1. The race for governor in Maine was so close, candidate Paul LePage had to wait until the morning after Election Day to find out he had won. The Waterville native defeated independent Eliot Cutler and three other candidates to become the first Republican to be elected Maine governor since John McKernan in 1990.

LePage, who will be inaugurated Jan. 5,  said he won’t be going to Augusta with an “ax to be chopping heads,” but he’ll be seeking to do what he did as mayor of Waterville: Reverse the trend of high taxes, streamline regulations, and shrink the size and scope of government.

It was a good November for Republicans in general as the Grand Old Party took control of both chambers of the Legislature.

2. The Oxford County casino referendum came down to money. Proponents of the casino far outspent opponents, and it paid off. The referendum passed, albeit by a small margin. The strongest support came from the folks who will be affected the most – the voters of Oxford County.

The final tally was so close that opponents demanded a recount. It did no good. On Dec. 12, opponents gave up on the recount after no appreciable changes in results were found.

The Oxford casino’s success at the polls helped backers of a casino at Bates Mill No. 5 in Lewiston. At the end of the year, the effort had raised 75,000 signatures collected in 300 towns and cities across Maine and in all 16 counties. It included 10,000 signatures from Lewiston alone, enough to push the Lewiston effort over the top and onto the November 2011 Election Day ballot.

3. More grim news out of Afghanistan came late in the year as more U.S. soldiers were killed, including a trio from Maine.

In late November it was learned that Army Pfc. Buddy McLain, a husband and father who lived in Peru, was one of six U.S. troops killed in an attack by an Afghan border policeman during a training mission in Nangarhar province near the Pakistan border. The attacker was killed in the shootout, and the Taliban claimed responsibility for the killings, according to published reports.

McLain was the third Mainer killed in Afghanistan over the course of a month. His death prompted U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, to send a letter to the U.S. Army asking that all the details surrounding the circumstances leading up to McLain’s death be released and that all programs used to train Afghan soldiers come under review.

Only three weeks before McLain’s death, another Maine soldier from the 101st Airborne — Andrew Hutchins, 20, of New Portland — was killed by enemy small-arms fire while on tower duty, according to the Pentagon.

Another Mainer, Marine 1st Lt. James R. Zimmerman, whose parents live in Smyrna Mills, was killed Nov. 2 in Helmand province. 

4. Lewiston and the surrounding area got the kind of attention nobody wanted over the summer and into fall: tiny insects that feed on human blood. Troublesome bedbugs were found to be a problem just about everywhere, schools, apartments, elderly housing and hospitals included.

Some schools were closed due to infestations. So was at least one hospital unit, and several apartments had to be treated with super heat to kill the bugs.

Ultimately, there was some measure of relief in news from across the nation — bedbugs were found to be a rising problem just about everywhere else, too. And some experts insisted people may have overreacted to the presence of the critters in the first place. After the Sabattus Primary School closed Oct. 5 and 6 because of bedbugs, the state Department of Education issued guidelines on how schools should react.

5. A crane operator escaped with only an injury to his thumb Sept. 2 when part of Route 136 in Auburn gave way beneath his rig and sent piles of sand, rocks and asphalt — and his crane — crashing down an embankment toward the Androscoggin River.

Tragedy was averted, but the headaches were very real. The collapse forced the closure of a long section of Route 136 — among the busiest commuter routes in the area — for nearly three months. Motorists traveling between Auburn, Durham and Freeport had to take long and sometimes baffling detours. Residents who live along those detour routes found their normally quiet neighborhoods overrun. Business all but dried up at stores and shops along the way because patrons could no longer get to them.  

Gov. John Baldacci signed an emergency proclamation allowing the Department of Transportation to speed the bidding process to repair the damaged section. Finally, at the end of November, crews rolled back the signs blocking Route 136 between Durham and Auburn, letting the first cars drive on the stretch of 136 since September.

6. There were big changes at Longley Elementary School after some dire news came in late 2009 — Longley had been identified as one of 10 Maine schools with such persistently low test scores that it qualified for $2 million in federal money to help boost those scores schoolwide to grade levels. One condition attached to the money was that the principal and half of the teachers had to go.

Low test scores at Longley were nothing new. The school, which opened in the early 1970s, is in a low-income neighborhood. The majority of students are Somali immigrants learning to speak English. Many students enter school academically behind their peers.

