The surprise of the legislative session this year was the chance for additional funding for K-12 education, a happy result of a slightly smaller than anticipated shortfall and dogged work by the Legislature’s Education Committee. As both houses consider the proposed budget amendment today they should retain this… Read More
You don’t have to be a former chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to know that the state Constitution trumps state statute. The opinion Daniel Wathen, who is a former chief justice, gave Monday to the Senatorial Vote Committee to that effect regarding the counting of… Read More
A pilot program to link seniors in need of good nutrition with farmers in need of customers has been so successful that it should be made a permanent part of agriculture’s mission and expanded to include the many seniors who would qualify and would like to participate. Read More
To some, it’s an election being decided by the U.S. Postal Service. To others, it’s a by-the-book application of a law designed to ensure that elections are, to the greatest extent possible, decided on Election Day. That’s pretty much the choice offered by combatants in… Read More
Whatever happens in the general health care system in the United States, happens more intensely in the VA health system because the veterans it serves are older, sicker and are more likely to have mental and behavioral health problems. Access to health care overall is getting worse; for… Read More
Big-city restaurants seem to have thought up a new way to take more of your money. They do it by charging up to $14 for a bottle of “designer” water and trying to make it tough to order plain tap water. The Wall Street Journal,… Read More
The Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes have put off their casino proposal until next year, until after the next election, for consideration by the next governor. An opposition group called Casinos No! already has formed with this future in mind. Clearly, both sides intend to make… Read More
President Bush’s State of the Union address on Jan. 29 was a renewed call to arms for the American people against global world terrorism. His words were well received at home, but they were unsettling to many of the allies, especially Europeans. They worried about the go-it-alone tone,… Read More
State economist Laurie Lachance brought complaining about taxes to a new level this week – meaning she proposed a specific package of reforms and did not just whine about the state’s high taxation. However, her ideas, even the ones that have been tossed around for years without anyone… Read More
Whether Maine did or did not just experience a recession is an academic question to five biomedical institutions here that never slowed with the rest of the economy in 2001. Their most recent gains, explained in brief in a new report card, suggest how much more these research… Read More
The Senate’s failure to achieve anything of substance on improving fuel efficiency for cars and light trucks was a triumph of fear over future. The vote on the amendment this week that effectively killed even incremental improvement was so overwhelming that the primary conclusions the public might draw… Read More
Canada’s 2001 census results were released Tuesday. It’s a five-year head count, making the census-to-census changes less startling than here, but revealing trends every bit as challenging. There now are slightly more than 30 million Canadians, up 4 percent since 1996. This matches the lowest… Read More
Secretary of State Colin Powell needed several days of being asked last month before he was even tepid about the Saudi peace plan for the Middle East. But the plan, if as advertised initially, is simply a restatement of U.N. Resolution 242 and the basis of the Oslo… Read More
The address Monday by the leaders of Maine Indian tribes to both houses of the state Legislature emphasized the need for mutual respect. It is an especially fitting topic after years of strain from the land claims settlement act of two decades ago, but mutual respect might come… Read More
During the 1996 referendum campaign on Maine’s Clean Election Act, proponents argued that the system of publicly funded campaigns would do two things to decrease the cynicism infecting politics. It would increase participation by enhancing the ability of lesser-known newcomers to run for office. It would shut off… Read More
To many, the announcement Saturday by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland that two priests who admitted to sexually abusing minors more than two decades ago have been removed from their Northern Maine parishes and not allowed to serve elsewhere came as a relief. The outcome may have… Read More
The Pentagon may be able to make sound arguments for developing a new generation of smaller nuclear weapons, as recommended in a congressionally requested report, the Nuclear Posture Review. But for the last half-century, nuclear bombs have been strictly a political tool and a means for avoiding rather… Read More
The standard defense for those seven, even eight-figure CEO salaries has always been that these individuals deserve such robust compensation in return for their all-encompassing knowledge of the business at hand. This defense took a sharp blow late last month with the appearance by former Enron CEO Jeffrey… Read More
When word of a Penobscot-Passamaquoddy casino proposal first surfaced early this month, Gov. King’s reaction was a swift and adamant rejection. When tribal attorney Tom Tureen, after a meeting with the governor last week, suggested that the door was open for negotiation, Gov. King’s reaction was a swift… Read More
Maine’s image as projected in the national news and entertainment industry is an ongoing source of aggravation. Whether the medium is a fluffy TV show about a mystery writer/sleuth or a serious news report, the depiction of Mainers as terminally quaint people who talk funny has grown beyond… Read More
