Here’s What the Maine State Legislature Did (and Didn’t Do) This Year [PODCAST]

Maine Policy Institute’s Director of Legislative Affairs Jacob Posik joined the Maine Wire podcast to review everything that has happened in the 131st Maine State Legislature — the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The 2023 legislative session is, blessedly, finished. For a precious few months, the free citizens of Maine can rest knowing that those men and women of unsleeping malevolence who seasonally inhabit the State House — er, I mean, our laudable public servants — will be unable to impose new burdens and taxes on our productive liberty. What follows is a summary of the significant legal and political developments of the 131st Legislature.

But first, an Executive Summary:

Republicans, limited to minorities in both the House and Senate, deluded themselves into thinking that they had meaningful leverage and colleagues across the aisle who wanted compromise.

They had neither.

Instead, the Democratic Cerebus of Gov. Janet Mills, Senate President Troy Jackson, and House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross wielded majorities brutally and efficiently to impose the will of Democratic donors and Portland area socialists on the rest of Maine. Your taxes and electric bills are going to increase, Planned Parenthood and solar developers are going to get wealthier, schools will continue to promote social contagion based on radical gender ideology, and politically connected businesses and nonprofits are going to get more of your money for little discernible benefit.

Gov. Mills set the tone for the session early with two major moves.

First, she put her weight behind the most aggressive abortion law ever considered in western civilization. She did this after stating multiple times during her re-election campaign that she would do no such thing. Then the governor, the media, and Democratic supporters led a misleading campaign to convince Mainers that the abortion bill was not as extreme as it really was. Second, Mills conspired with legislative leaders to torture the Maine Constitution and the plain meaning of English words to accommodate their mutual interest in enacting a partisan, uniparty budget. With these actions she told lawmakers: My way or the highway.

On taxes, spending, education, abortion, energy, sex changes for kids, weird porn books in schools, the growth of government, and pretty much every other policy sphere, Republicans mustered doomed resistance while Democrats turned the State House into a Chapo Trap House fever dream. Without majority power in either the House or Senate, the only leverage Republicans had was the optics of bipartisanship — for example, letting the governor have a photo op with Republicans clapping behind her. Democrats revealed early on that they had little need for the bipartisan votes or even the appearance of bipartisanship, and Republicans responded by offering both freely anyways.

Some interesting fights — that is, fights that did not have predictable outcomes decided in a Democratic caucus at the Augusta Country Club — occurred between far left liberals and Mills, with some libertarian wild cards in the mix. The most high profile of those was the fight over tribal sovereignty (a.k.a. casinos), but there were also standard intertribal squabbles over things like gun control, higher taxes, and whether to give more freebies to migrants and members of the non-working class. In both the Republican v. Democrat fights and the Governor v. Speaker fights, the outcomes can be fairly summarized as: Janet got her way. That much is evidenced by her winning streak on veto-overrides: undefeated.

After promising to “find where the common ground lies,” Speaker Talbot Ross went to work advancing hyper-partisan schemes favored by an extreme liberal minority while, at times, beguiling her Republican colleagues into thinking she was open-minded about major issues. She attempted to legalize trespassing, falsely claimed one of her bills had the backing of the Maine State Police, and spent Juneteenth calling for her supporters to “storm the capitol” over supposed white supremacists at the Department of Education. Two of her major initiatives — the tribes bill and a bill to give Medicaid to illegal aliens — failed.

Jackson — when he wasn’t alleging a nefarious Allagash conspiracy to rig selectboard elections against him or rigging elections by threatening to withhold tax credits if Republicans refused to drop out of legislative races — operated as one would expect a loyal union stooge to operate: not brilliant but effective.

Whereas clashes between the Speaker and the Governor played out via leaks and passive aggressive comments to newspaper reporters, the divide between Jackson and Mills — supposedly a long-standing, bitter divide — rarely became public.

Only when Attorney General Aaron Frey admitted to cheating on his live-in girlfriend of 12 years with a married direct report, and to covering up that adulterous affair for eight months, did we see daylight between Jackson and Mills. Jackson called for an outside investigation, potentially as a play to get his own ally installed in that office. But the investigator quickly broomed the scandal, and Mills said nothing.

