Category: Fall 2008 Newswire
Limited Funding Stalls Transportation Projects
TRANSPORTATION
The New Bedford Standard-Times
Courtney Hime
Boston University Washington News Service
December 8, 2008
WASHINGTON – The Shawmut Diner is located at one of New Bedford’s busier intersections. But congestion at Hathaway Road and Shawmut Avenue is not as bad as it used to be.
Philip Paleologos, the owner of the diner, has witnessed how effective the implementation of a single left-hand turn arrow can be in managing traffic.
“That has drastically cut down on not only accidents but also bottlenecking at the corner,” Mr. Paleologos said of the traffic signal, installed15 years ago. “Before the light with the arrows, we had many more accidents happening, because drivers were impatient and would pass on the left to go straight while people were turning.”
Despite this traffic success story, other intersections in the area are still experiencing problems. In fact, many of New Bedford’s intersections are under-designed, according to the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District.
“I don’t know who planned the roads down here back in the ’50s and ’60s, but they must have thought that we were backwater towns that weren’t going to grow at all because they built interchanges that made no sense,” said Roland Hebert, deputy director and transportation planning manager for the regional planning agency. “They only made sense if we were going to stay farmlands.”
As a resident of New Bedford for 31 years, Mr. Paleologos has seen other intersections fail to manage the growing increase in traffic flow. Route 6 in Dartmouth and the intersection of Route 6 and Faunce Corner Road in particular have both had trouble keeping up with an increase of vehicles on the road, he said.
The regional planning agency, which serves 27 towns and cities in southeastern Massachusetts, has published several reports on problem intersections and roadways in the area. According to the 2007 Transportation Improvement Program, the latest report released, some of the most common problems occur at the Routes 24 and 140 intersection, the Tarkiln Hill Road and Kings Highway intersection, the Interstate 195 interchange in Dartmouth at Faunce Corner Road, Interstate 495 in Middleborough and the ramps on I-195 onto Coggeshall Street and Route 18, but many other problems exist.
As national transportation and infrastructure problem
As the nation’s list of transportation projects grows, funding for these improvements continues to shrink. Communities appealing to the state for money to fix infrastructure problems are having trouble acquiring the necessary funds because state money for road projects is drying up. Officials are looking to the federal government for funds to help maintain and improve transportation infrastructures.
Funding for transportation projects on a national level has been problematic and slow. But there is legislation that could jump-start work on solving some of the problems of the nation’s infrastructure
While traffic demands in the region are increasing the funds available to improve roadways are shrinking and WHATEVER.
WHATEVER
WHATEVER ….
Plans for fixing New Bedford’s problem spots have been in development, but acquiring the funds from the state continues to be difficult, said James Hadfield, director of highway planning for the regional agency.
“Most of us …understand how difficult it is to get funding and how slow projects move through the pipeline to actually be funded,” said JamesMr. Hadfield, director of highway planning for the regional agency. said. “It’s a very serious problem that’s not only here in Massachusetts, it’s nationwide.”
In September the House passed the Job Creation and Unemployment Relief Act of 2008. The bill has been placed on the Senate calendar, but has not been considered. If passed, the act would help fund projects that are ready to be implemented within 120 days, said Jim Berard, director of communications for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
While he said he doesn’t think the bill will proceed any further this year, Mr. Berard said he believes a similar stimulus bill that would allot money for transportation projects will be in the works early in the Obama administration.
In addition to the economic recovery bill that would potentially replace the House-passed bill, Mr. Berard said the committee would be looking to pass a new federal highway surface transportation bill.
Mr. Berard said he couldn’t offer specific details on what would be included in the bill, which has not been drafted, but he said it would be likely to allocate at least $300 billion to transportation and infrastructure projects, a figure he called a “conservative estimate.”
“With all the emphasis that people have been placing on infrastructure, on the need to rebuild our national infrastructure, we are expecting this bill to be probably the largest, in terms of money, that we’ve ever passed,” he said.
Any funds allocated for transportation projects, however, must be distributed by the states. And in Massachusetts, distribution of transportation funds has become a hot topic.
According to the Massachusetts Transportation Finance Commission’s March 2007 report, the cost of maintaining Massachusetts’s transportation system “exceeds the anticipated resources available by $15 billion to $19 billion.” The report went on to say that the estimates were conservative and did not include addressing any needed expansions or enhancements.
“Putting a new lane on a highway, widen it, building roads that don’t exist yet – forget about that,” Mr. Hebert said of the report’s findings. “Just maintaining what we have and putting it in good shape, we’re $20 billion in the hole.”
That debt exists in part because of the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, commonly known as the Big Dig. The project, which from planning to completion lasted nearly 25 years, cost $14.6 billion, and with interest included, will ultimately total a cost of $22 billion, according to a July story by The Boston Globe.
“The Big Dig and the third Harbor Tunnel was the most expensive highway project in the nation and we did it with federal money and a state credit card,” Mr. Hebert said.
The system of bonding that financed the Big Dig is one that Mr. Hebert said he doesn’t believe is disappearing anytime soon.
“We’re still in a position where our elected officials are not responding to this need properly,” he said. “We’re borrowing more money on top and we still haven’t come up with more ways to pay it.”
The problem, Mr. Hebert says, is that the state hasn’t come up with a way to raise revenue so that debts and future state transportation projects can be funded with real dollars. While there is no easy answer for how to raise revenue, Mr. Hebert said, charging drivers a gasoline tax is one possibility. .
“It seems to me that gasoline taxes are the most fair user fee in the country,” he said. “If you don’t drive, you don’t pay it.”
