On Tuesday, a working group of the municipal officials presented the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee with a handful of recommendations, including vastly increasing the cost for public access to documents under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act. A very similar proposal came before the state’s Right to Know Advisory Committee and then the Judiciary Committee last year […]
Our View
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Our View: Shea should help complete this year’s fest
We all understand when bad things happen to good people. It’s more complicated to accept the capacity of bad people to do good things. Yet, that’s exactly the moral dilemma we face after the arrest last week of Joshua Shea, a young community leader who now faces heinous accusations. If police allegations are true, Shea, […]
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Rep. Gattine a Democrat
Rep. Drew Gattine is a Democrat from Westbrook. His party affiliation was incorrectly reported in an editorial on Page A6 Friday.
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Our View: LePage keeps ignoring issues at DHHS
Gov. Paul LePage needs to walk over to Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services and handle some personnel problems, and soon. While the governor was announcing a controversial new program Wednesday to allow more commercial tree cutting on public lands, Rep. Drew Gattine, D-Westbrook, was talking about a mysterious $1 million payment buried deep […]
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Open hearing showed us how democracy works
After months of cloudiness, the sun broke bright and clear over Maine Friday. And, no, we are not talking about the weather. In a small hearing room in Augusta, the Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee put five state employees under oath in a potential case of political favoritism and document destruction. In other words, there was […]
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Our View: Horse track shouldn’t get special favors
Maine missed its opportunity a decade ago to take a rational approach to casino gambling. We could have done as Massachusetts has done: authorize three casinos and decide upon general locations that best served the state. That logically would have meant casinos in northern, central and southern Maine. Instead, we took a hands-off, piecemeal approach […]
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OPEGA findings mandate a fully public discussion
On Friday, one political appointee and four public employees will appear before the state Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee to be questioned about the process they created and then implemented to fund Healthy Maine Partnerships in 2012. They are: Sheila Pinette, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC Deputy Director Christine Zukas, […]
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Our View: LePage resorts to failed tactics of war on drugs
After 40 years and countless billions spent, 82 percent of Americans feel the long-running war on drugs has failed. Somehow, with just a little more money and the same tactics, Gov. Paul LePage thinks he can turn things around. Tuesday, the governor proposed doubling down on that failed war, which is largely a law-enforcement approach […]
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‘Fact Tank’ says a good education growing in value
If you love facts, then a trip to the Pew Center’s “Fact Tank” is like scuba diving on a coral reef: you never know what fascinating thing might appear. Pew, by the way, is a non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., providing research on social issues, public opinion and demographic trends. And it is […]
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Our View: To dream and to act is to accomplish
Lewiston is getting another public park, thanks to the good efforts of Friends of Pettingill, the city council and Mayor Robert Macdonald. In 2008, the Pettingill Elementary School was closed and students were moved to Geiger Elementary. That left the Pettingill property vacant but, since the playground remained, the neighborhood made the most of this […]