Can the Voices of Inhabitants be Part of the Political Process in Maine in 2023?
And What is going on in Boothbay?
This newsletter is called the Individual vs the Empire. When I chose the name, I didn’t realize how apt it would be as I do now after watching the legislative work session about the “replacement school charter” for which I had submitted testimony. As I listened, I felt that Boothbay was being treated very differently regarding community participation than the other locations in Maine that were part of the earlier discussion. This could partly be due to the nature of my testimony, which touches on political philosophy, a subject seldom discussed by our public-private state for good reason, the political philosophy of the public-private state is inconsistent with that of the Maine Constitution. My testimony upholds the Maine Constitution and even submits that our local charter should require the Maine Constitution be taught in our district public schools starting in secondary school since our state sees fit to not include the Maine Constitution in public education at all.
My gut instinct told me that the non-receptive response to my testimony, which was never properly represented during the work session, has to do with the private cabal in Boothbay, visibly headed by Paul Coulombe and speculatively composed of private investors negotiating with the state, offering the state an opportunity to advance its business agenda embodied in the newly chartered Maine Space Corporation, using the public education system as a financial vehicle to capitalize the state’s new business by setting up schools as workforce training centers.
§13201. Maine Space Corporation established
3. Workforce. Facilitating the creation of a highly skilled workforce and attracting and retaining young workers in a new space economy. The corporation shall work closely with the University of Maine System, the Maine Community College System, career and technical education centers and regions and satellite programs, elementary and secondary schools and other organizations in the State to ensure education, training and recruitment programs are in place for the primary purpose of ensuring the availability of a highly skilled workforce to support the State’s new space economy;
[PL 2021, c. 631, §1 (NEW).]
4. Facilities. Providing facilities for research and development; small rocket and small satellite manufacturing, integration, testing and evaluation; and education and tourism;
[PL 2021, c. 631, §1 (NEW).]
5. Education. Enhancing science, technology, engineering and mathematics education and engagement in kindergarten to grade 12 and higher education curricula through partnerships with private industry to explore use cases for satellite data;
This theory is consistent with three acts that were passed in April 2022, which I will go into later. Considering that scenario, “the Empire” seems like an apt identifier, reminiscent of the Starship Enterprise, for what I encountered when I submitted a public testimony and said that constitutionally, it is not the boards who have the authority to amend the charter, it is the inhabitants of the municipality, and then I said what I thought should be in the school charter.
And the Legislature said…Ahem.
Interesting. I submitted three testimonies about the “repealed and replaced” Boothbay school charter on Maine Bill Search and all three are published in the record. I was not expecting the last one to be published, submitted after the hearing and before the work session.It is the testimony where I say what I think should be in the school charter
All written testimonies can be found at this link.
Recently on Substack Notes, I joked that the state bill testimony page is my new blogging platform, but seriously-it is going to be so. If my Town leaders were upset when I started commenting on public issues in my local newspaper, this should put a bee in their bonnet!
Afterward I submitted a shorter testimony for spoken testimony because I questioned if my testimony would be considered at all if I did not speak.
But all three testimonies are now in the public record perhaps because there are a very small number of written testimonies, including one by Bruce McDonald who also testified against the charter but during the work session I was said to be the only one testifying against enactment and referred to in the work session namelessly as “this other person”. That’s all right, Maine Legislature, but you could have given me a more specific identifier such as “nonentity #1”. I am sure if Mr. Mcdonald’s testimony were present at that time, he would have been identified by name because he is a board member.
But it is not the board members to whom the Maine Constitution grants the authority to amend the charter. That authority is granted to “the inhabitants of the municipality’ as my testimony emphasized, but when the Legislature hemmed and hawed to figure out a way to describe what my testimony is about, they couldn’t muster up the integrity to say “Home Rule” or mention that I specifically advocated that words saying that are charter will be aligned with state law will be struck out! Instead, they doubled down by saying that the replacement charter would make Boothbay “compliant” with state law. Never a mention of what is in those state laws because that’s not up for discussion.
