Snowe, Collins to lead panels Mainers to play key GOP roles

PORTLAND – It has been several decades since a senator from Maine served as chairman of a standing committee. Now Maine is getting two of them.

Sen. Olympia Snowe announced Friday that she’ll serve as chairwoman of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Sen. Susan Collins previously announced she’ll be chairwoman of the Governmental Affairs Committee.

Both appointments give Maine’s Republican senators power to shape legislation, but they also place them in leadership meetings that shape the GOP’s agenda.

“You’re in a privileged position because you can participate in those leadership meetings and participate in the effort to determine what your party’s agenda in the Senate is going to be,” said Richard Powell, a political science professor at the University of Maine.

Snowe, who has been a member of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurs since joining the Senate in 1995, steps up because Republican Christopher Bond of Missouri is taking a new post.

Bond will oversee a subcommittee that deals with the reauthorization of the federal highway funding law for the next two years.

Snowe said her new leadership post on the committee that oversees the Small Business Administration will put her in a position to help businesses in Maine and across the nation by relieving some of the pressures placed on them and opening new opportunities for them.

“I am eager to tackle an ambitious agenda that will ease the challenges small businesses face in finding affordable health insurance for their employees, grappling with government red tape, and accessing the credit and trade opportunities they need to grow and prosper,” she said.

Those priorities are of pressing concern to family-owned businesses in Maine, according to Cheryl Russell, director for the Richard E. Dyke Center for Family Business at Husson College in Bangor.

“She has consistently been an advocate for those issues,” Russell said. “We firmly believe we are going to get something done with her as chairwoman.”

Dana Connors, executive director of the Maine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, called Snowe’s appointment a “gift for Maine.”

He noted Snowe has always been responsive to the needs of Maine businesses. “With that type of commitment, and now a leadership position, it’s something we can only pray for,” he said from Augusta.

Nationally, more than half of the U.S. work force is employed by small businesses. In Maine, about 97 percent of the state’s 37,000 employers are small businesses with fewer than 20 employees, and those businesses account for creation of virtually every new job, Snowe said.

Collins’ appointment also is important. The Governmental Affairs Committee she will be leading has been dealing with creation of a new Homeland Security Department, among other things.

Snowe and Collins, who take their posts in January, become the first Maine senators to lead standing committees since the late Edmund Muskie was chairman of the Budget Committee in the 1970s.

Former Sen. George Mitchell served as Democratic leader in the Senate but was never chairman of a standing committee. Nor was former Sen. William S. Cohen a chairman of a standing committee.

Snowe also will serve on the Finance, Budget and Commerce, Science, and Transportation committees. She’ll retain her post as chairwoman of the subcommittee on oceans, atmosphere and fisheries.