What is one new policy that the state should embrace to make housing easier to build and afford?
Housing affordability will primarily be addressed through increasing the supply of homes. Building smaller, more affordable, and efficient homes will be key to quickly increasing the housing supply for all, rather than just large homes along the coast. Unfortunately, we are now seriously behind in terms of new housing construction and an aging existing supply. Many of us have faced the difficulties of finding contractors or handymen to work on our homes. Increasing the number of trained construction workers, from electrical and plumbing to carpentry, would help improve the number of homes built annually, as well as updating our existing housing stock, and give additional opportunities for our youth to stay in state.
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?
We could build solar panels over all our agricultural land, fill our oceans with wind power, and clear cut all our trees for transmission lines, and we would still need to import petroleum products for our energy needs. We need homes and buildings that burn less fuel to stay warm and cool. We need public buses to our rural communities with flexible schedules. We need to realize as a state, and country, that we cannot spend or generate our way out of the mess we’ve created. As a farmer, we do what so many in Maine do when we don’t have enough, we make do with what we have, and make use of what we have to get the job done. As a state, we need to spend less on energy, stabilize demand, and create opportunities outside of energy generation.
Should the state make changes to its tax laws? If so, outline your priorities.
We are all facing increasing property tax burdens, and these burdens fall most directly on those who have been in their homes the longest. Seniors/ pension and social security checks don’t go up with anywhere near the speed with which the value of their home or the cost of education and municipal expenses go up. They watch their monthly checks increasingly disappear to property taxes. Our current method of education funding pits the needs of our children against the needs of our seniors who are trying to age in place, and this is not sustainable.. The children of working class rural communities are left burdened by the deficit created by virtue of the place they were born, while the children of the cities have access to more educational resources, perpetuating the “two states” of Maine.
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?
In these times of increasing gun violence in our schools and political arena, we need to take a stronger look at our priorities as a society. With fewer and fewer resources for mental health needs in our state, more people are finding themselves alone when they most need help. As a society we are increasingly legitimizing the use of violence as a means of resolving disputes, and so the mentally ill turn there when there is nowhere else to turn. We need to make sure there is a real mental health system in Maine that finds folks with violent impulses and takes away their guns before it goes any further. Reasonable gun laws that keep guns out of the hands of unsupervised children, and mentally ill folks prone to violence are common sense measures that should find bipartisan support.
Describe a unique attribute or area of focus that you will bring to the Legislature.
As the House Chair of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry, and as a farmer, myself, with 20 years experience selling commercially, I have personal and policy experience with the agricultural sector that is unique in Augusta.There are a constellation of pressures that are mounting on farmers from loss of agricultural soils to development, increasing labor, fertilizer, and seed costs, to market pressure from Canada on blueberries and domestic pressure on our embattled dairy sector. I am proud to be the only Independent incumbent running for legislature this year, and honored to represent all those Mainers, Independents, Republicans, and Democrats who are eager for a less polarized politics that works for everyone.