April 16, 2008 edition - hard copy and web

Read the entire newspaper on line http://www.tinytowngazette.com

After a citizen’s challenge, Cohasset Town Manager cancels private meeting with Houghton and Corps  

by Tanna Kasperowicz

Two Cohasset Selectmen were invited to meet with former NY Congressman Amo Houghton and the Army Corps of Engineers this week to discuss the situation at Treat’s Pond. The meeting, a private meeting, was to take place at Cohasset Town Hall. One selectman told this reporter that it was best the meeting be private because they had to do some negotiating. After the meeting was challenged by former selectman Peter J. Pratt and others, Town Manager Bill Griffin cancelled the meeting. However, the D.A's office told Griffin that Pratt's claim that two selectmen are a subcommittee, and cannot participate in a private meeting, is a gray area.

Pratt said in his complaint to the District Attorney:

Such meeting was stated as being held to discuss, gather facts about, and probably deliberate upon a matter involving a highly controversial federal project of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) know as the Treat’s Pond Ecosystem Restoration Project (the Project), and located in a section of the Town of Cohasset. The highly controversial nature of, and the associated controversial nature of the congressional appropriation process for the Project, have been widely reported in local, regional, and national media.

Further, Pratt noted, Griffin told Pratt that Houghton had requested the meeting, and that attendees would be comprised of David Larson, USACE, two selectmen, Houghton and the town manager himself. The meeting would be a fact-finding meeting, and Selectmen and their manager would return to the full board to report their findings.

One thing Pratt neglected to tell the District Attorney (at least in this complaint) is  the constant, looming, and controlling presence of a third selectmen, Ralph Dormitzer-- like Houghton’s wife’s family, a property owner directly in the area of the Treat’s Pond project. Dormitzer has every right to act as a private citizen in this matter, but the Corps  and Delahunt’s office thinks  of him as their link to Cohasset Town Government.

After withering public pressure in July 2007, Dormitzer publicly recused himself from board votes on this matter.  The key word here is publicly.  From all documents, e-mails and letters read by this reporter, Dormitzer has been setting the agendas for the Army Corps and Sandy Cove Association ––for some time now.  While he would not have been present at the ill-fated meeting, his “agenda” would be at the forefront. Dormitzer has been prominent in the Army Corps records we have reviewed. 

This project is not yet a town project, and we predict it will never see the upcoming November Special Town Meeting.  It was rejected at Annual Town Meeting because none of the town boards and committees had any details to consider. The details of the project have not been vetted. It continues to be controlled privately. 

If Cohasset is to be a non-federal sponsor of this project, town boards and committees must be able to hear and participate in its debate. And is way past the time to bring this issue into the public arena.

This reporter was told that the $1 million the Army Corps brought with them had to be spent on a Sandy Cove solution or the money would be returned to the Feds. A Sandy Cove solution means that an engineering plan would have to be created by which Treats Pond could utilize Sandy Cove.

One town official claims that a secondary purpose of the ill-fated meeting would have been an end-run on the Feds’ salt marsh restoration money - asking to put it to a different use. But this seems highly unlikely, when the Army Corps is about salt marsh restoration, not neighborhood flooding.

Houghton got a nice gift from the federal government, commemorating his many years of service as a Congressman, but like many gifts people receive, it was the wrong color, the wrong size and it came with a tag: use it or lose it.

Unless the Selectmen have something magical up their sleeves, and there’s been nothing magical about their handling of this issue to date, it appears this federal money will not be used by the Town of Cohasset.

Flooding on Atlantic Avenue may have to be handled by local taxpayers and individual homeowners.

In the meantime, Selectmen should either vet this issue at a public hearing, or Houghton should return this gift to Delahunt, who is being embarrassed almost daily over this little porker.

