No bubbles in sight: GDP dropped 26% in ‘09

The value of goods and services produced in Newfoundland and Labrador dropped 26% in 2009 compared to 2008.  Those figures are in an appendix to the finance minister’s budget speech delivered on Monday.

GDP in 2009 hit $22 billion compared to $31 billion in 2008. That’s only slightly above the GDP in 2005.   The single year drop erased the gains of 2006 and 2007 which together saw an increase in GDP of 27.9%.

Real GDP declined 8.9%.

In 2008, Premier Danny Williams claimed the province would be protected from the global recession by some unknown means.  He and finance minister Tom Marshall continue to claim the recession did not affect Newfoundland and Labrador as severely as it did other places.

Average annual employment in the province during 2009 remained below employment levels in 2006 and the current forecast is for negligible growth (one half of one percent) in the coming year.  Meanwhile the labour force remains swollen with returning migrants thrown out of work in other parts of the country by the recession. 

Wages and salaries in the province are higher, driven primarily by increases in the public sector.

Sales of manufactured goods (shipment value) were down 33% in 2009. Housing starts fell 6%.

Oil production hit 97 million barrels in 2009, compared to 125 million in 2008.  That’s basically the forecast production from Budget 2009.  Interestingly, the December financial update had forecast an increase in oil production to 101 million barrels.  Oil production is forecast to drop again – to 86 million barrels – in 2010.

Newsprint shipments in 2009 were down by 49% from 2008 and 66% from 2005.  The value of fish landings was down 19% in 2009, wiping out gains in the preceding two fiscal years.

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“…Jobs that pay taxes, not depend on taxes…”

From the 1996 provincial election campaign, here are the provincial Conservative commitments on managing the provincial government’s finances.

Lynn Verge must be cringing at what Tom and the boys are doing especially with that bit about using policy to create private sector jobs instead of creating jobs that depend entirely on tax money

Mandatory sunset clauses turned up again in 2003 but there’s no sign the current crowd are going to give it another thought.

Balanced budgets have never been a goal of the current administration. In fact, the finance minister and the premier have explicitly rejected the idea.  When they had money they spent it and now that they don’t have money they are spending too.

 

A PC Government will:

• balance the budget over four years, through a combination of measures to stimulate economic growth and re-order spending priorities. Deficits designed to protect funding for essential services in the lean years will be offset with planned surpluses in the growth years.
• fix the rate of growth in borrowing below the rate of real growth in GDP, thus bringing down the debt-to-GDP ratio.
• use tax policy to stimulate private sector job creation - jobs that pay taxes, not depend on taxes.
• re-establish an Expenditure Review Committee to identify areas of inefficiency in government and take early and decisive action to eliminate inefficiencies.
• set priorities for program delivery and reduce spending on expendable and low-priority programs. 
• streamline and consolidate regulations to eliminate duplication and reduce the number of regulations and regulatory bodies.
• put emphasis on patient care and high-quality education while seeking efficiencies.
• impose mandatory sunset clauses on spending programs and regulations.
• appoint a Public Service Pensions Task Force within 60 days to investigate ways to address existing liabilities while honouring our commitments.
• reform the MHA pension plan to bring it more in line with those of public employees.
• cut the number of seats in the House of Assembly to 40.

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Burdening our children with increased debt: fish centre costs escalate wildly

An aquaculture centre that was supposed to have opened in 2009 for a cost of $4.2 million will now cost $8.8 million and construction isn’t set to start until later this spring.

Cost of the project shot up 22% in 2009 alone on a project that even then was already 71% over budget. Former fisheries minister Tom Rideout announced the project in 2007 as part of government’s pre-election vote buying orgy of public spending.

The provincial economy shrank by 26% in 2009.

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Bob Fowler’s speech

The video link.

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Budget 2010: prep work

Some things to watch for in Budget 2010:

1.  Deficit 2009.  Check to see how big the accrual deficit is, but expect that to be pretty much zeroed out.  The pension plan should have recovered its paper losses and with revenues being higher than the deliberately lowballed forecast, some people might be fooled into believing things are healthier than they are.