Voices across the state have been weighing in on the issue of a gas tax or an increase in toll road fees.
David Guarino, spokesman for Massachusetts House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, said the speaker also believes an increase in the gas tax would be a fair way for the entire state to help raise revenue.
“If the decision has been made that we need to do something, not only to address the Big Dig costs, which are immediate, but the long-term transportation needs of the commonwealth, then whatever solution we come to has to be fair and has to be something that is shared throughout the state,” Mr. Guarino said.
However, State Rep. Robert M. Koczera (D-New Bedford) said he does not support an increase in the gas tax at this time because the funds would be used to pay off the debt from the Big Dig, a project “generally seen as a benefit to Boston” and infrequently used by New Bedford residents.
“Most of my constituents do not utilize the Big Dig. So I tend to feel that’s a disproportionate cost that my constituents would have to pay,” he said of the gas tax.
Rep. Koczera said he would be more open to an increase in the tax if the funds would be used to help create commuter rail service or mass transportation for New Bedford residents. However, he said he doubts the support to pass an increase in the Massachusetts fuel tax exists in the state legislature.
Gov. Deval Patrick said in a statement that he is not “hostile” to an increase in the gas tax but that it’s not his first choice.
Instead, Gov. Patrick and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority have proposed increasing the toll fee at the Sumner and Ted Williams tunnels from $3.50 to $7 and at the Allston-Brighton and Weston toll plazas from $1.25 to $2. Hearings to discuss changes in toll rates are being held throughout the state this month.
Regardless of what the state decides, the initiative to raise revenue is a step in the right direction, according to Mr. Hadfield of the regional planning agency.
“We can’t keep borrowing our way out of problems,” Mr. Hadfield said. “Nobody likes to pay taxes, but yet everyone complains when the roads aren’t fixed or traffic signals break down. It has to be paid for one way or another.”
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East Lyme Soldier Shot in Iraq Hopes to Be Home by Christmas
LOZANO
New London Day
Dan Levy
Boston University Washington News Service
Dec. 5, 2008
WASHINGTON— Army Spec. Alex Lozano was on a routine security detail in Baghdad three weeks ago when he suddenly felt as though he was hit in the stomach with a baseball bat.
Turns out it wasn’t a bat but a bullet, which pierced the torso of the 21-year old East Lyme High School graduate, causing him to lose a kidney. He is now recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
“I heard the crack of the shot and I ran back to my truck and collapsed down to try and let others know that something happened because I couldn’t really talk,” Lozano said from his hospital room. “At first I knew I got hit but I didn’t know I got shot. I started to undo my vest until I saw part of my stomach and the blood on my hands.”
Lozano was shot on Nov. 13. He was flown to a military hospital in Iraq, where surgeons removed his kidney and repaired his intestines. After a few days he was flown to a military hospital in Germany, where his mother, Maria Lozana, soon met him. Two weeks ago they flew to Washington.
“I remember being put on a helicopter or something and then I don’t remember too much after that,” Lozano said. “I remember getting rolled into a surgical ward, and the next thing I know I’m in Germany.”
Lozano said he is “doing a lot better” but still has pain in his stomach, back and throat. The bullet struck him in the right side of his back and exited his front left, leaving a “half-dollar sized wound.”
He began occupational therapy at the beginning of the month—with the aid of a walker and other supports—and said he hopes to be home by Christmas, depending on his progress.
“The first time he got to the door and had to come back; now he walks a couple halls [in the ward],” said his mother, a teacher in Niantic. “It’s going slowly, but it’s going.”
Lozano’s throat is sore from the feeding tube removed a few days ago. So far he’s gotten by on Jello and pudding, but he was looking forward to a vanilla milkshake and fries from the Burger King in the hospital food court.
His mother said she hopes he’ll be well enough next weekend to take a bus tour of Washington organized by the hospital and tailored for convalescing soldiers.
In the meantime, Lozano has kept busy with leather work, a skill he picked up from his father, Phillip Lozano. As of Friday morning he had already completed half of a pair of moccasins.
Lozano also has had a slew of hometown visitors, including his girlfriend of two years, Melissa Hemler, 20, who paid him a surprise visit Thursday night.
“I was scared and worried, but he’s amazing,” Hemler said of Lozano’s deployment to Iraq. “I knew he was going to be OK.”
Another visitor on Friday was Jim Barnes, the East Lyme school system’s security director, who brought with him roughly 500 get-well cards for Lozano and other wounded soldiers. Barnes knew Lozano when he was a member of the high school’s public safety club, which Barnes advises.
He joked that Lozano’s weakened voice wasn’t too much of a hurdle for the former student.
“Alex has always been soft-spoken,”' he said. “He’s a ‘walk softly but carry a big stick’ person—a man of few words, but good words.”
Maria Lozano said her son, who majored in criminal justice at the University of New Haven, has always been interested in law enforcement. He was a member of the East Lyme Police Explorers in high school and his father is a former Texas state trooper.
“He was making guns with little Legos in day care,” she said.
Lozano is a member of the 344th Military Police Company, which conducts joint patrols with Iraqi police and trains them. The unit includes more than 90 Army Reserve soldiers from Connecticut and Massachusetts.
They were in an area of Baghdad known for covert bombings of military vehicles; Lozano said he was at the front of a convoy when he was shot. He had been in Iraq since July, and had expected to return home in April.
As for what he’ll do back in Connecticut, Lozano, who was deployed during his sophomore year in college, said he’s not ready to look that far ahead.
“I just want to heal right now,” he said. “I’m really not thinking of anything else.”
