By Michael Shepherd - May 17, 2023
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📷 Gov. Janet Mills carries a Maine-made Dove Tail baseball bat past a new machine that can precisely scan them at Hadlock Field in Portland on Wednesday. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Good morning from Augusta. Legislative committees are in today. Here's the agenda, including work at 10 a.m. on a wide range of gun bills and hearings at the same time on the governor's proposed spending bill.

What we're watching today

The $1 billion corridor is likely to be built. There are still some hurdles. The parent of Central Maine Power Co. continued clearing obstacles to its planned hydropower corridor through western Maine on Tuesday. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection lifted its suspension of a key construction permit after a court ruled that builders had the right to proceed despite a 2021 referendum aiming to stop the project.

The move had been telegraphed by state officials since the court ruling, which was not appealed by opponents and amounts to the surest sign yet that the project will be built. Restarting it will still take months longer, with a top official with Avangrid, CMP's parent, telling Wall Street analysts in an April earnings call that there should be a construction timeline by the middle of the year.

There are still more things for Avangrid to iron out. Corridor opponents are still fighting it on two fronts: a lawsuit challenging two federal permits and long-languishing appeals of the state permit that was turned back on this week. One attorney fighting Avangrid said last month that the appeals could create further conditions on the project by the time it is built.

The project was being built before voters rejected it at the ballot box, and both of those challenges were active at that time. Avangrid will likely be able to keep building if those proceedings stretch into their construction restart, which is subject to some conditions from the DEP. They include more conservation land around the footprint, third-party inspections and five days of notice to the state agency before building begins.

We are not all that close to that point yet, but it is drawing closer absent some legal bombshell. Over the course of a year and a half, the pendulum has swung in favor of CMP and Avangrid on this project.

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News and notes

📷 Rep. David Boyer, R-Poland, is pictured in the House chamber of the Maine State House on Dec. 7, 2022. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

✅ This Republican won a floor fight on a bill with political implications.

◉ Victories on the chamber floors have been few and far between for legislative Republicans, but Rep. David Boyer, R-Poland, was able to win a Tuesday vote on a bill that would force a Maine governor appointing an interim U.S. senator to pick someone with the same political affiliation as the senator being replaced.

◉ A Democratic bid to kill the measure failed when 13 members of the majority party in the House voted with Boyer and all other Republicans. That means it cleared an initial hurdle, although it faces more votes in both chambers.

◉ The bill would tie the hands of Democratic Gov. Janet Mills if she were ever called upon to replace either Republican Sen. Susan Collins or independent Sen. Angus King. She would not be able to choose a Democrat, although nothing in the law would prohibit that person from changing their affiliation after the appointment is made.

◉ These appointments can be king-making opportunities for governors. The last one in Maine came in 1980, when federal judge George Mitchell was picked by then-Gov. Joseph Brennan to fill the seat of Sen. Edmund S. Muskie after Muskie became secretary of state. Mitchell became Senate majority leader and a force in international politics.

🍻 We might be seeing the limits of Maine's alcohol liberalization.

◉ The COVID-19 pandemic led to lasting changes for Maine's liquor laws, with Mills signing a measure this year that made the to-go cocktails that became a feature of restaurants at a time when people were isolating permanent.

◉ Nationally, alcohol-related deaths rose 25 percent between 2019 and 2020, with alcohol sales also rising by nearly 3 percent. Maine has long had one of the nation's highest prevalences of binge drinking, which has led to some pushback on other measures to liberalize liquor laws.

◉ Two of them, from bipartisan groups that want to allow delivery of beer by small Maine breweries and allow direct shipment of spirits, have been opposed by the Mills administration on public health and constitutional grounds. Without the governor's buy-in, it will likely be difficult to pass the changes.

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What we're reading

🧮 Mills faces budget challenges from her left and right.

🥼 King recommends Nirav Shah to run the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

🔋 Maine is far from its renewable energy battery storage goals.

🫐 A wild blueberry giant is raising millions of native bees.

🏖️ Rising seas are no issue for beachfront home demand, Maine Public reports.

🌼 The flower that killed a dam is endangered no more. Here's your soundtrack.

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