Just remember that as he headed out the door Paul Oram described provincial government spending as unsustainable.  The finance minister said the same thing.  Odds are government will try and make things look smurferrific by pointing to the accrual numbers but don’t be fooled.

Check the cash deficit in a document titled the Estimates.  That will give you a picture of what the actual cash flows looked like in 2009. Budget 2009 forecast a cash shortfall of $1.3 billion.  The cash statements will give you a good sense of whether the the provincial government will have a significant financial problem in the medium- to long-term.

Your humble e-scribbler would expect a cash shortfall of something on the order of $800 million. 

That would make it the largest cash deficit in Newfoundland and Labrador since …well…ever and certainly since 2004.

In previous years, oil revenues erased just about every one of the projected cash deficits.  This year expect something closer to what they forecast a year ago on a cash basis.

That’s because…

2.  Oil revenues should be down.  The only question is by how much.

The finance department’s Decemberish estimate was for a drop of 30% which would bring in royalties of about $1.7 billion. The March 2009 prediction was for revenues to be half of what they were in 2008.

As it turned out, that was a pretty good estimate.  In the first half of the fiscal year royalties were down by almost 60% from where they were in 2008.  That was actually about 15% below the forecast in March 2009.  The year actually started off worse than the low-balled finance department estimate.

The December financial update claimed there’d be a jump in revenue from forecast but oil production figures – one of the revenue factors – stayed persistently below the volumes needed to help generate the cash.

Again, check the revenue figures in the Estimates. And don’t forget your humble e-scribbler had to get information from the feds because provincial finance basically refused to release any information. In itself that’s a reason to put a question mark over what’s coming.

Your old e-scribbler wouldn’t be surprised to see oil royalties of about $1.5 billion for 2009, give or take a couple of hundred million.  Just remember what finance minister Tom Marshall said during debate on the interim supply bill last week:

While production, natural production will come back when Hebron comes on, but it is never going to come back to what production was two years ago; unless, of course, we discover additional fields, such as in the other basins where they are continuing to explore…[Bold added]

Production is one factor in determining royalties.  Price and percentage are the other two.  Since we know the percentage and the price is unlikely to zoom back up to the stratosphere of mid-2008, we can reasonably expect the provincial government will have less money in the future than it has had in the past couple of years.

There are not new ideas.  Regular readers have seen them discussed before.

And that pretty much jives with something else…

3.  Other revenues were down in 2009, too:  Marshall put some numbers on the table in January and February during a series of speeches across the province.

• Personal income tax revenue for 2009 should come in somewhere around $800 million. That’s above forecast but remember that they lowballed the figures.
• Sales tax should be about $600 million.  That’s way off the forecast of $728 million.
• Mineral tax and royalties should be somewhere around $184 million.  Again that’s a wee bit above the forecast of $171.6 million

4.  Check the deficit forecast (cash) for 2010 and beyond it.  Revenues aren’t going to climb so the provincial government needs to lay out a plan on how to bring the books back into balance.  Deficit budgetting is what got us into a financial mess over the course of decades.  if the current administration doesn’t have a plan to balance the books sooner rather than later than we’d all better start wondering.

Former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge pointed out over the weekend that Canadians can expect health care costs to outstrip revenue growth by about 1.5% in the decade ahead. That’s just one aspect of the demographic challenge our province is facing but it is a very significant one.  The problem can’t be made to disappear with magical thinking or the cavalier dismissal that balanced budgets are just numbers on a page.

5.  We’ve been living in a fiscal house of cards and the house is collapsing. Take a look at the growth in interim supply spending since 2004, shown above in thousands of millions of dollars.   In six years, the interim supply spending has pretty much doubled;  it’s gone from 1.2 billion to 2.3 billion.

In four of the past six years, the leaps have been double-digits;  from 10.2% in 2007 to 17.5% in 2009.  This year it is seven percent above the year before.  The average increase in spending is 10.8%.  At that rate, the provincial budget in 2014 would be about $10.5 billion.