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House Members from New Hampshire Visit USS New Hampshire
SUB
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jenny Paul
Boston University Washington News Service
12/5/2008
WASHINGTON- Democratic Reps. Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes met Thursday with servicemen on board the USS New Hampshire, a naval submarine that was commissioned at the Portsmouth shipyard in October.
Shea-Porter and Hodes, along with Rep. Robert Wittman (R-Va.), traveled to Port Canaveral, Fla., where the submarine is stationed, and stayed on board the vessel for about eight hours to tour the facilities and speak with crew members and officers.
“The whole purpose, of course, was to see firsthand the work that they do each day,” Shea-Porter said. “I had boarded it before, but I had never experienced actually being underwater with them and seeing some of the things it’s capable of doing.”
Shea-Porter said the best part of the trip was speaking with the servicemen and seeing how hard they work.
“It requires a kind of stamina and mental conditioning and incredible commitment to this country to stay underwater and to be working without the sunlight and without the contact with the families -- except the occasional contact -- and to work like they do, staring at the equipment,” she said. “It’s a very intense environment. They’re a very special breed. I really admire them.”
The USS New Hampshire is the newest addition to the Navy’s Virginia-class of nuclear-powered attack submarines. It is the fourth naval vessel to be named for the state.
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Hodes Says His Bill Would Give Homeowners Facing Foreclosure More Options
FORECLOSURE
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jenny Paul
Boston University Washington News Service
Dec. 3, 2008
WASHINGTON—Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.) announced Wednesday that he has proposed a bill to give the government several tools to try to reduce home foreclosures across the country.
The legislation, introduced during the waning moments of this session of Congress, would require lenders to restructure the terms of troubled mortgages and allow bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages on primary residences – changes that Hodes said would let the government deal with the foreclosure crisis more aggressively.
“The rate of foreclosures is rising, not falling,” said Hodes, who promised to reintroduce the bill in January if Congress does not consider it during a December lame-duck session. “More people are losing their homes. The collateral fallout damage to neighborhoods and families is terrible, and I don’t think that mortgage foreclosure has been adequately addressed.”
Hodes said his proposal would provide a “menu of options” to homeowners facing foreclosures. Giving bankruptcy judges the ability to modify the terms of mortgages on primary residences is another option for homeowners who are “so far under water that they need to file bankruptcy,” he said.
But banking industry leaders have staunchly opposed the change, saying it would heighten the risks associated with primary-residence mortgages and result in higher interest rates for mortgages.
“I’ve seen speculation from industry experts that [interest rates] could go up by at least 1 percent, so if the current rate were 6 [percent], you’d be looking at 7 [percent],” said Ralph Coppola, president of the Mortgage Bankers and Brokers Association of New Hampshire. That, he said, is “because the risk factor on primary mortgages now is completely going to change if they can be modified after they’ve closed and been sold.”
The legislation would force the hand of lenders who have been hesitant to renegotiate the terms of loans for homeowners facing foreclosures. It would require several federal agencies, including the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to restructure all home loans that they own or in which they have a controlling interest.
Language in the $700 billion bailout package that Congress passed in October simply encouraged those agencies to renegotiate mortgages. Hodes voted against the bailout, saying it focused “too much on Wall Street” and did not adequately address the mortgage crisis.
Hodes’ proposal also would mandate lender participation in the government’s HOPE for Homeowners program, which helps qualified borrowers who are facing foreclosure refinance into fixed-rate, government-insured mortgages. The voluntary program, which took effect Oct. 1, so far has failed to garner many applications from consumers or support from mortgage lenders, who must take a loss when they write down the principal of a loan as part of the program.
“The HOPE for Homeowners program is pretty new, and we haven’t seen tremendous numbers from it,” Hodes said. “So far it hasn’t worked on a voluntary basis. I think that given what we’re facing, required participation is the way to go until we’re on the other side of the current crisis.”
His new bill also would place some additional limits on dividends and executive compensation paid out by banks who gave the government preferred stock in exchange for a share of the $250 billion in bailout funds allocated for government investment in banks.
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Researchers Developing Easier, Cheaper Ways to Catch Beetles
Beetles
Worcester Telegram and Gazette
Rachel Kolokoff
Boston University Washington News Service
Nov. 26, 2008
WASHINGTON – A costly battle is now being waged over the future of Maples and other hardwood trees in the Northeast. The enemy in that fight is a small, black and white-speckled beetle that stowed away inside wooden crates on a ship from China and emerged with the potential to become one of the most destructive insect species the United States has ever seen.
The Asian Longhorned Beetle was first discovered in New York in 1996, and since then has been found in Illinois, New Jersey and now in Worcester, the fourth infestation site in the U.S.
Spotted in the Kendrick Field section of Worcester in August, it has probably been in the city for at least seven or eight years, according to Michael T. Smith, a U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher who has studied the beetle in China, its native land. Since then department officials have begun looking for infested trees within a 62-mile area including the city and parts of Boylston, Holden, Shrewsbury and West Boylston.
When the beetle finds a potential host tree it chews a depression in the bark, lays an individual egg in that depression and then packs it down. When the larvae hatch, they bore into the tree and stay there, living off the wood and nutrients while they mature.
According to Mr. Smith, an infested tree can look normal for three to four years while the beetles are chewing its insides, working their way towards the outer bark. But eventually, if enough beetles have infested the tree, they girdle it, cut off its water flow and leave it to die. Chewing their way out of the tree, the grown beetles leave behind dime-sized holes, undeniable evidence of their presence, and move on.
Federal, state and city governments are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on programs to find and eradicate the tree-killing beetle. The task is extremely costly and time-consuming, but more efficient weapons against the pest may soon be on the way.
