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FINAL EDITION
bangordailynews.com
SATURDAY/SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29-30, 2007
What is
OAS driving
increasing on
Maine roads
How it grew from obscure railroad subsidiary
to the nation’s largest private landowner
PlumCreek?
I
BY KEVIN MILLER
OF THE NEWS STAFF
n the summer of 1864,
President Abraham Lincoln and Congress
signed off on a land
grant of tens of millions of acres to a handful of industrialists who
would help transform the
western frontier.
The transcontinental railway that sprang from the
Pacific Railroad Act of 1864
wouldn’t pass through Maine.
But in a roundabout way,
that railroad land grant set in
motion a series of events that,
nearly a century and a half
later, enabled a Seattle-based
company to propose the
largest development plan in
Maine history.
Plum Creek Timber Co.’s
rapid ascent from a littleknown railroad subsidiary to
the nation’s largest private
landowner is, in many ways,
emblematic of the dramatic
changes that have wracked the
industrial forestry business in
recent decades.
Now, Plum Creek’s proposal
for the Moosehead region —
namely, to rezone land for
nearly 1,000 house lots and two
large resorts — is a sign of
how the value of commercial
Montana
1,256,000
acres
Washington
128,000 acres
forestland from Maine to
Montana is changing,
with serious policy and
environmental implications.
See Plum, Page A9
Michigan
650,000
acres
Oregon
Tally of suspended licenses
reaches record high in 2007
Maine
New
Hampshire 928,000
acres
BY NOK-NOI RICKER
OF THE NEWS STAFF
33,000
acres
When Tina Turcotte of Scarborough died in July 2005 after
a truck driver with a suspended
license and an abysmal driving
record slammed into the back of
her car, legislators focused
their spotlight on the issue of
drivers with suspended licenses.
“Tina’s Law,” which passed a
year later, created tougher
penalties for people who continue to drive with suspended
licenses and those who are
habitual offenders.
Even so, Maine State Police
troopers in 2007 cited “an alltime record” number of people
caught behind the wheel after
losing their privilege to drive,
372,000 acres
Wisconsin
485,000 acres
West Virginia
Oklahoma
114,000 acres
126,000 acres
North Carolina
Texas
Plum
Creek
acreage
73,000 acres
48,000 acres
South Carolina
203,000 acres
Georgia
Arkansas
905,000 acres
Alabama
Louisiana
102,000 acres
499,000 acres
Mississippi
$1.50
850,000 acres
Florida
602,000 acres
843,000 acres
Plum Creek owns approximately
8.2 million acres in 18 states.
SOURCE: Plum Creek Timber Co.
state police spokesman Stephen
McCausland said Friday.
“In the past two weeks,
another 111 motorists have
been cited by troopers for operating after suspension of their
driver’s licenses,” he said.
“That brings the yearly total to
3,200 OAS citations that troopers have issued this year.”
The number of people who
have their driver’s license suspended is large, Secretary of
State Matt Dunlap said.
“We suspended around 85,000
on average [annually],” he said.
“That’s for failure to pay child
support, failure to pay a fine”
and numerous other reasons
such as being caught with a
“short fish or excessive noise at
a party.”
See Driving, Page A4
Al-Qaida blamed
in Bhutto’s death
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Pakistan claims audiotape is proof
skull was shattered by the force
of a suicide bomb blast that
slammed her
against a lever
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan —
in her car’s
Pakistan’s government asserted
sunroof.
Friday that al-Qaida was
The
new
behind the assassination of
explanations
Benazir Bhutto, and offered the
were part of a
transcript from a phone tap as
rapidly evolvproof. Hundreds of thousands
ing political
mobbed her funeral as the army
crisis
trigtried to quell rioting elsewhere
gered by the
that left 27 dead.
Bhutto
death of BhutPresident Pervez Musharraf ’s government also said to, Musharraf ’s most powerful
Bhutto was not killed by gun- foe in the elections. The rioting
shots or shrapnel as originally by Bhutto’s furious supporters
See Bhutto, Page A5
claimed. Instead, it said her
BY MUNIR AHMED
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Moosehead Lake
BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ERIC ZELZ
Maine use tax on planes
angers out-of-state fliers
BY CLARKE CANFIELD
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PORTLAND — When Steve
Kahn received a $26,000 tax bill
on his airplane, he thought
Maine Revenue Services had
made a mistake. Kahn lives and
works in Massachusetts.
But the bill was no error. It
was part of the agency’s
efforts to collect taxes on aircraft owned by out-of-staters,
even though they bought
their planes elsewhere and
brought them to Maine only
to visit.