Behind the scenes, the two career Democrats disagreed most pointedly over union matters. Jackson, a longtime unionista, of course wanted to maximize taxpayer dollars flowing into union pockets. Mills, however, seemed to delight in screwing over the unions, especially the state employees’ union. Ultimately, the legislature approved a massive offshore wind power port deal the construction unions called a “home run.” But the government unions are still struggling to find a sympathetic ally in the Mills Administration.

Of the two legislative leaders, Jackson proved more competent at making the trains run on time. This much became apparent as the House’s unfinished business continued to pile up well into the end of June. Talbot Ross’s leadership was so embarrassing for Democrats that even columnist Al Diamon, despite his perpetually low expectations for politicians and his general disinclination toward conservative ideas, has called on her to resign. That’s no small thing considering Talbot Ross’s status as the first African-American Maine House Speaker has immunized her against criticism in many parts of the state. Diamon had better be careful he doesn’t run afoul of a newly minted law, co-sponsored by the Speaker, that makes it a crime in Maine to cause someone “emotional distress.”

Republican lawmakers eked out minor victories, like securing dedicated funding for transportation infrastructure, but they mostly failed. Sometimes honorably and sometimes loudly.

In the Senate, a relatively young Minority Leader, Trey Stewart of Aroostook, found himself trying to lead some fellow Republicans who first entered state office when he was still in high school. Maybe even Elementary School. The caucus also had some Republicans who held leadership roles until the disastrous elections of 2022. That’s a whole lot of headstrong chefs in one very small kitchen, which is all the more frustrating when some of those Republicans think they’re the next Olympia Snowe. Stewart made the best of a caucus driven mostly by individual personalities. But it’s easy to see that simply gaining a technical majority of Senate Rs will not produce the same unified and coordinated activity that it did for the Senate Ds.

You would probably need 20 or more GOP Senators to have a Senate that actually did Republican things. Which is probably why the Maine Republican Party’s major state elections initiative under newly-elected Chairman Joel Stetkis — “Take Back the Gavel” — is aimed at capturing the Speakership. A Republican-controlled House for the final years of Mills’ term in office is not that big of a stretch, considering flipping a few thousand key votes in the right districts in 2022 would have likely resulted in a Republican House Speaker.

There was disagreement among House Republicans this session over strategy. Those divisions, which rarely became public, were not consequential for the outcome of any legislation, but they could fester if the caucus has actual power. At a high level, the debate seemed to be whether to approach the Democrats like good-faith partners in a negotiation over what’s best for all of Maine or to regard them as malicious political opponents. The former strategy prevailed most of the time. The caucus also has work to do to repair the damage left behind by a former leader who left more than $86k in campaign funds unspent last fall and then gave the money away rather than letting her political heirs inherit it.

Although there are horrifying rumors of a potential fall session of the Legislature, Maine’s fine civil servants will likely return to Augusta in January for a few items of business, potentially even Mills’ new “Office of New Americans” and her plan to import 75,000 workers, including foreign nationals, by 2029. At public events, Talbot Ross has made clear that she will continue to fight for a tribes bill as well as her bill to give Medicaid to illegal aliens.

However, the stage has mostly been set for the 2024 legislative elections.

The high profile presidential contest between an unpopular incumbent and, potentially, an even more unpopular former president — who may or may not be running a 1920 Eugene Debs-style campaign — will likely dominate the political dynamic. But at the district level, Democrats will have to defend a record that includes killing tax reform, legalizing elective late-term abortions, blocking all welfare reform, expanding experimental sex change procedures for children, driving up the cost of electricity through solar subsidies, handing politically connected labor unions a wind power windfall, and rejecting all school transparency and parental rights bills. Thanks to the one-party rule in Augusta, selling that message should be an easy task for a competent party.

The 131st Maine State Legislature

The 131st Maine State Legislature spent money.

A lot of it.