April 02, 2008 edition - hard copy and web

Read the entire newspaper on line http://www.tinytowngazette.com

Houghton requested a $50,000 water projects earmark from Congressman William Delahunt. He hoped it would alleviate severe flooding on Cohasset’s Atlantic Avenue, at his wife’s home. Money earmarked for the project is now over $1M - and costs are rising. This appears to be happening because Amo Houghton and Ralph Dormitzer are the project managers

by Tanna Kasperowicz

Initially, the Army Corps billed the project as the restoration of a salt marsh. Atlantic Avenue neighbor Ralph Dormitzer, who became a Cohasset Selectman in 2004, has beach rights on Sandy Cove. Years ago a homeowner gave an easement to the town to run a drainage pipe from Treats Pond to Sandy Cove. According to Dormitzer, who has written extensively about Treats Pond, the deed states that the current pipe can never be relocated, enlarged or expanded from its present use or present location. Dormitzer says because of this deed the Army Corps could not entertain Sandy Cove as part of any solution. However, documents the Gazette has read from the Army Corps shows an early interest in Sandy Cove being part of the solution.

While the town has experienced days and days of rain in March, one Atlantic Avenue neighbor, with a padlocked gate, has refused to allow the Town’s DPW to cross their property to attend to the cleaning of the pipe. Rumors abound that a second neighbor is contemplating a second gate.

Accordingly, one of the newly formed Cohasset Board of Selectmen’s first duties will be to meet in executive session to discuss their easement problems.

Although the Cohasset Board of Selectmen took the article to Town Meeting last week, they were not prepared to discuss it, and not one town board supported them.

At the meeting Fred Koed, in a last-minute effort to save the project money, proposed an amendment to the Treats Pond article which would send a message to Congressman Delahunt that the town was in fact still interested in pursing this project but needed to get a grasp of storm water and flooding in surrounding areas to see how this money might best be used.

Opponents of the project received several years of E-mails and letters about the project, through a freedom of information request. It is these documents from which I am quoting.

In an e-mail dated Aug. 04, 2003 Eric Hutchins, a fisheries biologist for the NOAA Fisheries Restoration Center told Atlantic Avenue neighbors... that typically barrier beaches (Sandy Cove) have a wetland area/pond behind them. In a natural world, the pond would slowly seep through the sand into the ocean as its form of self-maintenance. Development on Sandy Cove has prevented the natural draining of this water shed. The Treats Pond drain onto Sandy Cove was an attempt to satisfy a man-made problem to property flooding.

In 2003 the practical solutions being discussed were A. to turn the Treats Pond drain onto Sandy Cove into a more effective, lower maintenance and invisible outflow by using a field of underground perforated piping. B. Improve the water quality of Treats pond by better maintenance of storm drains and inflow waterways. In 2005 the Corps still has its sites on Sandy Cove.

At the meetings taking place in 2003, 2004 and 2005 are Atlantic Avenue neighbors with Delahunt’s chief of staff. Selectman Ralph Dormitzer, appears to be the only town official involved. Delanhunt’s office often asks about other town officials.

In 2006 Dormitzer is chairman of the board of selectmen. He continues to be actively engaged with meetings of the Sandy Cove Association with Delahunt’s office and the Army Corps. Dormitzer proposes an agenda for a January 2006 meeting that he sends to the Association members and the Army Corps.

Dormitzer notes as being unacceptable: Man-made structures on the Cove. Dormitzer has eliminated Sandy Cove as being any part of the project solution.

November 6, 2006 - Delahunt’s office writes to John Kennelly, NAE: “Getting some interesting calls from our Cohasset friends. Amo is accusing Corps of spending hundreds of thousand of dollars with nothing show...and he is apparently hiring or has hired an independent contractors.

“Ralph (Dormitzer) has also called, a little panicked.”

February 2007, Army Corps now rules out Sandy Cove and suggests pipe to Cohasset Harbor. They’re still looking for the town to support the project.

January 22, 2008 - Houghton and Dormitzer suggest that the Corps route the 42-inch diameter pipe from Treats Pond to Whale Meadow- staying off the Ralston property. Corps projects costs at $2.17 Million. Dormitzer wants new quotes from local contractors. John Kennelly, NAE says he is concerned that he will not be able to support this new suggested alignment, given the Federal justification requirements.

