MORE OBSERVATIONS FROM AUGUSTA

Legislative Blog # 2
For people new to these Observations: You might want to scroll down to Legislative Blog # 1, and read up. 

First week here my biggest challenge was finding my way around Augusta streets. This week a bigger challenge is finding my way around the legislative process in order to decide which sessions I want to attend in keeping with my major areas of interest: $ in Politics, Environment, Health Care, and Education.

Wednesday morning I wanted to attend Public Hearings on the Biomass Bond bills. It took more time than I planned to find parking as I passed by the parking garage before I knew it was there. I had to navigate my way around other parking areas and back to the garage. Then my printout didn’t tell me which committee was holding the hearing, and I assumed it was Energy and Natural Resources. So, going into the State House where my print-out told me I needed to be, I asked the attendant at the Check In if I was in the right place for the ENR hearings on the biomass issues in room 228 of the State House. He sent me to the scheduling office where I repeated my request. She said the ENR committee was meeting in the Cross Building right across the way. I went there and repeated my request at their information desk. She said ENR was meeting in Room 216. There I found myself listening to the tail end of a public hearing on Diversion of RGGI Funding. I had no idea what RGGI was. 

By then, I figured out I must be in the wrong committee, it was nearing 11:00, and I was frustrated and hungry, so I came back to my temporary home, ate lunch, and spent the rest of my computer time on Wednesday researching the Biomass Bond bills and trying to put together a schedule for Thursday.  So Wednesday was a loss in terms of observing the legislature at work. But, I keep telling myself, I get all these brain-health benefits from responding to such challenges.   

The two Biomass Bond bills propose funding for biomass infrastructure and low interest loans for capital investments.  An article in the Portland Press Herald by Scott Thistle  reports that sponsors agreed Wednesday to merge the two bills. Senator Troy Jackson, sponsor of the bill to provide low interest loans said, “By capitalizing on biomass energy, we have the ability to be a world leader in this industry . . . . The potential for developing new markets, innovating the industry, growing the economy and creating jobs is too great to pass up.” Governor LePage opposes the effort, calling it “corporate welfare at the worst, it can’t get any worse than that because they are coming in and they are telling you up front the only way they can survive is by you giving them a subsidy.”

In keeping with my core interests, I need to do much more research on environmental impacts from biomass, but from what I understand now, “Use of wood as a replacement for fossil fuels has thepotential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to climate change mitigation.” 

However, the criticism about corporate welfare is troubling. According to a Portland Press article referring to an earlier proposal, taxpayer funded subsidies are proposed “to support biomass plants that are owned by a multinational private investment firm worth an estimated $33 billion and another publicly traded market capital company that reported $1.6 billion in revenue last year."   So this issue, too, raises the specter of the power and influence of big corporate money to affect our politics-- like the one I reviewed briefly in my Legislative Blog # 1 below about a proposal to give another multi-million dollar corporate subsidy to General Dynamics, owner of Bath Iron Works.  

And so it goes—always many complications in the legislative business of solving problems. I am a long way from being ready to testify on these issues.

As complicated as my effort is in scheduling my own time here and researching to prepare, I am gaining a new appreciation for the complex process the legislature faces in getting its work done on several hundred bills between now and April: hold public hearings and work sessions in committee to debate each bill; make committee decisions—ought to pass or ought not to pass; debate again when the bill comes before the full House and the full Senate; reconcile any differences between House and Senate. I suspect I have hardly scratched the surface of that process in this brief description.

Thursday was much better for me: parking and finding the right room in the right building in less than 15 minutes, hearing the issues I wanted to hear debated in the Health and Human Services Committee, and realizing I need to do more research to fully prepare for observations and writing about the issues.