The record-breaking spending started in December when Mills proposed spending nearly $500 million, mostly on one-time checks for some Maine residents. Mills initially wanted to spend that money without public hearings. Jackson and Talbot Ross agreed to the rushed timeline, attempting to have lawmakers approve the bill on the same day the legislature convened. Senate Republicans were able to force hearings, but were ultimately unable to block or change the cash handout.

In the most expensive move of the legislative session, Democratic lawmakers pulled a parliamentary maneuver to pass a partisan budget with no Republican support. The $9.9 billion biennial budget is the largest ever for Maine, dwarfing Gov. Paul LePage’s last budget, which totaled $7.1 billion. Growth in Maine’s budgets has substantially outpaced both inflation and population growth in Maine. The extraordinary spending levels have been sustained mostly by large increases in federal dollars flowing to the state, but also by record high state tax collections.

Republicans initially believed their Democratic counterparts were negotiating in good faith over the budget bill, and they pushed for a modest $200 million tax rate reduction for the first $23,000 of a Maine workers’ income. Jackson went on WVOM’s George Hale & Ric Tyler Show, falsely accused Republicans of seeking tax cuts for the wealthy, and then the Democratic majorities rammed through their spending bill, effectively closing the door on tax relief during the current Legislature.

The parliamentary procedure Mills and Democratic leaders used to implement the Democratic spending plan has been met with a court challenge by a nonprofit group and some Republican state lawmakers. But the challenge is unlikely to impact any of the legislation passed in 2023. The challenge will, however, prove as a useful test to see whether Maine’s judicial branch is still interested in holding legislative and executive abuses of power in check.

At the end of June, state lawmakers approved another massive spending bill. The $500 million package included funding for many Democratic priorities, such as $12 million for offshore wind power, but few concessions to Republicans. The final package also included the Democratic paid leave tax, a new one-percent payroll tax that amounts to the largest state tax increase in decades. Though most Republicans voted against paid family leave and opposed much of the spending package, several members nonetheless stood behind Mills clapping and cheering as she signed the tax-and-spend bill into law.

The closest thing to a spending victory Republicans were able to secure was a transportation bill that will now provide a dedicated funding stream for infrastructure projects and repairs. The bill redirects taxes associated with the sales of automobiles and automobile components from the General Fund to the Highway Fund, mostly plugging the longstanding funding shortfall for road and bridge repairs. While small, the fix is noteworthy considering it should reduce Maine’s need to bond hundreds of millions dollars every couple years to maintain our roads. That will save taxpayers millions in debt payments down the road provided Democrats don’t undo these changes in the future.

The Legislature protected windfall profits for out-of-state solar developers.

Despite bipartisan support for a proposal to rein in massive subsidies for solar developers, Democratic lawmakers were able to secure a tactical victory for the solar lobby. The outcome ensures that electricity rates in Maine will continue to surge in order to pay mostly out-of-state corporations to build and manage solar panels. The nominal purpose of this arrangement is that Mills and her fellow Democrats believe these subsidies will reduce Maine’s carbon emissions and thereby lower global temperatures. In other words, some elected officials think they can change the weather with solar panels and all of us are going to pay higher electric bills as a result.

The policy debate revolved around a 2019 law that expanded “Net Energy Billing” to include solar facilities up to 5 MW. Even several Democrats who voted in favor of the original policy admitted publicly that they had made a mistake, a costly mistake for which Maine ratepayers were suffering.

The law guaranteed an above-market rate for electricity generated at those facilities and paid for it not with tax dollars, but with ratepayer dollars. Maine’s utilities, Central Maine Power and Versant, collected those rate increases and handed the money off to solar companies, 88 percent of which are not located in Maine. While a bipartisan proposal would have placed stiff limits around the program, the solar bill that eventually prevailed, though billed as a solution, left Public Advocate Bill Harwood uncertain as to whether it would decrease the expected $220 million his office has said Mainers will pay for the program by 2025.

If you want anymore evidence that the State Legislature gifted the solar industry several more years of lucrative subsidies, consider that almost immediately after the bill passed, Maine social media users were inundated with advertisements asking them to “subscribe” to “community solar.” Just to be clear: If you subscribe to community solar, you may receive a small discount on your electric bill, but that discount is coming right out of your neighbors’ pocket. For the vast majority of Mainers, electricity bills will continue to rise as a direct consequence of the State Legislature’s solar policies.