I did not feel that my testimony was properly represented in the work session, wherein I was not allowed to speak but Holly was, but now all three of my testimonies are part of the permanent written record, all identified with my name.
A central point of my testimony is that the “repealed and replaced school charter” relinquishes our local home rule rights over our school charter and says hence forth our local schools will be governed by central management by the state.
Representative Holly Stover supports my position that this is the purpose of repealing and replacing the Boothbay School Charter at this time when she writes the following, which literally says repealing home rule authority and replacing it with state rule is exactly what the boards are doing, without the consent of the governed to do so.
This is what “ Holly wrote:
Another benefit is that as the Legislature Amends Title 20-A over time, those amendments will apply to the CSD because Title 20-A will govern it. Title 20-A provides that where a CSD charter and Title 20-A conflict, the CSD charter will prevail. By enacting a new CSD charter in line with Title 20-A, we can eliminate the need for the CSD to keep introducing legislation going forward to avoid new conflicts with Title 20-A.
It’s so much work to actually think about how your local school system is governed and to what purpose it is used. Let’s make it easier for everyone and eliminate that right! In the future no one will have to bother, just obey!
Denise Griffen also makes my point for me in her testimony for the charter when she writes: (talking about the charter they are repealing)
“It is an unwieldy document containing very outdated language and does not comply with current state statutes and does not meet today’s modern school capital and financial needs. It requires only 25 residents to vote on a $10 MM++ dollar budget (in an in-person school board meeting), a far cry from the 1954 community school district budget.”
If that is the case, why wasn’t the replacement charter posted where all inhabitants of the community could read it and then vote on it before sending it to the Maine Legislature to try to get it enacted into state law? “
The very process by which this school charter is being pushed through is a testimony in support of my testimony that the inhabitants of the municipality were kept out of the process. Denise Griffen writes about the charter being repealed that “ It requires only 25 residents to vote on a $10 MM++ dollar budget (in an in-person school board meeting)”, and yet deals with the school charter in exactly the same way, although the agents that have the authority to amend the school charter are constitutionally defined as “the inhabits of the municipality” who are statutorily identified as the school district and not the “school district committee” or the boards conducting board meetings with rules identical to the way the legislative work session was conducted in which the public can watch but cannot participate.
Article in the Boothbay Register 01/12/2023
Boothbay Harbor selectmen hold 4 executive sessions In other action, selectmen voted, 5–0, to accept a proposed new Community School District charter. Board Chairman Mike Tomko reported the new charter had support from Boothbay selectmen and CSD board members. The charter was originally adopted in 1953. Tomko explained the new charter reflects “more modern language and brings the charter in line with current state statutes.”
The charter’s most dramatic change is moving from a town meeting-style budget adoption format to a budget validation referendum. Under the new format, the BVR remains in place for 10 years unless a public petition requests an earlier vote to revert back to the past format. Boothbay Harbor is the first elected group to vote on adopting the new charter. The superintending committee voted on Tuesday, Jan. 10; Boothbay selectmen were set to vote Wednesday, Jan. 11; and trustees vote on an undetermined date.
Tomko said if the legislature approves the changes it would be the charter’s sixth revision.
Despite the constant refrain about “aligning with state law”, as Bruce McDonald’s testimony pointed, under state law the budget validation referendum remains in place for only three years.
The way the Legislature dealt with raising the issue of participation by the inhabitants of the municipality was to ask sponsoring Representative Holly if the public was involved and Holly said “yes we had many public meetings, all advertised” They may have advertised school board meetings but they did not advertise that the meetings would discuss the charter. After attending the first meeting which was properly advertised, I was looking for another announcement about the school charter but never saw one. Furthermore, as reported in the Register, the boards decided to move the charter workshop from the select board meetings to the school board meetings, the former being a representative board wherein the public can play an active role, and the latter, an administrative board, where the public can only watch, very much the same as the legislative work session,
Boothbay Register Article 12/15/2022
Towns still seeking consensus on one last charter issue
Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor and Community School District officials have reach agreement on all major charter changes except one. Dec. 12, Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor selectmen were joined by CSD superintending committee members and trustees in discussing one final change. All three entities support changing the school budget validation process from a town-hall style public vote to a written ballot referendum.
