AUGUSTA (AP) – A bill that was on the verge of final enactment Monday forestalls the latest attempt by a Maine town to deorganize and directs steps be taken to lower the community’s expenses.

The town of Cooper, located between Machias and Calais, sought the Legislature’s go-ahead to deorganize and join Maine’s Unorganized Territory. Some of the town’s 145 residents said the move would lower property taxes. It was Cooper’s second attempt at deorganization since 1997.

Lawmakers who discourage deorganizations put together a compromise that suspends the move for now. The bill received final House approval Monday and awaited a final Senate vote of approval, which was expected.

The bill directs the Department of Transportation, Cooper and other nearby towns to find a way to lower winter maintenance costs on state Route 191, expenses that helped to drive the latest move to deorganize.

The bill also calls for state assistance in finding people to fill open elective positions in the town, said Rep. Christopher Barstow, co-chairman of the State and Local Government Committee, which worked out the compromise bill. If those measures don’t work, efforts to deorganize could resume next year.

Barstow, D-Gorham, said deorganization shifts local costs to other communities in the Unorganized Territory.

“It’s negative because towns lose a local identity (and) heritage,” Barstow said after the House vote.

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Stamped as irrelevant, gay gene’ bill killed

AUGUSTA (AP) – Labeled by critics as an irrelevant piece of legislation, a “gay gene” bill that tied together gay rights and abortion issues has been killed for the session.

The House and Senate were formally notified Monday that the bill to outlaw abortion based on sexual orientation has been unanimously rejected by the Judiciary Committee, which puts it in the dead files for the session.

The bill sponsored by Rep. Brian Duprey, R-Hampden, received a cool reception at a hearing earlier this month when anti-abortion activists and their adversaries who oppose restrictions on abortion dismissed the measure as irrelevant.

The bill sought to make it illegal to abort a fetus based on what it called “the projected sexual orientation of the fetus after birth.” First, scientists would have to identify a gay gene that could then be detected in a fetus.

A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday on another bill sponsored by Duprey, which seeks a constitutional amendment providing that only a union between a man and a woman can be legally recognized as a marriage in Maine.

The state already has a law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

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O’Leary, former labor federation chief, OK’d as UMaine trustee

AUGUSTA (AP) – The former president of the Maine AFL-CIO won the state Senate’s confirmation Monday to serve on the University of Maine System’s Board of Trustees.

Charles O’Leary’s nomination was shelved in 2003 by Gov. John Baldacci as he sought to maintain a numerical status quo between men and women on the board. O’Leary, of Orono, this year won unanimous committee backing for a seat on the seven-campus system’s board.

Also confirmed Monday were former state lawmaker Merle Nelson of Falmouth and Cynthia Phinney of New Sharon for reappointments to the Maine Community College Board of Trustees, and Andrea Watkins of Windsor for a new appointment to that board.

The Senate confirmed several appointments to boards of the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf and Maine School of Science and Mathematics.