Protected canoe launch funds draw fire

AUGUSTA – During a hearing Thursday about deficit-reduction cuts to natural resource programs in the state’s 2003 budget, lawmakers questioned why Department of Conservation Commissioner Ron Lovaglio was protecting $61,000 for the suspended John’s Bridge canoe launch on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway at the expense of other projects.

Sen. Jill Goldthwait, co-chair of the Appropriations Committee, asked Lovaglio whether his budget choices indicated the controversial project was still on the table.

Lovaglio has supported constructing a parking area and trail so canoeists can launch their boats at the bridge, which spans the Allagash between Eagle and Churchill lakes. The project was approved in 2000, but was challenged by environmentalists.

Last year, the conservation department backed away from the project to debate the larger issue of how many access points should be available along the waterway. In May, department officials expressed their continuing support for the canoe launch, but no further action has been taken.

“This is a project that has had a permit nullified [by the Land Use Regulation Commission], and the department hasn’t applied for another permit,” said Goldthwait, a Bar Harbor independent.

The senator noted that much of the $813,365 that Lovaglio’s staff chose to cut from the department budget originated in “dead accounts” – money allocated to programs and projects that no longer exist, but that the John’s Bridge money remained.

Lovaglio said that the money set aside for John’s Bridge could be applied to a “backlog” of other construction projects.

“As the money comes in, we have the list, and we start working our way down,” he said.

Goldthwait responded with the request that in tight budget times, reallocations of money from one project to another ought to be approved by her committee.

“[The committee should decide] whether this is a time to work at a backlog of projects or whether this money should be used to keep roofs over people’s heads,” she said, in reference to other proposed budget cuts.

Goldthwait also questioned the department’s decision to preserve the John’s Bridge money instead of funds allocated for a popular project at the Verona Island boat launch.

Lovaglio’s staff chose to return $30,000 of general fund money that had been allocated for repairing the public boat launch on Verona Island. Instead, the project will be scaled back, and funded with about $6,000 reallocated from other portions of the Department of Conservation budget, said Lovaglio.

Legislators discussed the idea of shifting funds from the John’s Bridge project to the Verona boat launch project, but no formal proposal could be made in the public hearing setting.

Goldthwait ended the discussion with a quotation from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which is set in “fair Verona”: “‘Tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone,” she said.

Other less controversial budget cuts outlined Thursday included:

? $162,000 from the State Planning Office, including $59, 261 from the Land for Maine’s Future fund.

? $251,244 from the Department of Environmental Protection.

? $198,000 from the Department of Agriculture.

? $245,000 from the Department of Marine Resources.

? $52,000 from the Atlantic Salmon Commission.