This week, Matt, Jake and Montana talk about the upcoming gubernatorial debates, which were announced this week. All three major candidates have confirmed their participation in four debates, which will be starting in early October, right about the time that early voting begins. We discuss the state of play in the governor’s race, and what these debates may (or may not) teach us.

We also get into the Senate campaign, as Troy Jackson held a big town hall event this week. He was greeted by a salty question from a skeptic in the crowd, and tried to do his best Graham Platner imitation at the event. The real question, though, is whether or not he’s able to keep the “movement” he inherited from Platner together, which is a real question after it has become clear that the “write in Graham” campaign seems to have actual legs.

This was also a week where current Rep. Jared Golden once again voted against his party on a major procedural vote in the House. As his time in office is coming to a conclusion, we ask the question: what do you make of Golden, and his time representing Maine’s 2nd Congressional District?

Finally, we take a quick look at the Lindsay Clancy trial, and the deadlocked jury. There are cultural touchstones circulating around the case, which are tied to some major themes of modern society.

This and more this week on the Pine Tree Pulse.

Many Mainers may not realize that one of the most consequential changes to the state’s energy policy in years is already law.

On June 20, 2025, Gov. Janet Mills signed LD 1868, now Public Law Chapter 386. The law moved Maine’s previous 2050 goal forward by an entire decade and requires that by 2040, 90% of retail electricity sales in Maine come from renewable resources, and another 10% come from qualifying “clean resources.” In other words, Maine has legally committed itself to a 100% clean-electricity sales standard by 2040.

To be precise, this does not mean every gallon of heating oil, gasoline or other form of energy consumed in Maine must be “clean” by 2040; it only applies to electricity sold at retail.

But that distinction hardly makes the policy insignificant. Maine is simultaneously encouraging greater electrification of heating and transportation, meaning policymakers are putting more of the state’s economy onto the electric grid while imposing increasingly strict requirements on what resources may supply that grid.

LD 1868 accomplishes this through two mandates. Maine’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, or RPS, will rise to 90% by 2040. A new Clean Energy Standard, or CES, begins phasing in during 2031 and reaches 10% in 2040. The clean category is broader than the renewable category and can include nuclear power, qualifying hydroelectric generation, and other sources meeting stringent emissions requirements. But 90% of the total remains reserved for resources qualifying under Maine’s renewable classifications.

The question Mainers should be asking is simple: What will this radical mandate cost?

Augusta Cannot Mandate Away the Cost

Earlier this year, Maine Policy Institute and other New England free-market organizations released Alternatives to New England’s Energy Affordability Crisis, a study examining several different ways the region could meet its future electricity needs. Its findings should make Maine lawmakers deeply uncomfortable with the direction they have chosen.

Increased electricity demand from electrification policies affecting home heating and transportation could boost overall New England electricity demand by 106%. Under the report’s renewable scenario, meeting this massive demand using renewables such as wind and solar, would incur approximately $815 billion in additional system costs through 2050 once you take into account battery storage and new transmission infrastructure.

In comparison, the same modeling projects significantly lower system costs for other generation scenarios, with the Nuclear scenario incurring $415.3 billion in additional costs, the “Happy Medium” combination of nuclear and natural gas incurring $195.8 billion in additional costs, and the Natural Gas scenario incurring only $106.9 billion in additional costs.

When changes in electricity prices are factored into household budgets, the estimated costs of the Renewable scenario become even more stark for average New England residential customers. In 2024, a family with an average annual bill of $2,100 per year for electricity would see an increase to approximately $4,610 annually by 2050 under the Renewable scenario, a jump of over $2,500 that would dramatically affect household budgets. By comparison, modeled annual bills under the Natural Gas, Happy Medium, and Nuclear scenarios are approximately $2,302, $2,569, and $3,339, respectively.

The reason for the cost difference is not difficult to understand. Electricity must be available when people need it, not merely when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. The report estimates that its Renewable scenario would require approximately 225,400 megawatts of installed regional generating capacity by 2050, compared with roughly 60,000 megawatts in each of the three alternative scenarios. That means vastly more generation, storage, transmission and interconnection infrastructure must be built and paid for to serve the same customers. Ratepayers will ultimately be the ones left paying these costs.

Maine has chosen to move forward with those policies against the recommendations of an incredibly thorough and scientific study demonstrating what the harm would be. This should prompt a serious reconsideration of the approach, not an acceleration to go further. Such an approach must address the issues raised in the report.

Affordability Cannot Be an Afterthought

The Maine Department of Energy Resources is currently shaping the 2027 Maine Energy Plan, and asking for Mainers’ input via workshops, webinars, and an online stakeholder survey.

“Affordable” is listed first, among four major priorities identified on DOER’s website. Reliability, security and clean energy follow. But the next sentence states that Maine is legally required to increase renewable and clean electricity to 100 percent by 2040.

The irony is hard to miss: Augusta has already dictated the destination and is now asking Mainers how concerned they are about the price of getting there.

To its credit, LD 1868 includes a limited cost safeguard. The Public Utilities Commission has authority to pause or delay scheduled increases in the new 10% Clean Energy Standard if compliance costs are driving up electricity prices without delivering enough new clean energy resources, and in some cases the law requires the Commission to do so. In practical terms, this means the state can temporarily stop the Clean Energy Standard from ratcheting upward as planned, but it does not eliminate the requirement itself. Importantly, that safeguard applies only to the Class III clean-energy requirement. It does not affect the much larger 90% Renewable Portfolio Standard that sits at the core of the 2040 mandate.

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire

In contrast to Maine, other states are starting to recognize the dangers these mandates could cause. In fact, last session legislators across the border in New Hampshire introduced and debated a bill to completely phase out renewable mandates. HB 219 was introduced in 2025 to phase out New Hampshire’s Renewable Portfolio Standard over five years, ultimately repealing the requirement by the end of 2030. Although the proposal ended up stalling in the Senate, it has been sent out to be studied, meaning this issue is still being seriously considered in New Hampshire.

In July, New Hampshire passed the productive legislation, HB 1775, that enables electric utilities to invest in certain natural gas and nuclear generation resources, and to seek recovery through rates for qualifying investments. The measure rightly identifies the importance of ensuring reliable, dispatchable, and controllable generation resources are available when renewable resources and storage can’t provide enough electricity.

On March 26, Gov. Kelly Ayotte issued Executive Order 2026-01, directing the New Hampshire Department of Energy to develop a roadmap for bringing next-generation nuclear generation to the state. Even more noteworthy, Ayotte’s office confirmed to the New Hampshire Bulletin that the order’s conclusion that greater use of nuclear power could lower electricity rates more effectively than greater reliance on renewable energy was based on the same 2026 study released by Maine Policy Institute and its coalition partners.

That makes the contrast with Maine especially striking. The research Augusta should be taking seriously as it races toward a 100% clean-electricity mandate is already helping shape policy in the state next door. New Hampshire is looking at the evidence and asking how it can expand reliable, dispatchable generation and lower costs. Maine is looking at the same regional affordability crisis and doubling down on mandates that restrict its options and are inevitably going to significantly raise costs for consumers.

Maine Should Reconsider This Disastrous Mandate

Maine lawmakers can reject this approach and advance policies that will actually lower energy costs and help keep the grid reliable. Rather than dictating which resources are able to compete, lawmakers should focus on the outcomes that will drive the best results for consumers.

A better energy policy would prioritize reliability and affordability, and allow technologies to compete on their merits. Nuclear power, natural gas, hydroelectricity, renewables, storage, and future technologies all should be welcome in that pursuit.

But LD 1868, our recent legislation committing us to 100% renewables by 2040, takes precisely the opposite approach. It reserves a vast share of the market for one particular technology, in this case seemingly endless rows of windmills and solar panels.

Instead of wasting resources on mandates, our lawmakers should revisit LD 1868 and our Renewable Portfolio Standard with an eye toward unwinding the mandate before the requirements begin to kick in.

Legislators should at a minimum commission a genuinely technology-neutral analysis comparing the cost and reliability of the statutory 90% renewable and 10% clean mandate, versus alternatives allowing greater use of dispatchable generation.

Better yet, Maine should repeal the rigid portfolio mandates and let the market sift through the wealth of options available for delivering reliable electricity and low cost. If it is possible to actually attain 100% clean electricity by 2040 at low cost to Maine consumers, that outcome has every reason to win on its own merits, without a mandate.

Subscribe now

Support Maine Policy

This week, the MPI gang returns from a week away at a conference in Florida to catch up on a number of interesting developments.

