I'm not a lawyer, but I think I have some sense of what is right and what is wrong.  There seems to be a lot of fast-and-loose manipulation of Maine laws and federal laws and guidelines by the City Council reference what it wants to do in Portland. I guess my criteria for illegality is "What would happen to me if I was doing some of these same things?"

       Portland City Council doesn't even follow its own ordinances, let alone the state or the federal governments.  

       Presented  here are a few examples of what I think are shady dealings on the part of Portland officials, things made up to support their projects, and some various Maine statutes that I believe have relevance to what they are doing.

The Stevens Avenue Project

       I first started getting into the legality of the Stevens Project after I called the FBI office in Portland, in November 1997. I explained the situation to an agent, and dropped some material off. The agent looked at that, called me back; said he was checking with the Justice Dept. in Washington, and would get back to me. 

       About a week later he called to say that nothing was going to be done about the project, even though he said it "meets our criteria for misuse of government funds and fraud" because the Federal Highway Administrator, Michael Savonis, who had approved and funded it, was not going to file a complaint. No complaint, no investigation. Very disappointing.

       Savonis called me the day before Thanksgiving, 1997, to tell me what had happened.

      He had launched a two-week investigation into the whys and wherefores of the project, and had come to the conclusion that the Portland DPW had essentially made up the rationale for the project, and then fooled the Maine DOT into approving it.

      Maine DOT, having seen the Portland DPW approval of the project, and the concurring Metropolitan Planning Organization approval, essentially rubber-stamped the project. 
      They sent it off to region I EPA in Boston, who took a fast look, and sent it on to the EPA  and Federal Highway Administration offices in Washington.

      The federal boys looked at all the approvals from all down the line, and as they are a tad busy in Washington, just took everybody at their word, and sent the money out. There you go....The Stevens Avenue Traffic Calming Project hits the road!

      Savonis  told me that he had had a conference call with a few people in Maine, and that everybody was "singing from the same page of the hymnal". They had gotten their story straight. 
      As "everybody meant well", he was going to declare the project an "experiment", even though "my conclusions were correctly drawn": that it was un-needed, was put down under false pretenses, and was going to cause a lot of pollution.

      Essentially he was going to cover his butt, along with all the butts of the other federal and state employees who had approved it. Understandable: One in government service has to be perfect in these days of PC correctness. No mistakes are allowed, and this was a doozy, although small.  On a federal basis, $1.2 million is peanuts.

      Savonis also said that the removal of Maine DEP Air Bureau Staffer Ronald Severance from the MDOT oversight board was a violation of federal law. FHWA and EPA know this, but are doing nothing about it.

    William Bray, the head of DPW, has stated repeatedly that he had 30 years of traffic engineering experience: he was the expert. He said this to a couple of city council  meetings I attended.

    This being the case, how is it that he did not seem to know the basic environmental and roadway engineering information that I was able to obtain within a months investigation on the Internet and from various federal agencies by phone? And if  he did know, then why did he promote a project whose rationale is contradicted by the very studies created to promote it, and that flies in the face of the national guidelines that he purported to know?

      12 years later we know that he was made to toe the party line. Portland DPW is a tool of the Portland City Council, and DPW doesn't like it.

    Then City Council member Charles Harlow, quoted by local TV stations and the Portland Press Herald at a public meeting on the project held at Katherine McCauley High School, said in Oct. 1998 that the city council had agreed to leave the project on the road for another 2-3 years to study the effect of the project.

    I had not heard of such an agreement, and the next day went to the Corporation Councils office, and the City Clerks office.  According to Gary Wood, Corporation Council, for such an agreement to be legal, it has to be voted upon by the City Council.  He told me that such a vote had not occurred. The City Clerk's office had also had no cognizance of such a vote. I therefore concluded that such a vote had not taken place and that the agreement was therefore illegal.

    Councilor Harlow was : 1). lying  2.) didn't know what he was talking about, or 3.) did know, and had been part of an illegal agreement by the City Council. 

    Perhaps there is another answer. But what?

    To give Harlow credit, when the Portland Traffic Calming Ordinance Proposal was being debated in a City Council meeting on March 29, 1999, he expressed reservations about what the Council was doing. 

     Harlow said that he remembered that the Council had promised the Portland public that the project would be removed after 2 years, no matter what, and now that that time was at hand, the Council was reneging on its promise. He thought that it made the Council look duplicitous. He's right. 

