State Rep. O’Dea seeks District 130 re-election

AUGUSTA — State Rep. John O’Dea, D-Orono, has announced he will seek re-election to the Maine House of Representatives from District 130. This includes the University of Maine.

A member of the Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Education, O’Dea said he vowed to continue to look “long and hard” at the University of Maine System.

During this session he was a sponsor of legislation to assess the effect of the increase in state dollars to the University of Maine System over the past five years. Among areas to be studied are construction projects; acquisition of equipment, supplies and services; faculty morale; improvement in the quality of student life; improvement in academic offerings; and distribution of funding among campuses.

O’Dea said he was proud of his record on environmental issues, which included support for river cleanup legislation enacted this session that requires paper mills to reduce the amount of pollution from kraft processing that is discharged into Maine rivers.

He said, “I am also very concerned about the administration’s shifting the responsibility for funding state services to the local property tax through its `no new taxes’ pledge.”

He cited equity in the state’s school funding mechanism as a continuing priority for the coming session.