David Lemoine: Blame it on the Dog

AUGUSTA (Dec 14): Late last summer, State Treasurer David Lemoine invested $20 million in short-term Maine funds in a high risk offshore venture. In November, the Treasurer meekly informed the Appropriations Committee that the investment had gone south. Now widely reported, Lemoine blames Merrill Lynch for the problem and seems to take no personal responsibility for the loss of our tax dollars. This in a time when the state deficit is closing in on a $100 million and probably headed for $200 million before the legislative session closes in the spring.

Reminds me of the lyrics of my friend Warren Nelson’s song “Blame it on the Dog”. It goes like this:

“Blame it on the dog. Blame it on the dog. When something real bad happens, blame it ooooon the dog.”

Lemoine is claiming that the funds will eventually be returned, albeit without interest. That’s a cover story not supported by investment professionals. The funds are likely gone or at best tied up and greatly diminished. Sure, fire the boys at ML but accept some personal responsibility for an irresponsible act Mr. Lemoine.

In Maine, the majority party appoints the State Treasurer. He is not elected and the position has no prerequisites for experience. The Democratic Maine legislature appointed Lemoine, a lawyer without an investment background, to this important post. Lemoine had termed out as a legislator from Old Orchard Beach and his party cronies decided to help the gentlemen out with a patronage plum: the position of Treasurer of the Great State of Maine.

It’s an important position with great responsibilities. For instance, the treasurer serves on the following boards:

* Finance Authority of Maine
* Maine State Housing Authority
* Maine State Retirement System
* Maine Municipal Bond Bank
* Maine Government Facilities Authority
* Maine Health and Higher Education Facility Authority
* Baxter State Park Investment Committee
* Adaptive Equipment Loan Board
* Maine Educational Loan Authority
* Maine Public Utility Financing Bank
* NextGen Investment Advisory Committee

The treasurer manages the state’s 37 bank accounts, controls all state revenue receipts and issues over two million checks and a half million electronic payments each year. David Lemoine is responsible for investing money from the state's cash pool (an average daily balance of $675 million). The treasurer manages revenue forecasting, assists with CMIA compliance, and acts as trustee for a number of state trusts. He issues the state's general obligation bonds and coordinates Maine's presentations to bond rating agencies. He distributes monthly revenue sharing funds to almost five hundred municipalities and manages Maine's unclaimed property.

That’s quite a responsibility for a guy whose only experience with finance appears to be balancing his own check book. Is it too much to ask that the state appoint a treasurer with a financial management background?

Can you imagine this happening in the private sector? Would any Maine company appoint someone to manage company finances who had no financial credentials? And what do you suppose would happen to an employee who blew $20 million in the course of thirty days on a speculative investment that verged on a spin of the roulette wheel? Look, we all know patronage is part of the political menu. (To the winner goes the spoils). The majority party gets a taste - maybe a truck driver here, a toll booth operator there. Fine. I can deal with that, but a STATE TREASURER? That’s beyond the pale.

The Democrat leadership of Maine should fire Lemoine and start a search for an experienced individual with a financial and accounting background. Shame on them for the appointment in the first place, but now they can at least correct the wrong.

We can do better than this. –H-

athenahealth Arrives in Maine

BELFAST/ROCKLAND (Dec 4, 07): We had big news last week as Jonathan Bush, CEO and President of athenahealth, announced the purchase of the former Bank of America (MBNA) property on Rt. 1 in Belfast. Situated on 53 acres, the 134,000 s.f. facility will house 100 to 150 jobs in the next year and up to 500 more in coming years; it's great news for our area and our state.

athenahealth went public in September and was one of the top three I.P.O.s in 2007. With patented software and an industry leading system, athenahealth presents promise that the ten year old company is about to take off. Belfast stands to see a stronger tax base and a fully employed workforce. Underemployment should be a thing of the past.

While all of the economic development entities in this state work together to try to make things happen - DECD, KWRED, PBRCC, CEI (and other lettered acronyms), in this case the kudos go to Maine & Company - Matt Jacobson, its president and CEO and Peter Del Greco, the deal maker. We've worked together for two years now to bring athenahealth to Maine. And Dave Tassoni, now managing director of athenahealth in Maine, showed his management capabilities in driving the process. Maine owes all three a major debt of gratitude.