First up, Vice President JD Vance made a visit early in the week to Maine to once again talk about the issue of fraud. The Maine Wire was able to ask a very important question of Vance, which is on the mind of many: when exactly will the administration be taking action to hold people accountable for that fraud?

This was also a week where tension between the United States and Canada continued to escalate, with the on-again off-again 50% tariff on Canadian goods being implemented, retaliatory tariffs being announced by Canada, and an announced name change of Lake Ontario all being part of the story.

Finally, we review some of the more amusing and quaint reactions to the publication of our 2026 Policy Blueprint, and we mark a pretty bad week for celebrity deaths with the passing of Dolly Parton, Tim Curry and Peter Cullen.

Augusta has adopted a new, statewide minimum teacher salary that it plans to fund by adding an additional subsidy to school districts.

The recently-passed 2026 supplemental budget sets this new salary for certified teachers, as well as career and technical education teachers. Beginning in the 2027-28 school year, the new minimum will be $45,000, rise to $47,500 in 2028-29, and reach $50,000 in 2029-30, where it will remain.

At a time when Maine homeowners are struggling with rising property taxes, it is unconscionable to pass another centralized mandate that raises the cost of education, especially considering education is the largest single use of property tax dollars for most municipalities.

Additionally, while any reasonable person would agree that teachers should be compensated competitively for their work, decisions about compensation are better made locally by the school boards and local taxpayers who know that area best.

If the state government has additional resources to earmark for education, lawmakers should prioritize using those funds to reduce the amount local taxpayers are required to raise, rather than attaching those dollars to another statewide spending mandate.

Furthermore, any additional state aid should be paired with spending restraint and safeguards ensuring it actually lowers local property tax commitments, rather than simply financing higher government spending.

Property Taxes, Education Spending, and Competing Priorities

Property taxes are among the most persistent affordability problems for Maine homeowners. As the Legislature’s Real Estate Property Tax Relief Task Force discovered and noted in its interim report this year, rising housing costs only compound the problem of rising property tax bills for many Mainers.

Also relevant, the report noted, is the state’s “extremely high” ranking for property tax burden, coming in fifth place nationally, with property taxes absorbing an outsized share of state personal income. Not surprisingly, property taxes provide more than half of local general revenue in Maine.

So, at the same time Augusta is acknowledging the property tax problem and searching for ways to make them more affordable, lawmakers are now on record approving a major new education spending mandate.

The question is not whether teachers deserve good salaries — they do — nor whether there are good reasons to need better pay to attract qualified teachers, which there are. Rather, the policy question is merely whether the decision about teachers’ salaries is best made in Augusta by politicians, or by local communities who know their own needs best.

Education and Property Taxes Are Closely Connected

The work of the Real Estate Property Tax Relief Task Force established that school spending is, for many Maine municipalities, the largest ongoing cost supported by property taxes.

The task force also acknowledged in its January 2026 report “the significant weight that educational funding places on property taxpayers and understands the degree to which costs of education and property tax relief are related.” The exact number depends greatly on the municipality, but the Maine Municipal Association established that as of 2016, roughly 68 percent of property taxes were dedicated to funding education in Maine communities. That average has presumably declined slightly since 2016 as the state has increased its share of education funding.

Current state funding figures show that for fiscal year 2026-27, $1.29 billion — almost all of which comes from property taxes — is required to be raised by local municipalities in order to pay their share of education spending. This is because the Essential Programs and Services (EPS) funding formula sets a statewide target of roughly 55 percent of EPS costs funded by the state, with the remaining 45 percent coming from the required local contribution.

The bottom line is that billions of dollars in school spending remain directly connected to local taxpayers. So when Augusta discusses property tax relief on one hand and education spending on the other, it is not as if the two topics don’t overlap. They do.

What the New Law Does, and the Illusion of “Free” Education Aid

The new law does allow qualifying municipalities to avoid the cost of the new minimum salary requirements.

Beginning in fiscal year 2027-28, and each year after, the state will increase funding to qualifying school administrative units by the amount needed to cover the new minimum salary requirements. The statewide cost of the new mandate is currently unknown from the enacted budget, as the mandate will not take effect in fiscal year 2026-27. State funding for this mandate will be based on the teacher data that is submitted and certified by school administrative units as of October 1, 2026.

Supporters of the salary requirement can reasonably respond that if the state is providing the additional subsidy, local property taxpayers are not being asked to directly finance the required increase. That is better than imposing an entirely unfunded mandate. But it does not make the policy free.

State money and local money ultimately come from the same people, the taxpayers. A dollar appropriated in Augusta still has to come from somewhere, whether through income taxes, sales taxes, or other state revenues.

Augusta has already relied on one-time funds and higher taxes to support growing state spending, while homeowners across Maine are simultaneously being squeezed by rising property tax bills. That is hardly evidence that the state has excess money available for another permanent spending mandate. But even if lawmakers did have additional resources to devote to education, they still face a choice about what those dollars accomplish.

Maine taxpayers are making it clear at every level of government that they are struggling with rising property taxes. Lawmakers should listen to those concerns instead of continuing to grow government spending and impose new mandates on decisions that are better made locally. If lawmakers were determined to spend this additional, still-unknown amount on education, they should have used the money to increase the state’s share of education costs and required towns to use those savings to reduce property taxes.

Instead of doing that, though, they pushed another costly mandate centered on salary — something that should inherently be a local decision.

The labor market varies widely across Maine, and it’s entirely reasonable for districts to pay their public school teachers differently in accordance with factors like enrollment, cost of living, available workforce, etc. There are places where a school district simply can’t attract math teachers unless it offers them significantly more than a district that has a low cost of living and relatively easy time maintaining its teaching staff.

Conclusion

In short, communities should be free to make their own decisions about what they can afford. They should also be able to make their own decisions about how they spend their money, which includes the tradeoff between aggressive salary schedules and other education needs, and/or other community-wide priorities.

Under the approach currently being pursued by lawmakers, decisions about teacher salaries have been taken out of the hands of local school boards, administrators, and taxpayers, and inserted into a statewide mandate.

Ultimately, the money to pay for education comes from two primary sources: state taxpayers or local taxpayers. State government can pull the rug out from under local control by mandating spending and then addressing the tab on the state side of the ledger. But either way, the money comes from taxpayers.

Given Maine’s current budget pressures and the tax increases lawmakers have already turned to in order to sustain higher spending, the better course would have been not to create another permanent state mandate at all. But if Augusta was determined to spend additional money on public education, those dollars should have been used to ease the tax burden already falling on Maine homeowners by increasing the state’s share of education costs and requiring the savings to flow through to property tax relief.

Instead, lawmakers chose to spend more while taking another decision away from local communities. This does little to address Maine’s affordability problem, and leaves taxpayers paying more for a system over which they have even less control.

Subscribe now

Support Maine Policy

This week, we celebrate Montana Towers’ birthday by first talking about the release of Maine Policy Institute’s 2026 Policy Blueprint. We detail what is inside the document, and what we are hoping to accomplish with it. It is, of course, already being attacked by the usual suspects in the left-wing progressive chattering class, but we find that delightful.

We also catch up on LePage v. Dunlap in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. Speaker Mike Johnson visited Maine this week touting LePage as among the most qualified candidates for Congress in history, and Dunlap secured the backing (albeit tepidly, and a bit late) of Planned Parenthood. We chat about how we view that race at the end of August.

Finally, we mark a sad milestone: the United States reaching $40 trillion of debt. How did we get to this point? Why is no one addressing the problem? What would it take to even begin to dig out of this hole? In a world where neither party is serious about the debt, can we ever hope to reverse course?

That and more on this week’s Pine Tree Pulse.

The Blueprint is the final result of meticulous and painstaking research spanning months.

Published every four years, the Blueprint includes the Four Pillars of Maine Policy Reform — namely, the economy, housing, education, and energy — as well as a review of the policy challenges facing cabinet-level departments, proposed state government reforms, major budget reform proposals, and a complete set of written legislation that can be introduced immediately.

The Blueprint outlines a comprehensive review of state government — legislative and executive alike — with the explicit goal of restoring focus, accountability, and economic growth. No institution is exempt from examination: legislative rules, constitutional officers, executive orders, agency rulemaking, permitting systems, and the procedures by which regulations are drafted and enforced.

Among the suggested reforms outlined in the Blueprint are:

• Roughly $1 billion in biennial savings in Maine’s state budget, spanning nearly every department and agency of state government.

• Recommended reforms and policy changes to each cabinet-level department.

• Reform to the process of selecting Maine’s Constitutional Officers.

