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The Mystery Of TideSmart Global Stimulus Funding and the Vanishing Media Coverage


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A while back in the post Maine State Enterprises VS The MicroEconomy, I introduced gubernatorial hopeful Steve Woods, and his advocacy for relocating the inhabitants of 108 Maine towns to urban centers. Mr Woods reasoned that the 108 towns were not contributing their fair share to Maine's economy.

 As reported recently in the news, China also has a rural relocation plan to ultimately relocate 450 million rural inhabitants to urban centers. China is buying the co-operation of the inhabitants with a free apartments and money, where as Mt Woods is advocating that the inhabitants should be more or less starved our of their homes by depriving said communities of state funds for infrastructure and transportation to remote areas.

I illustrated the disconnect of Mr Wood's selective statistics by pointing our that most of the stimulus funding had gone to urban centers in Southern Maine with Augusta getting about 38% of the take- enabling Augusta to build an airport.

I also mentioned that Mr Woods is the CEO of TideSmart Global which had received both state and federal stimulus funds to build its new business campus in Falmouth,and referenced this article published by prnewswire

The headline of the PR Newswire article features President Obama ( not present)  and Governor Baldacci as honorees at the groundbreaking ceremony of TideSmart Global, all made possible by federal and state stimulus dollars.
The prnewswire article quotes from Mr Woods and mentions that Mr Woods presented President Obama and Governor Baldacci with a commemorative stone in appreciation of the support he received from the stimulus programs and how TideSmart Global  couldn't have built their campus without all the help received.

The article goes on to report that Governor Baldacci applauded the project with these words", "I've never seen so much enormous earth work done in the state of Maine."

However the article does not identify the amount of state and federal stimulus funds distributed to TideSmart Global to finance the large and impressive business campus. I could not find TideSmart Global listed on Recovery.Org.

Recently I put in a freedom Of Access request to David Heidrich, Jr, Assistant Director of Communications, Department of Administrative and Financial Services

I received the following in response to that request:

Dear Ms. Andersen:

There are no documents responsive to your request in the possession of the Department of Administrative and Financial Services.

The State of Maine’s accounting system does not include a direct payment or direct payments to a vendor named TideSmart Global or any variation thereof.
The State’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 database does not include a subaward or an expenditure record for a vendor containing the name TideSmart.
 Finally, the Federal Recovery database does not include a recipient with a name containing TideSmart.
According to Recovery.gov, Falmouth was the site of 15 awards under ARRA. Six of these awards went to the Town of Falmouth, three went to the Governor Baxter School For The Deaf, three awards to The Student Conservation Association Inc., two to to Titcomb, R P & Associates, and one to the Maine Department of Transportation.
I hope that you find this information helpful.
Sincerely,
David Heidrich, Jr.
Assistant Director of Communications
Department of Administrative and Financial Services


I then did another search for the news story noticed that there were no articles about the TideSmartGlobal project to be found in the Maine media.

 I searched online at both the Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News . The Portland Press Herald files did not appear to date back to 2010. The Bangor Daily News has no record of the TideSmart Global stimulus project.The Bangor Daily News does have a news story on record feature a stimulus program for the ports in Febuary of 2010.

If Tide Smart Global was not financed by federal and state stimulus funds, what reason would prnewswire, a reputable news organization, have for posting a false story that says it was?

 If TideSmart Global was financed by federal and state stimulus funds, why are there no records of it in the Maine State accounting system or on recovery.org?

If TideSmart Global was not financed with federal and state stimulus funds, then how was it financed?

Why is there no record of the Maine media reporting on the TideSmart Global

These are questions that need answers.

 News Publications Featuring PR Newswire Article

Daily Finance
DM Foruns (article no longer available)
CNS NEWS MONEY WATCH ( By: TideSmart Global via PR Newswire)


Note Added Aug 30 2013. After discovering that code had been inserted into this post making all  links dysfunctional, I have corrected them and instituted other security measures. However the link to the CBS News Money Watch Story which cited TideSmart Global as the author, now leads only to an error page.I searched for it on the web again without success but a search for the title of the article leads to many web results. The title is President Obama and Maine Governor Baldacci Receive Commemorative Gift at Ground Breaking Ceremony for Construction Expansion Made Possible by Federal and State Stimulus Programs


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