I also want to congratulate Governor John Baldacci for creating the Pine Tree Zone program that he initiated when he first came to office. Pine Tree Zones create economic incentives that allow Maine to compete with other states to attract business and jobs to our state. The PTZ was critical to attracting this fine company and serves as the primary economic development tool in Maine. Thanks Governor. -H-

Return to Civility

ROCKLAND (Nov 23, 07): Friday night at 6:00 pm the Rockland community comes together again to light the community Christmas tree. Consisting of lobster traps stacked 34' high, it's a thing to behold. Lighting the tree has been a long time ritual in the Rock City; one I look forward to each year.

It's also the night that the new mayor and council is introduced to the crowd. I'll be introducing new mayor Hal Perry.

As we prepare to enter into a happy New Year, let us hope that this council returns the dialogue to a civil conversation. We're not going to agree on everything. Sometimes it may seem like we can't agree on anything. But can't we at least agree to treat each other with decorum and class?

I think this board has that capability and am looking forward to meetings where the rhetoric is dialed down, the grandstanding placed on hold and the business of the community being completed in a friendly and orderly manner.

Happy holidays! -H-

Aw Shucks. It Twarn't Nothin'

We keep a guest register on our desk. Recently I was thumbing through it and was thrilled with the comments I saw there and so I asked a volunteer to convert it to a word document. Here are the comments unedited:

2007 Penobscot Bay Regional Chamber of Commerce
Guest Register Comments

• Excellent
• Very Good
• Cool
• Love it here, come here all the time
• Wonderful
• Very, very pleased with service
• Great place, we’ll be back
• Great to see the beautiful coast of Maine
• Very well done
• A good place to visit
• Helpful for information on things to do in the area
• Congrats to all the volunteers, Great job!
• Very impressed, thank you
• Awesome
• Eager to come back
• Outstanding
• Maine is a beautiful place!
• Great work, friendly people
• Extremely helpful people
• Beautiful
• Great info
• We love it here, thanks for everything
• Great help
• Found just what I needed, thanks
• Beautiful Town
• Maineacks galore
• Nice welcome to Maine
• Spring in Maine is marvelous
• Love your new building, well done
• Love your town, lots of fun, very friendly people, thanks
• We love it
• Great place to spend your time
• Very informative
• Just splendid
• Send us some rain
• Beautiful facility
• Comfortable and informative
• Thank you Rockland
• Bravo
• We’re impressed
• Beautiful, well done
• Thanks for all the info and help
• Excellent Maine
• Just full of information, loved it
• Great addition to Rockland
• Very nice and the ladies behind the counter were even nicer
• Pretty area, friendly people
• Everyone is very helpful and kind, I love the floor
• We came for ten minutes and spent an hour
• The visitor center is sp interesting, I couldn’t leave it
• Wonderful, very inviting, nicely organized and displayed
• Wow, great job
• Excellent info display
• Very informative, and lovely layout and great display
• Very helpful
• Lovely harbor
• Staff very helpful
• Beautiful visitor center
• Wonderful destination
• You have been very helpful, thank you
• Most informative and enjoyable
• Such a beautiful and friendly area
• Helpful staff, great facility
• Beautiful town and great people
• Beautiful area, Chamber of Commerce very helpful and nice
• Gorgeous
• Glad we came
• A treasure
• Thank you very, very much for all your great help
• A great resource
• Thank you for the great directions
• So happy to visit here, people were so nice
• Very helpful with suggestions, thanks
• Breathtaking
• Wonderful, we will revisit
• Neat and friendly
• First time in coastal Maine, exceptional
• Loveable
• Love our Maine experience
• Wonderful, we will revisit
• Neat and friendly
• First time in coastal Maine, exceptional
• Loveable
• Love our Maine experience
• Great Center, beautiful town
• You folks are the best, thanks
• So glad to be here, have always wanted to visit Maine
• Outstanding, great improvement from last location
• Very informative, well laid out
• Lovely new complex, thanks for your help.
• Staff went out of their way to help us
• Rockland is a very special place
• What a great place! You'vedone a wonderful job here Thank you.
• Very good lots of fun. Very accommodating facility and staff
• Great visitor center and friendly folks
• Neat, staff has lots of great stories
• Perfect!
• Should have started here, lots of info
• Information Staff were extremely helpful
• It’s been great, Love the lobster
• Thank you for your hospitality
• Extremely nice building and people
• It was very informative and interesting
• Very helpful assistance, thanks
• Wow! Magnificent.
Great assistance from staff.
The people who work here are amazing

Congratulations to our fantastic staff and wonderful troupe of volunteers. Our members and the community at large should be pleased with the service they deliver. -H-

When Technology Attacks

ROCKLAND/ROCKPORT (Nov 1): As an aging Baby Boomer, I’ve always felt that I did a fairly competent job of being technically up to speed. I’ve used a P.D.A. since the 90’s and am pretty much paperless at work. I don’t text message, but what boomer does? I was part of a team that created innline.com in the mid-90’s, arguably the Internet’s first on-line hotel reservation system. While I was the weakest member of that team, the technology is now commonplace worldwide.