State lawmakers finally allowed that family in Newry to mine what could be the biggest lithium deposit ever discovered.

The far left environmentalists running Augusta have decided that pretty much everyone needs to be driving electric vehicles. Yes, EVs are more expensive, the electricity to charge them is getting more expensive, the charging infrastructure really isn’t there, the electricity they run on is still mostly produced by fossil fuels, we don’t really know how well they’ll perform after a few frigid Maine winters, most small town mechanics can’t really fix them, we don’t have good plans for recycling the batteries, and much of the raw materials come from unregulated African mines staffed with children. But these are minor concerns when we’re talking about Maine playing its responsible role in helping change the climate (in the right way).

The EV goals, however, stood at odds with another environmental regulation that prohibited a couple in Newry from tapping a lithium deposit worth as much as $1.5 billion, potentially the largest ever discovered. EVs require lithium. Tesla’s Model S battery, for example, contains more than 130 pounds of the metal. So at the same time the state was telling everyone to buy EVs, it was also preventing the mineral extraction required to build those EVs. Remarkably, the legislature was able to figure this one out. Congrats to the Freeman family on getting permission from the State to use their own property for profitable, job-creating ends.

Abortion

In what was doubtlessly the most acrimonious fight of the year, Maine Democrats passed the most permissive abortion law ever adopted in western civilization. Under the new rule, a healthy woman with a healthy baby can have an abortion for any reason whatsoever at any point during the pregnancy, so long as the doctor at Planned Parenthood signs off on it. The fight over the bill was marked by dishonesty from left-wing supporters, the largest-ever public hearing turnout by pro-lifers, and intense lobbying by the abortion industry.

Democratic lawmakers maintained that the bill was about allowing for late-term abortions in rare cases of fatal fetal abnormalities. However, the Attorney General of Maine said in 2022 that Maine’s existing law already allowed those exceptions. But when it became clear that Democratic communicators were packaging the proposal around fatal fetal abnormalities, the Attorney General’s office pulled an Orwellian swap out, editing without disclosure a guidance document available on its website. With the click of the mouse, the Attorney General’s Office changed its interpretation of the law to accommodate the political needs of the abortion lobby.

Emails obtained by the Maine Wire show how that process played out. No one would have ever known that the AGO was changing public legal guidance to accommodate political needs but for Rep. Reagan Paul flagging the document during an April press conference. Several reporters contacted the AGO’s press office after that, but the journalists for the most part seemed to buy the explanation that AGO’s original guidance was an error.

As if to underscore the dubious talking points of the pro-abortion side, Democratic lawmakers rebuffed multiple Republican efforts to make the language of the bill accurately reflect what Democrats were saying they wanted, i.e. a narrower bill that provided exceptions to Maine’s longstanding viability threshold for fatal fetal abnormalities.

The abortion fight had several dramatic moments. More than 1,500 pro-lifers turned up to the public hearing to oppose the late-term abortion bill in a marathon public hearing. It was a remarkable display of political organizing from the Christian Civic League of Maine and Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn). On the Judiciary Committee, Republicans pulled some schemes to delay the bill, but Democrats anticipated the shenanigans and batted them away. On the House floor, Republicans thought a socialist Democrat from Portland was going to rescue them, but he caved at the last moment. There’s a lesson here: Never trust a socialist.

By far a favorite moment from that floor fight was when a seasoned Republican stood in the wee hours of the morning to remind his colleagues for what was I’m sure the thousandth time that he used to work in law enforcement. As a retired cop, he said, he was uniquely qualified to say that the debate over LD 1619 should end. That’s because driving at such a late hour would not be safe for all the elderly pols in the room. Perhaps he was right, but he seemed to have underestimated the risks Democrats were willing to take with their lives in order to secure a lucrative victory for Planned Parenthood.

