Mud Season
Pitchforks and torches sometimes work. Also, our undercover lawmaker dishes dirt in Chapter 4 of "Augusta Confidential."
Monday night was standing room only at an emergency town meeting in the western Maine community of Hartford. About two hundred townsfolk piled into Town Hall to vote on whether to eliminate the elected “road commissioner” position and replace it with an appointed “road commissioner,” a part-time municipal employee to be hired and supervised by the 3-person Select Board.
Expecting a large turnout and, apparently, fearing an angry mob, the Select Board had made prior arrangements for law enforcement to be in attendance. Which was strange, because, no one around here ever remembers needing Johnny-Law to keep the peace at town meeting. At least not in the last 50 years. However, since Hartford doesn’t have its own police department, two members of the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department were on the scene, per the request of Select Board Chair Susan Goulet.
The deputies never actually entered Town Hall, though, preferring to sit in their separate cruisers, parked on Route 140, to play on their phones for the entire 90-minute affair. Smart move by the cops. There wasn’t any room left inside the meeting hall, which was hot, stuffy and loud on this unusually warm March evening.
(Disclosure: I live in Hartford and attended the meeting. Against my better judgement, to be sure. Due to my allergic reactions to political stupidity, I’ve made a point to skip as many town meetings as possible to avoid the temptation of writing about my local government. After all, as the Maine proverb goes, “Only a sick bird fouls its own nest.”)
To city dwellers, a vote on how a road commissioner is selected might sound banal, but in my neighborhood, the commish is a very important gig, with tons of responsibility. Literally tons, since many of our 50-miles of town roads are still dirt. In this neck of the woods, the ballot box is an accountability device to voice pleasure — or displeasure — over the way the town’s roads are maintained.
Here the situation gets a little bit complicated. Not to get deep into sausage-making, but rural towns like Hartford are often faced with limitations that city-slickers and people from away might not be able to comprehend. A small population means a more limited pool of people willing and capable to do the necessary work. And that’s the case with the road commish job.
In a nutshell, it’s the responsibility of the road commissioner (with input from the road committee) to award contracts to repair the roads in the summer and fall, and plow ‘em in the winter. For the last ten years, a nice fella named Bim McNeil has been the elected road commissioner. Bim also served as boss of the roads for about eight years back around the turn of the century.
Bim also happens to be the fella who gets most of the bids for the town road jobs. And while that may seem suspicious to city folk and others unfamiliar with the realities of small town life, it makes perfect sense. First of all, there’s no ordinance prohibiting the commish from bidding on work. So any claims of conflict-of-interest are moot. Secondly, in rural Maine, folks wear many hats. And Bim and his posse are well-versed in general earthwork and our local roads in particular.
Bim is a farmer. And because he’s a farmer in western Maine, he can do all sorts of things others can’t. (Disclosure: we buy hay from Bim because our goats love the fine fodder from McNeil Farms.) Born and raised here, Bim has been plowing the town roads since he was tall enough to reach the pedals, learning from his grandfather, Carl Gammon, (born in Hartford in 1903), the oldest of 14, who’d been a plowman for decades, and who also had served as road commissioner.
All that to say, Bim and his crew know what they’re doing. Far better than other small town crews in this region and often better than the state crews maintaining Route 140. And in rural Maine, good snowplowing makes the difference between survival and/or being late for work.
Also, for the last decade-and-a-half, I’ve observed Bim and his team do all sorts of roadwork. From culvert replacement to grading to fixing washouts to clearing fallen trees blocking roadways in the middle of a gale, Bim’s crew have repeatedly shown that they’re capable and conscientious. They’ve done a fantastic job, for instance, keeping our dirt road passable despite floods, snow, melts and mud. Not an easy task, for sure, considering the washboard hills and surrounding wetlands.
Back to the small town situation at hand. Last spring, Bim had a massive heart attack. Since then, there’s been a peculiar and vindictive vendetta against him, led by the three-person Select Board and amplified by a local oddball bee-keeper with a perpetual grudge. Not gonna go into the details here (some scandalous gossip, coupled with secret motives and boring back-stabbing) but suffice it to say the recently elected Select Board cabal has been stirring the pot with a dirty spoon, slandering Bim and his supporters.
Then, last week, in a series of moves that can only be described as pell-mell, the select board announced there would be a public hearing on March 6th, followed by an emergency town meeting on March 10th in order to change the way the road commish is “hired.”