Many pilots are outraged.
“At best what Maine is doing
is underhanded and devious. At
worst it is illegal. Either way,
it’s wrong,” Kahn said.
Maine officials say they are
simply enforcing the state’s tax
laws when they send bills —
into six figures — to out-of-state
plane owners.
See Tax, Page A8
Homicide numbers down in Chicago, NYC
BY COLLEEN LONG
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Chicago and
New York are about to close out
2007 with the lowest number of
homicides in more than 40
years, while cities such as Baltimore, Atlanta and Miami have
seen killings go up because of
what police say is a surge in
guns and gang violence.
New York City reported 488
slayings as of Friday, versus 596
for all of 2006. The city is on
track to have the lowest number
of killings since reliable record-
keeping started in 1963.
Homicides in New York
reached an all-time high of 2,245
in 1990, making the city the
nation’s murder capital. Since
then, the numbers have plummeted, and experts attribute the
decline in part to computerized
tracking of crime trends and
the practice of strategically
flooding high-crime areas with
police officers instead of
spreading them evenly through
the precincts.
Chicago is on track to have
the lowest homicide toll since
1965, when police reported 395
killings. The city had logged 435
slayings through Dec. 26. In the
early part of the decade, police
often reported more than 600 a
year.
Chicago officials credit the
improvement to their tough
stance on gangs, guns and
drugs.
“Those three ingredients, so
to speak, are what we’re focused
on,” said police spokeswoman
Monique Bond. “That’s really
what leads to random violence.”
Those factors were blamed
for increases in murders in
other cities.
Bush uses pocket veto to reject defense bill
BY BEN FELLER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AP PHOTO BY CHARLES KRUPA
Steve Kahn stands with his single-engine Cirrus at Hanscom Field
in Bedford, Mass., recently. Kahn thought a $26,000 tax bill on his
airplane from Maine Revenue Services was a mistake. The bill was
part of the agency’s efforts to collect taxes on aircraft owned by
out-of-staters who brought them to Maine to visit.
CRAWFORD, Texas — President Bush on Friday used a
pocket veto to reject a sweeping
defense bill because he dislikes
a provision that would expose
the Iraqi government to expensive lawsuits seeking damages
from the Saddam Hussein era.
In a statement, Bush said the
legislation “would imperil billions of dollars of Iraqi assets at
a crucial juncture in that
nation’s reconstruction efforts.”
The president’s objections
were focused on a provision deep
within legislation that sets
defense policy for the coming year
and approves $696 billion in
spending, including $189 billion
for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Also in the legislation were improved veterans benefits and tighter oversight of contractors and weapons programs.
The pocket veto means that
troops will get a 3 percent raise
Jan. 1 instead of the 3.5 percent
authorized by the bill.
Bush’s decision to use a pocket veto, announced while vacationing at his Texas ranch,
means the legislation will die at
midnight Dec. 31. This tactic for
killing a bill can be used only
when Congress is not in session.
The
House
last
week
adjourned until Jan. 15; the Senate returns a week later but has
been holding brief, often seconds-long pro forma sessions
every two or three days to prevent Bush from making appointments that otherwise would
need Senate approval.
Brendan Daly, spokesman for
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DCalif., said, “The House rejects
any assertion that the White
House has the authority to do a
pocket veto.”
See Veto, Page A2
Atlanta had 126 homicides as
of Dec. 26, compared with 111
for the same period a year ago.
Police attributed some of the
increase to a New Orleansbased gang that moved into
town after Hurricane Katrina.
Members of the International
Robbing Crew are accused of
killing at least seven people in
Atlanta.
In Miami, authorities say the
proliferation
of
assault
weapons led to an increase in
killings, from 56 in 2005 to 79 in
2006 and 86 so far in 2007.
See Homicide, Page A8
Index
Album
C10
Amusements C9
Business
C1-6
Classifieds E1-H8
Comics
H6-7
Crossword
H6
Cryptoquip F1
Dear Abby
H7
Dr. Donohue H7
Editorial A10-11
Horoscope
H6
Joni Averill
B4
Legal notices F6
Lifestyle C7-12
Lottery
A2
Obituaries B6-7
Outdoors D6-7
Religion
C11
ShopGirl
C7
Sports
D1-7
State
B1-8
Stocks
C5
Sudoku
C12
Television T1-4
Weather
B8
WSJ Sunday C2-4
Vol. 119, No. 167
0
13781 00006
© 2007 Bangor
Publishing Co.
Periodicals postage
paid at Bangor,
Maine 04401
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USPS 041000