About $25 million worth of help is possible for projects in Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties if Congress backs the spending plan.
Steve Collins
Columnist
Steve Collins became an opinion columnist for the Maine Trust for Local News in April of 2025. A journalist since 1987, Steve has worked for daily newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Maine and served as the State House reporter for the Sun Journal since 2016. The Maine Press Association named him Maine's Journalist of the Year in 2022. Among his other awards are the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2016 Ethics in Journalism Award, the I.F. Stone Whistle-Blower Award in 2015 and the Bob Wallack Community Journalism Award from the New England Newspaper & Press Association. Steve is a founder and board president of Youth Journalism International, a charity that teaches students around the globe about news writing, media literacy and issues of the day. His wife, Jackie Majerus, serves as its executive director. Born in Massachusetts, he grew up in a military family that took him to Norway, Ohio and Virginia, where he earned a degree in history from the University of Virginia. He and Jackie live in Auburn. They have two adult children, two collies and not enough time.
Posted inLewiston-Auburn
Nearly $6 million in funding targeted for Lewiston, Auburn projects in proposed federal budget
Budget bill includes $3 million for new Auburn PAL center, $1 million for new Lewiston fire substation, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins says.
advertisement
Posted inElection 2022, Lewiston-Auburn, Maine, Politics
Maine police union backs Golden, LePage in this year’s election
Law enforcement support for the Lewiston Democrat’s reelection bid is a surprise that counters most Republican criticism of lawmaker.
Posted in175th anniversary
In one of the area’s worst accidents, five drowned on Taylor Pond in 1940
The first clue that something was terribly wrong came when Floyd Ray noticed something floating in the water near his home on Taylor Pond on a Sunday evening in June 1940. He quickly discovered the body of a fully clothed woman bobbing beside the brick and cement wall along the shore of his property. She […]
Posted in175th anniversary, bPlus
Eight killed in Auburn in fiery 1985 plane crash, including Samantha Smith
“The world was stunned on a rainy August night when a Bar Harbor Airlines plane crashed and burned in Auburn, claiming eight lives. “Among the victims was 13-year-old Samantha Smith of Manchester, who became an American sweetheart in 1983 after visiting the Soviet Union at the invitation of the late Yuri Andropov,” the leader of […]
Posted in175th anniversary
Ice storm shut down Maine in 1998
The lack of electrical power for almost a week in Lewiston-Auburn closed businesses, shut schools and prompted linemen from across the country to assist in restoring power.
Posted in175th anniversary
Flood of 1896 washed out bridges, buildings along the length of the Androscoggin River
When it began to rain on Saturday, Feb. 28, 1896, a foot of snow lay across Androscoggin County. Farmers and tradespeople rushed to get home before the roads got so soft, slushy and muddy that travel would become difficult or perhaps impossible. Nobody knew that “the most malicious of Maine freshets” had just begun. The […]
Posted in175th anniversary, Lewiston-Auburn
Big floods have washed out Lewiston and Auburn
Among the worst years for flooding were 1896, 1936 and 1987.
Posted in175th anniversary
Sixteen babies perished in 1945 Auburn fire
A stove explosion was blamed for the deadly fire at the ‘baby farm.’
Posted in175th anniversary, Lewiston-Auburn
Lewiston’s impressive City Hall went up in flames in 1890
When Lewiston City Hall caught fire on Jan. 7, 1890, flames leapt 200 feet in the air as the blaze turned the monumental structure into a pile of rubble in little more than an hour. “It was a carnival of fire,” the Lewiston Evening Journal reported, “an enormous boiling furnace” so bright that it lit […]