    Councilor James Cloutier had just gotten an amendment passed to the ordinance that removed the Stevens project from the control of the ordinance. With that passage, the Stevens Project can now only be removed from the street by City Council vote, the very body that lied to everybody to get it installed!

    They did this because the Stevens Project was now out of compliance with everyone's regulations, especially Portland's. Nobody other than the Councils buddies who wanted it done like it. Deering Center was in an uproar, and the project would have come off in its entirety if the public had anything to say about it. Actually the public did, but they were ignored.

    In July 1997, here were 526 signatures collected on a petition  against the project. These were delivered to City Hall, and given to the Managers Office. This petition was " lost" shortly thereafter. This is a violation of Maine law.

    According to the City Clerk's office in Oct. 1997, a traffic order was to have been issued by the DPW, authorizing construction of the project. This T.O. was to have had any petitions either for or against the project attached to it. The attachment is a moot point, because the T.O. was never issued, which is a a violation of Maine law.

    As reported in the "reporter's notebook "section of the Portland Press Herald, Aug. 9. 1997, an illegal meeting of the Public Safety commission on the project took place at Patti's Restaurant at Northgate Shopping Center Aug. 5, 1997, at 7AM.  It was  the morning after the City Council meeting that voted to take the disastrous asphalt curbing off the road, and held to get a new traffic calming plan started. 
    State law requires public boards to give ample notice to allow public attendance. If an emergency exists, then the news media must be notified. None of this was done, in an attempt to accommodate the schedules of the PSC members, who had other plans. Harlow was leaving town .

Illegal Stop Signs

Ever wonder why you can be driving down some small quiet side street in Portland, then come up to a three-way intersection to see a stop sign all three ways?  It makes no sense?

Well, some local who wants to slow you down, to make you want to drive elsewhere, has asked his Councilor to have those put in. "Traffic calming" : used NOT for safety, but for diversion.

The Councilor does this by ignoring the law, and the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices. It's flat-out illegal.

The problem here is that the Federal Highway Administration writes the MUTCD, to make sure signs and signals, placement of such, and pavement markings, etc., are all the same across the nation. It reduces or eliminates confusion about what the signs say, do, and where they are placed (It's why everything is mind-numbingly the same: regulation).

To get federal funds for state highway and roads projects, the states are all required to follow the MUTCD.

To make sure the money keeps coming, the towns are supposed to follow the state and federal lead.

Not Portland. They don't care. If you want a stop sign, it will be done- the hell with the feds, the state, the Traffic Ordinance, and the MUTCD. This is dangerous.

All of this is denoted in the Stop Signs page .

State of Maine Statutes.   Possibly relevant sections in red.

     Some of these seem to apply to various aspects of the Stevens Avenue Project, in various ways. It all depends on who said what, to whom, and the documents that were created to start and maintain the project.

    Portland DPW has created a number of documents that present wrong information that sounds plausible to the uninformed, in an attempt to support the Stevens Project.

    In other areas they have flat out and out lied. Or, assuming they thought they were telling the truth, they just didn't know what they were talking about.

The problem here is that they were always saying "We are the experts here. We know what we are doing."  OK.........

The professional engineers that go along with these shenanigans bother me. Why do they support these cockamamie schemes? Why do they put their professional stamp on lies?

My wife is an investigator for the Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, and every time I get into this material with her she looks askance and asks me "Want me to make a call?"

I've been telling her to wait.....but I'm getting tired of that.

Perjury

Various Portland officials have given testimony or created documents supporting the Stevens Project, Deering Oaks Project, Capisic Street Project to, and for, the Portland City Council, State of Maine, Federal Highway Administration, EPA, and God only knows who else. 

Even if one assumes that these officials didn't think they were lying at the start of the program, or were then just mistaken in their statements, now they know better. They still, however,  maintain their earlier positions on the project, and still support it. 

This means that they are officially lying. Maine law says this is perjury:

CHAPTER 19

FALSIFICATION IN OFFICIAL MATTERS

17A § 451.     Perjury

1. A person is guilty of perjury if he makes:

A.  In any official proceeding, a false material statement under oath or affirmation, or swears or affirms the truth of a material statement previously made, and he does not believe the statement to be true; or    [1975, c. 740, §61 (amd).]

B.  Inconsistent material statements, in the same official proceeding, under oath or affirmation, both within the period of limitations, one of which statements is false and not believed by him to be true. [1975, c. 499, §1 (new).]

  [1975, c. 740, §61 (amd).]