• Changes to Legislative rules in the Maine House and Maine Senate

• An index of written legislation to be introduced by lawmakers

View and download the 2026 Maine Policy Blueprint at mainepolicy.org/research.

Subscribe now

Support Maine Policy

This week, we deal with the inauspicious return of Graham Platner to the public square, as well as the adventures of his replacement in the U.S. Senate race, Troy Jackson. Are progressives pining for their true love in Platner, and is the Democratic establishment annoyed that Jackson’s campaign now has to deal with a distraction? We discuss.

This is also a week where a long list of bad stories for Maine dropped, in which the negative consequences of progressive governance continue to become apparent.

On the education front, in the wake of Maine once again performed dismally in a major educational results evaluation, Commissioner Pender Makin continues to try to tell us that “test results don’t matter.” Why don’t they matter? Mostly because the test results tell us how poorly she has performed and how disastrous the policies she has pursued have been for Maine kids.

In Portland, business owners are growing increasingly vocal over the continuing decline of the city. Homelessness, aggressive panhandling and needles everywhere — all of which are the result of progressive policies failing the city — have caused not only everyday citizens, but the business community to say “enough is enough.”

Speaking of needles, they are now washing up on the shores of communities along the Penobscot River, as the out of control needle programs — a progressive policy — in Maine now grow out of control.

Everywhere Maine is living with the destructiveness of hard-left policies run amok. We discuss the implications and more in this week’s Pine Tree Pulse.

Maine’s community colleges provide valuable education at a relatively low cost. They train nurses, electricians, automotive technicians, construction workers, and other professionals Maine employers need. Helping students acquire these skills without incurring excessive debt is a reasonable goal.

But Maine’s new permanent free community college program goes far beyond helping students who cannot afford tuition.

The program was made permanent through the fiscal year 2026–2027 supplemental budget signed by Gov. Janet Mills. Qualifying students can now receive up to two years of free tuition at any of Maine’s seven community colleges. The program is expected to cost taxpayers approximately $10 million per year.

Supporters describe the policy as an investment in Maine’s workforce. Since the original temporary program began in 2022, more than 23,000 eligible students have enrolled, and community college enrollment has increased substantially.

Those numbers demonstrate that people will use a program when the government makes it free. They do not, however, necessarily demonstrate that the program is properly targeted or that taxpayers are receiving an adequate return.

The central problem is that Maine has created a permanent entitlement with few restrictions on who receives it, and almost no obligation for recipients to provide anything in return.

Wealthy Families Receive the Same Benefit

Maine’s free-college program has no income limit.

A student from a family earning $40,000 per year can qualify. A student from a family earning $400,000 per year can also qualify. As long as the student meets the residency and academic requirements, pursues a degree or certificate, and applies for other available financial aid first, the state will cover the remaining tuition.

This means taxpayers will subsidize families that could much more likely afford community college tuition themselves.

Community-college tuition can still be difficult for low-income families, and targeted assistance could help students who would otherwise be unable to enroll. But lawmakers did not create a need-based scholarship. They created a universal benefit regardless of whether the recipient needs financial assistance.

Supporters may argue that universal eligibility makes the program easier to understand and administer. That may be true, but administrative simplicity does not justify paying tuition for families that do not need public assistance.

Maine already uses income standards for property tax relief, health programs, housing assistance, and numerous other benefits. Lawmakers are clearly capable of targeting assistance when they want to.

The Program May Give More to Wealthier Students

The program is structured as a “last-dollar” scholarship, meaning that students must first use federal grants, state grants, scholarships, and other available aid. Maine’s program then covers the remaining tuition.

That sounds fiscally responsible, but it creates an unexpected result.

Lower-income students are more likely to qualify for federal Pell Grants and Maine State Grants. Those programs may already cover most or all of their community college tuition. Students from wealthier families are less likely to receive need-based aid, meaning the state may pay more toward their tuition.

The program is therefore promoted as helping students who cannot afford college while potentially directing larger state payments toward students who receive less need-based aid because their families have greater financial resources.

This is not fraud; these families would simply be following the rules lawmakers created. But it is an obvious way the program will be exploited. Families that were already prepared to pay tuition can instead have the state pay the bill.

The Law is Too Broad and Relaxed

Supporters repeatedly justify free community college as an investment in Maine’s workforce. After all, the purpose of community colleges is to prepare students for careers in Maine.

But the law does not require recipients to study an occupation facing a shortage. It does not require them to complete their program. It does not require them to work in Maine after graduation. It does not require them to remain in Maine for any period after they stop attending college. There is also no repayment requirement for students who receive free tuition and then leave the state.

A student can use Maine taxpayers to complete two years of college, transfer to a four-year university, and leave Maine immediately afterward.

Continuing to a four-year college is not inherently bad. But it demonstrates that the program does not always function as direct workforce training. In some cases, it operates as a taxpayer-funded discount on the first half of a bachelor’s degree.

If lawmakers want to defend free college as a workforce investment, the program should contain some connection to Maine’s workforce. Instead, they’ve chosen not to do so, allowing Maine taxpayers to be exploited while potential talent flees to another state.

Taxpayers Assume the Risk When Students Drop Out

The program allows students to attend either part-time or full-time. Students pursuing a standard two-year associate degree may receive the scholarship for up to three years.

Recipients must pursue a degree or academic credential, but they are not required to complete it. The law does not contain a clear repayment provision for students who withdraw, repeatedly change programs, or leave without earning a credential.

When students pay at least part of their tuition, they have a direct financial incentive to choose their program carefully, attend class, and finish. Free tuition weakens that incentive.

But because the cost of community college falls on taxpayers rather than the student, a student may enroll, take courses without a clear plan, and leave when the program becomes too difficult or inconvenient.

The student loses time. Taxpayers lose money. Ultimately, both parties lose.

This does not mean that most community college students will act irresponsibly; it means public programs should be thoughtfully designed around realistic incentives, rather than the assumption that every recipient will use a benefit exactly as intended.

Maine Already Had to Close One Loophole

The original, temporary “free community college” program had weaker residency requirements. A person from another state could move to Maine when enrolling and qualify while living here. Approximately 4% of participating students moved to Maine when they enrolled.

The permanent program now requires students to establish Maine residency for at least one year before admission.

That change is an improvement. However, broad benefit programs frequently encourage people to arrange their circumstances around eligibility rules, and a one-year residency requirement is insufficient to anchor potential recipients to Maine.

Even under the revised law, recipients do not need to have graduated from a Maine high school. A person only needs to establish residency for 12 months before admission and satisfy the other eligibility requirements.

The program is not narrowly designed for Maine teenagers from families unable to afford college. Its eligibility is much broader than its political marketing suggests.

Better Policy Was Available

Maine did not have to choose between universal free tuition and not providing any assistance.

The state could have offered income-based scholarships. It could have prioritized nursing, skilled trades, public safety, and other occupations with documented worker shortages. It could have required recipients to work in Maine for a reasonable period after graduation or repay part of the benefit.

At a minimum, lawmakers should require detailed annual reporting on completion rates, attempted credits, program changes, employment, wages, and whether graduates remain in Maine.

Maine’s community colleges deserve support, and students with limited financial resources deserve an opportunity to build successful careers. But a program should be judged by its design, not simply by the popularity of the word “free.”

The new program is too broad and will pay tuition for wealthy families, subsidize students who leave Maine, cover education unrelated to workforce shortages, and place the financial risk of non-completion on taxpayers.

None of these outcomes require anyone to break the law; they are permitted by it.

That is exactly why the program will be so easy to exploit.

Subscribe now

Support Maine Policy

This week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz parachuted into Maine, and while he was here he had a lot to say about fraud in Maine. He also spoke to The Maine Wire as well as congressional candidate Paul LePage, which provoked the ire of Gov. Janet Mills (remember her?)

A back and forth began over the issue of fraud, how much of it there is, with Janet Mills attempting to claim that she and her administration has been deadly serious about the issue, and that Oz and the Trump administration are “playing politics” over the issue. Is there any truth to that, and is it suspicious that Mills only seems to talk about fraud when a figure like Oz shows up in Maine and forces her to? We discuss.

We also get into the contempt charges that have now been handed down to Dr. Anthony Fauci, and discuss whether there is any legal basis for them. What will the courts say, and what happens next? We talk about it.

This and more on this week’s Pine Tree Pulse.

This opinion editorial by a local business owner was published in the Portland Press Herald this week.