But for future charters changes, especially ones involving changing the school budget validation process, school officials prefer a public vote to revert back to the town hall-style school format. Under the current proposal, any charter change would require legislative approval
The words “ town hall-style school format” is an odd concoction . Unlike the select board, the school board is administrative and is not required to allow public participation at its meetings. while the words “town-hall” suggest it is participatory but if that were so, the word “school” would not be needed, and so it comes across as disingenuous.
Is Boothbay’s historical culture to be repealed and replaced with the Empire?
The Empire is the Maine Space Corporation, the state’s new corporation, unconstitutionally chartered by special act of Legislation in April, 2022, alongside the arguably unconstitutional HP 1489 that robs municipalities of their home rule rights to regulate housing density or to say anything about community character. That authority is now redelegated to the corporate state of Maine to which all Maine municipalities must be “compliant” (obedient)
Also enacted at the same time was LD 1845 an Act To Amend the Maine Education Statutes which authorizes demonstration-research schools for which the general law that governs the rest of the public educational system is waived and the school can make its own rules.
Does that sound like LD 1845 might have been written with the Maine Space Corporation in mind? Does that sound like a plan to finance the Maine Space Corporation using the public educational system, which according to state law can be financed by conditional gifts? Conditional gifts is a pay to play system. While the federal government prosecuted Paul Coulombe for pay to play, the Maine government has made pay to play legal. Paul Coulombe is in his element and secrecy abounds everywhere in the numerous massive projects taking place on this peninsula all connected to Coulombe.
After experiencing my direct encounter with the state, I believe the state and the cabal are negotiating deals and that what I said I thought the school charter should prohibit is what they are planning.
I don’t have proof that this is so but the pieces and the characters all fit together into a consistent theory.
If so, do we just let it happen? Or do we implement a strategy for reclaiming the Maine Constitution?
The pitfalls of allowing private sector Commissioners not required to take an oath to uphold the Maine Constitution to write Maine Legislation
A dozen or so unelected commissioners, three who wrote the framework for HP 1489, together with the Maine Legislature wrote and enacted HP 1489 as an “emergency act” transgressing yet another part of the Maine Constitution which states:
An emergency bill shall include only such measures as are immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health or safety; and shall not include (1) an infringement of the right of home rule for municipalities, (2) a franchise or a license to a corporation or an individual to extend longer than one year, or (3) provision for the sale or purchase or renting for more than 5 years of real estate. Maine Constitution Article IV. Part Third. Legislative Power, Section 16
This arguably takes away the legal authority by which the Boothbay Regional Development Cabal (or Corporation- take your pick because it is a secretive organization) propose to build a corporate-owned housing concentration zone at 3.5 the density of the surrounding area. The only way that density is legal is because of HP 1489, which was enacted as an emergency act, bringing its constitutionality into even greater question than it already was.
Unconstitutional enactment is the rule of law until successfully challenged in a court of law, which requires standing, which requires justified claim to personal injury. That means you, abutters. So man up and take action for the sake of future generations! Please!
Since the inception of the public-private state, in 1976, its oligarchs have been confrontational with the constitutional state of Maine. The public-private state is a hegemonic form of government that established itself in Maine in 1976 with the on-the-record intention to “eliminate public referendums on municipal bonds’, provided in the Home Rule amendment of 1969.
Conditional Gifts might allow them to do that, with a little more tweaking of the statute:
§5654. Conditional gifts 2. Perpetually comply with conditions. When the donor or the donor’s representative has completed the donor’s part of the agreement concerning the execution of a conditional gift, the municipality shall perpetually comply with, and may raise money to carry into effect, the conditions upon which the agreement was made. [PL 1987, c. 737, Pt. A, §2 (NEW)
Now is not the time for complacency.
Originally published at https://mackenzieandersen.substack.com.
