Letter to the Editor: Thanks, but I’m not that thirsty…

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As I was returning from lunch the other day at my Augusta office, I ran into Rep. Lance Harvell coming out of the Republican Party’s state office. As we walked and chatted amicably, I learned that Rep. Harvell was somewhat annoyed at wasting his time with debating some bill about a sewer.

After a few minutes of Rep. Harvell’s typically animated conversation with quite a bit of handwaving, we parted company there on the street. This chance meeting left me wondering what sorts of things he might be proposing in Augusta for those of us here in western Maine. So I went back to my office and looked up some bills he was sponsoring. What I found was clearly a disappointment.

One bill Rep. Harvell sponsored is L.D. 1244 which is a “Resolve, To Advance Health Care in Maine.” As Rep. Harvell ran for election on a platform of cutting the Department of Health and Human Services and he was clearly against the so-called “Maine Welfare State” (which the facts are clear Maine is not), I found it ironic that he is now proposing to require the State Budget Officer to use federal stimulus money to pay outstanding MaineCare settlements for hospitals.

Further, this left me wondering what stimulus effect this would have at all in Maine. I’m not suggesting Maine should not pay their debts, but using federal stimulus money in this manner simply has no stimulus effect whatsoever. This would be a misuse of federal stimulus funds and that much is clear.

So then I ran across another interesting proposal, perhaps more “stimulating” than the first. Rep. Harvell sponsored L.D. 1168 which is “An Act To Allow the Taste Testing of Malt Liquor and Spirits.” I suppose that this is sort of a state level stimulus program as Rep. Harvell’s proposal would allow Maine state liquor stores to give away free liquor.

I would really like to give Rep. Harvell the benefit of the doubt, but I’m really left wondering.

What I would quite like to see is some strong advocacy in Augusta for spending federal stimulus money wisely on things that will make a difference in the future. Incentives for new businesses in green technologies would be an obvious choice among many others. We need jobs here in western Maine that are focused on a sustainable future, but we definitely don’t need free drinks on the public dime.

Dennis Haszko
Farmington, ME

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14 Comments

  1. Maybe you would feel differently about the federal stimulus money being used to pay MaineCare settlements for hospitals if you were an employee whose job was in jeopardy due to lack of said payment. It’s all in one’s perspective, I guess.

  2. Mr Harvell also made it a point, in this publication, to give out some flawed information about storing your snowmobiles for the summer.
    Be sure to check with your dealer before believing what he has proposed as a plan to handle the new fuel and the problems it supposedly causes!

  3. I would like to think that the money given back or “actually paid to the hospitals” would be a good thing. If a hospital is running as a non-profit and is giving back the money due to them that they will have to spend that money in order to remain a non-profit statues. I would think that if a hospital is running with a 10 million debt they would fold. There is no business that could absorb that kind of loss and continue running. So to me that means that the hospitals have moved passed the debt and continue running, praying that they would get some of the money back. So now you take the stimulus money to pay the debt acquired by the state through the Mainecare system and give it back to the hospitals for services rendered and give that to them in one lump sum. Now a non-profit can’t have a profit for the year or they could loss there tax exempt status. So they will have to invest that money, maybe with new construction. If this is the case, this will employ site work personnel, builders, plumbers, electricians, brick layers, roofers, architects and so on. This will also employ the manufacture field that builds windows, makes brick, makes wire, the lumber industry, the nail industry, the steel industry, the roofing industry, and so forth. If all these people are making money they are spending it, from stores to cars. That is stimulating the economy.

  4. Mr. Morgan:
    I understand how your example of new construction at a hospital stimulates local employment and spending, and even production (hopefully closeby). However, isn’t the primary purpose of a hospital to more effectively diagnose and heal the sick and injured? Building more empty conference space at FMH won’t make it a better place to get well after the economy rebounds. Stimulus money used for infrastructure investments like the proposed addition to the electrical transmission system in Southern Maine seem designed to be more beneficial in the long term. Unfortunately, I can’t think of a better, more local example.