The tax in question — formerly part of LD 1089 which was ultimately scrapped, technically, but still stitched into the supplemental budget in a different form — adds a 2% surcharge tax on annual income over $1 million for single filers and $1.5 million for married couples and other filers. It was proposed in an attempt to achieve “tax fairness” in Maine, according to its sponsor, Rep. Cheryl Golek (D-Harpswell).

This tax has become known as the “millionaire tax” — a misnomer that ought to be replaced with more precise terminology such as, simply, a “surcharge tax.”

Serious question: Given the fact that the Maine Legislature has demonstrated precisely zero fiscal restraint, has dramatically increased the state’s budget by 45% since 2019, and has provided a profoundly underwhelming return on the spending, why should we trust the money will be spent wisely, meaningfully, and honestly? Why should more hardworking Mainers — even those in an anomalous cohort — surrender more of their hard-earned money to the Maine government after we’ve witnessed its egregious spending habits and abysmal fiscal management for the last eight years?

The author says in the op-ed that the additional revenue from the tax, estimated to be about $75 million, could “help support services that directly influence whether Maine businesses can hire and retain employees: childcare assistance, tuition-free community college, better pay for care workers, help for families facing eviction and support for schools.”

Well, sure — it could, in theory. But will it? The tax was originally supposed to be earmarked specifically for funding public education, but since being added to the supplemental budget, the revenue is now being directed to the General Fund, where it can support the broader state budget.

The notion that the revenue could theoretically be used to support all the things the author mentioned sounds nice and even reasonable; after all, Maine Policy sincerely wants families, childcare workers, schools, and aspiring students here in Maine to prosper. Indeed, prosperity and freedom for all Mainers is the cornerstone of our mission.

But the reality is, as with most or all “progressive” ideas, taking more money from Maine taxpayers and throwing it at various issues to ostensibly benefit Mainers is, at this point, rooted in unrealistic and utopian fantasies, given our state government’s track record with spending and fiscal mismanagement in the last eight years.

We haven’t had a revenue problem; we’ve had a spending problem. And still, attendant with that spending problem has been a litany of issues that still haven’t been resolved — and in some cases, have exacerbated.

It’s a reasonable question to ask: we’re crushed by taxes, but where, exactly, is our money going?

For example, Maine ranks as having one of the greatest tax burdens in the nation, but among the results are:

‣ Astronomical energy and housing costs

‣ Deplorable education outcomes (#41 in the nation)

‣ Ubiquitous and unchecked fraud that exploits Maine taxpayers

‣ Unfettered organized crime

‣ “Harm reduction” policies that have resulted in the distribution of 17.2 million free needles — 2.3 million of which remain uncollected — and the largest HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C outbreak in generations.

‣ An environment hostile to businesses

‣ The worst infrastructure in the country

‣ Nearly $47 million misspent on improper Medicaid payments

Additionally, supporters like the author here frame this tax hike as targeting the “rich,” arguing it will only affect a small number of ultra-wealthy Mainers. This is a misconception. This tax will affect everyday business owners and have a ripple effect on Mainers across all tax brackets.

As we mentioned in our own op-ed in March, most small businesses in Maine pay taxes through the individual income tax, meaning these higher personal income rates would affect profits for small, family-owned businesses. Think of a lobster wholesaler in Rockland or a family dairy farm in Aroostook County. Their owners report every dollar of business profit on their personal returns. When taxes increase on those businesses’ income, the consequences do not stop with the individual business owner. Higher taxes influence decisions about hiring new employees, investing in equipment, and even wages and raises.

Ultimately, this surcharge tax will have a net negative effect on Maine’s economy with the following:

‣ Adverse and disproportionate impacts on employers and small businesses

‣ Slower economic growth and reduced investment

‣ Risk of talent loss and reduced attraction of high-value workers

‣ Widening competitive disadvantage relative to New Hampshire

‣ Increased revenue volatility and budget risk

The theory that if more people just surrender more of their money to the government, life will miraculously improve across the board for all Mainers, is at the very least deeply misguided, if not utterly delusional. As it turns out, utopia isn’t achieved when unscrupulous bureaucrats get their way and force you to surrender more of your money; after all, no amount of money and no amount of taxes is ever enough to satiate the progressive lawmakers’ unquenchable thirst for more government spending, regardless of results. This is why one of the greatest errors people often make is placing an inordinate amount of trust in the government.

To be clear, Maine Policy has not only been opposed to this surcharge tax, but to taxes affecting all Mainers in general. In 2025, Governor Janet Mills and the Maine Legislature passed a slate of new taxes that affect ordinary, working Mainers, taking more of their money to be used for — what, exactly? To help Mainers, or to fill some budgetary shortfall created by lawmakers in Augusta? In any case, we opposed those taxes, too — not to mention the limitless spending. To compound the offense, Governor Mills had made hollow campaign promises not to raise taxes, and sure enough…

Now that the budget has exponentially inflated and new taxes have gone into effect since Governor Mills took office, Maine residents need to ask themselves whether life has improved or worsened. It seems the latter is true, as 75% of Mainers perceive Maine as unaffordable, and 30% may leave in the next five years, according to a recent UNH poll. About two-thirds cite housing and the cost of living as the driving factor for their decision to leave the state, and 50 percent of those who plan to leave the state mentioned lower taxes as a reason.

…But a massively increased budget and a host of new taxes should mean greater prosperity and quality of life for Maine people, right?

Let’s face it: Mainers are being taxed to death, and the results have been abysmal. As Steve Robinson put it, “[T]he obvious thing that ten years of progressive experimentation has now proven beyond serious dispute: the progressive program has made life in Maine worse. Not marginally worse. Worse in every single way that social science, economics, and political science can measure. Everything is worse and nothing is better after voters handed progressives carte blanche over the levers of political power.”

Current leadership in the Maine Legislature erroneously holds that we can tax our way into prosperity. We can’t. So until the Legislature can actually demonstrate some modicum of frugality and lower taxes for all Mainers, Maine Policy will object to any new tax proposed, no matter whom it targets.

While this 2% surcharge tax is deeply flawed in its own right, consider this message a wholesale indictment of any increase in taxes in Maine — especially after we’ve seen the results.

Subscribe now

Support Maine Policy

This week, the Pine Tree Pulse is back and we talk about the now official nomination of Troy Jackson as the Democratic nominee to replace Graham Platner. Jackson, of course, is a well known figure in Maine politics and has been involved in state government as a member of the power elite for more than two decades. How does this change the race against Susan Collins? Is Jackson’s background, wooden delivery, and milquetoast personality going to be able to give him enough juice to truly challenge Collins? We discuss.

This week we also saw the testimony — such as it was — of Dr. Anthony Fauci on Capitol Hill. The long dreamed of public accounting from Sen. Rand Paul did not happen, however, as Fauci stonewalled, pleading the 5th Amendment repeatedly. But can he plead the 5th when he has been granted a pardon for all activities during the COVID period, and is in no real legal jeopardy? We consider.

We also chew on a recent UNH poll that showed 40 percent of Maine people had a favorable view of socialism. What does that result actually show us, and what is driving this renewed love affair with history’s most discredited economic system? We examine.

That and more on this week’s Pine Tree Pulse podcast.

The United States has spent years trying to address housing affordability through subsidies, tax credits and government financed developments. Yet home prices and rents remain unaffordable for millions of Americans because policymakers have often avoided the central problem: there are simply not enough homes in the places where people want to live.

The recently-enacted 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act represents a partial recognition of that reality. The sweeping federal law includes more than 60 individual sections covering construction, financing, manufactured housing, zoning, federal grant programs, rural housing, community banks, institutional investors, and more.

From Maine Policy Institute’s perspective, the law is a mixed bag. Its strongest provisions remove government barriers that make housing harder and more expensive to build. Its weakest provisions expand subsidies, increase federal involvement, and restrict who may purchase private property.

Even the law’s positive reforms will take time to materialize. Housing projects take years to finance, permit, and construct. Federal agencies must also write rules and establish new programs before many provisions can operate. Any meaningful increase in supply, and any resulting effect on rents or prices, is therefore more likely to emerge gradually over several years.

What the Law Gets Right

The strongest portions of the ROAD to Housing Act recognize that housing cannot become broadly affordable unless it becomes easier and less expensive to build.

Encouraging Zoning and Permitting Reform

The act directs the Department of Housing and Urban Development to develop best practices for state and local housing policy.

Those recommendations include reducing parking mandates, lowering minimum lot sizes and setback requirements, permitting accessory dwelling units, allowing duplexes, and other small multifamily homes by right, establishing maximum review timelines and streamlining discretionary approval processes. The law also specifically addresses barriers to manufactured and modular housing. These recommendations correctly identify many of the regulations that restrict housing construction and are consistent with many of the problems MPI identified in our Under Construction housing report released last year.