Mr. Smith, part of the agriculture department’s Beneficial Insects Introduction Research Unit in Delaware, is coming to Worcester in December to work in the field and try to develop faster, cheaper ways to detect and control the beetle.
The cost for Worcester’s program is growing as surveyors find more infested trees, according to U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern.
The total cost cannot be specified until surveyors determine the full extent of the infestation, but Mr. McGovern said it is expected to exceed $30 million for the first year.
Suzanne Bond, spokeswoman for the inspection program in Worcester, said the department has agreed to cover the costs for the first year of eradication efforts. But in the following years, costs will probably be divided among the federal, state and city governments, as they have been in Illinois, New Jersey and New York.
“Moving forward, cost-sharing relationships are basically part of the process,” Ms. Bond said.
Mr. McGovern said Worcester has already invested a lot of manpower in the beetle program and cannot afford to spend more.
“These are hard economic times,” he said, “and we shouldn’t have to pay for this.”
In terms of cost, it is best to intercept the beetle early on, according to Mr. Smith. Once the population grows past a certain point, it is no longer possible to eliminate it; at that point, regulating its growth becomes the goal.
“The Northeast is very worried,” Mr. Smith said.
In Worcester, the beetle is current inhabiting urban areas on the edge of forest, he said. If the beetle enters the forest, it will be much harder to contain.
Mr. Smith said the infestation in Worcester is large enough to allow him and his colleagues time to complete some fieldwork before workers chop down and grind up all the infested trees.
“There’s a lot we can learn that’s specific to the U.S. by getting our hands dirty up there,” he said.
Ms. Bond said efforts to survey the regulated area will continue to be ongoing throughout the winter.
Mr. Smith said the detection methods he is developing could save time and money for surveyors like those in Worcester by allowing them to determine more quickly which trees are infested.
The faster that workers can detect infested trees, the faster that they can eradicate the beetle, whose destruction of Northeastern trees and forests could potentially cause billions of dollars in damage to the lumber industry, the maple syrup industry and the tourism industry, which depends on fall colors. Water and air quality could also be affected.
So far, surveyors in Worcester have found more than 3,000 infested trees through the only available method--using their eyes or binoculars to examine trees one by one for markings associated with infestation. Often, they must climb the trees to look for markings in the canopy.
Mr. Smith said those methods are 66 percent effective, meaning that for every 10 infested trees examined, they can miss three or four infested trees.
As one alternative, Mr. Smith is trying to analyze the sound beetles make when they chew wood inside a tree. If he can determine the specific noise the chewing makes, he can detect infestations by touching an acoustic sensor to the tree.
“You can pretty much develop the acoustic signature,” he said, “and the sensor could recognize it, kind of how telephones can recognize your voice.”
Another tool would measure the amount of carbon dioxide in each tree. Because beetles produce carbon dioxide, infested trees would have unusually high levels.
“It’s in its early stages,” Mr. Smith said, “but it has been developed by a company that would use them to detect termites in walls.”
The tool, which looks much like an oversized remote control, has a metal, needle-like probe that would pierce the bark of the tree.
Because the best way to test the tool is in the field, Mr. Smith said, he will probably take it with him when he goes to Worcester in December.
Most of his other fieldwork has been in China, where he has spent two months every summer for the past 11 years.
“That’s the meat of my research,” he said, “because you need to study the beetle in its natural settings.”
In China, Mr. Smith collects species of wasps and brings them to his quarantined Delaware laboratory for study to determine whether wasps that parasitize the beetles could be used to help control infestations.
While in Worcester, Mr. Smith hopes to find native species of wasps that parasitize the beetle. To study the natives, he brings them to his insectary, a small, outdoor breeding house, where he allows them to grow inside large cylinders containing 2-foot log segments.
Standing in the insectary’s narrow, dusty walkways during warmer months, Mr. Smith is completely surrounded by some 500 cylinders, each filled with wood and a species of insect, stacked row-by-row.
Once the wasps develop, he brings them into the quarantined lab and unleashes them on logs infested with beetles, to see if they attack.
After three years of traveling to eastern forests, he has found four native species of wasps that act as the beetle’s natural enemies, he said. One wasp goes inside the tree, lays eggs on the outside of the beetle larvae and stays until the eggs hatch.
“If one of her eggs falls off the surface of that larvae, she’s able to move it back on,” he said. “The parental care is very amazing.”
The larvae grow inside the tree for most of the year and emerge as adults in the spring and summer.
Currently, surveyors can search only for trees infested with larvae and have no way of searching for adult beetles. But Mr. Smith is also developing a lure, an aroma that surveyors can use to attract beetles and determine if an area is infested.
To develop the lure, he is working with scientists to isolate the chemicals found in certain trees that the beetles are naturally attracted to.
Mr. Smith said he was “tickled pink” by the success he had in the lab this year and hopes to have a lure that could be mass-produced sometime soon.
Over every four or five-year period, some 15 exotic insect species are introduced to the United States but only one reproduces enough to become a major pest, according to Mr. Smith.
Many of those species, such as the Asian Longhorned Beetle, enter on foreign ships that dock at U.S. ports of entry.
If port inspectors find insects on board the vessel or in cargo, they box them and mail them to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where Department of Agriculture researcher Steven Lingafelter, an expert on Asian Longhorned Beetles, works. About 60 specimens arrive each day.
“When I find a specimen while I’m traveling in other countries, he (Lingafelter) is who I send it to if I need it identified,” Mr. Smith said.
Mr. Lingafelter got his job in the museum’s entomology department in 1996, on the same day the beetles were first found in New York, he said.