2. In a prosecution under subsection 1, paragraph B, it need not be alleged or proved which of the statements is false but only that one or the other was false and not believed by the person to be true.

  [1999, c. 13, §1 (amd).]

3. It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that the defendant retracted the falsification in the course of the official proceeding in which it was made, and before it became manifest that the falsification was or would have been exposed.

  [1981, c. 317, §12 (amd).]

3-A. In a prosecution under subsection 1, paragraph A, evidence that the allegedly false testimony in the prior official proceeding was contradicted by evidence in that proceeding may not be a sufficient basis by itself to sustain a conviction for perjury.

  [1981, c. 317, §13 (new).]

4. It is not a defense to prosecution under this section that the oath or affirmation was administered or taken in an irregular manner or that the declarant was not a competent witness in making the statement or was disqualified from doing so. A document purporting to be made upon oath or affirmation at any time when the actor presents it as being so verified shall be deemed to have been duly sworn or affirmed.

  [1975, c. 740, §62 (amd).]

5. As used in this section:

A.  "Official proceeding" means any proceeding before a legislative, judicial, administrative or other governmental body or official authorized by law to take evidence under oath or affirmation including a notary or other person taking evidence in connection with any such proceeding; [1975, c. 499, §1 (new).]

B.  "Material" means capable of affecting the course or outcome of the proceeding. [1975, c. 499, §1 (new).]

6. Perjury is a Class C crime.

False swearing

Various Portland officials created documentation for the Federal Highway Administration that led that agency to fund the Stevens Project, and attempted to get funding for the Deering Oaks project. They distorted the facts of the projects in both cases, and misled the FHWA officials, EPA, DEP, MDOT, (pick an agency) : "public servants performing their official duties".

If these Portland officials did in fact believe their misinformation to be true, then they did not know what they were talking about. They are either lying or ignorant.

For example:

               Telling the Portland public that the Stevens Project was a "safety" project, while at
               the same time telling the federal agencies involved that it was a "clean air project",
               to get it funded.

               Telling the Federal Highway Administration that the Project would be removed if the
               second Phase of funding for it was not approved, while having no intention to do so.

               Telling the FHWA that one of the purposes of the Project was to divert truck traffic
               "to less congested streets", knowing full well that there aren't any.

               Telling everybody that the Deering Oaks Project "could make the air cleaner"  while
               knowing full well it was going to get worse. It would also"improve mobility",
              "Increase access", "decrease congestion", "rejoin the park halves", and so on.
              All of which are lies.
              
              

17A § 452.     False swearing

1. A person is guilty of false swearing if:

A.  He makes a false statement under oath or affirmation or swears or affirms the truth of such a statement previously made and he does not believe the statement to be true, provided

(1)  The falsification occurs in an official proceeding as defined in section 451, subsection 5, paragraph A, or is made with the intention to mislead a public servant performing his official duties; or

(2)  The statement is one which is required by law to be sworn or affirmed before a notary or other person authorized to administer oaths; or   [1975, c. 499, § 1 (new).]

B.  He makes inconsistent statements under oath or affirmation, both within the period of limitations, one of which is false and not believed by him to be true. In a prosecution under this subsection, it need not be alleged or proved which of the statements is false, but only that one or the other was false and not believed by the defendant to be true. [1975, c. 499, § 1 (new).] [1975, c. 499, § 1 (new).]

2. It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that, when made in an official proceeding, the defendant retracted the falsification in the course of such proceeding before it became manifest that the falsification was or would have been exposed. [1981, c. 317, § 14 (amd).]

2-A. In a prosecution under subsection 1, paragraph A, evidence that the allegedly false testimony or statement in the prior official proceeding or before a notary or other person authorized to administer oaths was contradicted by evidence in that proceeding may not be a sufficient basis by itself to sustain a conviction for false swearing. [1983, c. 450, § 3 (amd).]

3. It is not a defense to prosecution under this section that the oath or affirmation was administered or taken in an irregular manner or that the declarant was not a competent witness in making the statement or was disqualified from doing so. A document purporting to be made upon oaths or affirmation at any time when the actor presents it as being so verified shall be deemed to have been duly sworn or affirmed. [1975, c. 740, § 63 (amd).]

4. False swearing is a Class D crime. [1975, c. 499, § 1 (new).]

Unsworn Falsification

This all comes down to whether or not all the experts involved in creation of the Stevens Project, The Deering Oaks Project, etc.,  knew what they were talking about. They all said they did, having many years in their fields of expertise.

17A § 453.     Unsworn falsification