Local zoning rules frequently prohibit less expensive housing types, require unnecessarily large lots, or force developers to provide parking spaces that residents may not need. Discretionary permitting processes also create uncertainty by allowing otherwise lawful projects to be delayed or rejected after developers have already invested substantial resources.

Federal guidelines will not, by themselves, change local zoning laws. The act also states that HUD cannot penalize a state or locality merely for declining to adopt the guidelines. Still, the law’s emphasis on reducing regulatory barriers represents an important shift away from treating housing affordability exclusively as a spending problem.

Expanding Manufactured and Modular Housing

The law includes several reforms designed to encourage manufactured and modular housing, an issue MPI has advocated for and testified on for many years. These homes can be constructed in controlled factory settings, reducing delays caused by weather, labor shortages, and inconsistent worksite conditions. They can also cost substantially less than conventionally-constructed homes.

That makes the issue particularly relevant to Maine, where labor costs are high, construction seasons are limited, and many communities need housing that can be built affordably at a relatively small scale.

MPI has previously argued that manufactured housing can provide Maine residents with a less expensive alternative to traditional site-built homes and that municipalities should remove barriers preventing its development.

The federal act modernizes manufactured-housing definitions and financing rules, increases certain federal loan limits, and directs agencies to examine barriers facing modular-housing manufacturers. These reforms could expand consumer choice and allow builders to use more efficient construction methods.

Providing Community-Bank Regulatory Relief

The act’s community-bank provisions could also provide some indirect benefits for Maine’s housing market.

Smaller banks and credit unions play an important role in financing local home purchases, rehabilitation projects, and small-scale development. They are often more familiar with local property values, borrowers, and market conditions than large national lenders, making them especially important in rural communities and smaller towns. Yet these institutions must often comply with regulatory systems designed around the size, structure and risks of much larger financial firms.

The law includes changes involving bank examination cycles, deposit regulations, credit-union governance, and the formation of new community and rural financial institutions. These provisions are intended to reduce unnecessary administrative burdens and make it easier for smaller financial institutions to operate, expand, and serve their communities.

These changes will not directly produce new housing, and their effect will depend on how regulators implement them. However, reducing disproportionate compliance costs could allow local lenders to devote more staff time and capital to serving customers rather than navigating federal requirements. That could improve access to mortgages, renovation loans, and financing for smaller housing developments that may not attract the attention of large national banks.

Rewarding Homes That Actually Get Built

Another promising provision is the Build Now Act, which ties a portion of federal community-development funding to measurable increases in housing construction. Jurisdictions that improve their housing growth can receive additional funding, while some underperforming jurisdictions may see their allocations reduced.

This is not as effective as directly repealing restrictive zoning rules, reducing permitting delays, and removing the other government barriers that make housing harder and more expensive to build. Those reforms address the underlying problem more directly and should remain the priority.

Still, the provision represents an improvement over federal programs that reward communities for producing plans, conducting studies, or announcing housing goals without requiring meaningful results. As Maine knows well, homes proposed, permitted or funded on paper are not the same as homes that are actually completed and available for people to live in.

If the federal government is going to continue spending money on housing and community development, that funding should at least be directed toward jurisdictions that demonstrate real progress in producing homes.

Streamlining Environmental Reviews

The law also allows certain smaller or lower-impact housing projects to skip a full federal environmental review. This includes some development on previously used land, the purchase of property for affordable housing, certain renovation projects and a few other situations. It also prevents agencies from requiring another review when a substantially similar review has already been completed for the same project and location.

Environmental protections can serve an important purpose, but requiring multiple agencies to review essentially the same project can add significant time and expense without providing any meaningful additional benefit. Each month of delay increases financing, labor, legal and administrative costs. Those costs are eventually reflected in higher rents or sale prices, and can even cause a project to be abandoned entirely.

Reducing unnecessary duplication should allow at least some federally-connected developments to move forward more quickly.

What the Law Gets Wrong

Unfortunately, the law also contains provisions that could undermine its own supply-oriented goals.

Restricting Institutional Home Purchases

The law’s most troubling provision restricts certain large institutional investors from purchasing additional existing single-family homes. The restriction generally applies to investors that directly or indirectly own at least 350 single-family homes, although the final law includes exemptions, including an important exception for qualifying build-to-rent properties. While targeting large investors may be politically popular and understandable to many frustrated homebuyers, public sympathy does not necessarily make the policy economically sound.

The fundamental problem is that preventing one category of buyer from purchasing existing homes does not create any additional housing; it simply changes which buyers are permitted to compete for the limited number of homes already available.

Institutional investors frequently purchase homes, renovate them and offer them as rentals. Those properties can provide an option for families that need the space of a single-family home but cannot, or do not want to, purchase one. Restricting investment could therefore reduce the supply of professionally-managed rental homes. In markets with already limited rental inventories, that could place additional upward pressure on rents.

Investment can also bring capital to vacant, foreclosed or deteriorating properties that require substantial repairs before they can be occupied. Large investors played such a role following the financial crisis, when they purchased foreclosed homes, converted many into rentals and helped stabilize distressed housing markets. Not every institutional purchase serves this purpose, but a blanket restriction risks discouraging the rehabilitation of properties that might otherwise remain underused or deteriorate further.

The policy also interferes with the rights of owners to sell their property to willing buyers and creates complicated questions about corporate structures, indirect ownership and enforcement.

Institutional purchases may increase competition for particular homes, but that competition is especially consequential because housing supply is constrained. The more effective response would be to allow builders to produce enough homes to meet demand.

Expanding Federal Grants and Subsidies

The act also creates or expands numerous federal grants, pilot programs and housing initiatives. Among other things, it authorizes a Whole-Home Repairs pilot, makes new affordable housing construction eligible for Community Development Block Grant funding, and creates programs connected to permitting, conversions, public housing and other housing activities.

The Whole-Home Repairs pilot, for example, would provide grants to qualifying homeowners and loans that may be forgiven for certain landlords. Participating landlords would be subject to conditions that include limits on rent increases for assisted units.

In some cases, subsidies can increase demand for construction labor, materials, or housing without increasing productive capacity. That can raise prices and allow government programs to compete with private buyers and builders for already scarce resources.

Grant programs also empower federal agencies to decide which projects, organizations and communities receive assistance. That invites political influence, creates administrative costs, and can encourage local governments to pursue federal funding instead of adopting difficult but necessary zoning reforms.

The law specifies that it does not itself authorize additional funding, meaning that many programs will still depend on future congressional appropriations. That limits the immediate fiscal effect, but it does not eliminate the possibility of substantial future spending.

Government-Financed “Affordable Housing”

The act also allows Community Development Block Grant recipients to use up to 20 percent of certain funds for new affordable-housing construction.

Government-financed housing projects are often extraordinarily expensive on a per-unit basis. Projects may be subject to layers of federal, state, and local rules governing labor, procurement, environmental review, design, financing and tenant eligibility. Each requirement adds paperwork, professional fees, and delay.

By the time a subsidized development is completed, taxpayers may have spent far more per unit than a private builder would have needed to construct comparable housing. Government construction programs may produce highly visible projects and favorable political talking points, but they typically build too few homes to make a meaningful difference in a regional housing shortage.

A better approach would be to create conditions under which builders can produce naturally affordable housing without requiring a subsidy for every unit.

A Better Road to Housing Affordability

The ROAD to Housing Act represents an important acknowledgment that housing affordability is fundamentally connected to supply.

Its best provisions reduce duplicative reviews, encourage zoning reform, expand construction options and address financing barriers. These policies could eventually allow more homes to be built at lower cost.

Its worst provisions move in the opposite direction. Restrictions on institutional buyers interfere with private transactions without adding supply, while new subsidies and grant programs expand government’s role in selecting projects and distributing benefits.

Congress should build on the market-oriented portions of the law.

Housing affordability will not be restored by deciding who may purchase property or by attaching a federal subsidy to an artificially-limited number of homes. It will be restored by allowing the market to build enough homes to meet demand.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act takes some meaningful steps in that direction, but it also carries forward many of the same government interventions that contributed to making housing markets more complicated and expensive in the first place.

Subscribe now

Bennett is a familiar name to those who have followed Maine politics for years. He has been a member of the State Legislature on two occasions, the first of which saw him become Senate President in a unique power-sharing agreement with then-State Senator Mike Michaud in 2001.