Which pissed off a whole bunch of people who were fine with the current, fully-functioning system. Those folks started making phone calls and posting on the socials, alerting locals to the anti-Bim subterfuge being attempted by town officials. Lots of folks turned out for the public hearing and the vast majority spoke in support of Bim and his gang and keeping the commish an elected position.
The public hearing response should have given town officials pause and, perhaps, motivated them to reconsider their road department re-organization plan. After all, no one asked for this move. The re-org was solely a scheme devised by the Select Board to further their apparent vendetta against Bim.
The Select Board triumvirate, though, went forward with the emergency town meeting. Which, to put it politely, was a cluster-fuck. The meeting started a half hour late and there wasn’t a PA so it was tough to hear what folks were saying. Most painful, though, was the lack of an actual semblance of a plan and it was clear from the outset that this emergency meeting was a waste of everyone’s Monday night. Not only was it super-obvious that the majority in attendance supported Bim (a very modest and humble fella), it was clear the townspeople weren’t pleased with the backroom scheming by their elected officials and their tiny coterie of supporters.
Following some “town meeting” formalities, including electing a moderator and explaining what we’d be voting on, there was a 20 minute discussion and attempts, by some, to get clarifications on why the change was even being debated.
Then, finally, it was time to cast our ballots. All registered voters had been given a pencil and a small yellow piece of paper with Yes or No options. After marking the ballots, there was a mad rush to the ancient wooden box. After all, it was past 7:30 and most folks still hadn’t had their supper.
About 20 minutes later, the votes were counted and the result was definitive: Yes=55, No=130. The people of Hartford had spoken. When a couple hundred citizens of town with a population of a thousand show up for an emergency meeting in the middle of March, this is clearly democracy in action.
And while the Select Board didn’t intend to, they awoke a sleepy bear (aka the electorate) during their long winter’s nap. For instance, since the newly-elected Select Board member Kathleen Landry is considered the prime instigator of the anti-Bim efforts, the pro-Bim team has launched a recall effort to remove her from the Select Board.
Elected officials recalls, here in Hartford, are a 3-stage process. The first step was to collect 58 signatures and present them to the town clerk. That’s been done and has triggered a second petitionary process that requires 116 additional signatures in order to place a re-call vote on the agenda for the annual town meeting in June. And based upon the turnout for Monday’s night’s party, my guess is that Landry will be forcibly removed from the Select Board.
Unless she quits first to avoid the humiliation of being electorally kicked to the curb less than a year after taking an office with a 3-year term.
All this to say, an active citizenry CAN make a difference and be a force for change (or stability), especially on the local level. It was only because Bim’s supporters took action, alerting townsfolk to the Select Board’s emergency meeting, that the throngs came out en masse to reject their meddlesome schemes.
Also, in what seems to be a recurring theme in recent Crash Reports, the goings-on in Hartford have been ignored by the media, notably the local newspaper of record, the Lewiston Sun-Journal. While I’m not saying this tale is front page news, if the S-J deems “Golfers Sling Discs at Lewiston Course” worthy of coverage, then editors should’ve sent a reporter to cover an emergency meeting in a small town attended by a couple hundred concerned citizens.
I’m sure media apologists will try to defend the S-J’s lack of attention to local nefarious plots —such as the anti-Bim campaign — as a side effect of the newspaper’s struggle to stay afloat, amid declining revenues, massive layoffs and the decision to mail rather than home deliver the newspaper to subscribers.
Which is more the reason, in these days of Legacy Media acting like a dinosaur on a sinking ship, to support independent journalism like the Crash Report. Become a paid subscriber now, to lock in the six dollar monthly or sixty dollar annual membership before the March 17 increase and paywall.
And without further ado, the latest dispatch from our secret correspondent from under the Dome in …
Augusta Confidential
by Reese Calloway, state legislator
Senate GOP Blocks Supplemental Budget, Leaving Rural Communities in Crisis
Maine House and Senate Republicans can’t get their act together. And rural Mainers will pay the price for the GOP’s incompetence. After months of negotiations and compromises, the House passed a supplemental budget with a two-thirds majority, ensuring funding for schools, EMS services, housing assistance and critical public safety measures. House Republicans worked across the aisle to secure a deal. They had the votes. The budget was ready to be enacted.