Just remember, though, that as Tom Marshall noted, oil production won’t be what it has been for the past two years.  Oil prices won’t be skyrocketing either and as such, provincial government revenues won’t be growing at the rate of 11% per year or better.

If provincial government spending continues to grow as it has since 2004, it won’t be very long before this province is in the same state it was during the late 1980s.

 

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PIFO

If the supporters of the administration believe that something has been done for entirely partisan reasons (let alone that such partisan decisions are justified), then it seems rather …pointless…ermmm…silly…to argue that a decision taken wholely, solely and totally by politicians was somehow not a political decision.

It would seem to be a penetrating insight into the friggin’ obvious.

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Dipperdoom

Dipper Dale’s Dead.

Again.

Well, at least his online presence Tickling Bight has gone the way of Brigadoon, back into the mists of the Internet moors.

Yep.

He’s hydroqueened for the second time in about a month.

No explanation.

Just poof and the blindly partisan  - and sometimes downright bizarre - rantings are gone.

Now maybe like Sue  - or the fictitious Scottish village Brigadoon -  the whole thing will pop back, just like the last time your humble e-scribbler noted it had up and run off without so much as a tip of the hat or a goodbye.

She’s gone, b’ys, she’s gone Update:  It’s been a week.  Looks like Dale the Dipper’s propaganda space is gone for good. [31 March 2010]

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Wanted: adults

Former Bank of Canada David Dodge laid it out in stark terms for anyone who wants to listen.

“It” is the challenge facing all Canadians of continuing to provide public services like health care in the face of shifts in the workforce among other things.

But the hard choices for any prime minister go beyond energy. Former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge spelled it out in bleak terms, saying Canadians need to have the courage to engage in an "adult conversation" about what governments can afford at a time of a shrinking workforce, ageing population and slowing economy.

"We kind of are wishing the problem away by assuming that we can curtail expenditures without curtailing the real services that governments are providing to you and me as citizens," he said after addressing 250 convention attendees.

Adult conversation has been missing from what public discussion there has been of major issues in this province for the past seven years.  Around these parts, the challenge of having a substantive discussion is greater given the prevalence of magical thinking throughout society.  Magical thinking in this case would be any suggestion that there are no problems at all or that they will be easily solved.

Let’s see if there is continued magical thinking in Monday’s budget.  Bet the farm on a “yes” and you won’t make much:  everyone who has been paying attention is expecting just that.

They likely won’t be disappointed.

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From the safety of the ivory tower

Some professors at the University of Regina don’t like a scholarship for the children of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

They argue it “glorifies imperialism” and:

“It conflates heroism with the death of individuals who are in the military service and we think that the death of individuals is always a tragic matter, but we think that heroism is something different,”

Lots of people conflate lots of things but in this case one is tempted to suggest that the learned ones at Regina U have conflated their thoughts with anything approaching reason.

But in light of these thoughts offered from the prairies, one wonders what the view is at the administrative level at a university that is part of the scholarship program, a university built as a lasting memorial to men who gave their lives in military and naval service.

Noreen Golfman, Memorial University’s managerially-challenged grad studies dean, wrote a piece for the now defunct Independent back in  January 2007 in which she vented her frustration over the prevalence of images from the war in Afghanistan during the holiday season:

Every time you opened a newspaper or listened to the news, especially on the CBC, you were compelled to reach for the box of tissues. If it wasn’t a story about some poor sod’s legs being blown off then it was an extended interview with some dead soldier’s parents. Indulging in another bite of dark chocolate was meant to be more painful this year. Here, have a plate of guilt with your second helping, my dear, and pass the self-reproach.

Golfman also lamented the lack of protest in her typically insightful way:

What in the world is going on? Where are the protest songs of yesteryear? I guess, when General Rick “MUN graduate” Hillier invites you to come along and share the joy ride you have to join up faster than you can say “Bob Hope is dead.” Reading Mercer’s widely circulated piece on the joys of serving gravy to the grateful Canadian boys was almost as painful as watching Peter MacKay flirt with Condoleezza “Condee” Rice.