After some time in the private sector, Bennett returned to politics in 2012, running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Olympia Snowe. He was later elected chairman of the Maine Republican Party, a position he would hold until 2017.

In 2020, Bennett was again elected to the Maine Senate, and has been serving his second stint in the Legislature ever since.

In June 2025, after a lengthy political career as a Republican, Bennett announced that he would join the 2026 gubernatorial race as an independent.

Our discussion focused on the governor’s race, his opponents Bobby Charles and Hannah Pingree, the issues facing Maine and his policy prescriptions to resolve those issues, and much more.

Maine Policy Institute does not endorse candidates or involve itself in political campaigns. We are bringing you conversations like this so you may better understand the priorities of individuals who seek powerful positions in Maine’s government.

Watch our last conversation with Rick Bennett:

Watch our most recent gubernatorial conversation with Bobby Charles:

Subscribe now

Every year, when the Maine State Legislature adjourns, it is tempting to think the policymaking is over and everyone’s freedoms are at least temporarily safe. The bills have been printed, the public hearings have been held, the roll calls have been taken, and lawmakers have gone home to their districts.

But unfortunately, that is increasingly not how Maine governance actually works.

In many cases, the end of the legislative session does not mean the end of policymaking; it simply means the action moves to state agencies, appointed boards, regulatory proceedings, councils, commissions, authorities, and “stakeholder” processes that most Mainers will never hear about and almost never follow.

That should concern everyone who cares about having a transparent and accountable government.

Maine people elect legislators to make the major decisions that affect their taxes, their energy bills, their businesses, their jobs, their homes, and their families. The basic bargain is straightforward. Elected officials are supposed to debate bills in public, cast votes in public, and then answer to voters for the consequences. That system is far from perfect, but at least the public can see who supported and opposed a policy, and it can hold legislators accountable at the ballot box. Delegation of legislative authority breaks that connection.

Rather than clearly deciding the hard questions themselves, lawmakers too often set broad directions and then step back, leaving the most consequential details to be worked out elsewhere. The result is a system where elected officials can claim credit for the intent of a policy while the real world costs, complications, and controversies emerge later through decisions made by unelected bureaucrats. The Legislature may adjourn, but the bureaucracy never stops.

That does not mean agencies have no legitimate role. Rulemaking is sometimes necessary. Technical decisions often require expertise. But there is a difference between implementation and lawmaking, and increasingly, Augusta blurs that line.

Maine’s new paid family and medical leave program is a good example. Lawmakers created one of the most significant new labor and tax programs in recent state history, but much of the practical effect is now being shaped through implementation. Employers and workers have already begun paying into the system through a payroll tax, and benefits began this year. Rather than making all of the major decisions up front, lawmakers passed the law and left many of the practical details to be worked out afterward. Mainers are now seeing the program take shape through guidance documents, administrative interpretations, and changing rules that determine how it actually works for employers and workers. These details are important, and too many of them are being decided inside the bureaucracy after the Legislature has already moved on.

Energy policy offers another example. Some of the biggest decisions driving up electric bills in Maine do not happen through a clear vote in the Legislature; they are often shaped through Public Utilities Commission proceedings, transmission cost decisions, and utility rate cases that play out over months or even years. By the time those decisions show up on monthly bills, ratepayers may be paying hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs without a clear understanding of who made the decision or who should be held accountable. To the average Mainer opening a monthly electric bill, the distinction between a legislative mandate and a commission-approved cost is not especially meaningful. Either way, the bill goes up. But politically, the accountability becomes much harder to trace.

The recent debate over data centers points in the same direction. Rather than simply allowing local communities, property owners, utilities, and private markets to respond to an emerging industry, Augusta moved quickly toward moratoriums, councils, and centralized planning. Even after Governor Mills vetoed the Legislature’s data center bill, she created a new advisory council by executive order. Whether one supports or opposes large data centers, there is a familiar pattern emerging of new issues arising, with Augusta’s instinct being to create another body, another process, and another layer of government — process that will lead to a continuously growing government without many people even noticing.

Growth is not always done through one sweeping law. Often it happens through delegation. A board here, a council there, a new rulemaking process, a new report, a new program that will be “implemented later,” a new fee or mandate that will be “worked out by the department.” By the time Mainers feel the cost, the vote that started the process may be months or years in the past. The legislator who supported the broad policy can claim the agency made those decisions. The agency can claim it simply followed the law, the board can claim it is applying technical expertise, and the public is left trying to figure out who, exactly, is responsible. That is not how a representative government should work.

If a policy is going to raise costs for ratepayers, workers, employers, or families, lawmakers should have to vote on it clearly. Major decisions about new taxes, higher energy bills, housing costs, or costly mandates should not be pushed off to agencies or appointed boards. They should be made in public by the elected officials who will have to answer for them.

Maine already recognizes this principle in part. Under state law, certain “major substantive” rules require a higher level of legislative review. That is an important safeguard. But in practice, many rules that have significant real world impacts are not classified as “major substantive” and therefore never receive that additional scrutiny, which weakens the safeguard considerably. Too many major policy decisions are still pushed into implementation, rulemaking, agency interpretation, or quasi-independent bodies after the public spotlight has moved on.

The solution is not to eliminate agencies or deny that technical rules sometimes need to be written; it is to stop pretending that major policy choices become less political simply because they are handed to regulators.

When an agency adopts a pivotal rule that directly affects Maine families and businesses, it is no longer dealing only with technical details; it is making decisions that should belong to elected lawmakers.

That is the line Maine needs to restore. Legislators should write laws clearly enough that agencies are carrying out policy, not creating it on their own. If a rule would impose major new costs or expand government power, it should come back to the Legislature for approval. When the Legislature adjourns, Mainers should not have to wonder which agency, board, or stakeholder process will make the next major decision for them.

Lawmakers should have the courage to govern openly, vote clearly, and own the consequences of the policies they put in motion. The public does not lose its right to accountable government just because lawmakers have left Augusta.

Subscribe now

Portland’s downtown should be one of the easiest places in Maine to open a restaurant, bar, music venue, or other nightlife business. It is compact, walkable, and already attracts the customers these businesses need. At a time when Portland’s storefronts are sitting empty, the city should be encouraging new businesses, but instead, City Hall requires business owners to navigate a maze of restrictions and permitting requirements before opening.

Under the city’s Downtown Entertainment Overlay, a business generally cannot obtain an entertainment license if it is located within 100 feet of another entertainment-licensed establishment.

The rule dates to the 1990s and was retained when Portland created its downtown entertainment overlay zone in 2007. According to the Portland Press Herald, city officials say it was intended to prevent an over-concentration of nightlife establishments and address concerns about noise, disorder, and fights associated with Old Port bars closing for the night.

Cocktail Mary owner Isaac MacDougal recently experienced these consequences firsthand. Earlier this year, MacDougal moved the business to 30 Market Street, a larger space that had already been built out for a bar and nightclub. He reportedly did not learn until after signing the lease that Cocktail Mary could not receive an entertainment license because another licensed establishment operates nearby. Cocktail Mary had DJs and events planned for the summer. The business was not accused of excessive noise, violence, or misconduct.

Creative Portland ran into the same barrier while organizing its “Third Wednesdays” events. The organization wanted bands to perform in a plaza at 511 Congress Street and had reportedly secured support from nearby businesses. Despite that support, the city said the performances could not go forward because of the buffer.

After hearing from business owners and arts advocates, Portland’s Housing and Economic Development Committee has finally forwarded a proposal to remove the restriction to the Planning Board. The board is expected to hold a workshop and public hearing before sending a recommendation to the City Council.

This recommendation is long overdue, and the council should absolutely repeal the rule.

Portland already has excessive regulations, capacity limits, inspections, and an entertainment-licensing process. If an establishment repeatedly generates excessive noise, tolerates violence, or fails to control its customers, the city can take action against that establishment.

The 100-foot rule does something very different. Rather than punishing misconduct, it presumes that businesses will create a problem based solely on the distance to another establishment.

This is the central flaw in Portland’s approach to regulation. Instead of focusing on measurable harm, the city often relies on preventive restrictions that make private investment more difficult whether or not the regulated activity causes a problem.

Portland’s Broader Business Climate

Portland’s poor business climate is not due to a single 100-foot rule; it’s a broader regulatory environment that suppresses entrepreneurs. Arizona State University’s 2022 Doing Business North America report ranked Portland 71st out of 83 cities for overall ease of doing business and 65th for starting a business. The report evaluated the regulatory environment facing small- and medium-sized businesses using indicators covering business formation, employment, electricity, land use, taxes, and insolvency.