Since the Superfund was created in 1980 in reaction to the Love Canal disaster, the law of the land regarding toxic waste has been “the polluter pays.” If the parties directly responsible for an environmental disaster could not be identified or could not pay for the cleanup, the… Read More
As details emerge about the fierce battle that erupted last weekend in the mountains of southern Afghanistan, so does further evidence that the war against terrorism will be long, difficult and gruesome. As seven flag-draped coffins complete their journey from those mountains back to the United States, they… Read More
It is a timeworn observation that an executive decision reviled by all sides of an issue indicates a fair compromise. Others say universal scorn merely indicates a bad decision. President Bush’s decision regarding tariffs on imported steel provides an interesting test of these two conflicting hypotheses. Read More
The Jackson Laboratory nestles in the woods on the edge of Bar Harbor, next to Acadia National Park. So far, the three have lived together peacefully and productively. A current question is whether this peaceable kingdom can survive and prosper. The lab serves two purposes. Read More
Don’t be fooled by the recent rains and runoff from melting snow. They may raise the levels of lakes and streams, but they do little or nothing to replenish the ground water that supplies the wells that serve 58 percent of all Mainers. The percentage is even higher… Read More
One of the most daunting impediments to Maine’s economic future in this age of technology is its lack of college graduates with degrees in science and engineering. A serious threat to the state’s educational present is its pressing shortage of math and science teachers. The… Read More
Show business folks love the shock value of shattering a taboo, but they have almost reached the end of the line. Homosexuality has long been old hat. Same with incest. Monica Lewinsky cracked the taboo against public discussion of specific body parts; “The Vagina Monologues” finished it off. Read More
The Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes are developing a new casino proposal. The Passamaquoddy representative to the Legislature, Donald Soctomah, says the tribes soon will present lawmakers with a complete and factual description of the proposal. Sen. Ken Lemont of Kittery, the likely site of the casino, says he… Read More
It is hardly shocking that members of the European Union are saying ever more loudly that they resent the United States throwing its military weight around. The United States has a lot of military weight; from the continent, its slightest nudge looks like a body slam. It is… Read More
Learning Results, Maine’s system to raise academic standards, was first debated before today’s high school seniors were in kindergarten. It is not required to be even partly in place until many of them will have finished college. Education groups asking legislators for more time this week can make… Read More
The energy bill passed by the House was so bad – big subsidies for oil and coal, very little for efficiency – that the Senate’s, by comparison, will have to be better. But just beating the House version is too low a goal; the Senate has several opportunities… Read More
At the beginning of this session, the Maine Department of Marine Resources presented the Legislature’s Marine Resources Committee with a plan to overhaul the way the state considers aquaculture leases, a process now infected with bitter disputes and expensive litigation. It was a thoughtful, thorough plan, backed by… Read More
Gov. King kept his word and more in restoring funds to state health care programs now that the budget shortfall does not look as dismal as expected. But the earlier proposed cuts raised several issues that the new revenues merely paper over and do nothing for programs under… Read More
By agreeing last week to reopen the 1999 management plan to the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, Maine and the National Park Service are returning to basics. The ensuing debate is likely to be loud and prolonged, but in the end it should be preferable to the chronic complaining and… Read More
Give two UMaine researchers credit for open-mindedness both as scientists and residents in a state where organic farming has an important and growing place in farming. Their work should remind lawmakers that these farmers must be given a chance to grow and certify their crops. Read More
The 2002 Winter Games left Americans with a sense of national pride – 34 medals, the most ever by far – and accomplishment – a few judging controversies aside, the massive undertaking of hosting the world was pulled off flawlessly. And, despite the eye-popping $2-billion price tag, Salt… Read More
The Maine Kids Count Data Book is a mere 16 pages long this year, but it is a booklet with a bang because it shows a dismaying trend among Maine’s children. Over the last five years, “children staying in homeless or emergency shelters has almost doubled,” according to… Read More
Mainers have long suspected, thanks to anecdotal evidence and personal experience, that they pay a premium when they buy a new car. Now, a study commissioned by the Legislature confirms their worst suspicions: Maine’s new vehicle excise tax is, in fact, the highest (tied with Arizona) in the… Read More
The cliche, made famous again not many years ago by a Democratic leader, is that it takes a village to raise a child. In Bangor, Rosemary Baldacci, who died Tuesday at age 74, could take pride in knowing that her children help to raise a village. Her life,… Read More
We all suffered a loss with the murder of Daniel Pearl – his family, his newspaper, his journalistic colleagues and the reading public. His wife, pregnant, learned the worst after making eloquent appeals for his release through an agonizing month. The Wall Street Journal tried its best to… Read More