Mr. Lingafelter has traveled to China, Korea and Japan to study the beetles, and his office shelves are lined with jars of beetle larvae and pupae.
The Asian Longhorn Beetles are his favorite species, he said, in part because they are so colorful.
They come in a variety of shades, including white, yellow, black, orange, aqua and a deep, iridescent green. Each has spots, which are actually patches of densely packed hairs easily seen under a microscope.
“It’s really a beautiful group, for sure,” Mr. Lingafelter said.
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Hundreds of Miles Away, Guardsman Still Calls N.H. Home
EMERSON
The New Hampshire Union Leader
Jenny Paul
Boston University Washington News Service
11/24/08
WASHINGTON—Traces of homesickness flit across Andy Emerson's face as he ticks off a list of the things he misses most about his home state of New Hampshire.
“My family’s there. My friends are there,” Emerson says, his voice growing louder with excitement and his words pouring out faster as the list grows longer. “It’s such a friendlier place. It’s a place where you can be at home and not even really be there all the time.”
A drive for practical knowledge and experience has marked the past eight years of Emerson's life, and it has taken the 26-year-old hundreds of miles away from his hometown of Henniker. Still, Emerson manages to keep firm ties to the state as a second lieutenant in the New Hampshire National Guard, even as he works full time for a lobbying firm in Washington and takes night classes at the George Washington University law school.
He’s committed, he says, to returning to New Hampshire as a permanent resident in the not-too-distant future.
In the meantime, Emerson, who maintains a permanent residence, car and spare wardrobe in New Hampshire, flies from Washington to the Granite State one weekend every month to fulfill his National Guard duties and sometimes returns for lengthier officer training sessions.
He enlisted in 2005, while he was working as a legislative assistant in former New Hampshire Rep. Charlie Bass’s Washington office, where he often focused on defense and foreign policy issues. Emerson’s decision surprised Bass and other staff in the office, Bass said.
“Andy’s kind of a mild-mannered guy,” Bass said. “He was quiet, and he didn’t appear to me to be the National Guard or military type, but Andy came to me and said, ‘I want to join because I want to do my part. We have this war on terror…and I’m the kind of guy that might be able to make a difference.’”
Emerson took a leave of absence from Bass’s office during the latter half of 2005 to attend basic training in Oklahoma but returned to work after training ended. His military experience gave him better perspective on the congressional policy issues he dealt with and provided him with direct connections to active-duty members of the military, he said.
While staff assistants in most offices relied on congressional military liaison officers, “I could talk to anyone,” said Emerson, who was commissioned as an officer in August and will be in the service for at least six more years.
His personal values, not his work, were the central factors in his decision to enlist, Emerson said. He was an intern in Bass’s office when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. He supported the war in Iraq then, and still does. He concedes that the administration’s policy on the war was badly implemented, but emphasizes that he agrees with its reasons for the invasion.
“I think there was a lot more of a personal sense of not wanting to be hypocritical,” said Emerson, who hasn’t been deployed to Iraq but expects to deploy overseas some time in 2010. “If you supported that decision [to invade Iraq], you should probably be willing to volunteer to be a part of it. There are a lot of ways you can do that. At 23 years old, I thought that [enlisting] was the right way to do it.”
Since he was a little boy, Emerson has always wanted to pull his weight in family, school and work activities, his mother, Nancy Emerson, said.
“When he was in elementary school … and his dad and I were home with him, he shared a night -- each of us cooked one night, and he always took his part,” said Emerson, who lives in East Andover. “Just little things like that.”
Nancy Emerson said her son displayed a similar sense of responsibility when he decided to postpone college for a year after high school. He used that year to work , in New Hampshire for AmeriCorps, a government community service program, because he wasn’t sure, he explained, what he wanted to do in college and didn’t want to waste time and money without having a direction in school.
“I think [AmeriCorps] was a really good experience for him,” his mother said. “I think it made him politically aware about different people’s feelings about politics and about poverty and diversity.”
After his AmeriCorps stint, Emerson enrolled in Goucher College outside Baltimore and interned in Bass’s office during his sophomore year. Bass was so impressed with his work, the former lawmaker said recently, that he hired Emerson as a part-time staff member during his junior year. Emerson commuted to the congressional office and took extra courses that year so he could graduate early and begin working full time.
“Andy is bright, and he learned the ropes very quickly,” Bass said. “We had a lot of interns, and a lot of them were pretty good, but Andy was especially good because of his innate abilities. It just basically worked with him.”
After Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.) defeated Bass in November 2006, Emerson found himself looking for work but was hesitant about taking positions offered by defense lobbying firms in Washington.
Then Bass’ former chief of staff, Darwin Cusack, asked him to join Eastpoint Strategies, a Manchester-based lobbying firm. Knowing the position would allow him to split his time between Washington and New Hampshire, Emerson jumped at the offer. At the firm, Emerson helps clients, many of them New Hampshire companies, to apply for federal grants and represents them “to make sure their legislators in D.C. are supporting them.” Company policy prohibits him from discussing specific work he performs for clients.
At night, Emerson attends law school, although he said he wants to remain at Eastpoint Strategies even after he becomes an attorney. The courses he takes as a law student will make him better equipped to find and distill information and consider different sides of arguments and policies, he said.
“I think it’s important to have a broader perspective of what you’re doing,” Emerson said. “It probably has something to do with why I joined the Army, too. I don’t like to talk about things without knowing what I’m talking about.”
Emerson doesn’t expect to graduate from law school until 2013 because he will have to take time off to undergo further officer training in the National Guard. Balancing his military obligations with work and school hasn’t always been easy, and Emerson said he sometimes wonders if he should have enrolled in law school at an earlier date or chosen a more compact National Guard officer training schedule.