One wonders if then Professor Golfman, now Dean Golfman, still holds the same miserable opinion of the men and women who served in Afghanistan.  Some of them might be graduates of Memorial or, mercy sakes, might even be graduate students there.

Does she share the  views of academics at Regina? Did she offer her opinion of the Project Hero scholarship before memorial endorsed it?

Perhaps she might be moved to offer a comment if she has the time, that is, coping with the financial mess in the grad studies school.

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Related:  Rick Mercer’s answer to Golfman.

Jacks and the Auditor General

What is it about Dipper leaders named Jack and their problems with having the Auditor General check over their expense claims?

Here’s Jack Layton using a worn out excuse that hasn’t been tried since well before the spending scandals in legislatures in St. John’s, Halifax and among Jack’s political brethren in Westminister:

"Well, those are already audited, so I don’t know why wasting money on a second audit of something that has already been audited would make sense," he said.

Yep and there were audits in the House of Assembly too during the peak of the spending scandal.  Layton should ask his defence critic Jack Harris who, as it turns out, is the former leader of the New Democrats in Newfoundland and Labrador. Here’s what he had to say in voting for a government bill that proved to be a key foundation stone for the spending scandal:

Similarly, we have a new provision which requires an annual audit of the accounts of the House of Assembly which I think is appropriate; that there be accountability through an annual audit.

That proved to be so incredibly effective, as a subsequent review by an Auditor General revealed. Heck, Jack Harris’ old bench mate wound up going to jail for his part in the whole business.

The days of the kind of unaccountable political privilege the two Jacks  and the rest of the Ottawa Dippers are clinging to is long over.

A little sunshine in dark corners goes a long way to killing off any untoward activity that is taking place, the glare of public scrutiny also helps to keep it from taking root.

Imagine what might have been prevented if political donations were scrutinised more closely.

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Shawn the Bullet Dodger

labradore makes a couple of very interesting points about Danny Williams and the failed New Brunswick Power deal, what with a major story that remains unreported in the mainstream a full six months after it broke.

Frankly it’s hard to know what’s more interesting here:  Shawn’s failure, Danny’s intervention or the reason why the mainstream media continues to ignore a gigantic energy story in Newfoundland and Labrador that is directly related to the first two.

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Related: “Five years of secret talks…”

Graham abandons NB power deal

The deal to sell New Brunswick Power to Hydro Quebec is dead.

Both sides are pointing to risks and problems that turned up apparently by surprise.

New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham said:

"However, over the past several weeks as we worked to take that agreement and turn it into a full legal document, Hydro-Québec has asked for changes to the agreement that would have unacceptably taken away some of the value and increased some of the risks for New Brunswickers."

And CBC reported:

Quebec Premier Jean Charest told reporters on Wednesday his province pulled out after its power utility found unanticipated risks and costs related to matters like dam security and water levels.

After due diligence was done, he said Hydro-Québec decided that "we were beyond what was acceptable."

It will be interesting to see what happens if the Tories win the next provincial election and have to cope with the NB Power debt pig.  So far their only bright ideas have been to oppose someone else’s bright idea.

Stat Porn – all outlinks are local

On any given day, people who read Bond Papers also like to read:

1. John Gushue’s  dot dot dot.
2. Geoff Meeker’s Meeker on media
3. Ryan Snodden’s weather blog
4. Russell Wangersky
5. Bob Wakeham

All the number of visits to the other regular links around these parts  - over there on the left - fall off dramatically after those.

Well at least that’s what Statcounter tells us.

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U of O is ‘bush league’

That’s according to Ann Coulter and  - as painful as this is to acknowledge – she might actually be right.

Well, given that a couple of hundreds morons can create enough of a ruckus to deny free speech on a university campus.