But now my technological world seems to be falling apart. It started with my TV. I got a great buy on one three years ago, seven hundred and fifty bucks – a real guy machine. It has a 42” high definition screen is hooked up to a DVR (digital video recorder) and needs two remote controls to operate. The picture is terrific and the ability to record programs prior to being on air was a wonderful thing. I never miss a play during a Patriot’s game and take pleasure doing my own replays on controversial calls.

Then came the black outs. First it was gun shots that did it. If there was a gun fight on a given show, the TV would shut down for about ten seconds on the first flash from the barrel. I put up with it for a while; it was an irregular occurrence. Then it got to the point that I couldn’t watch a war movie because the TV would shut down every couple of minutes. Now just about anything will instigate a shut down – a beat on a drum, a flash from a camera, you name it and it will shut the TV down.

Repairmen weren’t able to figure it out. It was just the something I would have to live with – get over it. That was until last week. “The bases are loaded,” said the announcer, “the count is three and two and Big Pappi is at the plate. The runners will be advancing. And the pitch…” And the damn thing shut down for two minutes. (“Damn” was not the word(s) that came out of me). That was it. Time for a new TV but not, Donna tells me, for a few months or so. The property tax bill is due.

But that wasn’t the end of my technical problems. My home computer decided that it too should have the ability to stop on its own accord. And it does. It locks up over and over until the frustration becomes unbearable. It clicks and flashes all the time, probably commandeered by a terrorist or worse, a spammer using my computer to jam yours. A new computer is needed. To hell with the taxes Donna, I’m going to put it on the card.

I’m not done yet. My handy little Palm Pilot that I take with me everywhere has decided to not cooperate either. It stores the agendas and minutes from every meeting that I’ve attended since 2002. As a chamber director, I attend hundreds of meetings in a year and store hundreds of names in my data base. When I synchronize it to my computer, it now has decided to double up the calendar. So when I enter, say, “Board Meeting”, then synch up, it shows “Board Meeting, Board Meeting”. The next time I synch up it shows “Board Meeting, Board Meeting, Board Meeting, Board Meeting”. The next synch repeats the entry 8 times, then 16, then… Guess it’s time for a new PDA too.

Now my cell phone has developed a mind of its own and is storing voice mails for a few days before allowing me to know that they’re there. To the caller, it would seem that I don’t return my calls, which I generally do. The frustration is building.
A glutton for punishment, I decided that my 2000 Microsoft Office Suite was outdated at work, so I replaced it. While the new 2007 software is slick, if too complicated, I learned how to take advantage of the new technology and began to enjoy using it. The only problem is that I’ve found that when I send an Excel spread or a Word document to the staff or to others, they can’t open the documents because their technology isn’t 2007. That’s not going to work. Now what?
The Technology Gods have apparently aligned against me. It looks to me like all I can do is go into debt and start to replace all this stuff. I am grateful for one thing however. At least I don’t have a pacemaker. –H-

Now a Citizen of Red Sox Nation

ROCKLAND (Oct 15, 07): The Red Sox had me up until 1:30 in the morning last weekend and it was an unsatisfying conclusion to my new interest in baseball. Seven runs scored in the tenth inning ended my delusion of a four game series.

As an adult, I have never been much of a fan for the game until I made my move to New England. I would watch bits and pieces of the last games of the World Series, regardless of who was playing. But that was about it.

Six years ago I started to take interest in the Sox. (It’s hard not to be a fan since the Nation is so much a part of life here). So when I made the decision to be a fan, it was wonderful for my team to win the World Series right off the bat. That must be frustrating to those who have been waiting a lifetime for such an occurrence. It’s a distinct advantage of being a fair-weather fan.

