A bad day on Page One

Anyone who stole even a passing glance at Page One of the Wednesday morning newspaper could see that Gov. John Baldacci was having a bad day in terms of public relations.

The dark and brooding headline over the newspaper’s lead story shouted that the governor’s grand plan to have the state take over the county jails wasn’t going over worth a damn with the public, and a subheadline noted that the governor’s own brother Peter, a Penobscot County commissioner, was among leaders of the grass-roots revolt.

The paper’s second lead story, snugged tight against the jail-consolidation foofaraw so the two stories sucked up all of the prime news space above the fold, concerned the unpopularity of Baldacci’s proposed budget cuts with the health and human services crowd. Leading the opposition on that count was a member of Baldacci’s political party, Democratic Sen. Joe Brannigan of Portland. The governor was 0 for 2 before I had even checked out the bottom of the page.

The jail-reorganization plan calls for consolidating the county jails and state corrections system into a statewide unit managed by the Department of Corrections. Four of the jails would be eliminated. Baldacci claims the plan would save millions of dollars annually and ease overcrowding in the state system.

Wrong, little bro, elder sibling Peter publicly counseled. All it does is show that the Department of Corrections is thinking just about its own needs, while kissing off the needs of the counties. “One of the poorest business plans I’ve ever seen,” said Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross, a Republican. Hancock County Sheriff William Clark, also a Republican, said the deal is typically Baldaccian, much like his school-consolidation plan or his Dirigo Health lash-up. “He takes an idea and runs with it without thinking it all the way through,” Clark said.

Rhetoric in the budget-cut flap was no more supportive of the governor. Brannigan, co-chairman of the legislative Health and Human Services Committee, said he won’t support cuts in human services programs in order to lower taxes. If the governor “leads in that direction, he won’t have my vote,” Brannigan said, political affiliation notwithstanding.

Elsewhere, the school-consolidation thing is said by Department of Education officials to be smoothly humming along, even though the governor continues to take his licks from members of his own party, as well as from the loyal opposition.

Rebellion has simmered just below the surface on that one since Baldacci first put it on the fast track to enactment in the Legislature. A convocation of the disgruntled, led by former Democratic Rep. Skip Greenlaw of Stonington, is scheduled for today at Bangor. Greenlaw hopes to start a statewide petition drive to repeal the legislation. He needs 55,087 signatures to get a petition before lawmakers.

The besieged Baldacci must have a certain empathy for President Bush, who, like the governor, can’t seem to please anyone – left, right or center – these days. Sure, Momma Baldacci often warned him there’d be such speed bumps along the way. But, still …

We all have our bad days, of course. But the details usually don’t lead the morning newspaper. Granted, some do occasionally find Page One. Like the case of the hapless Air Force officer who was relieved of his command earlier this week faster than you can say “Homeland Security freakout” for recently allowing a B-52 bomber mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads to fly for three hours cross-country.

But the more intriguing of the genre are often buried inside the paper by an editor faced with a last-minute hole-plugging job. My favorite this week was the one about the Vermont man who crashed his car twice within 30 minutes on Interstate 89.

The first time, speeding northbound, he went off the highway into the median, then struck another car. Uninjured, he was charged with gross negligent operation. Released from the state police barracks, he soon drove off the interstate again and crashed into a rock ledge, starting a fire. Again unhurt, he was arrested for reckless driving, held on $50,000 bail, and may face more charges. “We are looking into what, chemically, he may have ingested,” a state trooper said. Good idea, that.

That one dovetailed nicely with another about an angry ex-convict wrecking a New Hampshire police station with a stolen bulldozer on a post-midnight rampage, explaining that police drove him to it by their unrelenting harassment, and demanding an investigation.

The two stories may not have the cachet that continually having half of the state upset with you does (see Baldacci, above). But as accounts of bad days go, they are, as my coastal friends say, “keepahs,” nonetheless.

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may e-mail him at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.