“But I tend to think you take life as it comes, and if something’s important, you just make it work,” he said.
Emerson, however, is adamant about one thing: he’ll become a full-time resident of New Hampshire after graduation. The state’s friendly atmosphere, its wealth of outdoor activities like hiking and skiing –not to mention the close proximity of his family and friends – are too much for him too pass up.
“It’s a cross between the suburban, modern life and quasi-rural that allows you to have a great standard of living without dealing with city life,” Emerson said. “I can’t imagine living here [in Washington] and raising a family, and I’d like to do that someday. So I’m going home.”
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Pingree Spends Orientation Week Finding Her Way Around
PINGREE
Bangor Daily News
Maite Jullian
Boston University Washington News Service
11/21/2008
WASHINGTON – Democratic Rep.-elect Chellie Pingree describes orientation week for new members of the House as being like the first week of school.
“Half of the time is spent finding your way around,” she said.
On Friday morning, Lisa Prosienski, Pingree’s campaign manager and future chief of staff, led the way through the numerous hallways and floors of the U.S. House office buildings exploring potential offices for the new Maine representative and her Capitol Hill staff.
Office picking is an institution on the Hill. On Friday morning, new members gathered for the traditional lottery, which Prosienski described as “quite a ceremonial process.”
Offices are picked by seniority – the longer you have served the higher you are on the list. When members retire or lose and their offices become available the current members get to decide if they want to move to a vacated office. Then there is the lottery for new members.
Getting number one means you’ll get to choose first. Getting the last one means that you may end up with one of the offices on the 5th floor of the Cannon House Office Building with no windows and low ceilings.
Prosienski picked number 17 – out of 54 – and was pretty lucky. By early afternoon, she and Pingree knew they will be in room 1037 of the Longworth House Office Building. As Pingree had wished, she will be on a lower floor, and will have windows.
But before settling in on the first week of January, new representatives and their teams have tons of work to do. The new members’ orientation week was designed to give the freshmen some help in organizing their offices and understanding their new role.
“A lot of this week has been about administrative and procedural issues,” Pingree said. “We were given stacks of paper and applications. I had been told there would be those things but I didn’t know there would be so many endless details.”
Besides receptions and celebrations, including a dinner below the U.S. Capitol Rotunda and a reception at the botanical garden, it was more about sessions to learn about pensions and benefits, the rules surrounding staffers, anti-discrimination laws and how to set up an office.
But Pingree said she did have time to think about being in Washington.
“Did we really win? Are we really here?” she said. ”It is so exciting to be here. I knew it would be great but I hadn’t assessed the impact of winning with Barack Obama.”
Prosienski, who has been working on and off with Pingree since she ran for the U.S. Senate in 2002, is also eager to be on the Hill.
“It is very exciting,” she said. “This is a tremendous opportunity. I would expect a fast moving Congress and a lot of work.”
They both are going back to Maine for Thanksgiving, but they won’t have too much time to rest. Another orientation session is planned for the first week of December at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass., and they have to work on taking over from Rep. Tom Allen, who lost his challenge to Sen. Susan Collins.
“We have so much work to do,” Pingree said. “We are making a transition, picking up on cases Tom Allen was working on.”
She also has to interview and hire staff – up to 18 members for D.C and Maine offices – study the numerous issues that need to be addressed, build a Web site and learn about communications on the Hill.
Even though the team is still in transition, Prosienski said she already has received a phone call for Rep. Pingree. And the Blackberry Pingree got this week, the “internal communication system” of the Hill as Prosienski called it, is already getting messages.
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A National Treasure Once in the Hands of a Mainer
FLAG
Bangor Daily News
Maite Jullian
Boston University Washington News Service
Nov. 21, 2008
WASHINGTON – When the light of dawn broke on September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key was able to see the American flag flying over Baltimore’s Fort McHenry. He then knew that the British bombardment of the fort had failed.
The poem he wrote to celebrate America’s triumph in that battle became the lyrics of the national anthem and made the Star-Spangled Banner an icon in American history.
Almost 200 years later, the early light of dawn has been replaced by soft blue lights and the 30-foot by 34-foot Star-Spangled Banner lies behind glass doors at a ten-degree angle, in a brand new and dramatic display at the National Museum of American History, which reopened Nov. 21 after going through a two-year renovation.
It took seven years to restore the most famous flag in American history and ensure its survival. And at the center of the project was Bangor native Marilyn Zoidis. As senior curator of the project, Zoidis realized from the beginning what a huge challenge they faced.
“The first time I actually got to examine the flag, my stomach fell to my feet,” she said. “I thought ‘what have I got myself into?’ I turned to the chief conservator and asked her if the flag could be saved. She said she thought we could do it, that it was the plan. Over the next seven years, we implemented that plan.”
The extent of the work needed on the flag, which was originally 30 feet by 42 feet and was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1907, became evident only after it was taken down from the main hall of the museum in 1998. The original plan was to remove the linen backing and put it back on display.
“Much of the flag had been lost over time because of the light, use and being on display,” Zoidis said.
Zoidis was hired from a pool of national applicants in 1999 to lead the restoration. She worked on the project until 2006, when it was completed, sharing with the Smithsonian her expertise in telling stories through artifacts.
“She has a special gift in using an exhibition to tell compelling history,” said Kent Whitworth, executive director of the Kentucky Historical Society, where Zoidis now works. “I never met anybody better at that. She brings intellect and energy, tenacity to these projects. It was a great day when she arrived here.”
