Lawmakers will have to deal with the governor’s final veto when they return to Augusta on Thursday, but there’s little left to fight about otherwise.
Democrats have out-raised Republicans so far ahead of the 2018 legislative races, but don’t read too much into the numbers yet.
The Maine Legislature looked poised on Thursday to pass measures allowing over-the-counter access to an overdose antidote and increasing penalties for drug traffickers, but another bill increasing possession penalties is in limbo. All face further votes and they were part of a 2016 legislative agenda around Maine’s opiate crisis. Last year, Maine set a record for overdose deaths with […]
Good morning from Augusta, where an already contentious election-year legislative session may get more complicated with wrangling over funding the campaign finance referendum that passed in November. You’ll likely recall that Question 1 contained a host of election reforms. They included new disclosure requirements and increased penalties for violations. But the most important and controversial change was that it […]
The revival of the U.S. Export-Import Bank passed the House of Representatives last week, but General Electric Co. says that won’t save 80 future jobs that could have been brought to Bangor. U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, a Republican from Maine’s 2nd District who voted for the bank after criticizing it for much of the year, has been roundly […]
This ad for Lewiston Mayor Robert Macdonald’s re-election bid was spotted in a local weekly paper yesterday, and I’m still struggling to understand it. Macdonald, a two-term incumbent known for being conservative, finds himself locked in a battle with Democratic activist Ben Chin. Three other candidates — Stephen Morgan, Luke Jensen and Charles Soule — […]
Nobody’s perfectly happy with the two-year budget deal between congressional leaders and President Barack Obama that cleared the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday. It would raise spending by $80 billion over that period, dividing that equally between defense and domestic programs. That excess spending was offset by equal amounts of spending cuts and revenue hikes. Democrats, including […]
Good morning from Augusta. Today’s Daily Brief is brought to you by two letters from Gov. Paul LePage’s administration that caught our eye last week. LePage isn’t big on Roger Katz these days LePage has escalated an intra-party fight with Sen. Roger Katz, forwarding two letters to the Maine Republican Party’s state committee urging the senator to recuse […]
Former Maine Gov. John Baldacci came out against Question 1 on the November ballot in a radio interview on Thursday. He’s the most prominent Democrat so far to come out against the referendum, which would increase funding for Maine’s taxpayer-funded election system, add transparency requirements for political advertisements from outside groups and increase penalties for election […]
Good news, Maine! We’re No. 48! That’s on the Forbes magazine list of business-friendly states. Maine sat at 49th last year after taking 50th place — last among states, for you civic-minded people — from 2010 to 2013. It gives Maine the worst economic climate in the country, pegging the state’s growth prospects at 49th. Forbes does […]