Then it got to the Senate – last night, March 11 – where the dysfunction struck like a wrecking ball. Senate Republican leadership, if you can call it that, blew up the entire deal, with Senator Trey Stewart lighting the fuse. He and his obstructionist allies, including Russ Black, Sue Bernard, Stacey Guerin, Scott Cyrway, Dick Bradstreet and Jeff Timberlake, abandoned their own communities out of sheer partisan spite.
Let’s be absolutely clear about what they just did:
Housing programs to keep working families in their homes? Not a priority for Senate Republicans.
Cost-of-living increases for direct care workers and people on fixed incomes? Not if Trey Stewart has anything to say about it.
MaineCare payments for hospitals and rural healthcare providers? Blocked. If your local hospital is struggling, blame your Senate Republican.
Funding to fight the next wave of the spruce budworm infestation, which threatens Maine’s forests and economy? Gone, thanks to GOP obstruction.
And what’s even more absurd? House Republicans had already agreed to this budget. This wasn’t some progressive wish list—it was a negotiated deal that their own party had helped shape. But because of the disarray and backstabbing between House and Senate GOP leadership, rural communities will be left without the support they desperately need.
Trey Stewart and his Senate Republican colleagues didn’t just kill a budget. They sabotaged their own constituents. They left small towns without a lifeline. They showed, again, that when push comes to shove, they care more about party loyalty than the people they were elected to serve. And rural Mainers, who have been sold out time and time again, should remember exactly who left them behind.
A Masterclass in Losing a Debate
Well, that was an embarrassing failure for the faux-lobsterman from Winter Harbor, GOP House leader Billy Bob Faulkingham.
Billy Bob, Maine's own right-wing rabble-rouser, swaggered onto Fox News Bangor last Thursday night, primed and ready to ignite a culture war inferno against Sen. Joe Baldacci from Bangor. Instead, viewers were treated to a cringeworthy spectacle of self-immolation.
The subject? Trans women in sports because it’s THE topic the GOP loves to exploit, crafting imaginary crises to divert attention from their policy void. But, bless his misguided Christian-Nationalist End Times cultist soul, Faulkingham was woefully unprepared for the intellectual thrashing that awaited him.
Baldacci, a seasoned attorney with a firm grasp of constitutional principles, methodically dismantled Faulkingham's flimsy arguments. He highlighted that Maine's existing policies already ensure fair competition in sports, rendering Faulkingham's fear-mongering both redundant and absurd. When challenged to provide concrete examples of trans women wreaking havoc in Maine athletics, Faulkingham predictably stammered and stalled, offering nothing but babble and hollow rhetoric.
Faulkingham invoked the worn-out trope of “protecting our youth” in a desperate bid to plug the hole in his sinking ship. As if Maine's young athletes are lying awake at night, haunted by the phantom menace of trans competitors. It can’t be that they are grappling with real issues like underfunded schools, rampant gun violence and the GOP's relentless assault on affordable healthcare.
The pièce de résistance? Faulkingham's pitiful lament about liberals attempting to "cancel biological reality." Ah, the classic conservative male fragility, clinging to outdated notions of biology while conveniently ignoring the consensus of the medical and scientific communities. Perhaps someone should present him with a participation trophy, though, given his disdain for inclusivity, he'd likely reject it.
Throughout this debacle, Baldacci remained composed and factual, painting Faulkingham as a bewildered intruder in a debate far beyond his intellectual reach. Even the typically sympathetic hosts at Fox News Bangor struggled to resuscitate his floundering performance, ultimately resigning themselves to the inevitable trainwreck.
So, what's the takeaway? If Billy Bob was smart, he’d keep his trap shut. But he’s not smart and in the real world realm of substantive debate, he's hopelessly outmatched.
Portland Prog to Pathetic MAGA Stooge
Oh, John Eder, currently the GOP state rep from Waterboro, was once Portland’s Green Party golden boy, the young’un who tricked a bunch of old hippies into thinking he was some kind of progressive revolutionary. Once upon a time, way back in 2002, Eder strutted around, under the Dome, like he was Maine’s version of Ralph Nader. Guy could NOT stop boasting how he was the first Green elected to the Maine Legislature. And, amazingly, for a brief moment, he convinced some gullible libs that he was the real deal.
Then Eder got smoked in 2006 when Democrats rightfully redistricted him into irrelevance. And that was the beginning of the long, humiliating slide that transformed Eder from a left-wing pseudo-firebrand into a cranky old MAGA parrot, squawking tired right-wing grievances like an egg-bound free range chicken.
