(Augusta) Legislature preserves nonexistent $71,000 job - Government

Government
Legislature preserves nonexistent $71,000 job

By Victoria Wallack
Statehouse Reporter

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AUGUSTA (May 18): Patrick Dostie, the state's nuclear safety inspector, has been coming to work every day to a job he's held since 1989 — even though the position was eliminated in 2005 by the Legislature.

Lawmakers were set again this year to eliminate the job, along with the position of nuclear safety adviser, a post currently held by former Senate President Charles Pray.

The thinking was that with the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant closed and officially decommissioned, the two jobs and the $276,000 budget that supports them, aren't necessary.

But Dostie, or at least his post, has been resurrected again thanks to late-night maneuvering by Sen. John Martin, D-Aroostook, who put the position back in through an amendment to the supplemental budget.

While some believe Martin was trying to save a job for Pray, who served with him in leadership when Martin was speaker of the House and Pray was Senate president, the job qualifications don't fit.

Pray acknowledged "Speaker Martin's" efforts, but said the inspector's job is being preserved and he's leaving his $76,000-a-year adviser post, which he's held since 2003, in August.

The total budget for the position, which includes benefits, travel and his share of the office space at the state's Public Advocate office, is $158,000.

"This is much more of a political job," said Pray, explaining a lot of his time is spent in meetings and working with regional or national groups to get the federal government to make good on a promise to remove the 550 metric tons of nuclear spent fuel and waste currently stored at the old Maine Yankee site in Wiscasset.

The safety inspector's job, he said, was deemed more important, so Martin's amendment preserved it.

That's the short version of what happened this legislative session. The full story is more complicated.

Under an agreement reached in 2004 among the state, Maine Yankee and the federal government, the budget to monitor the spent fuel storage facility at the old nuclear power plant site was supposed to go down to $170,000 in 2009, from the current $360,000.

Half of that bill is paid by Central Maine Power and Bangor Hydro Electric customers in Maine, and the other half by electricity users elsewhere in New England who once purchased power from the nuclear generator, which shut down in 1997. The plant had been in operation since 1972.

That budget cut would have eliminated funding for both the job of nuclear safety adviser and nuclear safety inspector — a position that was actually cut in name only in 2005 by the Legislature.

There would have been money, however, for the Department of Environmental Protection, the state's testing lab and the state police to continue monitoring the storage site.

After a bill designed to keep the funding at $360,000 was defeated this year by the Legislature, Martin attempted to amend the supplemental budget to add back in funds and bring the new total to $220,000.

"The suspicion was it really was an attempt to revive the position that Charlie Pray had," said Rep. Sawin Millett, R-Waterford, a former state budget director, who serves on the Appropriations Committee.

Millett said Martin's first amendment was vague enough that it could have applied to Pray's job. "The second iteration required a higher-level of degree in an attempt to make it clearer it was not a way to continue Charlie Pray," Millett said, but the Appropriations Committee still rejected it.

Martin slipped it in the supplemental budget the night bipartisan negotiations fell apart, and it was ultimately approved by the Democratic majority in the full Legislature.

The amendment would appear to be good news for Dostie, the safety inspector, but he's still not out of the woods.

His position, cut in 2005 by the Legislature, still does not officially exist, although he is being paid his $71,000 salary, benefits and office expenses — totaling $118,000. Funding for the job was not cut at the same time the job was eliminated, so money was transferred over to pay his salary.

When the job of safety inspector is officially restored later this summer, Dostie will not meet the requirements.

Martin's amendment apparently went back to language from 1989 when the nuclear inspector's job was first created. It requires the inspector "be an individual knowledgeable in the field of commercial nuclear power production and possess, at a minimum, a master's degree with major work in nuclear, mechanical, electrical or chemical engineering and have at least three years' experience in nuclear operations."

The state couldn't fill the job for what it was paying in 1989 and waived the master's degree requirement for Dostie, who has a bachelor's degree in engineering and physics. Dostie did have more than the needed experience, however, because he worked at Maine Yankee as a radiation control specialist for 10 years before coming to the state.

Dostie now has 30 years experience and his boss in the Division of Environmental Health at the Department of Health and Human Services wants to keep him.

"We're going to go back and see if we can't get that law changed," said Nancy Beardsley, head of the division, because Dostie's experience is too valuable to waste.