House Speaker Mike Saxl’s plan to offer cheaper health care coverage to employees in small businesses could save Maine tens of millions of dollars a year while improving care for hundreds of thousands of Maine residents. The plan is so good it sounds illegal; in fact, the speaker… Read More
Among Enron’s sins has been its campaign toward headlong deregulation of the energy industry. The company lobbied at the national and state levels to turn energy into a commodity that it could buy and sell in its single-minded drive to build profits out of trading rather than from… Read More
The Department of Transportation’s announcement that the number of options being considered for a connector between I-395 and Route 9 has been slashed from nine to two came as quite a surprise to many at a meeting in Holden Wednesday, including the project’s entire public advisory committee. Even… Read More
Why, after so many years, does the Roman Catholic Church release the names of priests who sexually abused children? As painful as the news is for some parishioners, the answer is found in the actions and words of the victims. The identified victim of the… Read More
Well before the beginning of the legislative session in January, members of the King administration were predicting that the budget shortfall would be nowhere near the projected $250 million. Their anticipation of a gap that revenue forecasters this week put closer to $160 million gave the administration the… Read More
The great thing about expanding Medicaid coverage in Maine is that not only do more people get health care but the federal government pays for two-thirds of the cost. The danger of this coverage is that it can outrun Maine’s ability to pay physicians a fair rate, pushing… Read More
No one knows better than Superintendent Matthew Oliver of SAD 4 how Maine might integrate laptops in schools to provide students with opportunities for learning they otherwise would miss. His recent report on the experiences of teachers and eighth-graders at Piscataquis Community Middle School, which has… Read More
Chief Justice Leigh Saufley is new on the job as head of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. In her first State of the Judiciary address to the Legislature Tuesday she sounded like a seasoned veteran. Actually (and no offense meant to Justice Saufley), she sounded… Read More
Colin L. Powell proved once again last week that he is no ordinary secretary of state. He spent more than an hour on MTV’s global satellite television program “Be Heard,” fielding questions, some hardball, from young people around the world. His answers were as good as the questions. Read More
When President Bush visits American troops at the demilitarized zone today, he will carry with him a satellite photo of the Korean peninsula at night. The South will show up as awash in the electric light of prosperity and freedom. The North will be nearly dark, its few… Read More
If a local environmental group lacks standing to intervene at the Board of Environmental Protection over a development in Bangor, virtually all contentious hearings the BEP has held over the last decade would have been considered improper. The precedent has been set and reset for 30 years, and… Read More
On a gray winter day, in a February thaw, with dirty remnants of snow and ice lining the roads, Route 3 from Mount Desert Island to Ellsworth flaunts a spark of excitement. The Trojan Girls have been at work. The utility poles carry their signs,… Read More
It has been five years since consultants hired to evaluate Maine’s antiquated and inordinately expensive prison system recommended that six of the state’s eight adult prisons be closed, including the Downeast Correctional Facility in Washington County. Last week, Gov. King proposed a $117.9 million bond package that includes… Read More
Is 43 years enough time to fix what is blatantly broken in Maine’s higher-education system? State Sen. Mary Cathcart of Orono has been passing around a 10-part series from 1959 editions of the Bangor Daily News, with the problems described in the articles depressingly current. The series suggests,… Read More
A popular herbal product called kava kava, said to relieve anxiety and stress, is having an anxious time of it itself. German scientists have linked it with 30 cases of liver disease. Six of the victims experienced liver failure. One died, and four others required liver transplants. Switzerland… Read More
It’s hard enough to get people to pay taxes when they appreciate when they get in return, but when they see the money going elsewhere and not back to them, it is nearly impossible. So at the rally last week against a local-option sales tax, the minimum rural… Read More
Something funny has happened to The New York Times best seller list published in the Sunday Times Book Review section. For several weeks in a row, three of the top five in the current hardcover list had a dagger at the end of the listing. The dagger leads… Read More
The next chancellor for the University of Maine System, Joseph Westphal, breezed this week through a couple of issues he will surely face when he starts in April: boosting research and development, capturing students now lost to schools out of state, being more accountable to the public. All… Read More
When the Senate failed to produce 60 votes to end a filibuster, supporters of increasing the average fuel economy for automobiles had to give up on the idea of reaching 40 mpg within the next decade. To get an idea of how little progress has been made on… Read More
Requiring Maine’s electric utilities to encourage people to use less of their product never made a lot of sense, and now that the utilities no longer generate the power they sell, the conservation part of their mission seems even more distant. A recently revised bill in the Legislature’s… Read More
