As local debate heats up, Androscoggin Chamber reasserts support for passenger rail plan

LEWISTON — Top local business leaders expressed their support again Tuesday for moving forward with a $500,000 passenger rail plan for Lewiston-Auburn.

The proposed plan, which involves $400,000 in Maine Department of Transportation funding and a $50,000 local match from both Lewiston and Auburn, could be stalled if Auburn city councilors don’t approve the city’s share of funding by Nov. 1.

The study is expected to be the topic of a workshop session of the City Council on Monday, Oct. 5. The council could vote on the issue during its Oct. 19 meeting.

Clif Greim, board chairman of the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber’s board discussed the proposal again during its regular policy meeting Tuesday morning and were in agreement that the chamber should reiterate its support for the plan because some candidates for local office were raising concerns and criticism about the proposal.

Chamber officials had previously voiced their support for the plan as it and its funding source were being ushered through the Maine Legislature earlier this year by Rep. Jared Golden, D-Lewiston. The measure received the support of all of the state lawmakers from the Lewiston-Auburn delegation on both sides of the aisle.

“We still very strongly support the strategic development plan for rail,” Greim said. “The potential impact on this community is very positive and we just want to make sure that the results of this planning have a strong financial advantage and community advantage locally here.”

Greim and other advocates for moving the strategic plan to fruition are also careful to say they aren’t necessarily advocating for passenger rail at any cost but believe the associated economic development that passenger rail has brought to other communities in Maine and across the U.S. would be replicated here.

Greim said the chamber intends to have representatives at the upcoming council meetings to support the plan.

Greim said he wanted to remind people engaged in the debate that the plan was intended to finally answer many of the financial questions critics are asking. The chamber’s continued support of developing a strategic plan was not an endorsement of a final rail project and it was important people get facts and detailed specifications before reaching conclusions about returns on public investments in rail.

But Auburn Mayor Jonathan LaBonte described his position as “nuanced and wonky.”

“If they were asking what I thought, I would say, ‘Don’t do it right now,'” LaBonte said. “I think we need to better understand what’s being looked at and why.”

LaBonte, who works as Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s director of policy management, said he doesn’t believe spending $500,000 on the plan, which LePage considers just another study, would result in any tangible development.

“For $500,000, the state could run 10 to 12 bus runs to Portland every day for two years,” LaBonte said.

LePage vetoed state funding for the measure, but lawmakers overwhelming rejected the veto.

LaBonte said Tuesday that as mayor he doesn’t have a vote on the council, but he was concerned that city officials were not fully informed on Golden’s bill, despite numerous media reports.

LaBonte and other opponents of the plan, including City Council candidate Robert Stone, have charged that the matching share from the city is an “unfunded mandate” and may be unconstitutional.

“I would have no problem with the city making a contribution to creating an action plan,” LaBonte said. “But I think before we have to cut a check for $50,000 there ought to be a very open conversation between Auburn, Lewiston and DOT, not any other lobbyist groups or special-interest groups or politicians, but Auburn, Lewiston and DOT, about what the actual steps could be to see passenger rail arrive in town. I think just because it’s played out in the Legislature with local politicians that doesn’t necessarily make it the right policy decision.”

Supporters of developing the plan include the Sierra Club Maine Chapter, the Androscoggin, Oxford and Coos Counties Rail Coalition and the Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce. These Western Maine groups see passenger rail between Lewiston-Auburn and Portland as the next step to linking Maine and Montreal and a market potential of 4 million people.

LaBonte, who as been an advocate of developing passenger rail in the past and who still supports a multimodal approach including rail and buses, said planners in both cities, and especially Auburn, have been working on passenger rail connections for more than two decades and some basic facts had to be acknowledged in the conversation.

“Because all of this hullabaloo about this study is the one that solves this when the reality is 600,000 people a year go from Portland to Boston on a bus; only a quarter of a million people go from Portland to Boston on a train,” LaBonte said.

He said much of the conversation was being politicized but that he wanted to stay focused on the facts.

LaBonte was also critical that the scope of what is to be researched was not well-defined in Golden’s bill although public hearings and testimony on the bill made clear it was to be an actual development plan and not just another study, according to Golden.

Golden said Tuesday that the LePage administration, specifically the transportation commissioner, will be in the position to develop a request-for-proposals that will then be put out to bid to find a consulting and engineering firm capable of completing the work.

He said LePage administration officials have made threats to either not put the plan out to bid or to simply recast a previous study — literally rebind a 2011 study on passenger rail in Maine with new dates and hand that back to the Legislature. But Golden said lawmakers would be watching carefully and would work to hold LePage and his staff accountable for doing the work the Legislature had overwhelming directed Maine DOT to do.

He said the MDOT is being asked to work “hand in hand” with Lewiston and Auburn along with the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority to develop the request-for-proposals. Golden said lawmakers would not only want to see that RFP before it is released but also would seek to determine what criteria the administration intends to use in selecting the entity that would develop the plan.

Golden said there is no predetermined model that advocates for the strategic plan, despite claims from opponents, including LaBonte, that the only model Lewiston-Auburn passenger rail advocates support is one that mimics the Amtrak Downeaster’s service from Boston to Brunswick.

“I think they are really putting themselves out there in a dangerous position when they start talking about sole-sourcing and writing the (request-for-proposals) in a way to reach a predetermined outcome,” Golden said.

Golden said new innovations in passenger-rail technologies including commuter rail that’s being implemented in parts of California all hold promise for a more affordable way of bringing passenger rail to Lewiston-Auburn.

Previous estimates have pegged the cost of a passenger-rail service for Lewiston-Auburn at over $100 million, but more recent estimates suggest it could be delivered for as little as $30 million to $60 million.

LaBonte also dismissed questions about whether he is facing a conflict of interest in trying to represent the needs of constituents while at the same time keeping his boss happy.

“I’ve found Gov. LePage to be a very reasonable man when he is dealing with reasonable people,” LaBonte said.

But others, including at least one local Republican lawmaker who supports moving forward with the plan, said it was clear that as mayor, LaBonte was wrestling with the issue and other issues.

“Unfortunately for Mayor LaBonte, there may be a problem sometimes in being a mayor of a city and in working for a governor at the same time,” said state Rep. Bruce Bickford, R-Auburn, “because if the governor is not behind this, it would be very hard for Mayor LaBonte to be behind it.”

Bickford said he supports developing the plan because it takes positive steps to build on millions of dollars in passenger rail infrastructure upgrades done with both private and state funding in 2009 to get portions of the rail lines to Lewiston-Auburn in shape for passenger trains.

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“If they were asking what I thought, I would say, ‘Don’t do it right now,'” LaBonte said. “I think we need to better understand what’s being looked at and why.”

“I think they are really putting themselves out there in a dangerous position when they start talking about sole-sourcing and writing the (request-for-proposal) in a way to reach a predetermined outcome,” Golden said.