What is one new policy that the state should embrace to make housing easier to build and afford?
Title 30-A now allows for accessory dwelling units to be built on the same lot as a single family dwelling. Although the law bypasses traditional local control norms and legal expectations, municipalities are only now adopting local procedures to accommodate the law. Maine needs to provide technical assistance and promotional efforts to best take advantage of this new, potentially efficient law. Indiscriminately handing out money for down payments is a poor idea for government intervention that will do nothing but inflate home prices and create winners and losers in the process. Let’s resist new gimmicks and support the new dwellings law.
Transmission lines, solar incentives and offshore wind development have been controversial over the past several years. What steps should Maine take to meet growing demand for electricity?
Net metering drives up electricity rates in Maine. The Legislature needs to end this practice while promoting diverse and efficient home heating systems that do not over-incentivize dwelling and commercial building electrification. There should never have been a system that paid solar farm developers by taking money from the pockets of current ratepayers.
Should the state make changes to its tax laws? If so, outline your priorities.
Democrat leaders in the Legislature have abused their power by eliminating the Property Tax Stabilization Program for seniors in the 131st Legislature, after joining Republicans and approving it in a previous session. The Stabilization Program should be reinstated with minor adjustments to make it more efficient for towns to collect data and for overall program maintenance. Instead, the program was eliminated, and the budget line spent on other items.
We are closing in on the one-year anniversary of the Lewiston mass shooting. Are further legislative responses required around guns, mental health, supporting victims and families or other policy areas?
The current Yellow Flag Law is a good one. Inter-agency communication can and should be improved so that Yellow Flag is carried out. Private fundraising efforts for victims’ families have been impressive, as once again, Mainers stepped up to the plate to help. Although a scientifically-based correlation is difficult to make, more research on brain injury, concussions, and related medical injuries should be pursued. I believe that vibration from exposure to explosions are consequential to brain functioning, and a case can be made that the Lewiston shooter was impacted by his previous military service that involved explosives.
Describe a unique attribute or area of focus that you will bring to the Legislature.
Education. I am a career educator with graduate degrees in educational administration and policy, including a PhD. from UMaine, and I have decades of experience in PK-12 and in higher education. I can unequivocally state that both state standards and teacher training fall short in the area of mathematics. While the Mills Administration can point to successes elsewhere, education will go down as Governor Mills biggest failure. We have great teachers. But, from a chronic truancy rate above 25%, to drug and lice problems emanating from some homes, to the necessary revamping of Child Development Services, to learning loss from the COVID-19 lockdown, too many Maine children have been pulled downward by a Maine Department of Education that lacks a vision for what can be.