Over the course of the year, the improvements at Longley began to show. With the federal money, the school hired additional staff and began new programs to boost student performance. The Sun Journal charted the progress with a series of stories about changes at the school.

7. The Nateva Festival in Oxford drew almost 10,000 people, organizers said, and by most accounts, it was also orderly, well-behaved and almost trouble-free.

The July 4 weekend bash at the Oxford Fairgrounds featured acts such as Zappa Plays Zappa, with Frank Zappa’s son Dweezil; funk legends George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic; and the rock and blues group The Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi Band.

Nearby land and business owners reported the noise was tolerable and that rowdiness was kept to a minimum.

The event went smoothly, but there were a few problems. Roughly two dozen people were charged with drug possession or trafficking.

Department of Environmental Protection officials reported some forested wetlands had been cut without required permits. And the Oxford Planning Board is mulling an ordinance to warn neighbors of potential noise from mass gatherings.

Even so, the second Nateva Festival is already planned for Aug. 4 to 7, again at the Oxford Fairgrounds off Pottle Road.

8. Outgoing Gov. John Baldacci set a goal for the state of 2,000 megawatts of wind power by 2015 and 3,000 by 2020. Several projects have been proposed, some are under construction, while a handful are up and running.

With every new wind project that’s proposed comes a new round of opposition from people who don’t like the way wind turbines look or sound within their communities.

Still, by year’s end, projects like Kibby Mountain in Franklin County were producing wind power. The Kibby project is expected to produced 357 kilowatt hours of electricity annually. Half the turbines were put online in October 2009, and TransCanada expects to have the remainder operational in 2010. The capital cost of the project is approximately $320 million, according to a Wikipedia page dedicated to wind power in Maine.

Another project has been proposed in Oxford County. The Longfellow project would have 16 turbines that could produce 40 MW of electricity, enough to power about 17,000 homes in the Northeast.

9. If 2010 was a year for health care fraud, it was also a year for getting caught.

A Harrison woman who owns businesses and property in Norway pleaded guilty in December to stealing $4 million from MaineCare. Dawn Cummings Solomon, 42, admitted to charges that she, through her Living Independence Network Corp., overbilled the state for hours and expenses since January 2006.

Solomon’s sentencing is set for February. Solomon’s attorney and the state reached a plea agreement for an eight-year sentence with all but 40 to 60 months suspended, plus four years of probation and up to $4 million restitution to the MaineCare program.

Around the same time, a Lewiston man was sentenced to prison  and his adopted sister to home confinement after the pair was convicted of defrauding the government of health care and other benefits.

Ahmed Yusuf Guled, 75, was ordered to serve four months in prison and to pay restitution of $119,440 and forfeit property totaling $109,733. His sister, Dahabo Abdulle Osman, 59, of Portland was sentenced to six months of home confinement and five years of probation for the same offenses. U.S. District Court Judge D. Brock Hornby also ordered Osman to pay restitution totaling $102,509 and forfeit property totaling $88,642.02.

Guled and Osman were convicted in U.S. District Court on June 24, 2010, of conspiring to defraud the United States and commit health care fraud offenses and separate charges of health care fraud. The jury found that they fraudulently obtained Medicaid funds through MaineCare’s Home and Community Based Care Program, also known as the Waiver Program.

10. In August came distressing news for the YWCA.  Leaders of the 130-year-old Lewiston-Auburn institution met with employees, telling them the debt had grown too big to continue. They would have to close immediately.

Then came the rescue efforts.

The Lewiston Maineiacs donated 1,000 tickets to the team’s home games at the Colisee. Oakhurst Dairy promised 10 cents of every gallon of milk sold in Androscoggin County during the month of October. And the three high school swim teams who use the East Avenue facility — Edward Little, St. Dominic and Lewiston — collaborated over a post-Thanksgiving swim-athon to raise money.

Other fundraisers include cookbook sales, pie sales, a card party and even the auction of a donated 1988 Cadillac Sedan deVille.

That and a number of private donors pledged enough donations to prompt YWCA officials to cancel immediate plans to close the facility.

By the middle of October, about $370,000 was raised, according to Lee Young, president of the YWCA Board of Directors. More was promised. And the YWCA’s fundraising effort continued toward the end of the year.

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