__________________________________

April 16, 2008 edition - hard copy and web

Read the entire newspaper on line http://www.tinytowngazette.com

The Democrats’ Latest Trick: Making You Fear the Bear Stearns Bailout

By Pete Kasperowicz

Democrats, who believe it’s perfectly fine to waste half of the taxes you pay each year to the federal government, are making an ironic attempt to get you to worry about whether taxpayers will eventually get stuck with what could only be a tiny additional charge, at most, for the Federal Reserve’s bailout of Bear Stearns.

         As usual, this is not much more than an attempt to make the rich look bad and create some wiggle room for more federal spending. This time, their strategy is to create the idea that taxpayers will ultimately pay for the bailout of Bear Stearns and all its bigwig, fat cat owners and clients, which makes their argument – that we should spend more money on “the people” – easier to advance.

         It’s a trick. But this issue is complicated, and it might be hard to understand what’s going on. Thus, a guide for refuting Democratic claims that taxpayers will foot the bill for Bear.

         Bear Stearns is an investment house that got in trouble because it was over-exposed to mortgage-backed securities (MBS). If you don’t know what MBS are yet, they’re bundles of mortgages that are turned into securities that you can invest in, based on a belief that mortgage holders will keep paying their mortgages, generating profits for these securities.

         This is the part of the financial equation that broke down over the last nine months. The housing bubble burst, and many people who bought houses at the top of the market did so in the belief that prices would keep rising. They bought houses with no money down, interest-only loans, and maybe even took out an adjustable rate mortgage. When these mortgages started resetting at higher rates – and prices fell, making refinancing impossible – many people couldn’t afford to repay their loan.

         This hurt everyone. Lenders holding onto loans couldn’t collect. If mortgages were turned into MBS, these securities suddenly dropped in value, and in many cases couldn’t even be traded in the market.

         That’s what happened to Bear Stearns. It was over-exposed to these securities, and got stuck holding stuff that not only sank in value, but couldn’t even be sold on the cheap because the market sees them as toxic.

         This also made the financial system less liquid and tightened credit conditions, since financial institutions routinely swap assets for money in order to meet their cash reserve requirements. When they couldn’t trade MBS, banks need to stop lending in order to meet these requirements, and the economy was at risk of shriveling up.

         That’s where the Federal Reserve stepped in. The Fed is the lender of last resort. It’s mission these days, which most sane people seem to agree on, is to make sure financial institutions can continue operating.

         The logic is easy to grasp. One option is to let things run their course and let institutions exposed to the wrong products fail. But it’s important to remember that these financial institutions are the gears in the economy. If half the banks fail, there are broader implications. You can’t get credit for a house. A business can’t take out a loan and expand. The economy shuts down.

         This is what happened in the 1930s, in what is now broadly seen as a big mistake by the Fed. The Fed didn’t stand in the way of anyone getting liquidated, and one-third of all US banks failed. Then came the Great Depression.

         The Fed thought it faced a similar choice with Bear Stearns. It quickly decided that a Bear bankruptcy would have been much more costly to the US economy, since it would have killed a company, hurt shareholders, put the market even more on edge, and done nothing to ease liquidity conditions.

         Instead, the Fed made the following deal. It will help JP Morgan Chase buy out Bear Stearns by lending it $29 billion. In return for this short-term loan, it will take as collateral the hard-to-value MBS formerly owned by Bear.

         Essentially, the Fed is expected to hold this MBS until the time comes when these toxic securities can be traded again. In doing so, the Fed has agreed to take as collateral something that private companies were afraid to touch, and in return offered much-needed liquidity to the market, in the hopes that this stuff is not worthless in the future.

         So how does this affect taxpayers? Only indirectly at best.

         The only way taxpayers could get hurt is if the MBS held by the Fed is ultimately seen as worthless. And even if that happens, in all likelihood the next step would be that the Fed – which generates tens of billions of dollars for the US government each year – would not generate as much money for the government at some point in the future.

         In other words, taxpayers will never write a check. At the very worst, the Fed will give the US $29 billion less in some future year, a tiny addition to the endless debt the US government racks up this year (we’re on pace for another $400 billion in debt in 2008 alone).