In the end, Gov. Janet Mills signed LD 1619 into law despite vowing on multiple occasions during the 2022 campaign that she would do no such thing.

Senate Democrats keep door open for selling dead baby parts

Maine Democrats delivered a profitable new policy to their donors at Planned Parenthood, but they took it a step further as the bill received final approval in the Senate. In response to an amendment from Sen. Eric Brakey (R-Androscoggin) that would have temporarily blocked the transfer or sale of fetal remains following abortions, every single Democrat state senator voted against. You read that right. Every Democrat in the Maine State Senate voted against a ban on the trafficking of aborted baby parts.

Sen. Brakey introduced the amendment based on examples from other states where late-term abortions are legal and fetal organ trafficking has flourished. One of Maine’s top late-term abortion advocates, Dr. Shannon Carr, had testified in favor of LD 1619. But she omitted from her testimony the fact that she was named in a wrongful death lawsuit following the death of a 23-year-old elective abortion patient. Nor did she tell lawmakers that the clinic she was working for, Southwestern Women’s Options, provided the nearby University of New Mexico with dead baby parts for research. Don’t take my word for it: UNM officials very publicly announced a change to their dead baby parts research program after Dr. Carr had return to Maine.

Under Maine’s current laws, it is illegal to donate, transfer, or sell a human fetus — but only if it is alive or was born alive. If the baby is killed with a Digoxin injection before it’s delivered, as is typical with late-term abortions, then the baby’s remains are fair game for researchers at whichever university or pharmaceutical company bids highest.

In 2015, a series of undercover investigative reports from the Center for Medical Progress revealed multiple executives from abortion clinics, including abortion giant Planned Parenthood, discussing the lucrative dead baby market. Sworn deposition footage obtained after the Center was sued only bolstered the revelations from their undercover work.

The market for fetal tissue is sustained primarily by pharmaceutical companies. Those companies have used abortion leftovers to produce vaccines, rheumatoid arthritis treatments, psoriasis treatments, and to conduct stem cell research. I rather doubt you’ll see a new section in Uncle Henry’s for dead baby organs, but fetal organ trafficking is all too real, and thanks to Senate Democrats, Maine’s the newest market.

Sex changes for children

Democratic lawmakers took a serious interest in ensuring Maine children can have healthy sex organs removed if they are said to be suffering from gender dysphoria or if they’re suffering from social contagion and believe they’re suffering from gender dysphoria. Despite medical trends in Europe and some American states, which are headed away from early, irreversible, and experimental interventions for gender confused children, Democrats sprinted headlong into California-style far left policies rooted firmly in the most extreme versions of gender ideology.

[RELATED: Transgender Youth, Like Any Other American, Deserve the Highest Quality of Care…]

The Democratic desire to embrace the transgender moment manifested itself as opposition to parental rights bills and in support for expanding minors access to sex change drugs and surgeries. Mills signed into law a bill to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to get sex change drugs over their parents’ objections. When parents consent, or perhaps when they insist, there’s effectively no lower age limit on when a sex change can start. Mills also signed a bill to reaffirm her previous executive order that taxpayer money can be used for sex changes, including on minors. The verdict isn’t in yet on a bill that would prevent Maine law enforcement from reuniting a kidnapped child from out-of-state with their parents if the child was brought to Maine for the purposes of getting sex change drugs or surgeries. But be patient.

The transgender ideology was also at work as Democrats rejected every single Republican proposal to restore and protect parental rights in public education.

Several Republican bills came in response to instances, both in Maine and nationally, of parents discovering that school employees had coached their son or daughter into “social transitions” without their knowledge or consent. Many school boards adopted this transgender secret-keeping as official district policy. In Damariscotta, a mom discovered that, even without a district policy codifying this kind of thing, a 26-year-old conditionally licensed UMaine grad student had secretly provided her 13-year-old daughter with breast binders. That particular affray is currently the subject of a federal lawsuit that could determine just how far parental rights extend into the operations of government-run schools.