For the flag’s restoration, a new lab with a glass wall so visitors could see the work progressing was built within the American history museum, one of the Smithsonian Institution’s museums which is located on the national mall here.
The $18 million project started in 1999 went through four stages: removal of the linen support, detailed examination of condition and construction of the flag, cleaning treatment, and long-term preservation plan.
When Zoidis, 59, talks about the Star-Spangled Banner, her excitement over its historical signficance is evident.
“I always felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to get it right, to ensure the long term safety of the flag and that stories told about it tell a complex history of America,” she said. “It is a very complicated symbol which reflects a complex history of American society.”
As the curator, she was “the content expert supposed to know everything there was to know about the Banner and flags in general,” Julia Forbes, the former senior educator on the project, said.
“The flag is a metaphor for the nation in many ways,” Zoidis explains. “We can go through wars, an economic downturn, riots or strikes but we can emerge as a nation with resilience and hope. The flag represents that.”
In recognition of her accomplishment, the Washington D.C.-based Maine State Society is presenting her with its annual Big “M” Award on December 13, which rewards Mainers for their professional achievements or contributions to their state.
“This is very, very nice,” she said. “I am deeply touched that they would think of me, that they would give it to me. It is from my home state that I love so dearly,” said Zoidis.
Zoidis is now the assistant director of the Kentucky Historical Society. She could have stayed at the Smithsonian and written a book, but the museum was closing for renovation and she was looking for her next challenge, driven by a will to move forward and experiment, qualities reflected in her professional choices.
Zoidis was born in Bangor. Her grandfather moved there from Albania in 1904. Her father and his two brothers opened the restaurant Pilots Grill in 1940, a “community institution of sorts,” she said, but which closed in 2002.
She graduated from Bangor High School in 1967 and got her undergraduate degree from the University of Maine in 1971. After teaching at James F. Doughty School, named Fifth Street Junior High at that time, and then at Bangor High School, she got a master’s degree in education in 1978.
“Then a job opened up at the Bangor Historical Society,” she said. “I was able to concentrate on the stuff I love: the artifacts and documents.”
Presenting and sharing history with the public through exhibitions has always been her first passion.
“It’s an important obligation to preserve the history of a community and to share it. It is a way to reach people who don’t think they are going to like history,” she said. “The idea of finding something that people will like to see in a hundred years, conserve it and capture its meaning is something incredibly exciting for me.”
She was the executive director of the Bangor Historical Society from 1983 to 1987 and then went to Freeport, where she held the same position at that city’s historical society for two years.
In 1992, she got a master’s in American history from Carnegie Mellon University and became the director for research and collections at the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh for one year.
Interested in social and cultural history, she started a doctorate program in American history at Carnegie Mellon but the offer to work on the flag derailed that plan and she never completed her dissertation.
While on a fellowship at the Smithsonian to complete the last chapter of her dissertation, she heard that the museum was looking for a curator for the Star-Spangled Banner Project. She was “stunned” to learn she was one of the five finalists and ultimately she was selected for the job.
Abigail Ewing, the former curator at Bangor Historical Society who worked with Zoidis for a year, was not surprised when she learned Zoidis had landed a job at the Smithsonian.
“She left here [Bangor], went to Freeport and went to graduate work. She was getting into more challenging positions and bigger projects,” she said.
For the people who worked with her, Zoidis is a passionate historian who brings with her intellectual stimulation and energy.
“She was very open and giving with her research,” said Suzanne Thomassen-Krauss, the chief conservator of the project. “She was always enthusiastic about finding questions to my answers. We could discuss and share. It made our jobs easier.”
“I really loved working wither her,” Forbes said. “She is so smart and very passionate for her work.”
Whitworth still sounds amazed that Zoidis agreed to work at the Kentucky Historical Society.
“Kent was looking for someone who could help in the next stage of developing and I was looking for the next challenge,” Zoidis said.
Withworth said she has surpassed his expectations in the two years she has been working there.
“She has been a great adviser in terms of exhibition, administration, development and marketing,” he said. “She has infused this place with a lot of intellectual energy. We went through a real transition with her. We are just very fortunate, thanks to Maine for sharing Marilyn Zoidis with Kentucky.”
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Norwalk World War II Airman Laid to Rest at Arlington
TROY
Norwalk Hour
Jordan Zappala
Boston University Washington News Service
11/20/08
ARLINGTON, VA. – On an appropriately cold, gray morning, Army Staff Sgt. Martin F. Troy of Norwalk was finally laid to rest with military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, a full 64 years after his bomber crashed during World War II in Nazi-occupied Europe.
At Wednesday’s early-morning Catholic service, “Ave Maria” played on the organ as six soldiers from The Old Guard carefully and methodically carried the American flag-covered casket between somber rows of family, friends and well-wishers, including Rep. Chris Shays and Rep.-elect Jim Himes – each of whom turned, out of respect, to face the fallen soldier as he traveled up the aisle.
Troy’s only living sibling, Julia Carvutto, sat in the front row of the small, whitewashed Old Post Chapel on the grounds of Fort Myer Army base in Virginia, just outside the gates of Arlington. Carvutto, 90, never took her hand off of the attentive man next to her – William Wilcox, her son – who supported her physically and emotionally throughout the morning’s ceremonies.
“It is just overwhelming,” Wilcox said later, his eyes brimming. “We’re flooded with emotions. We are just so relieved that finally he’s home.”
Wilcox’s sentiment echoed that of the service’s presiding cleric, Monsignor Joseph Goudreau, who said the family were likely to be experiencing the “conflicting emotions of gratitude and sorrow,” because Troy had for so long gone without a proper burial.
