By Michael Shepherd - Aug. 4, 2022
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📷 A reminder is written on a door at the former Great Northern Paper mill in Millinocket on Jan. 13, 2017. (BDN photo by Ashley L. Conti)

Good morning from Augusta. There are 96 days until Maine's November elections.

What we're watching today

A reconstituted version of a controversial company is back at the center of a big Maine project. Cate Street Capital is well-known in Maine as the last owner of the Great Northern Paper Co. mills, gaining attention after a Portland Press Herald investigation found it extracted nearly $16 million in tax credits for a smaller investment. None of it saved the iconic East Millinocket mill, which the company reopened in 2011 but shut down for good in 2014.

The company is now back in Maine — sort of. A group called CS Solutions has been tapped to help manage the restart of a Hampden trash plant that 115 Maine cities and towns are trying to buy and restart with financial help from a hedge fund. It has many of the same principals as Cate Street, including CEO, Ned Dwyer, who managed Great Northern when the mill closed in 2014.

There is a notable addition, however. The group's chief operations officer is Maine Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner George Gervais. He defended Cate Street during his time in the administration of then-Gov. Paul LePage by saying the tax credits extended the life of a mill set for the scrap heap long before it closed. LePage told the Press Herald in 2015 he was unhappy with the deal, but he said there was no way to avoid it. The tax-break program was later tightened.

Cate Street filed for bankruptcy in 2020, but a new company that apparently houses CS Solutions emerged from the rubble. It bills itself as a Florida-based clean-tech company managing a hydroponic greenhouse in that state and trash-to-pellet and biomass plants in New Hampshire, where a judge in 2020 called the new company a "continuation" of Cate Street.

Tension around this played into LePage's 2014 reelection campaign, when independent Eliot Cutler hit the Republican and his administration for making a bad deal with investors. But both LePage and then-U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, the Democratic nominee, hit Cutler for politicizing the area's woes. (Michaud is now an East Millinocket selectman helping to redevelop the mill site; Cutler was arrested on child pornography charges in March.)

The group's exit from Maine has tamped down the political tension around Cate Street and its offshoots since then. But the reconstituted company's entrance into another major project here may elevate it from one that has gained notice regionally so far to one of statewide interest.

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News and notes

The word of the week in the governor's race is "elitist."

— That's what former Gov. Paul LePage called Gov. Janet Mills in an interview with the conservative Breitbart News published this week and then in a fundraising email issued on Wednesday.

— "Janet Mills comes from a multi-generational political family, and she is very much out of touch with Mainers because she’s an Elitist," the email opened.

— It's an attempt by the Republican to leverage his familiar origin story of being homeless at age 11 after escaping an abusive father against that of Mills, a Democrat whose family's run of officeholders dates back to the early 1900s. Her father was well-connected in the Republican politics of the 1960s.

— LePage, however, has gone from outsider to a behind-the-scenes controller of Republican politics here between his first run in 2010 and his third now.

— "Paul LePage wants to convince the people of Maine that they were better off under his leadership than Governor Mills'," the Mills campaign said in a fundraising email last week. "There’s just one problem: he’s wrong."

A paid family and medical leave referendum drive is pitched as a failsafe.

— Progressive groups running a brand-new effort to put a sweeping paid family and medical leave referendum on the 2023 ballot says it is designed to give supporters an alternative to a legislative panel's work on the issue.

— "This gives us two chances to make PFML a reality next year, and we couldn’t be more excited," the coalition said in a Thursday newsletter.

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What we're reading

— Maine's two senators argued for Electoral College reform in a Senate hearing on Wednesday with a key measure on track for passage.

— A quiet part of Belfast is the epicenter of what police called a giant theft ring. Things got heated there on Monday evening, when victims reportedly showed up at a home looking for their property.

— Maine Center for Disease Control Director Nirav Shah isn't really running for office, you guys.

— This Belfast middle school teacher helped to engineer the escape of a Ukrainian counterpart whom her classroom connected with last year.

— Maine is among the top states where rising home values are driving wealth.

Photo of the day

📷 Della, a canine "staffer" for Precision Paving of Bangor, sits in a truck while crews work on a railroad crossing in Presque Isle on Wednesday. (Star-Herald phot by Paula Brewer)

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