A bill to require parental consent before a public school starts a social gender transition on a child of any age died. A bill that would have prevented males from competing in women’s sports went down faster than Lia Thomas’s female competition in the 100-meter freestyle. But not every wacky idea from the Gender & Women’s Studies majors setting the agenda in Augusta became law. For example, a proposal to make the description of Maine’s state seal gender neutral and then subject either the sailor or the farmer on the state flag to an artistic sex change never got traction.

Maine is almost guaranteed to see the transgender social contagion grow because Democrats also refused to get behind the idea that maybe elementary school libraries aren’t the place for pronographic depictions of children engaged in sex acts. Democrats, with the help of some Senate Republicans, killed a bill that would have required schools to establish a rating system for books kept in libraries, such that parents would be able to know that “Gender Queer” was inappropriate for a middle schooler without having to examine the cartoon renderings of strap-on sex. Democrats, again with help from some Republicans, also killed a bill that would have removed an exemption schools have from Maine’s law against giving obscene material to minors. If you give pornography to a twelve-year-old at a Little League game, you can be charged with a Class C crime. But if you’re a public school librarian, no such Puritanical restrictions apply.

Now, in Maine, school children will be inundated with gender ideology and sexually explicit content, and, if they become gender confused, we’ll give them the very same drugs that were once given to sex offenders to sterilize them — before society decided that that was barbaric. Planned Parenthood, which has decided to get in on the sex change market, will be passing out Lupron and Histrelin like Skittles to little kids for the Orewellianly named practice of “gender-affirming” care if they pick up Barbie instead of G.I. Joe — and Maine taxpayers are, in some cases, picking up the tab. Social workers, who have now proliferated in Maine’s schools, may continue secretly handing out sex change advice like guidance counselors used to pass out college brochures. You need signed parental consent to give a kid an Advil, but there’s no paperwork when you’re helping them make their breasts look manly.

Every attempt at reducing taxes was killed.

As the battle over the $9.9 billion biennial spending bill made clear, Democrats were not interested in reducing taxes. Not income taxes, not sales taxes, and not any other kind of tax the state uses to extract money from residents and businesses. Maine currently has the 3rd largest tax burden in the United States. Rather than a mark of shame, Democratic lawmakers seemed to accept it as a challenge to take that #1 spot.

An attempt to phase out the state income tax died mostly along party lines. So did several other bills that would have reduced Maine’s state income tax. Senate Democrats killed a bill that would have reduced, from 5.8 percent to 4.5 percent, state income taxes for married couples making less than $46,000 per year and individuals making less than $23,000. As a result, low-income Mainers will be $300-$600 dollars poorer at the end of the year.

A bill to allow families to deduct vehicle excise taxes from their state tax bills failed. A bill to exempt overtime pay from the income tax failed. A bill to exempt gold and silver purchases from sales tax failed. A bill to exempt “Gold Star Parents” — that is, the parents of U.S. servicemen who have died in combat — from the state income tax failed. A bill to allow a tax deduction for home heating costs died. A bill to bring Maine’s 5.5 percent general sales tax back to 5 percent died in the Senate. That change would have reduced sales tax collections by nearly $150 million per year. A proposal to create a “sales tax holiday,” akin to the one Massachusetts has most years, was voted down in the House and the Senate, mostly along party lines. The fate of a bill to exempt diapers from the sales tax has yet to be decided.

Lawmakers killed a dragnet vehicle inspection program

The Maine State Police lobbied hard to get lawmakers to enact a new digital inspection program that would have increased the annual vehicle inspection fee from $12.50 to $20, ended so-called “sticker shopping,” and given the State Police a new avenue to pull you over. Fortunately, it failed.

Under the proposal, the new digitized inspection system would have recorded when you brought your car to a shop for repairs. If you failed inspection for any reason, a digital record would have been created in a database maintained by the State Police. If you brought your car elsewhere for a second opinion, that shop would be able to see that you had previously attempted to get your car stickered and force you to get the same repairs the first mechanic recommended. Rather than deregulate Maine’s onerous vehicle inspection program, this bill would have doubled down and created greater incentive for mechanics to say you needed unnecessary repairs to your vehicle.