My lost interest in baseball came as a result of childhood trauma. As a little kid I was a huge Milwaukee Braves fan. I think I could still tick off the whole Milwaukee lineup: Mathews, Spahn, Crandall, Torre, Schoendienst, Covington, Bruton, Adcock and of course Aaron. I wore my Braves cap every day to the point that my teacher would yell at me to remove it in class. I fastened a Braves baseball card to the spokes of my bike with a clothes pin to make a motorcycle noise. (Jeez I wish I had that card back. I would make a fortune selling it). I listened to every game on the radio and thrilled to their World Series win.

Then came the news - they were moving to Atlanta. My world came crashing down. I couldn’t believe you could move a team and was too young to remember that Milwaukee stole the team from Boston only a decade or so prior. That was it. The next season I threw away my ball cap and pledged never to watch a game the rest of my life. I almost made it.

I attended a few Brewer games over the years, always on the invite of Brewer owner, Bud Selig, now commissioner of baseball. He would invite Chamber directors from around the state to join him for lunch and a game. It was quite a rush, but I still never developed a love for the game. Then I moved to Maine.

So now I’ll glue myself to my really big leather chair and watch all the games of the championship series, even to the early morning hours. And I’m prepared to suffer if the outcome isn’t what is expected. I pledge not to go negative though, always assuming that the Sox will pluck defeat from the jaws of victory. I spew enough negativity as it is dealing with Maine politics and that’s quite enough. –H-

Oh No. Another Retail Blog

I really don't like shopping and am the typical guy shopper - I walk out with exactly what I went in to buy, nothing more. Point of purchase generally doesn't work on me. Buying presents for birthdays and Christmas generally sends me into a panic. I wander aimlessly through the store trying to figure out what my wife would like for her birthday. I have no ability whatsoever to imagine what a dress or a sweater might look like on her. I can't tell the difference between haute couture and J.C. Penney.

Sometimes I feel like a secret shopper, sent in to a store by management or a competitor to check out the service. When I'm in the stores shopping, the chamber guy in me can't help judging the customer service I receive.

For instance, I happened to be in a very nice store a few minutes before 5:00. I was purchasing an item when I heard the bell ring on the store's door. "I'm sorry," the owner said to the woman trying to enter the store, "we're closed". "But I just want to buy a gift certificate", said the one-minute too late shopper. Once again, "I'm sorry we're closed; you'll have to come back tomorrow." I wonder if that happened.

Then this week, I needed a special shaving mirror and couldn't find one in Rockland or Camden. I happened to be at a conference in Augusta so stopped off at a specialty bed and bath shop. You can figure out which one that was. I found just what I was looking for and walked up to the counter to check out. I was the only shopper in the front of the store. The young clerk looked at me with a blank stare then turned around and argued with another clerk about her not getting her 15-minute break. This while I waited impatiently to pay and go. It was probably only a thirty second delay but quite a turnoff for this reluctant shopper.

Finally, Donna knew I was going to Augusta and asked me stop at THE CLUB and load up on tissue, paper towels, bar soap - all the commodity goods that THE CLUB is known to sell in huge quantities at supposedly great prices. She gave me her THE CLUB card so I could buy merchandise at this apparently very exclusive facility. I roamed around the store for 45 minutes grumbling under my breath at the indignity of it all - me in my suit and goofy bow tie pushing around a huge cart of stuff. I finally found the elusive box of Bounce and headed for the checkout. I handed the clerk my THE CLUB card, (or actually Donna's THE CLUB card), and was told that while they were sorry, I could not buy the goods I selected because my picture was not on THE CLUB card. I explained that Donna is my wife, they could check the address to verify that and the fact that we have the same last name is not just a coincidence. Didn't matter. I left a gigantic pile of merchandise on the counter and exited the store. (I didn't wait to see if they wanted me to put it all back). I was hot. When I got home we cut up THE CLUB card. How goofy can that be to deny a sale to a customer at the checkout? A small retailer would have figured how to make the sale.

So with the big box argument in full swing here in Maine, the secret shopper in me has come to some conclusions. National retailers are here to stay and will be players in the marketplace. They're here because the demographic research tells them that there's a market for what they sell and they represent the changing face of retail.

On the other hand, those that see the national retailers as destroyers of downtown aren't giving the small business people the credit they deserve. Look how downtown Rockland has thrived in recent years and this in the face of new big box competition. The secret to success in retail isn't so secret after all. Give great customer service, provide value and quality of product and the store will do just fine. Great service can come in either a big or a small package and so can bad. -H-