Then again this is Canada where it isn’t unusual to see that kind of thuggery at universities, let alone discover some schmuck like Francois Houle in a position of responsibility.

Anyone been to Sir George Nutbar  - d.b.a. Concordia University - lately for a stimulating, civilised intellectual exchange on the Middle East?

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Kremlinology 19: Ass-kissing has its rewards

Wade Verge is apparently back in Hisself’s good graces.

One clue was Wade’s prominent place moving the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne during which Wade dutifully kissed The Boss’ hindmost regions with an enthusiasm not seen in the House of Assembly since the glory days of a former ambassador to Hy’s.

But the real clue to Wade’s new status is his meteoric shift of seats.  The fellow has gone from being right next to the door to sitting right up by the Speaker.  More importantly, Wade is now just inches away from Hisself, hisself.

It isn’t the treasury bench, but it’s a place of some prominence.

As proximity to The Old Man goes, Wade is way closer than the much beloved Diane Whelan. Wade is even closer than O’Brien The Embalmer. By the by, Kevin may not know where St. Anthony is, but he damn well knows where his meal ticket comes from.

Wade is in an august spot. The last ass to warm the particular bit of sealskin where Wade is now ensconced was none other than Senator Beth Marshall, as she now is.

Now for those who missed it, Beth may have had a bit of a disagreement with Hisself, but she remained a completely loyal foot-soldier right up to the time she was promoted to glory by their mutual friend, Steve.  When it came time to implement the Green report, Beth got the job.  If she was on the outs with The Old Man she’d never have gotten that job.

But anyway, whatever Wade did, he did it right.

You can tell by just how pretty he is sitting now compared to where he was perched just three months ago.

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Coulter finds Canuck suckers

Ann Coulter at Western in a handful of words:

1.  Francois Houle is a schmuck.  If you can’t understand why, then read this guy.

2.  Coulter is playing this exactly as she would, if anyone knew anything about Coulter’s schtick.

Which is why Houle is a schmuck, in case you didn’t figure it out yet.

3.  Meanwhile, for those of you old enough to remember the Lampoon and who can appreciate NSFW writing in the old style, try this and this.

You’ll laugh harder than Coulter is at Houle and all the other Canuck schmucks who fell for same lame game…

yet again.

Sheesh.

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I am Legend

This is a throne speech from someone who doesn’t plan on doing very much more in politics.

There is no greater legacy My Government is building for our province’s children than the renewed sense of pride and confidence that they, as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, are feeling as we become masters of our own destiny. In classrooms and homes across our province, a new attitude is taking hold, full of hope in the dream of a wonderful future for young people right here at home. This year’s plan of action builds with confidence on the extraordinary progress Newfoundland and Labrador has achieved since 2003.

That’s pretty much the tone of the whole thing: “Everything I set out to do is now done.  Everything and everyone is ready for a better tomorrow.”

The only thing missing was the talk of new hands taking the helm.

We already have that, by the way, in the 2005 throne speech in which Danny Williams plagiarized John Kennedy’s inaugural address to come up with his own version:

"The time has come for new heroes to step forward: men, women, and young people who can build their community, grow our economy, foster cooperation, and inspire the confidence we need to pursue our dreams together."

In the context of the speech though, Williams didn’t have the same idea Kennedy’s speechwriter used.  Kennedy was running on the theme that he embodied the new generation of leaders.  In Williams’ case, he was – apparently – talking about others coming forward to replace him.  That sounds odd, but then again, this is an administration that started out with the sort of foolish ideas – grandiose, overhyped megaprojects – that usually come from parties that are entirely clapped out.

In any event,  the new session of the latest Williams’ legislature may prove to be his last and one of the lightest in the history of the province. Then again, this guy has been The –est Premier.

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Personality Cult

Take a gander at a Canadian Press story about the personality cult surrounding the Premier and you’ll notice some rather curious things.

