By Michael Shepherd - April 12, 2022
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Good morning from Augusta.

What we're watching today

The Senate president is feuding with a top logging group over bills endangered by opposition from the state and industry. Over the past few days, a longstanding battle between Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, and the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine has taken off from Op-Ed pages to Facebook posts and finally to the Senate floor on Monday as Jackson-backed bills take steps toward votes in the State House.

The hard-charging labor Democrat, a logger by trade, got into politics after being a key figure in a 1998 blockade to protest the hiring of Canadian loggers to work in Maine. That has been his main cause in Augusta since then. His orientation on this and other issues has put him at odds with the industry.

Jackson passed a bill in 2019 that expanded collective bargaining rights to loggers and haulers, but no Maine lawmaker was hit harder by Gov. Janet Mills' veto pen last year. One of the vetoes included a bill that targeted logging companies by proposing a ban on the aerial spraying of pesticides. Jackson could have similar problems with two more bills that he is championing this year that would create a logging dispute resolution board and provide tax incentives to companies that hire Maine workers and meet pay standards.

The first measure has been approved in both chambers, largely along party lines. The second, sponsored by Rep. Richard Evans, D-Dover Foxcroft, failed in the Senate on Monday. It came after Dana Doran, the head of the logging industry group, assailed Jackson in an Op-Ed in two central Maine newspapers last week for advancing "unnecessary bills" over the objections of the logging industry in an election year, flagging the AFL-CIO's role in helping to pick a logging representative on the proposed dispute panel.

Jackson has fired back in Facebook posts since then, accusing Doran of lying in a plea for loggers to come to the Senate chamber on Monday for a vote on one of the bills. He said last week that it is clear the leaders of the industry group are "only working for themselves."

"We're never going to move the needle in this state if people don't actually stand up and let loggers actually have a voice in rates, not in other things that are helpful but trivial, but the actual prices that they're being paid," Jackson said in a Senate floor speech on Monday.

It is not simply a battle between Jackson and Doran. The Mills administration opposed the dispute resolution board at a March hearing. The Legislature is on track to pass that one, but it only won by a two-vote margin in the Senate. Any Mills veto would doom the measure if the environment remains the same, risking a late-spring fissure in the Democratic alliance.

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What we're reading

— Obscure state rule changes have veterans clubs and others reliant on pull-tab gaming fearing for their financial future. At one Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Portland, the games make up the bulk of revenue. State regulators say the changes came in response to reports that clubs were skewing game odds and the changes are being examined again.

— Portland is looking for a new city manager while it considers changes that would downgrade the responsibilities of that job. The city's charter commission voted in March a create an stronger executive mayor in the city. While some type of manager would still work under the mayor's supervision, the changes come at a time when filling other city roles has been difficult.

— Economists, including two tied to former President Donald Trump, gave Maine's pandemic response an A grade in a study. They said the state was able to keep deaths low and limit economic harm, putting Maine among the top eight states. It was the only one with a Democratic governor to score that high.

— A first-in-the-nation ban on sludge spreading linked to PFAS contamination advanced in the Maine House of Representatives on Monday. The measure was backed by Democrats and advocates who cited the need to move quickly to fight forever chemicals, while Republicans thought the measure went too far.

— A Bangor student who once had her braids cut by a teacher and has faced racist comments about her hair is part of a push in Augusta to make hair discrimination illegal. Arianna DeJesus, a high school senior who is Black, testified in favor of a measure that is one vote away from going to Gov. Janet Mills' desk that would follow Maryland and other states in adding the new category to anti-discrimination laws.

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Follow along today

10 a.m. The House and Senate are back. In the House, an initial vote could come on a bill from Passamaquoddy Rep. Rena Newell aimed at improving water quality at the tribe's Sipayik reservation. Watch here.

The Senate could vote on the sludge spreading ban and adult-use marijuana delivery bills that were approved in the House on Monday. Watch here.

3 p.m. The budget committee continues work on Mills' spending proposal. Watch here.

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📷 Lead photo: Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, climbs the stairs to a trucking company headquarters in northwestern Maine near the border with Saint-Pamphile, Quebec, on Sept. 17, 2020. (BDN photo by Josh Keefe)

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