On Monday, the Auburn City Council is scheduled to consider a resolve to bar city staff from cooperating with the duly-elected Lewiston-Auburn Charter Commission. Wrong. The charter commission’s work is nearly complete, with an early plan already drafted. For nearly two years, commissioners have worked with city staff, businesses, community and social service groups, elected […]

On Thursday afternoon, around 3 p.m., Frank McCutcheon Jr. transformed from pilot to hero. Moments later, Carlos Portillo  made a similar journey from boater to hero. While flying over the Androscoggin River with a visitor from California, McCutcheon noticed a man struggling in what appeared to be a sinking paddleboat near Gulf Island. No one […]

In a city of 25,000 registered voters, 740 people turned out Tuesday to vote on Lewiston’s proposed $69 million school budget. That’s 2.8 percent of those eligible to vote. Just pause a moment and think about that figure. While higher than the number of voters in the past four years, statistically it represents 1 in […]

On the cover of Thursday’s Sun Journal were two photos from Wednesday’s National Bike to School Day action. In one image, Kya Robitaille and her brother Max were seen riding along with mom, Angela, on their way to Geiger Elementary School. Smiles all around. In the other, 11-year-old student Damon Holm was hunkered down on […]

It’s ruff when no good deed goes unpunished. That would certainly be the case with the governor’s recent adoption of a dog from the Greater Androscoggin Humane Society in Lewiston. Wanting to replace his beloved Baxter, a Jack Russell terrier who died recently, Paul LePage stopped by the GAHS on Tuesday after his family spotted […]

The average Maine high school student-to-teacher ratio is 1:12. So, too, is the rate of Maine children who have a parent who served time in jail. One in a dozen. That’s shocking, and terribly sad. Early this week, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released its report on the emotional and financial toll children pay when […]

On Monday morning, over breakfast at the Blaine House, members of the newly formed Blue Ribbon Commission on Maine Education Finance and Achievement flunked a critical public access test. The group, which is required by law to meet in public, didn’t do that. Instead, its membership met in secret to begin work on potentially sweeping […]

New greenhouse gas rules announced last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency elicited howls of protest from the South and Midwest. Governors and members of Congress from those states labeled the new rules “job-killers” and predicted economic disaster for their regions. That prediction is contradicted by the facts. In 2005, nine Northeastern states joined […]