Of course there are the cultists themselves who display the characteristic worship of the Premier, the propagation of the usual myths and the patronising and paternalistic way these people look at politics.  To wit:

“Blair”:…The one thing I can say for certain is that he has accomplised  [sic]the most possible for this province, and I see no leader that could possibly shake my belief in him and his ability to run our great Province.

…

“C”:…I can finally say that there is a premier that I am proud of.  I can honestly say that when I am represented by MY premier I'm not cringing in anticipation of his comments like so many in the past.

…

“Seriously”:…Danny Williams is successful because he doesn't need the office. He can make decisions that have better long term outcomes because he doesn't need the office.

…

By far the best example of the personality cultist view came from someone who signed with a pseudonym “Joe Blow”:

But Danny already has everything he wants when it comes to money. Now what he wants is a better future for his people, and he is succeeding in this.

[Lorraine] Michael wonders how long the Cult of Danny can endure?

Here is your answer.

Death will be the only thing that stops this man from ensuring that our province thrives.

“Now what he wants is a better future for his people, and he is succeeding in this.”  There can be no clearer statement of that view which reduces individuals in Newfoundland and Labrador to the status of children fit for nothing better than to be looked after.

Such is the essence of personality cults.

It’s also worth noting this comment:

"If anybody thinks democracy is healthy in this province just look at the voter turnout the other day," said Michael Temelini, a political scientist at Memorial University.

…

"As popular as (Williams) may be, we should be paying as much attention to the House of Assembly and its important role in upholding our democratic system. People should stop paying so much attention to the executive branch. But that's what happens when you get one party in power.

"What's going on in Newfoundland is people are just going to wait until Danny Williams retires. Now that's a problem."

There is nothing evident today that was not also evident five or six years ago but that’s really another issue.  The thing to note is that Temelini – once a very public Dan-o-phile – is now a solid critic of where the province is under Williams’ leadership.

Temelini isn’t alone in this.  There are a number of public commentators who have gone from praising the Premier to be concerned for the state of public life in the province.  Then there are the comments coming from all corners of the province that express some frustration with things in Newfoundland and Labrador after seven years of Danny.  Increasingly the grumbling is coming from within the Tory party, especially among the old townie establishment part of the Blue Machine.  it’s all still very much quiet grumbling of the sort where people are a bit self-conscious that word might spread back to Hisself and Hisself’s hangers-on. But five years ago, no one would have dreamed of even thinking of being disgruntled let alone expressing it.

Moods are shifting.

Still, some people quoted in the article seem to recognise  - albeit vaguely – that there is an issue even if they quite obviously don’t know what to do about it.

"Why do people put so much hope in one person?" wonders Lorraine Michael, the sole New Democrat in a Gang of Five opposition that includes four Liberals.

"We do have a personality cult mentality here in Newfoundland and Labrador and a lot of it is based on his personality."

That last bit is by no means clear.  The worship of an individual in the fashion seen in this province over the past few years speaks to a much deeper cultural issue  - a cultural disorder – rather than something as simple as “he is a sweet guy” or “he is a bully” or “he is very charismatic.” take your pick:  those are all descriptions of a personality but they don’t explain the bootlicking toadying of so many out there.

Nor does it explain the unwillingness of Michael and the four Liberal opposition members to resist being steamrolled by Mr. Popularity.  Just because someone is popular, even if he or she is actually that popular, doe snot make them correct in decisions. Rolling over on something like the expropriation bill, for example, simply shouldn’t happen in a healthy democracy.

Still, recognising there is a problem is the first step in finding a solution.

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Backlog

As labradore notes, while a throne is speech is supposed to be about laying out the new legislation for the upcoming session, the one delivered today was surprisingly thin in that respect.

Not to worry. 

There is plenty of old legislation that isn’t in force and unkept promises dating back to 2003 to keep any half decent administration busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

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PUB quietly imposes water management deal

The public utilities board imposed a water management agreement on NALCOR and Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation on March 9, 2010. The reasons for the decision were filed separately ,

The PUB didn’t issue a news release when it issued the order, nor did it issue any sort of media advisory or news release on the half day of hearings it held into the application.

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