little.
I’ll steal a lot.
If we all work together,
we won’t get caught.”
That’s quite a picture
The partisanship here should not obscure legitimate issues that only surface when people step into or attract the spotlight. Would the average citizen have known otherwise about a lucrative tax abatement on land that doesn’t meet the state’s specific forest land acreage requirements and doesn’t pass the straight face test for commercial forest? Also, I can’t recall any situation in which a government official brought up and ultimately censured on an ethics issue was formally accused by someone in their own party, R or D. Accusations get deferred to the opposition. Charges should be judged on their merits and not dismissed out of hand as politically motivated. That applies to both parties in this case.
To start with, I’m not a fan of LePage and his band, and am looking forward to them leaving office. I agree with “DewiL” that Poliquin is a fishy character, and I wonder what he’s smoking that makes him look to himself like a viable candidate for U.S. Senator. That said, IF it is in fact true that MSHA is spending $200,000 per unit to build one bedroom apartments, that’s exceedingly expensive. IF that’s the case, there should be an investigation into the board’s practices. I don’t disagree with the government providing safe, healthy, efficient living quarters for poor people, but small and frugal will do just fine, thanks.
I’ll also give credit to the LePage administration for going after Paul Violette at the Turnpike Authority. The guy was a political hack and a long-time crook, and he richly deserves his upcoming time in the crowbar hotel.
When one party dominates the political scene for too long, government becomes a scam for those in office. Voting the bums out of office may be the only remedy. That said, LePage and HIS bums are an unsavory bunch.
Traditionally, when I see a suit coming my way, I check the security and location of my wallet. The suits in this picture would cause me to check again.
Dear Readers –
Keep in mind that this is the same editorial page that recommended that we Mainers should ignore the obvious management problems and flawed accountability structure at Maine Housing because its mission is too important to endure such scrutiny.
This editorial is so highly predictable. Equating the appropriate oversight efforts by Mr. Polloquin and fellow responsible board members of MaineHousing with the crass witchhunt pursued by Rep. Dion and other hacks is simply absurd. The ramifications of Mr. Polloquin’s business affairs are miniscule in comparison to Dale “Carbon Credit Queen” McCormick’s malfeasance, despite the BDN’s and PPH’s efforts to minimize the latter.
BDN – why can’t you save yourself and us readers the trouble of digesting such bilge by simplifying your daily editorials this way: “Democrats good; Republicans bad”. Repeat.
And when did a political witch hunt become “the appropriate oversight effort”? When you are a crook, I guess you believe everyone around you is also.
Really. $200-300K for a one/two bedroom apartment – you don’t think that requires oversight? Would you pay that much for a two-bedroom house in Maine?
Poliquin is looking out for your best interest as a taxpayer and you return thanks by rhetorically slapping him in the face? Are you for real?
Very real. I think somene should clean up his own garbage before he goes after someone else. He is a crook and is trying to cover that up by taking the heat of himself and accusing Dale of something that hasn’t been proved. If he was looking out for my best interests, he’d resign.
McCormick is an example of entrenched public servants not doing public service but channelling money and power to serve special interests. She and other like her need to go if we are to move foward
Maybe you could provide us all with your definition of ‘entrenched’. She serves a four year term. AND the governor can remove the executive director for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or misconduct in office.”
So if everyone is so sure that she has MISMANAGED this agency, WHY has Gov LePage allowed her to continue as director?
Because it’s nothing but a witch hunt to take the focus of Poliquin’s criminal acts.
There is no witch hunt.
The witch has been found.
Running MSHA.
Into the ground.
Paul Violette, the former head of the Maine Turnpike Authority, soon to be a guest of the Maine prison system, is a living definition of “entrenched.” He’s definitely a Maine product, scion of a politically powerful northern Maine family with Democratic Party connections. Violette was appointed to his sweet job by Republican Jocko McKernan, aka Mr. Olympia Snowe, (a guy who knows a corrupt deal when he sees one, and dives right in), and then embarked on a 23 year career of enriching himself and his cronies.
.
Both should be jettisoned to put the point across there is a new sheriff in town. The baggage needs to disappear. Of course the political hacks will find others to whine about but for now, Poliquin and McCormick must go.
Who’s the “new sheriff?” Le Page? I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s egging Poliquin on, and bolstering him as he puts himself above the law.
That certainly is your opinion, nonetheless, we have a new sheriff and I was only pointing out something I thought obvious and not making any assumptions. If anyone is above the law people would surely see it so leave it until it happens.