As the Legislature continues to work out the details of a reform that would shift much of school funding from the property tax to the sales tax, the difficulty of finding enough sales to tax becomes apparent. Though the bill, intended to ease the pressure on property taxes,… Read More
The King administration’s proposal to index gasoline-tax increases to inflation is an understandable reaction to years of fighting with legislators over penny increases to the tax, currently at 22 cents. But indexing raises problems as well as revenue and should be viewed with caution by members of the… Read More
In case you missed it, President Bush continues to press ahead with his idea of letting people invest part of their Social Security contributions in the stock market. In his State of the Union address, he include d the line, “We must make Social Security financially stable and… Read More
Maine Reps. Tom Allen and John Baldacci are certain to vote for reform and against soft money when campaign-finance reform comes to a vote in the House, perhaps Wednesday. But while reformers have gotten the required 218 members to bring the bill by Reps. Christopher Shays and Martin… Read More
As the tattered American flag rescued from the rubble of the World Trade Center entered the stadium, a respectful hush fell over the crowd at the opening ceremony Friday for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Instinctively, with no external prompting, the 55,000 on hand put celebration aside… Read More
In most cities, the home team wins the Super Bowl and fans pour into the streets to celebrate that particular happy event. In Boston, the New England Patriots defeat the St. Louis Rams in a football game and fans pour into the streets to curse the baseball success… Read More
After embarrassing itself for four months by its failure to pass an economic stimulus bill, the Senate finally did the right thing this week, or at least the best thing one could hope for in an election year. It gave up. Instead, the Senate quickly… Read More
To understand the powerful need for a legislative office to oversee the activities and results of Maine government, look at the current debate in Augusta over health care cuts to a number of programs. Lawmakers ask questions they hope will reveal the effect of the cuts and instead… Read More
Most Mainers saw Duane “Buzz” Fitzgerald for the last time during Gov. King’s State of the State address in January, where he received the first Governor’s Award for Extraordinary Public Service for his work. Mr. Fitzgerald, who died of brain cancer Friday at age 62, easily deserved such… Read More
In the weeks immediately prior to Sept. 11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put himself in the spotlight – and on the hot seat – with a series of speeches vaguely calling for reform of a military establishment he described anecdotally as inflexible, outdated and riven by turf battles. Read More
A report released last week revealing that Acadia National Park was underfunded wasn’t so surprising; analysts can go to lots of places in government or private business and find shortages in staffing and programs. What was remarkable about the Acadia study was the amount the park was behind,… Read More
Just five meetings were needed last fall for a legislative commission to assemble a plan to boost higher education in Maine through a permanent council that would set education targets, advocate for needed support and change a culture that still sees higher education as an option rather than… Read More
With the stock market sliding downward despite continuing signs of an improving economy, Wall Street clearly is rephrasing the question of the day. It’s no longer whether there are other Enrons out there, but how many. The answer, apparently, is quite a few. None may… Read More
The events of Sept. 11 and after opened a lot of eyes to a lot of vulnerabilities in matters of homeland security, public health, law enforcement, investigation and prosecution. While there is disagreement on whether some of these vulnerabilities are real and overlooked or imagined and overblown, federal… Read More
Though all the actors gathered quickly, who can say whether the $8.5 billion drama over coveted state highway funds is already scripted? If it is, this will happen: State highway officials will testify about the centrality of federal funding to local transportation plans, members of Congress will talk… Read More
The annual Measures of Growth study of Maine, being released today, is especially important his year because it marks the end of an economic cycle. Begun in a recession in 1993, the measures charted Maine’s progress in business, the environment and community through rapid growth and state budget… Read More
Former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay abruptly canceled eagerly anticipated testimony this week before Congress because events of the weekend made it likely “the tenor of the hearings will be prosecutorial.” Mr. Lay would do well to give a closer listen – it’s become a full-blown chorus. Read More
Everyone in the Bush administration seems to agree that the people captured in Afghanistan and now held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are “illegal combatants” and not prisoners of war. But Secretary of State Colin Powell has raised a serious question as to how their status should be… Read More
In the opening section of his State of the State address, Gov. King ticked off several positive trends for Maine and its economy – increasing household income, easing of the tax burden, lowering of electricity costs. Though the gains are modest – in a few instances somewhat more… Read More
For all the wheels within wheels that spin out budget numbers in the state’s General Purpose Aid to Education and make the K-12 budgeting process so difficult to understand, one recent addition to the funding formula is clear enough and wrong enough to create something of a crisis. Read More