Worst of all, the State Police never responded to criticisms of how the new program could be used on their end. For example, let’s say your sticker was good until the end of the month but you brought it in early to get it over with. Your car fails that inspection, but you opt to bring it somewhere else for a second opinion. If a state trooper is following you on the highway and punches your license plate information into the new digital system, can they see that your car recently failed inspection and use that failure as the pretext for pulling you over? Nobody really knows, but it’s a creepy prospect.

The surveillance system could also have been lucrative for trial attorneys. Say, for example, that someone failed an inspection at the beginning of the month their current inspection was set to expire. If they later got into a car accident where they were at fault, would an attorney be able to use their failed inspection as evidence of negligence even though they were still in compliance with Maine’s vehicle inspection law?

Considering no evidence exists to support annual motor vehicle inspections make roads safer — in Maine or elsewhere — Mainers dodged a bullet. While this proposal is dead for now, there’s little doubt the State Police will be back again in the future trying to install it.

Sludgepocalypse

On energy and environmental policy, one major theme of the session was Republicans attempting to clean up after predictable mistakes made by previous legislatures. This was the case with Maine’s solar policy, which takes money from poor residents to fund windfall profits for out-of-state developers in the name of changing the weather. Even some Democrats admitted that the 2019 law that brokered that arrangement was a terrible mistake. But Republicans were unable to overcome the mutually beneficial relationship between the solar industry lobbyists and some Democrats.

[PODCAST: Maine Wire Podcast: Sludgepocalypse with Rep. Mike Soboleski…]

Republicans did succeed, though, in fixing one mistake the previous Legislature made when it banned Maine companies from importing oversized bulky waste from other states. That change brought Maine’s waste treatment and landfill systems, predictably, to the brink of an environmental crisis. The effort to resolve the problem was driven primarily by Rep. Mike Soboleski (R-Phillips) and only begrudgingly accepted by Sen. Anne Carney (D-Cumberland), whose bill created the problem in the first place. Unlike Carney, Soboleski came up with the radical idea to visit landfills and waste treatment facilities before decreeing from on high how they ought to operate. He was even thanked privately by Mills herself for digging Democrats out from under the pile of human excrement they’d heaped upon the state.

We’ve written at length about sludgepocalypse and the policies involved, but briefly: Maine’s municipal waste facilities and landfill operators were unable to process enough raw sewage because a bipartisan bill from the 130th Legislature prevented a major landfill operator from importing the oversized bulky waste it needs to stabilize the landfill where many cities and towns dispose of sewage. As a result, overflow tanks began to fill up, threatening to spill over into bodies of water. Sewer bills began to rise as the landfill operator was forced to truck solid waste into New Brunswick. As costs began to rise, along with the level of human sludge in need of a landfill, Soboleski was able to broker an agreement between lawmakers, the landfill operator, municipal facilities, and the Department of Environmental Protection that kept crisis at bay.

Maine approved a massive offshore wind project.

One of the final acts of the Legislature was to approve an offshore wind power port bill. That has laid the foundation to create new government panels and commissions that will oversee the construction of a massive port, either in Searsport or Eastport, where large wind turbines will be constructed.

[RELATED: Wind Power Port Bill Hands Lucrative “Home Run” to Politically Connected Unions…]

Although Mills and Democratic lawmakers agreed broadly with the plan to erect offshore wind turbines in the Gulf of Maine, there was some disagreement about whether the jobs involved in the project should be primarily union jobs. Maine’s large construction companies, including the company responsible for building the majority of Maine’s onshore wind turbines, said pro-union carve outs in the original offshore wind bill would prevent them from bidding on the project. That raised the possibility that a massive taxpayer-funded project would primarily benefit out-of-state unionized workers.

In the end, the head of Maine’s AFL-CIO called the wind power bill Mills signed a “home run” for labor unions.

As for the North Atlantic Right Whale, the American Lobster, and Gulf of Maine haddock, they could not be reached for comment.

Fin

In sum, living in Maine is about to get more expensive for everyone, as taxes and energy prices climb, but as Mainers sink further into poverty, we can at least get our 14-year-olds taxpayer-funded sex changes and late-term abortions.