UPDATED: APPLL Files Campaign Finance Inquiry About No on Four
55 West Street violation on council agenda; recount on cruise ship question set for November 23
BAR HARBOR—On the heels of a recount request about a town ballot article concerning a potential repeal of 1,000 daily cruise ship disembarkation limits, the Bar Harbor based APPLL has announced it has filed a campaign violation inquiry with the states ethics commission.
APPLL, an association of local residents and business owners, announced its filing on November 15 in the late afternoon via press release.
In a press release from the organization, APPLL President Kristi Bond wrote, “The no-vote faction mounted a significant and coordinated campaign against ballot measure four.”
Earlier this week, Kevin DesVeaux, owner of the West Street Cafe in Bar Harbor, collected the 100-plus signatures required for a recount on the article.
The recount will occur on November 23 at 9 a.m. at the Bar Harbor Municipal Building.
On the Town Council’s November 19 agenda is a potential next step for the town to file an enforcement action against 55 West Street, which is which is one of the two properties where cruise passengers disembark.
The November 5 vote on the potential repeal of the current rules was close. A no vote on the question kept the limits in place. A yes vote was to repeal the ordinance that had been approved by voters in 2022. The November 5 ballot measure (Article 4) failed by 63 votes or less than 2 percent. Of the 3,489 votes cast, 1,713 voted in favor of the repeal and 1,776 voted in favor of keeping the ordinance as is.
If that repeal had passed, the town council would have put forward a different proposal limiting cruise ships.
The current 1,000 limit was approved by voters in 2022 (Article 3) as part of a citizens’ petition and referendum. That had passed 1,780 to 1,273, a difference of 507 votes or 16%.
According to Bond, APPLL fulfilled the state-required Ballot Question Committee (BQC) disclosure of sources of funding and spending reports for the campaign efforts of the Yes on Four Committee it supported as required by law.
“None of the coordinated ‘No on Four’ campaign pieces contained the required disclosure indicating source of funding. Further, we can find no evidence of a required BQC having been registered by this group in advance of their campaign efforts,” Bond said.
The press release alleges that the “No on Four” campaign “spent significant funds on town-wide sign placements, coordinated social media, a dedicated website, and a significant direct mail program among other electioneering efforts whose cumulative costs well exceeded the $5,000 threshold.”
If an organizations spends $5,000 or more “to initiate or influence the outcome of a statewide ballot question,” according to the state website, it is a BQC. It then must file a campaign finance report with the Maine Ethics Commission
“Bar Harbor voters deserve to know where the money came from to support the ‘No On Four’ campaign. It seems like there are so many out-of-town influences. Our side followed campaign finance requirements, our opposition should, too,” Bond said.
Charles Sidman, a lead petitioner in the citizens’ referendum that led to the limits said Saturday, “Speaking for myself, APPLL’s purported ethics complaint (which I would be interested to see in full) to the Maine Ethics Commission has no legs whatsoever and is merely another futile and self-satisfying effort (like the pending election recount) directed primarily at assuaging the disappointment of their own members. The community defending the Ordinance, urging citizens to ‘Vote No on Four,’ has never been a formal entity in any sense of the word, meaning with centralized direction, decision-making, fund-raising, expenditures, etc., all of which are elements of an organized group constituting a regulated Ballot Question Committee (BQC). Instead, what APPLL’s Ms. Bond calls a ‘faction,’ ‘campaign,’ ‘committee,’ ‘organization,’ etc., was in fact only a loosely interacting community of independent citizens, who out of shared concern, spent their own funds on separate efforts of their own choosing, none of which by any one citizen do I believe exceeded the threshold for forming and reporting as a BQC. The successful resistance of such a broad community of independent smaller actors in defeating the efforts of a larger and apparently stronger one is reminiscent of the jungle reality that an army of small biting ants can defend and keep out even the larger and more ferocious panther. Formally, this is called swarm, agent-based or complex system behavior, and is usually stronger than any single opponent.”
“Net:net, the Maine Ethics Commission is free to inquire of or investigate me or anyone else in Bar Harbor, and everyone involved can speak for their own independently undertaken efforts,” Sidman continued. “But I and others were and are very cognizant of the BQC rules (s/a), and believe that everyone on our side was and is in full compliance.”
Included in the Bar Harbor Town Council’s November 19 agenda is a potential motion that would authorize the town manager (or designee) to “begin the process of filing an enforcement action in court, pursuant to 30-A M.R.S. § 4452.”
That action “would seek civil penalties (i.e., fines); an injunction ordering the defendants to correct or abate the violations; and reimbursement of the town’s attorney fees, expert witness fees, and other costs.”
This is in reference to an August 5 notice of violation sent to the the owners of 55 West Street, Golden Anchor LC.
That violation alleges that the Golden Anchor violated the town’s Cruise Ship Disembarkation Ordinance, which went into effect on July 18, 2024 because it did not have a permit to do so. The Golden Anchor has argued that since it has been disembarking cruise ship passengers under the town’s former rules, it does not need to obtain a permit.
The notice of violation reads, “On or about July 25, 2024, it was observed that individuals meeting the definition of ‘Person’ under the CSD Ordinance disembarked from a cruise ship on your property without the property owner having first obtained a CSDF permit as required by the ordinance.”
We have reached out to the “No on Four” website and will update this story if we receive a statement.
This story was updated on November 16 at 4:15 p.m. to include a statement by Charles Sidman.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Ballot Question Committee Registration & Reporting Requirements:
21-A M.R.S. §1056-B and 21-A M.R.S. §1059
Definition of a Political Action Committee:
21-A M.R.S. §1052(5)
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I’m so fed up with these APPLL folks that I would happily vote for a complete ban on cruise ships just to spite them
Despite their disingenuous cries of poor mouth, APPL members clearly have money to burn in their attempts to break representative government and bankrupt Bar Harbor - by any means.
APPL et al seem to be taking a page from Donald Trump's grifters' playbook to get their way by corrupting government. And like Republican officials, Bar Harbor town councilors continue to fall all over themselves to fall in line with the kleptocrats.
Perhaps the profiteers are taking heart from Trump's recent win, despite previous losses at the ballot box and in the courts.