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STATEHOUSE

April 12, 2010

Road funding sparks contention in Senate

Funding also sought for energy efficiency

By Ethan Wilensky-Lanford ewlanford@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

AUGUSTA -- A difference of opinion between two Democratic senate committee chairmen about spending revenue from leasing state-owned lands for energy projects will likely come to a head Monday.

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Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, is expected to offer an amendment to L.D. 1786, which would designate specific "energy corridors" through Maine, to direct a larger portion of the revenue to highway and road projects.

Several of these corridors are along state-owned land already used for highways. Along such corridors, energy companies would pay the state to lease land to site pipelines and transmission lines.

Damon's idea, however, flies in the face of consensus built by Sen. Barry Hobbins, D-Saco, and his Utilities and Energy Committee, which proposed 80 percent of proceeds from such corridors go toward energy-efficiency projects administered by the soon-to-be-established Efficiency Maine Trust.

Hobbins managed to build a unanimous consensus on all 38 bills his committee took up this session. His committee was the only one to do so.

The bill that passed Hobbins' committee without a hitch in the House earmarks the remaining 20 percent of such revenue to the Maine Department of Transportation.

"It's somewhat inconsistent with the whole public policy discussion," Hobbins said Wednesday of Damon's pending amendment.

L.D. 1786 was born out of recommendations from a bipartisan 13-member commission that met last fall. The legislation the commission drafted was reshaped and molded by the 13-member Utilities and Energy Committee for weeks before it hit the House and Senate floors this session.

Nobody knows how much revenue energy infrastructure could bring to the state; the value of the infrastructure is dependent on the energy market, and the lease payments would therefore be negotiated.

Hobbins calls the money "Monopoly money."

Damon still wants it for the Highway Fund, saying the Department of Transportation should be able to use the money as it sees fit for transportation infrastructure improvement and maintenance.

 

Ethan Wilensky-Lanford -- 620-7016

ewlanford@mainetoday.com

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