| 🗞 The Daily Brief is made possible by Bangor Daily News subscribers. Support the work of our politics team and enjoy unlimited access to everything the BDN has to offer by subscribing here. |
|
| 📷 Republicans in the Maine House of Representatives, including Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor (bottom), look up to see how their colleagues voted on a heating assistance package on Jan. 4, 2023, at the State House in Augusta. (AP photo by Robert F. Bukaty) |
|
🦞 A push to fund Maine's lobster legal fight gets wide support.
◉ During the lobster industry's legal wrangling with the federal government over lobstering limits last year, House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, was able to pass a bill starting a legal defense fund but not before appropriators stripped the $1 million in funding from the measure. Watch a public hearing on the measure at 1 p.m.
◉ Faulkingham is looking to add that money back this year in an effort supported by Jackson and Talbot Ross. The money would come from the state budget and not from industry fees, which drew initial opposition from the Mills administration in 2022.
◉ The heat is off to a degree in the fight over rules aimed at protecting endangered whales after Maine's congressional delegation won a six-year pause in a spending bill late last year, but the case continues.
◉ Under the current draft of Faulkingham's measure, the state money would only be used to fight the federal government and not in a new defamation lawsuit against a conservation group that red-listed Maine lobsters.
🥊 The state wants a labor complaint from the employees' union dismissed.
◉ The Mills administration asked the Maine Labor Relations Board to toss a complaint from the Maine Service Employees Association, the top union representing state workers, in a rebuttal filed on Tuesday. Read it.
◉ The union, which is aligned with Democrats and represents roughly 9,000 state workers, complained that the top state negotiator was illegally trying to restrict its bargaining team. The sides have not begun negotiations, but the union is preparing to open them with a large pay increase proposal.
◉ The state's rebuttal counters the union by saying the union is not negotiating in good faith and is using the complaint as "a public relations tool to politically charge the bargaining atmosphere."
◉ "The State is willing, prepared, and looking forward to expeditiously beginning good faith negotiations for successor agreements with MSEA and its contractually-defined bargaining team, just as it has done for decades prior," the state said. |
|
📱Want daily texts from me tipping you to political stories before they break?
Get Pocket Politics. It is free for 14 days and $3.99 per month if you like it. |
|
What we're reading
🧊 There's an early Republican split in talks on changing a tax-freeze program.
⚡ Maine's aging grid puts renewable energy projects at risk.
❗A superintendent allegedly victim tampered in her son's domestic violence case.
🛐 Portland's new homeless shelter will be full on the first day.
🦝 Raccoons are Maine's top source of rabies exposure. Here's your soundtrack.
📇 On the BDN's Op-Ed pages, the only Maine Democrat to oppose a Ukraine resolution explains her vote. |
|
| 💰 Want to advertise in the Daily Brief? Write our sales team. |
|
|
|