In the war on terrorism, the White House and Congress have marched as one. In the war on recession, partisan squabbling is so fierce that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan now says the two sides ought to just retreat and let recession defeat itself. Now,… Read More
Amid all the scoundrels, fakers, boosters, suckers, dummies and victims tangled up in the Enron collapse, a few heroes have emerged. They saw it coming a long time ago and said so. A breezy columnist for the New York Daily News wrote a year ago… Read More
A petition campaign by legislators to further siphon funds from the governor’s technology initiative is being portrayed as nothing more than making a choice between frills and essentials. Laptop computers for middle-schoolers may be nice, but such things as General Purpose Aid to education and helping the poor,… Read More
To say that President Bush has grown in office is an understatement his demeanor since Sept. 11 has exposed and that his State of the Union address demolished. Transformed would be a better description. The most obvious manifestation of this transformation is his skill in… Read More
The original appeal of term limits – that they would bring new perspectives and fresh ideas to the State House – probably has come to pass, though it is hard to quantify. Comments from lawmakers suggest at least that rank and file are being listened to more often… Read More
It took guts for President Pervez Musharraf to order a crackdown on radical Islamic extremism in Pakistan. His Jan. 12 speech came as an almost unique event in the Muslim world. It validated the Bush administration’s decision to rely on Pakistan as a key member of the coalition… Read More
The press release that came out of Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton’s office January 2001 included all the calm government-speak of an official making a small programmatic adjustment. On workers’ comp for coal miners, the governor was still behind his state’s 1996 reforms. The reforms had saved money and… Read More
Speaking of being wrong, we were wrong Monday to print a cartoon by Jim Borgman that likened the Enron debacle to a plane crashing into an office building. Though we received just one phone call and a single letter of protest about the cartoon, even if no one… Read More
Advocates for the mentally ill and mentally retarded are trying to defend their state programs while recognizing that legislators have the difficult job of trying to close the budget gap. And while they are looking at programs that didn’t use all of last year’s allotted share, by deferring… Read More
From the start, Americans responded admirably to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, expressing heartfelt sympathy to the injured and the survivors of the dead, donating mountains of emergency supplies, filling charities to overflowing. Congress responded similarly; one its first acts was to create a compensation fund,… Read More
Forty years after the surgeon general concluded cigarettes were harmful and three years since the tobacco companies stopped lying about it, the industry has devised a handful of new ways for customers to consumer tobacco products, specifically nicotine. The new hook by the industry is that these products… Read More
Sen. Olympia Snowe got quite an earful when she toured Maine this month to check on anti-terrorism efforts. She found county and municipal officials and other civic leaders eager to keep on preparing for the worst. But they need instruction, equipment, better communications – and money. Read More
Employing a tactic most often found among mob hitmen, the lead Andersen accountant for the Enron books refuses to testify before Congress – David “The Amortizer” Duncan says he can offer no information whatsoever that will not be self-incriminating. Can’t wait to hear Tony Soprano order his crew… Read More
How much would policyholders celebrate if their insurance rates dropped 1 or 2 percent? Probably not at all, but if they were to increase by that much while significantly expanding mental-health and substance abuse coverage, the effect, according to the King administration, would be “imprudent.” The fear of… Read More
After spending its month-long vacation trying to settle the disagreement over an economic stimulus package through blame-fixing and name-calling, Congress is back on the job and, in one chamber at least, suddenly embracing cooperation and compromise just as Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says the stimulus may not… Read More
No doubt for some of the 500 people at Bangor High School last week hearing about a government pension offset and windfall elimination provision was something of a shock. But the pension losses, created by Social Security changes in 1977 and 1983, have been around for years and,… Read More
Last year, lawmakers took up two bills regarding Maine’s coyote snaring program – one to eliminate it, the other to expand it. Based upon the belief that the state’s relatively uncontrolled coyote population is devastating its deer herds, the first bill was rejected, the second passed and the… Read More
Maine’s next governor will not take office for another year, but its current one, Angus King, sounded Tuesday very much like a governor giving a farewell speech. His final State of the State address was a summation of what he saw as accomplished during the last seven years… Read More
The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee opens its inquiry tomorrow on the Enron affair; the House Energy and Commerce Committee resumes its inquiry begun last month. Eventually, at least seven and perhaps as many as 10 congressional committees may look into how the nation’s largest bankruptcy occurred, how it… Read More
During a chance for governors to ask questions of President Clinton in 1999, Angus King raised his hand and said, as he tells it, “Mr. President, it’s these special education expenses that are driving our budgets. It would be better if, instead of starting new programs, you funded… Read More