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| 📷 Gov. Janet Mills speaks during a press conference at the conclusion of the National Governors Association meeting in Portland on July 15, 2022. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett) |
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A new campaign ad from the governor highlights a historic bump in education funding.
— The new ad from Mills highlights the two-year budget passed in 2021, which lifted the state's share of basic K-12 education costs to a 55 percent threshold that had been enshrined in law but never met by Augusta.
— Democrats had long pushed for the state to meet the goal, but lawmakers were only able to do it after a wave of federal aid greased strong state surpluses in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. The budget was approved on a bipartisan basis.
— The threshold has long been pitched as a way to avoid property tax shifts. While it clearly keeps costs from percolating down to the local level, state and local tax burdens have risen in Maine and nationally in recent years due to higher incomes and property values, a Tax Foundation report found.
A Maine island whose name had a racial slur now has a "No Name" name.
— As part of an effort to cull place names that feature racist terms, 650 geographic features on federal lands were renamed by the Interior Department recently because they contained the word "squaw," an offensive term for a Native American woman.
— Only one Maine feature was on the list, the former White Squaw Island between Greenbush and Argyle on the Penobscot River. The amusing new name for the island is No Name Island.
— “I feel a deep obligation to use my platform to ensure that our public lands and waters are accessible and welcoming," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency, said in a statement. |
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What we're reading
— A federal review of the Maine National Guard’s sexual assault and harassment policies did not investigate the complaints raised in a BDN investigation of a predatory culture that prompted the review.
— Omicron-specific boosters are available. Here's how to get one in Maine.
— Allagash Brewing, Maine’s largest craft brewer, is adding a tasting room at the former Scarborough Downs in a large expansion of its operations and a boon for the large and burgeoning new mixed-use development.
— The state's high court heard arguments Thursday over the intertidal property needed to build a controversial land-based salmon farm in Belfast, Maine Public reported. |
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