Nuggets from the notebook while adding some context to news from last week …

Friday’s story about brominated flame retardants focused on the Department of Environmental Protection’s plans last December to initiate public hearings to regulate BFRs through the Kid-Safe Products Act.

The DEP was told to stop the review process in December, a couple of weeks before Gov. Paul LePage was sworn into office. The Baldacci administration could have OK’d the public hearings, but decided not to. The reasons behind that decision had spurred some speculation that LePage’s transition team had asked Baldacci’s administration to scuttle six months worth of scientific analysis that showed BFRs were dangerous enough to regulate.

The extent to which the two administrations talked about stopping the rule-making process is unknown. A Freedom of Access request yielded little correspondence between Baldacci’s team and LePage’s transition. A former high-level staffer in the Baldacci administration also said he doesn’t recall members of the LePage team requesting a halt to the BFR rule-making.

It may not have mattered if they did. As one of his first acts as governor, LePage signed an executive order suspending all pending rules, a decision that could have halted the BFR public hearing process anyway.

The administration said the suspension was temporary while it put “their people”  into high-level positions in various departments.

One of those people is Patricia Aho, the DEP’s deputy commissioner and a former lobbyist for Pierce Atwood. According to lobbying documents filed with the state’s Ethics Commission, one of Aho’s former clients was the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, an organization representing four manufacturers of BFRs. Bromine opposed two bills during the 2008 session, the Kids-Safe legislation and a separate bill that phased out a class of BFRs. 

Dan Demeritt, LePage’s spokesman, said the DEP is currently reviewing the state’s analysis of BFRs, and it stands to reason that Aho will be involved. Should the department suddenly decide with Aho’s former clients, expect the same uproar that accompanied the administration’s plans to overturn a ban on bisphenol-A, or BPA, after it was reported that another lobbyist, Ann Robinson, included the repeal in the governor’s regulatory reform package.

Robinson has lobbied for the chemical industry.

So far, it appears the Legislature is splitting with LePage on BPA and repeal of the Kids-Safe law. But the BFR issue is different because unless the governor authorizes the public hearing process for BFRs, the Legislature may not have any say in determining if the entire class of chemicals will get regulated.

Under provisions of the Kid-Safe law, the DEP had until Jan. 1, 2011, to identify two priority chemicals. The department complied with BPA and another class of chemicals. But Jan. 1 marked the end of the priority-chemical mandate.

Absent a citizen petition to the DEP, the governor now controls the fate of BFRs.

Razor-thin margin

By one vote, Republicans in the Maine House of Representatives last week defeated a bill, 73-72, that would have would have instituted fines for motorists not using their directional signals on the interstate.

The GOP postponed the vote three times, spurring speculation that they didn’t have the votes to defeat the bill sponsored by Rep. Michael Shaw, D-Standish.

The House has 78 Republicans, 72 Democrats and one unenrolled member.

All Republicans voted against the bill. Six House members were absent. Five were Republicans, one was a Democrat.

Majority whip Rep. Andre Cushing, R-Hampden, last week denied that his caucus had postponed the vote because it didn’t have the votes.

The Transportation Committee voted on party lines to not pass the measure, a vote that surprised some because transportation issues typically unite the parties, not divide them.

Some Democrats were also surprised that the GOP wouldn’t side with the Maine State Police, which, according to public hearing documents, testified that Shaw’s bill was helpful, but not a priority.

Child labor pains redux

Sen. Deborah Plowman’s bill to loosen work limits in the state’s child labor laws promises to elicit one of the more controversial debates this session.

Plowman, R-Hampden, wants to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to be able to work up to 32 hours a week during the school year and up to 11 p.m. on school nights.

The law Plowman wants to change was adopted in 1991. According to news reports from that time, Maine updated its child labor laws amid complaints from teachers that some students were pressured to work long hours, thereby affecting classroom performance.

Industry groups like the Maine Restaurant Association opposed the bill, arguing that it forced restaurants to hire only adults.

According to the reports, former Gov. John McKernan, a Republican, threatened to veto the bill amid concerns over a provision that allowed civil lawsuits against employers who illegally hired teens who were injured or killed on the job. McKernan eventually allowed the law to pass without his signature, telling the Sun Journal in a July 1991 story that he “was for all the rest of the bill.”

Those same industry groups are backing Plowman’s proposal.

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