Businesses experience city regulations cumulatively. A new operator may face zoning requirements like the 100-foot rule, business licensing, an entertainment license, inspections, fees, sound rules, and additional approvals before opening. Each requirement may appear relatively minor when considered independently. But together, they create costs, delays, and uncertainty that can make an otherwise viable project impossible.

Complex regulations also tend to favor established businesses. Older venues may be protected through exemptions or prior approvals, while new competitors face restrictions that did not apply when the incumbent opened. An existing entertainment license can effectively prevent another nearby establishment from competing for performers and customers.

The same regulatory instinct can be seen in Portland’s housing policies. Under the city’s current inclusionary-zoning mandate, residential developments of 10 or more units generally must either designate 25% of their units as affordable to households earning 80% of the area median income or pay a substantial fee. A recent Maine Policy Institute analysis of a city-commissioned study concluded that these requirements have made housing projects more expensive and more difficult to finance. Housing and nightlife may appear to be separate issues, but the underlying policy philosophy is the same.

Portland identifies a legitimate concern, housing affordability in one case and public safety in the other, and imposes costs on the businesses or developers needed to address it. When less housing is built, or usable commercial space remains dark, city officials respond with further studies, programs, and regulations rather than reconsidering the barriers they created.

Portland cannot regulate affordability into existence by making housing prohibitively expensive to build. Similarly, it cannot create a lively downtown while preventing nearby businesses from hosting entertainment.

Restaurants, bars, theaters, galleries, and music venues benefit from locating near one another. A person may eat dinner, attend a performance, and visit another establishment afterward. Each business generates foot traffic for the others. This clustering is one of the primary advantages of a downtown.

Supporters of the buffer may argue that additional entertainment venues could generate noise and create more work for an understaffed police department. Those concerns should not be dismissed, but they should be addressed directly through sound enforcement, capacity rules, and penalties against establishments that repeatedly cause disturbances.

Repealing the buffer rule should be the beginning of a broader review of Portland’s business regulations. The city should identify and remove outdated, ineffective regulations, duplicative approval processes, and requirements that increase the city’s costs.

The business dispersal requirement keeps usable spaces quiet, protects incumbents from competition, and substitutes arbitrary geography for evidence. Its repeal would help Portland’s nightlife, but the greater significance lies in what it could signal about the city’s regulatory direction.

A city that wants more housing, occupied storefronts, and successful local businesses must stop placing unnecessary barriers in front of the people willing to create them. Scrapping the 100-foot rule will not fix everything, but it is a long-overdue step toward making Portland a city that welcomes new businesses.

Subscribe now

Following his nomination in the Republican primaries, which he won by nearly 20 points, Charles sat down for a conversation on the Maine Policy Institute podcast to discuss the Maine governor's race, why he ran, the problems facing Maine, the failures of the leadership in Augusta, and much more.

Charles first joined Maine Policy for a podcast episode last year as part of our candidate interview series. You can watch that episode here.

This is part one of an interview series with the 2026 gubernatorial nominees. Maine Policy Institute does not endorse candidates or involve itself in political campaigns. We are bringing you conversations like this so you may better understand the priorities of individuals who seek powerful positions in Maine’s government.

Listen to this episode here, as well as on YouTube and Spotify.

To learn more about us, visit MainePolicy.org.

Subscribe now

Share

This week we do our podcast a bit early, due to the explosive new scandal in Maine’s U.S. Senate race. Graham Platner has now been accused of sexual assault by a former on-again off-again girlfriend, Jenny Racicot.

According to Politico:

Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.

“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”

This is a story that was reiterated in a personal interview with Jake Tapper of CNN which aired shortly after the Politico story dropped.

While Platner had survived prior scandals — from tattoos to internet trolling to prior abusive relationships with women — this one is different. Support for him among the Democratic establishment collapsed (finally) Monday, with the DSCC, Maine Democratic Party, national progressive allies like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and local Maine politicians all calling on him to drop out. Platner, for his part, said that he would be “taking time to reflect” about the best path forward.

We reflect on how things got to this point, and what happens next for Platner. If he does drop out, there is already a mad dash of candidates throwing their hat into the ring to run in his place. Which among them is the most likely? We discuss.

We also talk about what has happened to our politics and our society that it took this long to ultimately end the Platner candidacy.

All this and more on this week’s Pine Tree Pulse podcast.

Lamentably, Abigail was both correct and prophetic with these words.

Abigail wrote these words in John’s absence as he was attending the Second Continental Congress in Baltimore. Their separation eventually became frequent and long-lasting: John was elected to serve as a diplomat pleading for French support and a Dutch loan to ultimately secure a victory in the war. Consequently, being more than 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, he was separated from his family at home in Braintree, Massachusetts for years as he served his country.

The Adamses were emblematic of the tremendous sacrifices the early patriots made.

Abigail, though she received some familial support, largely raised their four children on her own while John was abroad or traveling for the Continental Congress. Though she was a woman of profound courage, she nonetheless lived in fear and toil while her husband was absent, sometimes not hearing from him for weeks or months while the war raged on and uncertainty cast a shadow over her life.

She had to manage their farm and finances alone. She cared for her family during times of outbreaks of disease. She lived what was practically a stone’s throw from Boston, where the British were occupying, and often was subjected to the thunder of cannon fire. She worried constantly about her husband and the future of America. She endured shortages of essential supplies. At one point, she traveled across the Atlantic just to be reunited with John, despite her paralyzing trepidation of crossing the ocean.

Of course, John’s sacrifices ought not be ignored, either. He was away from his family for years as a diplomat abroad, missing much of his children’s upbringing and support from his wife. For many years his relationship with Abigail chiefly existed in handwritten letters. He crossed the treacherous Atlantic multiple times as a diplomat, risking disease and being kidnapped or killed. He courageously risked his reputation by defending the British after the Boston massacre — and winning. He served tirelessly in a myriad of committees during the war, hardly ever resting. He sacrificed his lucrative career by instead serving his country. By signing his name on the Declaration of Independence, he became a de facto a traitor to the king, and therefore subject to imprisonment — or worse, hanging, by British authorities.

These are just some of the sacrifices the two made, and these are just two people. Tens of thousands of early patriots and colonists made similar sacrifices, including, of course, the soldiers who fought in the war and were subject to some of the most odious and wretched conditions. Some, like officer Henry Knox and General George Washington, stayed through to the end despite the unyielding miseries that befell them.

Lamentably, a sore lack of gratitude and appreciation for the early patriots’ sacrifices prevails today, in addition to a lack of pride for our country. In fact, in our present epoch, it seems common to regularly hear continual cries of scorn, contempt, and opprobrium of our country. These are perennial cries that seem to ignore our nation’s history, but they’re most salient around the Fourth of July, when each year we are reminded of the ills that plague America, rather than, say, the sentiment that we as humans are all created equal and are endowed with “certain unalienable rights” such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It’s disheartening to see. It seems the sentiment of our country that many Americans default to is one of negativity, pessimism, and criticism. Scores of Americans would say they’re not proud of America or proud to be American, that America is utterly devoid of anything worthwhile or worth preserving.

Imploring Americans to have appreciation for their country is not asking them to be mindlessly jingoistic and pretend that everything is okay in America, nor is it asking them to love their government; in a sense, that’s the antithesis of being American. It’s just asking them to appreciate the life, principles, and system of laws and rights we enjoy (and frequently take for granted) here, and to have gratitude for the sacrifices that were made to birth this country.

Conversely, imploring Americans to appreciate the sacrifices of the early patriots is not asking them to suspend all criticism of the conditions here. It’s reasonable to criticize the systems or people who are failing the the nation. It’s reasonable to denounce corruption when you see it, to denounce avarice and greed here when it’s evident. But it’s also unfair to flippantly hold America in contempt as if it’s the root of all evil. Lazy cynicism of America is equal parts unhelpful and unwelcome.

Yes, America is rife with a myriad of issues. The costs of healthcare, housing, groceries, and childcare are utterly deplorable. Politicians inexplicably become wealthy after being in office as public servants, and money plays an inordinately large role in politics. Ideology is corrupting our institutions and weakening our trust in them. Our obesity rates are absolutely embarrassing. Maternity and paternity leave is oftentimes so limited that both parents have to work and hardly get to spend time with their children.

But fundamentally, America is not just a good place but a great place; why else would so many from around the world seek to live here? Why not other countries? As it turns out, every country faces its own ills, and because human nature is not unique to any one country, America - though it does have its unique set of challenges compared to the rest of the world - is not exactly unique in its issues.

