State senator Dennis Damon
- occupies a special place of dishonor in the pantheon of Sears Island Sellers-Out that appears on occasion on this blog
Sears Island Sellouts: saga continues with: Senator
Damon, He has taken to heart
Public Law 277 , An Act Regarding the Management and Use of Sears Island, which (unconstitutionally) confers the Legislature's
Transportation Committee with the power of final approval or disapproval over any change of use of Sears Island - an executive power granted by Maine's Founding Parents to the Executive Branch.
Senator Dennis Damon has used this unconstitutional Law 277 to lead the Transportation Committee on a rollercoaster ride,
first imposing
on November 18, 2008 binding conditions on MDOT forbidding the agency from signing
a conservation easement agreement with Maine Coast Heritage Trust, until a container port received its permits to build and operate on Sears Island,
but then ,
on January 13, 2009, pressuring that Committee - many members freshman legislators bewildered by the issue - into reversing its earlier unanimous 11/18/08 vote, and voting instead to waive the restriction on inking The Deal (above) that they'd earlier imposed, through a circuitous device of
"What was the
quid pro quo? What did the Silent Senator ask for and receive during those private meetings with the governor to which he admits having
after the November 18th vote that actually saved Sears Island and before the January re-vote that put it again at risk . Meetings so private that the co-chair of the committee, Representative Mazurek of Rockland was left out of the wheeling and dealing. Let alone the rest of the committee members!
What was enough to get Senator Damon to switch not only his vote, but also to
shove reversal of the unanimous vote through the members of the Legislature's latest transportation committee when it convened for the first time in January 2009
Not content with his own silence, Sentor Dumb'un muzzled the citizens, repeatedly turning down requests by concerned Mainers for permission to speak to the assembled legislative members of
either committee.
Interestingly, Senator Damon was oft to be seen with former Earth First! activist turned muzzler-of-NGO's Jimmy Freeman of Verona Island, (photo) who achieved his own peculiar renown for stifling opponents of dismembering Sears Island, such as the Maine Green Independent Party, the Native Forest Network- Gulf of Maine region, the Maine Earth First! clan. [Note: the Maine Green Independent Party has removed Mr. Freeman from its leadership, and hasthen taken a public stand against the Sears Island port plan and its mitigation plan!)
But from 2004 until that blissful MGHIP moment, under Jimmy's minstrations, none of the three NGOs raised the slightest of murmurs during the years of struggle by a ragtag pack of grassrooters to hold the island free of development. this while Freeman, now
president o f a new government funded 501(c)(3) humorously named Friends of Sears Island(pdf), in the company of Sierra Club representative Joan Saxe, officially represented the public interest in the negotiations over Sears Islandwith the shipping industry and MDOT. Yet without ever consulting that public they were tapped to represent, Joan and Jim abandoned the public demand to pierce the illegal causeway (a necessity for fish and shellfish restoration), together agreed to hand over hundreds of wild wetland rich acres of the island to the industriocrats, and gether voted to exempt the island splitting plan from environmental review under federal transportation law. With Friends like these, Sears Island hardly needs enemies!
Listen to Damon supporting Maine coastal fisheries habitat protection and restoration at the March 19, 2008 hearing of the Marine Resources Committee. Then listen to Damon two months later supporting construction of a container port on Sears Island, (right in Penobscot Bay's top fish nursery) at the May meeting of MDOT's Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee. One hope and prays the Maine Superior Court will shortly relieve the Transportation Committee of the burden of implementing PL 277, by the simple expedient of declaring it in violation of the Maine Constitution's Article III Distribution of Powers.
He used 277 to work the Baldacci administration into a corner on Sears Island, only to then let him go after a serious of behind the scenes private meetings with
is an unconstitutional usurpation of executive branch decision making power by a sole legislative committee.
The senator, whoover the course of three years routinely declined to let opponents of the port project speak before two relevant committees of the Maine legislature that Senator Dumb'un chairs:
* The transportation committee, where the port wannabes, unencumbered by contrary testimony thanks to Damon's requal of requests to address the Committeess.
had free reign to dissemble to their heart's content, of course)
* The marine resources committee (where Damon has blocked all requests to testify to the claiming that the food, habitat and reproductive success of the fishes that the marine sources committee regulates
"are not a concern of the committee."
