Amid budget crisis woes, legislators engaged to marry

AUGUSTA — Amid all the discouragement of the budget crisis, Maine lawmakers were treated to some happy news Wednesday. Two of their colleagues — Rep. Mary F. Cahill, 26, D-Mattawamkeag, and Sen. Gerard P. Conley Jr., 37, D-Portland — are engaged to be married.

“We are very much waiting for him to move to Mattawamkeag,” said Sen. Michael D. Pearson, D-Enfield, after announcing the betrothal to his fellow members of the Appropriations Committee.

Replied Sen. Joseph C. Brannigan, who like Conley hails from Maine’s largest city: “I’m sure that she’ll enjoy living on Pine Street.”

Conley said the couple had not set a date for the wedding, much less decided where to live, although he had a preference.

“Portland is my suggestion,” he said. He said he proposed on Sunday and that, when he informed his 11 brothers and sisters of the wedding plans, “10 of them had never heard of Mattawamkeag.”

Conley said they began dating at the end of this year’s regular legislative session: “When everybody else was fighting, we were getting along great.”