         And that’s the most pessimistic outcome. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said in early April that he believes the Fed in the future will be able to trade MBS, and will most likely recoup its money, and may even make some money on the deal.

         In the end, the Democratic complaint that the Bear Stearns deal might cost taxpayers is several offensive things all at once. It’s a way of pretending they care about taxpayers, which they don’t. It’s a made-up crisis, since there’s no evidence there will be any cost to taxpayers. It ignores the larger picture, which is the Fed’s creative attempt to keep the markets under control.

         And, at its very worst, it’s a not-so-subtle attempt to get you angry at “the rich” for being bailed out, and to convince you that “the people” need a bailout too.

         Don’t buy it. The Fed is working to heal a financial system that no one, rich or poor, can afford to have collapse, and helping Bear Stearns was incidental to that mission.

April 16, 2008 edition - hard copy and web

Read the entire newspaper on line http://www.tinytowngazette.com

I am reading Burning Up the Air: Jerry Williams, Talk Radio, and the Life in Between by Steve Elman and Alan Tolz

by Barbara Anderson

Co-Director, cltg.org

I was often a guest on Jerry’s WRKO show. Between1988 and 1996, I was there every Tuesday for a two-hour segment called The Governors, first with Howie Carr, then with Bob Katzen. But for me it was just part of my job as a taxpayer activist: I missed a lot of the drama swirling around me, that I am now learning about in this fascinating book.

Unfortunately, my last recollections include my frustrations with Jerry’s new mantra, his response to the political news and to callers’ outrage: there’s no hope.

An activist like me didn’t relate to hopelessness; I’d get frustrated when I presented my solutions just to be met with a pitying glance from the host. We create our own hope, I’d insist. Call talk radio. Write letters to editors. Get signatures. Run against incumbents. Vote.

How upbeat. How optimistic. How an-noying. Ten years later, I’m beginning to annoy myself.

Last week I wrote an optimistic column about a proposal by Governor Patrick, House Speaker DiMasi and Senate President Murray to address the “only in Massachusetts” police details. This, I predicted, could herald a new era in which our elected representatives no longer exist to serve the public employee unions: an era in which public employee benefits are no longer the main reason for government’s existence.

The day the column ran, Governor Patrick seemed to be backing off the proposal during his monthly visit with to the Egan/Braude show on WTKK.

The more I think about this” he said, “the less certain I am that we can fix this top down, you know, by just saying, ’Here’s the governor’s policy or the state government’s policy,’ because the conditions are so different at local levels. There’s a lot we can do about how we deploy the State Police at the state level, but I think we’re going to have to show some respect for the judgments at local levels and create some space when public safety permits and makes prudent the use of flagmen.

Later that day the Massachusetts Senate added police detail language to a Transportation Bond bill. It called for the state to establish a plan determining which state roads need police, and which can use civilian flagmen. Then things got confusing, as the Senate decided to let the cities and towns deal with the detail issue on their own, allowing local cops to continue doing details if it’s in their contracts.

The media coverage and public response to this language was mixed: it ranged from outrage that the Senate had capitulated to the local unions, to praise for taking the first step. Meanwhile, the police unions were trying to get the language removed in the House during the final vote on the Transportation bill. They were unsuccessful and the bill with the police detail language is heading for the governor’s desk.

I, the optimist, think that Patrick, DiMasi and Murray wouldn’t have started this controversial conversation if they didn’t intend to follow through. I think they are taking is easy at first, giving the union leaders a chance to be reasonable, to give up the taxpayer rip-off on secondary roads before public anger banishes them completely from the highways.

As Democrats, they are reluctant to interfere with collective bargaining, anachronistic as that union tradition may be. Instead, they are giving moral support to mayors and selectmen who want to drop the details on their secondary streets – and thinking about removing the union veto from local management decisions on other employee benefits.

That’s my optimistic analysis, and I’m sticking to it – for now. Though Jerry may have been right at the time, that there was no hope for the commonwealth, this could be the year that hope returns.

