By Michael Shepherd - May 18, 2023
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📷 This photo provided by the Maine Forest Service shows several locomotives and rail cars burning after a freight train derailed on April 15, 2023, near Rockwood. (Maine Forest Service via AP)

Good morning from Augusta. The Legislature is in today. Here are the House and Senate calendars, plus a busy committee agenda with hearings on offshore wind bills and work on a statewide flavored tobacco ban.

What we're watching today

This rail confidentiality law may get erased after a rural Maine derailment. A 2015 law that shielded records on hazardous materials transported by rail in Maine is on the chopping block under a quick response from lawmakers to the train derailment in the Moosehead Lake region in April.

Nobody was injured in the derailment of three engines and six cars of a Canadian Pacific Kansas City freight train near Rockwood, which was carrying hazardous materials that did not burn in the resulting fire. But there were environmental consequences, since hundreds of gallons of fuel leaked into nearby waterways. The state has cited the railway for erosion near the site.

The very worst was avoided in Maine, but the derailment gained national attention on the heels of a February derailment in eastern Ohio that released hazardous chemicals into the air and prompted environmental and public health responses in three states as well as government lawsuits against the railway.

Maine has had some unique experience in this policy area. During a period of divided government in 2015, the Legislature passed a measure that made all records confidential that describe the hazardous materials trains carry, as well as the routes and the frequency of travel, which effectively barred the public from getting those records from police or fire departments.

Then-Rep. Michael Shaw, D-Standish, argued at the time that the proposal actually increased public safety because railways would be more likely to provide information to government agencies on their activity if they knew it would not be made public. His sponsorship of the hastily passed bill drew attention since he was an Amtrak conductor.

The Legislature passed it, but it was vetoed by then-Gov. Paul LePage, who said in a message that he was "not at all comfortable shielding this information from the Maine citizens that may be placed in harm's way." But lawmakers easily overrode the veto, with just five of them agreeing with LePage's stance.

The pendulum is now moving in the other direction. The new bill to strip the confidentiality law comes from lawmakers across the ideological spectrum, from progressive House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, to moderate Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford, and conservative Sen. Stacey Guerin, R-Glenburn, who represents much of the Moosehead Lake region.

This wide group of sponsors bodes well for passage and shows how the consensus policies of yesteryear can be flipped quickly when the kinds of events that have drawn national attention hit home.

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News and notes

📷 Students from Regional School Unit 5 wear face coverings as they head home on a school bus on Jan. 5, 2022, in Freeport. (AP photo by Robert F. Bukaty)

📄 A COVID-19 commission moves forward.

◉ An effort led by Sen. Lisa Keim, R-Dixfield, to establish a commission that would review Maine's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, sailed unanimously through the Legislature's health panel on Wednesday. It sets up a sweeping review of the response led by Gov. Janet Mills and her administration.

◉ The tone on this has shifted sharply in two years. In 2021, the Mills administration testified against a similar effort from Keim in the heat of the pandemic. This time, the Maine Hospital Association joined the push with a set of reasons far disparate from those of the conservative Maine Policy Institute, which is critical of health policies at the state and federal levels.

◉ Expect the commission's work to lead to a boiled-down version of the debate of the last three years on education, public health and economic policies. There have been many national studies that have tried to balance those areas, with one from conservative economists giving Maine's response high marks.

♟️ One of Maine's senators is open to this debt ceiling workaround.

◉ Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, told Semafor reporter Joseph Zeballos-Roig that President Joe Biden should consider invoking a constitutional challenge to the federal debt limit as an escape from the current standoff with House Republicans on the issue.

◉ King said there are "some very strong legal arguments" surrounding the 14th Amendment, which says the validity public debts cannot be questioned. Biden has said he may make the argument that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional, but he does not appear to be ready to do it in this situation.

◉ That makes a deal between the White House and Republicans the likeliest situation here. Advisers to both Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-California, have ramped up their meetings in recent days. Rep. Jared Golden, a centrist Democrat from Maine's 2nd District, took a dim view last week of any 14th Amendment workaround and expects some sort of budget deal.

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What we're reading

🔫 Maine is likely to ban "straw" gun purchases in response to April shootings.

💭 A firm backed by private equity rethinks its Maine solar expansion.

👀 This Maine hospital could have closed this year without major changes.

🏦 Out-of-state banks own nearly all of Bangor's vacant homes.

🔎 New staff discovered crucial documents are missing in a Maine town.

🔥 The cause of a Maine landfill fire may never be clear. Here's your soundtrack.

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