Here’s the thing about Eder: He was never in it for the “movement.” His political activity was always about him. And when the left kept moving without him, the aging bro wouldn’t dig in and do the work required of a team player. The moment Eder was no longer the center of attention, he threw a tantrum and cried like a spoiled brat deprived of his iPad. Eder’s next response: go the route of the scorned ex-progressive, throwing himself into the arms of the reactionary fash like so many bitter failsons and incels before him.
Eder isn’t a political maverick. He’s a fraud. A sellout. A sour relic who switched sides because his ego couldn’t cope with irrelevance. Portland moved on. Maine moved on. But there Eder remained, shaking his fist at the world, screaming into the void about leftist betrayal.
First, it was subtle. Dabbling in right-wing talking points here and there. Maybe a snide remark about how the woke left had gone too far. A little friendly banter with the same conservatives he once claimed to oppose. But then, because no one was paying attention to him, Eder went all in. Last year, he ran for and won District 136. So now, he’s just another desperate whackjob screaming about cancel culture and peddling whatever garbage the far-right is paying for this week.
This wasn’t some deep ideological awakening. It was an ego move and pathetic grift as a lame attempt to stay relevant in a state that outgrew him. Eder figured out that rage-baiting about wokeness and repeating Trumpist nonsense was his last path to getting fan bois. And like any middle-aged man, whose glory days peaked twenty years before, Eder embraced the downward spiral with open arms, with the hope that he will, once again, be a star.
The same guy who once claimed to fight corporate power now spends his time cozying up to the worst extremists. He used to talk about fighting for working people. Now he’s shilling for a party that guts labor rights and hands tax cuts to billionaires. He once railed against war. Now he’s nodding along with the same neocon bullshit he used to pretend to oppose. Congrats to Rep. Eder, for his transformation to bootlicking brownnoser is 100 percent complete.
Truth is, dude betrayed himself. And that’s the most pathetic part of his journey.
OBSTRUCTION, EXTREMISM AND TANTRUMS
If Republicans put half as much effort into governing as they do into obstructing, Maine might actually move forward. Instead, they act like petulant children who’d rather burn the place down than play fair. Their greatest hits this week? Gutting social programs, attacking marginalized communities and sabotaging the budget. And, of course, more whining about being victims.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has declared war on Maine over transgender athletes, claiming our policies violate Title IX. And rather than standing up for our kids, state Republicans are cheering on the bigots. Instead of working on housing, education or economic growth, they’re obsessed with policing teenagers playing sports.
Maine Republicans aren’t just failing to govern, with their strategy of chaos and cruelty, they’re actively making things worse. And like immature brats, they lust for power without responsibility in order to satisfy the need to be assholes.
Here’s the deal: we can’t let them win. We need to support candidates who actually care about Maine. Get involved. Stay loud. Because if we don’t stop them, we’ll have to keep dealing with wingnuts like….
Sen. Jim Libby, the longtime lawmaker from Cumberland who decided that Republicans are somehow oppressed. Yes, that’s right. The very people pulling the levers of national power, in the view of Libby, need a bill to make “political affiliation” a protected class under Maine’s Human Rights Act. In Libby’s eyes, facing criticism for supporting extremists is the same as racial or gender discrimination.
Or Rep. Joshua Morris, a realtor from Turner, busy leading the charge to defund Maine’s Paid Family and Medical Leave program. Because what’s more "pro-family" than making sure parents can’t afford to stay home with their newborns? Morris is working overtime, double time and triple time for corporate lobbyists, ensuring their bread stays buttered while working-class Mainers get the shaft.
Meanwhile, Sen. Stacey Guerin from Penobscot is on a mission to kill Maine’s solar energy programs. She says green incentives are unfair to non-solar users. You know what’s actually unfair? Legislators like Guerin collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck while doing the bidding of corporate polluters.
The reality? Republicans want to make governing as dysfunctional as possible so they can blame Democrats for future problems. The only thing they’re actually voting for is their own irrelevance.
If Republicans thought they could do all this quietly, they were sorely mistaken. This week, hundreds of Mainers took to the State House steps, protesting against Trump, Musk and the extremist GOP agenda. The message was loud and clear: “We see you. We will remember. And we vote.”
BREAKING: Just as I was putting the final squiggles to the parchment bearing this, the fourth installment of Augusta Confidential, Senate President Daughtry issued an edict, calling the Senate back into session tomorrow. Stayed tuned for more drama, hand-wringing, weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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