Joseph “Jerry” Conlon, 83 – a survivor of the June 30, 1944, air battle that took the lives of 17 of the 41 men who flew that mission – made the three-hour trip from his home in Roaring Spring, Pa., specifically to see the last man of their fallen crew laid to rest.
“This has been a long time in coming,” Conlon said slowly to open his memorial remarks at the service.
With somewhat halting speech, Conlon talked about the unexpected gun fight that interrupted their mission to bomb a German oil refinery, and how three of the four U.S. planes in the air crashed into swampy Hungarian soil. Several soldiers, including Conlon, were able to parachute out of their falling planes to spend the remaining months of the war in German prisoner of war camps, but 17 men were not as lucky, hitting the ground still inside the planes. Sixteen of those bodies were eventually recovered and buried, but Troy seemed to have been forgotten.
“I have 14 great-grandchildren now,” said Conlon. “All this time, Martin’s remains have been underwater, in the crater made by his plane when it crashed.”
The retired soldier went on to describe how 37-year-old Troy, who was married at the time of his death, and his best friend John Lenburg palled around on their Italian base, always smiling and laughing. It was Lenburg, Conlon said, who petitioned the government 10 years after the war ended to return to Hungary and try to recover Troy’s remains.
When Lenburg died before Troy’s remains were found, Conlon took the burden upon himself. On July 17, 2007, bone fragments were found, he said, and two days later, he flew to Hungary to witness their long overdue recovery.
The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command compared the DNA of the fragments to Carvutto’s DNA and confirmed that they belonged to the missing airman, said Patrick Troy, great-nephew of Martin Troy.
“It’s incredible that the Army spent the time and money to bring him back,” said the 49-year-old salesman from Newtown. “I’d always heard about Uncle Mart, but I only knew that he’d gone down in a bomber during World War II. I didn’t have all the details. This really made the extended family learn more about him.”
Troy said that the discovery allowed him to reconnect even with the family of his great-aunt – nieces and nephews mostly, since Martin Troy and his wife had no children.
Led by a gray hearse, the funeral procession wound through Arlington’s manicured hills, passing many soldiers standing guard and six black horses pulling a cloaked black caisson, and eventually stopped in Section 60, where Troy will be surrounded by soldiers from more contemporary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
With Carvutto and Conlon again in the front row, a minister quietly uttered a prayer before seven nearby soldiers fired a sharp salute, and out of the quiet, a lone trumpet began to play taps, bringing tears to many of the roughly 30 mourners.
A soldier on bended knee presented the flag to Carvutto. Candy Otstott – a member of the Arlington Ladies, a group of military wives who ensure that someone will always be at a soldier’s burial – stepped away from her Old Guard escort to offer a note and word of condolence to Carvutto, before the entire party made its solemn procession back to the waiting cars.
“Julia, I’m sure the passage of time has assuaged some of the hurt you must have felt when the KIA soldier walked into your house,” Conlon said to Carvutto in the chapel. “I’m thankful he’s finally home, and may his soul rest in peace.”
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Thousands Request Tickets to Obama’s Swearing-In
CONN TICKETS
Norwalk Hour
Jordan Zappala
Boston University Washington News Service
11/19/08
WASHINGTON – With Inauguration Day still two months away, tickets to the swearing-in ceremony are already nearly impossible to obtain.
Connecticut residents should be able to call or e-mail their members’ congressional offices to request one of the estimated 2,000 free tickets given to the Connecticut delegation for the Jan.20 ceremony, but the number of residents who have already done so reaches well into the thousands.
Fourth District constituents are in a less-than-ideal position. With Christopher Shays on his way out of Washington and Jim Himes not yet secure in a Capitol Hill office, area residents have even less of an opportunity to get their names on the inaugural list.
There “really isn’t a mechanism in place” for newly elected members to take ticket requests from constituents, said Carole Florman, spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which organizes all inaugural ceremonies held at the U.S. Capitol. Often, outgoing members take requests and pass on a list to the incoming member, she said, although they aren’t required to do so.
Rep.-elect Jim Himes does have an e-mail alert system on his home page, where 4th District residents can sign up to be informed on how to acquire the sought-after tickets – a system Florman said she was encouraging.
Dave Natonski, press secretary for Shays, said that he is not keeping a list of interested callers and instead telling 4th District constituents to contact the offices of Connecticut Sens. Christopher Dodd and Joe Lieberman.
The number of constituents requesting tickets from Lieberman’s office has topped a thousand, but an aide estimated that the office will receive only 400 tickets, leaving many residents who make the trip to Washington to watch the festivities on giant television screens posted on the National Mall and across the parade route.
In all, 240,000 tickets are available for the inaugural ceremony, but the largest portion go to the president-elect and vice president-elect. The remaining tickets are distributed to members of the new Congress, with each senator receiving a greater number of tickets than each House member, Florman said. If lucky enough to reserve tickets, constituents must pick them up in person at the congressional offices in Washington during the week leading up to Inauguration Day, she said.
None of the Connecticut offices has divulged exactly how the tickets will be doled out – whether by lottery or first-come, first-served – and that decision is left completely to congressional discretion.
Don Carlson, transition chief of staff for Himes, said that the Connecticut delegation will be meeting soon to come up with a consistent policy for ticket distribution in an effort to avoid any appearance of impropriety regarding this historic inauguration – for which Washington officials say they expect more than 2 million visitors.
Carlson also indicated that Himes, and the delegation as a whole, will be organizing inaugural parties both in the 4th District and in Washington so that Connecticut residents can come together to experience history.
Jennifer Paul contributed to this report.
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