April 16, 2008 edition - hard copy and web

Read the entire newspaper on line http://www.tinytowngazette.com

Hull selectmen incumbents and candidates are off to the races

by Rod Young

‘Doc’ [John] Silva is the selectmen chair, so you can bet he’s up for re-election. He is. The current vice-chairman Ron Davy is also running. Last year incumbent John Reilly won re-election as chairman, and Joan Meschino also prevailed as vice-chair. In 2006 Chairman Chris Olivieri was unopposed.

One might expect that, come the board’s reorganization meeting following the May 19 town election, it’s Olivieri’s turn once again, since he’s up for re-up in ’09 – unless, of course, either or both incumbents are defeated. Then Joan Meschino, ostensibly the most independent member of the current board, might finally be awarded the helm for a year, breaking what some insist has become an entrenched ‘good-old-boy network.’

Unquestionably Hull’s popular town manager Philip Lemnios, who has enjoyed the unqualified support of Silva, Davy, Reilly, and Olivieri – most notoriously for his having been re-hired as town manager with a healthy salary increase and no competition – presumably would be happy with the re-election of the two incumbents.

Challenger Dennis Blackall, if he were to replace either Silva or Davy, might in Lemnios’ mind potentially rock the ship of state (town) now precariously headlong into the stormy fiscal waters of FY ’09, then into a deathly whirlpool – by Lemnios’ own estimation – that will be fiscal year 2010.

Blackall has been critical of a select board too willing in his estimation to accept the absolute stewardship of Lemnios whose fiscal stand since returning as Hull’s manager has been generally to roll the town’s current and future hardships up Beacon Hill. Silva and Davy credit Lemnios – and Blackall agrees – that Lemnios in his first stint as Hull’s Town Manager adroitly anticipated the last state ‘rape’ of local aid to cities and towns. Ever since, Hull has been surviving on the $2-million ‘rainy day’ fund that Lemnios painstakingly accumulated over many a Spartan month.

But state local aid never recovered, and may even be due for more hits in the next 24 to 36 months. Local lottery aid was just barely saved from cuts in the FY’ 09 state budget by a legislative infusion of scarce revenue. There may be no helping out of inevitable layoffs and service cuts this time around. Lemnios and Chairman Silva have not been reticent to talk up the dire prospects.

The campaign debate is shaping up as one of fiscal priorities. Blackall and a second seemingly like-minded challenger on the ballot, Hull native Domenico Sestito, would prioritize local initiatives to the hilt – ‘damn the torpedoes (state cuts), full steam ahead’ on building Hull’s economy, over husbanding every last penny to ride out the upcoming storm. An aggressive public policy to foster growth of course requires investment in infrastructure, services, and public relations at the possible expense of a fireman or policeman (or two or three) or of the dreaded “O” word (override) that might be upon the town in any scenario.

There’s no such option as ‘deficit spending’ at the local level (except for snow removal reminds Lemnios) – only borrowing to be Ok’d in tough economic times by town voters persuaded to set aside statutory tax cap Proposition 2-1/2.

Lemnios’ answer to Blackall’s challenge has been to hire a community-development director to coordinate Hull’s development as a Mecca for day-trippers, who are decreasingly willing to spend for increasingly expensive tanks of petrol for trips to the Cape and beyond.

“Hull as a destination” is a theme nearly a century old last realized in the roaring ’20s, but arguably since the Great Depression of the ’30s never given an ‘all or nothing’ push.

The current select board generally splits on costly municipal entrepreneurial initiatives 4-to-1, with Davy occasionally siding with his inveterately progressive colleague Joan Meschino. The most recent debate has been over the once highly touted desalination project, now shelved. There will come no doubt hot exchanges on the wisdom of proceeding with four offshore wind turbines. Reportedly, Lemnios has ordered audit of the long-term advantages of wind power for the town.

With the elevation of Blackall and/or Sestito, there assuredly will be greater willingness on the board to  throw the dice as Hull’s way out of a statewide economic downturn that, according to State Senator Bob Hedlund (R-Weymouth) and Representative Garrett Bradley (D-Hingham) may persist well into the next decade.