Reckless gambling means losing more than winning.So does reckless oversight of gaming, a situation Maine has fostered since racinos were allowed by referendum in 2005. Maine’s gambling control board, now two years into its work, still doesn’t know what it’s empowered to do.“Here we are sitting as a board without really having any authority,” board […]

In the postmortem of the deadly Minnesota bridge collapse, a dichotomy has emerged: Could a span that stood for four decades, without a hint of serious problems, been structurally deficient from the start?This question is bound to baffle transportation engineers for months to come, but this quandary is ultimately more solvable than the massive problems […]

If not through renaming a bridge, Dr. Bernard Lown deserves commemoration somewhere within the community that launched the young Lewiston High School graduate toward great academic success, groundbreaking contributions to medicine and the Nobel Prize.Auburn city councilors have rejected an effort to rename the bridge between New Auburn and Little Canada for Lown, a celebrated […]

If throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks works for graffiti artists, it should also work for Lewiston in its initiative to combat graffiti vandalism.Everything and nothing works to stymie graffiti. Strict laws can punish artists, but not stifle the creativity driving them. Legal graffiti outlets – like walls – aren’t proven long-term […]

So, latest tourism statistics compiled for the Maine Office of Tourism have revealed one unrevealing revelation: tourists to Maine prefer the coast.This truth has been self-evident for decades, ever since steamships brought passengers to an unknown summer enclave named Bar Harbor. Coastal Maine’s rugged beauty and seclusion still intoxicates seasonal guests, whose presence is integral […]

Quietly, Farmington farmer Konrad Bailey announced last weeek the cessation of his family farm’s door-to-door milk delivery service. Time and cost caught up with Bailey, who said 20-hour days and rising expenses made continuing daily delivery a physical, and fiscal, impossibility.“The agriculture system is flawed,” Bailey told the Sun Journal about his decision. “Because the […]

Flip through the register of the Maine House of Representatives and Maine Senate and see what our elected officials state as occupations. Most are retirees, educators, small-business owners, “consultants,” foresters and farmers, medical professionals and lawyers.Just a handful, though, are millworkers.One fewer now, with the resignation of Rep. Randy Hotham, R-Dixfield, an employee at NewPage […]

The school saga unwinding in Portland serves as a stark reminder to elected officials, of all stripes, about the dire importance of doing business in public.Facing crowds of frustrated taxpayers is every official’s last wish, as it indicates severe dissatisfaction with job performance. In the private sector, such appraisals are usually relayed in private one-on-one […]

We’ll thank Thomas Harrison, even if some others won’t.Harrison showed tremendous selflessness this past June by stopping to aid an injured boy, whom he had spied along the roadside in Mexico. Tyler Richard, 9, had accidentally shot himself in the chest with a .38-caliber handgun he had inexplicably found in his grandfather’s couch, while he […]

It’s been more than a month since the city of Lewiston received its one response to a request for proposals to sell the Androscoggin Bank Coliseé. No name was ever released, no details disclosed, no financials figured; the city acknowledged receipt, and went along with its business.We’re surprised the RFP yielded even the single response. […]