  5. Seamus: I don’t deny that building the (Back Bone) of the electrical structure would be a project that would put people to work. If Maine took control of some of the profits from the transmission of the electricity to southern New England I would love and would support the project. If we let some companies prosper and let others dry up, I would have a issue. Why don’t we help the textile industry, the lumber industry, the paper industry, and so forth. In the long run this will give us jobs. Not the one time building of the electrical line through the state in order to help transmit power out of the state to another.I understand that this is a Hugh undertaken and will take many years of building to do this. I understand that by doing this it will free up the grid so that future power producers may be put on the grid to market their product. I know the current grid is at or almost at capacity. If we do this we will be able to have more wind farms, bio-plants, or another means of a electricity producing companies be built because now they will be able to reach the market. The reason I say to pay back the hospitals is they have already provided a service and their bill was not paid by the state. I am not a great supporter of a lot of waste,fraud or abuse. I would to think that the money allocated would help our states get further ahead. I have many ideas of how to spend this money, I for myself am sick and tied of how the state says that they have a balanced budget and yet they owe millions. I all so think if we took the money provided for education and fixed the top twenty schools of the list that are in need of repair first we would save having to foot them in the future. Imaging that we put people to work and saved money in the process. Thanks for the time and thanks for reading my opinion. It is always good for everyone to get involved.

  6. This is a classic example of a sore loser. Paying off settlements for MaineCare with federal stimulus money to keep hospitals open is a bad thing Mr. Haszko? As for the bill for less restrictions on taste testing, did you ever think that would help local businesses like Ron’s Market to help grow a customer base? No, the problem is that you did not think about those issues you thought about what you would have done (if elected) and applied that to Rep. Harvell’s tenure. But then again it is always easy to criticize from the outside looking in.

  7. Well, enough said. This is why Dennis lost.
    A lesson should be learned here, Lance: Never trust a Liberal. Especially with your tax dollars!

  8. This is the actual wording of Lance’s bill. “1. Taste testing on agency liquor store premises. Subject to the conditions in subsection 2, the bureau may authorize an agency liquor store stocking at least 200 different codes of distilled spirits products to conduct taste testing of distilled spirits on that licensee’s premises. Any other consumption of alcoholic beverages on an agency liquor store’s premises is prohibited.”
    Ron’s market does a lot for the community and I would be thrilled if Lance were able to sponsor a bill which would help Ron’s. I honestly had no idea that Ron’s stocked at least 200 different varieties of distilled spirits. How many other stores in Franklin County can make that boast? I am always supportive of growing local businesses, but am not sure that encouraging people to develop their taste for different types of alcohol is the way to go. It is too bad that Lance’s other work is not getting more attention. I am sure that he is trying to strengthen many other aspects of our economy besides alcohol consumption. Keeping local hospitals solvent is a positive step, yet appears at odds with Lance’s goals before he was elected. I find it encouraging that he is able to listen, adapt and change. Perhaps at some point he will author a bill with a gun control advocate and find a solution which will please hunters and city people alike.

  9. Whats with this Haszco guy. Whats wrong with paying our bills that are way ,way. over due? I guess thats a typical democrat thing to do. Just dont pay our bills. Let somebody else worry about them. Let me tell you somehting Mr. Haszco, the bills are here, they are over due and need to be paid. Take your sour grapes and fade away like most all other wanaabe politicians who had their butt handed to them in the election booth. The people here dont want to hear your angry ranting. What, trying to get on the ballot in the next election cycle already?

  10. “…so-called “Maine Welfare State” (which the facts are clear Maine is not)”

    The author lost all credibility with this statement. Not only is Maine a welfare state due to the Maine government encouraging the rapid growth of welfare recipents, but Maine government itself is a welfare state, taking in $1.40 for every tax dollar we send to Washington. The state of Maine is a classic welfare queen spending lavishly on things it doesn’t need with someone elses money.

  11. It is an honorable thing to pay one’s debts. The State has been in arrears for a long time with respect to hospital reimbursement and it would seem to be a sensible thing to use the soft money from the Feds to have the State do the right thing. Soft money is best used this way because, when it is used to start new programs, it usually leads to angst when the money runs out and the choice is then between letting a program fail or coming up with ever more money to keep it going, probably in hard times. We don’t need any more government. We have a surfeit of it , State and Federal. Mr. Harvell has the right idea in this matter. It is a “shovel ready” cause, so let’s shovel the money to the hospitals what is owed them.

    As for the taste testing issue, why not let retailers do that? The bill would remove yet another nit picking regulation. To say, as Mr. Haszko does, that “Rep. Harvell’s proposal would allow Maine State Liquor Stores to give away free liquor.” is to engage in a distortion, a real stretch. It suggests that retailers are going to be passing out free bottles of drink. What business man would do that to his own detriment? A sample, a taste, is just a way to generate a sale.

    As for Maine as a wellfare state, it absolutely is. Few states have suspended the Federal time limit on how many years people can be on wellfare, but Maine has. We are a beacon of wellfarism. Every working person should resent the fact that Maine is so ready to support the non productive without limit. The working people are paying for it. It is perniciouls enabling. How many of the Bulldog readers have known people who have abused the wellfare system? I do. Mr. Haszko is not paying atttention.

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