America has given birth to such a dizzying amount of wealth and success stories it’s almost incomprehensible. American achievements are nothing to take lightly. The internet, telephone, and airplane began here. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak formed Apple and invented the personal computer. Alex Honnold climbed the 3,000-foot El Capitan in Yosemite without ropes. Harriet Beecher Stowe - a Mainer - wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And Michael Jordan is still the greatest of all time.

Furthermore, our cities, our food, and our national parks are world-class, attracting millions of visitors from all over the world. Culture here has produced Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Forrest Gump, as well as Fleetwood Mac, Metallica, and Michael Jackson. Our universities are so elite that they, too, draw people from all over the world.

We’re creative, we’re inventive, we have a sense of humor. America is the land of opportunity for a reason. It’s also the land of liberty, and the land of adventure.

Indeed, life in America is absolutely imperfect and needs serious corrections, but it’s still good, and much better and more preferable to many, many other countries in the world. And while it may be imperfect, it’s nonetheless imperative that we not throw the baby out with the bath water. America is worth preserving.

It is our duty to combat the contemptuous narratives and sentiments, but it is also our duty to educate ourselves on the brutal realities of the Revolutionary War in order to fully comprehend the magnitude of sacrifices our ancestors made. Learning about the Revolutionary War can also further our understanding of how and why we are here, and ideally, further our appreciation (there’s that word again) the life we enjoy as Americans.

If you’re not sure where to begin, watch our conversation with Revolutionary War historian Alan Taylor, or watch Ken Burns’ recent six-part docuseries, The American Revolution. Read David McCullough’s biography John Adams and his book on the Continental Army, 1776. Visit historic sites such as Lexington and Concord, or George Washington’s Mt. Vernon in Virginia. There’s a myriad of options to learn about the war, as well as celebrate out 250th anniversary as Americans. After all, at the very least, the founding of America is deeply interesting and rich with deeply fascinating stories.

Abigail Adams was right: We are reaping the blessings of our ancestors, but we scarcely conceive the hardships they endured. As Americans, especially with our nation’s 250th anniversary just days away, it is paramount that we understand the great sacrifices of the early patriots, both men and women alike. We ignore our own history at our peril.

Maine’s new statewide ban on student use of cellphones in school is based on reasonable concerns: Cell phones and other electronic devices can be distracting in class, and teachers should not have to compete with group chats, games, or social media while trying to teach. Schools should be allowed to keep phones out of classrooms, and local school boards should be allowed to adopt rules when their communities want them.

But Maine’s new “bell-to-bell” mandate goes well beyond the common-sense goal of keeping students focused.

Beginning August 1, every public school in Maine must adopt a policy prohibiting students from using cell phones, smartwatches, and other personal electronic devices with internet or cellular capabilities from the start of the school day until dismissal. The law is not limited to classroom instruction; it applies during time between classes, lunch, study halls, and other moments when students are not being taught, or when a cell phone is not guaranteed to distract others from learning.

The law does contain necessary exceptions for students with individualized education programs (IEPs), Section 504 accommodations, individualized health plans, and translation needs. Schools may also authorize additional exceptions in emergencies. But for ordinary students, the state has decided that a phone cannot be used at any time during the school day.

Maine Should Trust Local Schools

Maine has a long tradition of local decision-making. Before this mandate, public school districts decided their own cell phone policies. Some school districts chose strict phone restrictions. Others allowed students to use phones during lunch or between classes.

The state has now taken away that central policy decision. Local boards can still decide how to store phones, how to discipline violations, and how to write the details of their policies. But the core question of whether a full bell-to-bell ban is right for a particular community has been stripped from local control.

Statewide policies might make sense when students’ basic rights or safety are at stake. But the difference between allowing a student to check a phone during lunch and requiring that phone to stay locked away is not a question that needs a one-size-fits-all answer from the Maine state government.

Results Will Take Time

It is hard to tell what results the cell phone ban will actually produce. So far, national studies have not shown that school cell phone bans improve standardized test scores or attendance. The National Bureau of Economic Research published a study that demonstrates the effects of cell phone bans in school, stating that, “For academic achievement, average effects on test scores are consistently close to zero. High schools see modest positive effects, particularly in math, while middle schools see small negative effects. We find little evidence of effects on school attendance, self-reported classroom attention, or perceived online bullying.” That’s not to say a cell phone ban cannot eventually lead to better scores or student performance; after all, cell phone ban policies are still recent. It could take a full cycle of students who have never used phones in school to see large-scale improvements in test scores. Right now, it’s too early to tell.

However, prior to the statewide cell phone ban, Bangor Public School District had a classroom ban on cell phones requiring students to lock up their phones before class. Educators from Bangor said they have seen increased engagement in class and better performance among students. While some anecdotal evidence provided that classroom bans are improving performance, it is unclear if a “bell-to-bell” ban is any more effective than a classroom cell phone ban.

The Enforcement Problem Will Be Greater Than Supporters Admit

Supporters describe this policy as a way to let teachers teach rather than police phones. That goal is understandable. But a bell-to-bell ban may move the policing from classrooms to hallways, cafeterias, offices, disciplinary meetings, and eventually the restrooms.

Faculty will have to collect phones, store them, and return them. They will also have to decide what happens when a student claims they need access to their phone to call their parents after a device is confiscated. Finally, they will have to deal with arguments over whether a smartwatch counts, whether a device was in use, or whether a particular situation qualifies as an emergency.

Strict rules that students broadly dislike will also invite incessant boundary testing. Hundreds of students walking the halls with their phones will raise the question of how a school enforces a policy, or whether it becomes selectively enforced.

Inevitably, when class gets out, hundreds of students will take to the hall to walk to their next class. How will schools enforce a phone ban while students are walking in herds? Will teachers be forced to pick up the slack?

Students Should Not Lose Freedom When the Bell Rings

Students should retain a reasonable amount of personal freedom during non-instructional parts of the school day.

There is an obvious difference between scrolling social media during math class and checking a phone during lunch. Putting a blanket ban on all cell phone use during the day greatly hinders personal freedom. Students use their phones to coordinate rides, communicate changes in work schedules, check in with family, respond to parents, talk with siblings, and handle normal parts of modern life. A student whose parent needs to communicate about a doctor’s appointment, a late pickup, a family emergency, or a change in plans should not have to rely on a school office as the only point of contact.

This is especially hard to justify for older students. A high school senior may have a job, a car, younger siblings, family obligations, or a parent who depends on them for communication. These students are close to becoming adults, if not already adults. Schools should help those students become responsible, not teach that life’s problems are solved by blanket prohibitions by the government. In reality, such prohibitions create more problems than they solve.

Better Policy is Available

Maine does not need to choose between unlimited phone use and an all-day statewide ban. The better approach would be simple: let local districts decide, or limit the prohibition to personal phone use during direct instruction.

A district that wants a full bell-to-bell policy should be able to adopt one. A district that wants phones away in class but available during lunch should be able to make that choice as well. Voters and student representatives to the school board can hold their own school board members accountable district by district if they believe the policy is too strict or too loose.

Maine’s bell-to-bell ban may be well-intentioned, but good intentions don’t always make for good policy. The policy takes a legitimate concern about classroom distraction and turns it into an unnecessary statewide restriction on student freedom and local control.

Keeping phones out of classrooms is good and reasonable policy, but the state’s bell-to-bell ban is trademark government overreach. Limiting the ban to instruction time and ceding power to local control is a better, more measured approach. The state should adopt this policy instead.

On the final podcast of June, we look forward to America’s 250th birthday in anticipation of the Fourth of July.

Our main topic of conversation is once again Ranked Choice Voting this week, as a new Bangor Daily News analysis states that only 437 votes stood between Shenna Bellows, who was the fourth place finisher in the initial primary vote count, and the Democratic nomination. The crux of the case: if Bellows had gained just a few hundred additional votes in the second round of counting, she would have moved into third place rather than fourth, and it would have been Troy Jackson, not Bellows, that would’ve been eliminated in that round. From there, Bellows would’ve collected the bulk of Jackson’s votes, pushing here ahead of Pingree and ultimately into the lead.

We discuss this scenario, as well as the complications and questions posed by the idea of recounts in Ranked Choice Voting elections.

We also catch back up on the Platner vs. Collins Senate race, Platner calling Collins a corrupt criminal, and Collins’ outraged response.

Finally, we deal briefly with a decision by the Supreme Court this week regarding the Temporary Protected Status of Haitians, and the problem of valuing the outcomes from legal decisions rather than their fidelity to the Constitution and American law.