💰 One state budget is negotiated with a much bigger one to go.
◉ A smaller and short-term portion of Gov. Janet Mills' January spending proposal was unanimously voted out of the appropriations committee on Thursday and should go to the Legislature next week for passage.
◉ Among the highlights are tens of millions of dollars in payments to hospitals and nursing homes, as well as $5 million in aid to cities and towns, as recommended by the health committee. There were major funding requests for Maine's embattled low-income legal defense program and guardians ad litem, but money was found in the current budget to meet immediate needs.
◉ Hearings on the $10.3 billion two-year budget began this week and will consume much of the Legislature's work between now and the end of June.
📺 Fox News hosts a mother battling a Maine school on LGBTQ issues.
◉ Fox News host Laura Ingraham said on her Thursday show that she will air an interview on Friday with Amber Lavigne, a Newcastle mother at the center of an incident gaining traction in the national conservative media sphere during a wide debate over schools and gender identity policies.
◉ Lavigne spoke at a school board meeting in December, telling members that a staff member at Great Salt Bay Community School gave her 13-year-old a device used to minimize the feminine appearance of the chest.
◉ She declined to speak with the BDN last month. In a recent interview with the conservative Washington Times, she demanded the firing of that employee. She also is being represented by a conservative legal group that says her constitutional rights were violated.
◉ School officials have responded by vaguely saying there is a "false narrative" spreading about the case while saying they are barred from discussing it in detail due to confidentiality laws. They have also blamed conservative media attention for bomb threats in December and January. |
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