By Michael Shepherd - March 10, 2023
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📷 Central Maine Power Co. utility lines are pictured in Pownal on Oct. 6, 2021. (AP photo by Robert F. Bukaty)

Good morning from Augusta. The legislative committee agenda is short on Friday. Here's the schedule.

What we're watching today

A judge weighs in on the rhetorical battle over the utility takeover to be decided by Maine voters. Rhetoric is a key feature of every political campaign, but it is especially so in the fight over putting the infrastructure of the state's two big electric utilities under the control of an elected board that would use billions of dollars in public borrowing money to fund the takeover.

Supporters of this question call it "a consumer-owned utility." Opponents call it a "government takeover." In the latest draft of the referendum question, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows' office skewed toward the latter view, proposing to ask voters to create a "quasi-governmental" power company.

On Thursday, a Maine Superior Court judge ruled that was wrong, accepting an argument from Our Power, the group running the utility takeover campaign, that the term was misleading and not understandable. The move sends the question back to Bellows' office for another draft of the referendum question.

The court case over the question's wording has been playing out quietly in the public-relations war over the referendum. Both Our Power and their adversaries at Central Maine Power Co. and Versant Power, the companies targeted by the referendum, have tried to cement their preferred terms in the public, media and in governmental and judicial spheres.

On the proponents' side, the phrase "consumer-owned utility" is already a term used in state law, and it highlights the cooperative model they are trying to push. For the opponents at the major utilities, invoking government ownership of the grid serves to highlight risk. The new elected board would be a new kind of government entity that would exist outside the state budget.

The case from Justice MaryGay Kennedy is relatively simple: She says "quasi-governmental" is not easily understandable in part because it is not defined in state law nor a term used in the ballot question. While she does not exactly say consumer ownership should be mentioned in the question, she dings Bellows for not including it despite the term featuring prominently in the proposal.

For Our Power, it is a victory in court just after an unsuccessful attempt to get a rival question backed by CMP's parent off the November ballot. That sets up a duel between the utility takeover question and the other one, which would subject the public borrowing needed to fund the takeover to yet another vote.

While the judge's ruling gives proponents some language to hang their hats on, neither it nor Bellows' next question will stop the wrangling over the best term. It will define much of the public campaign over this sweeping idea.

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News and notes

📷 State Sen. Eric Brakey greets voters at the polls in Lewiston while running for Maine's 2nd Congressional District on July 14, 2020. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

🇺🇦 Most Republicans in the Maine Senate back a Ukraine resolution.

◉ After 53 Republicans in the Maine House of Representatives opposed a resolution on Tuesday backing Ukraine in its war with Russia, only four of the 12 caucus members voting in the upper chamber on Thursday voted against it.

◉ Those opponents were Sens. Eric Brakey of Auburn, Matt Pouliot of Augusta, Peter Lyford of Eddington and Stacey Guerin of Glenburn. The top Republicans in the chamber voted against it, while House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor led opposition to it earlier in the week.

◉ Supporters of the resolution have centered their arguments on the U.S. role of ensuring democracies persist across the world. Arguments from Republicans ranged from what they called a misplaced focus on global issues and criticism of Ukrainian leadership. Brakey, a libertarian-leaning Republican who has run twice for Congress, gave an 18-minute floor speech savaging the measure.

◉ "This resolution on the war in Ukraine is riddled with half-truths, historical omissions and dangerous conclusion that urge our nation down the path towards a potential global nuclear war, the likes of which no one alive or dead on this earth has ever seen and one that humanity will never experience twice," Brakey said.

🧾 Legislative committees are quickly putting budget work together.

◉ This week, eight of the Legislature's 18 core committees submitted so-called report backs" on Gov. Janet Mills' two-year spending plan. These sets of recommendations on budget items are a key part of the budget process, triggering reviews and then votes from the appropriations committee.

◉ Mills and lawmakers have been saying they want a budget to pass with two-thirds majorities. But Democrats have until the end of the month to advance a majority-only budget as they did in 2021, and committees are making headway. Watch the speed of these reports for signs of their posture.

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What we're reading

🚬 Maine isn't checking for underage marijuana sales like it does for alcohol.

📣 Bangor urges lawmakers to act on a sludge crisis.

🛍️ The state granted a $6 million tax abatement to an Ellsworth mall.

🤝 A local developer will buy the embattled Presque Isle mall.

💰 Lawmakers will be urged by a federal panel to increase indigent defense funding, the Maine Monitor reported.

🤔 The state is struggling to study short-term rentals in unorganized territories, Maine Public reported.

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