Author: John Andrews

It’s Easter weekend, but the only Easter egg to be found under the dome in Augusta is just another goose egg on the scoreboard for anything even close to resembling an emergency to justify this current emergency session. The House and Senate will meet tomorrow at 10am for legislative business before the holiday weekend. On the docket are the usual bill references, legislative sentiments and divided reports. Two bills being referenced tomorrow caught my eye. One is a great idea and the other has failed every time it’s been tried. Freshman Representative Quentin Chapman (R-Auburn) has submitted LD 1683 “An…

It’s Tax Day. Taxation is theft. With that grim reminder out of the way, let’s get down to the scouting report for the April 15 session for the Maine House and Senate. Both chambers will gavel in tomorrow at 10 a.m. for a session with light calendars. There are a few potential spots worth watching to see how people react to the legislative business before them. We are a couple weeks into the special, emergency session that was called by Governor Janet Mills (D-Maine) after the Democrat majority in the legislature forced a sine die early adjournment last month. Yet…

The Maine House and Senate will be in session on Thursday beginning at 10am. Both calendars are fairly light and most of the morning will be taken up by bill referrals and legislative sentiments. The Maine Wire will be tracking many of bills being referred to committees, but one of particular note caught our eye. A freshman legislator may have submitted a bill that would benefit themselves directly. Representative Flavia DeBrito (D-Waterville) has sponsored a bill that is being referenced to the State and Local Government Committee tomorrow. The bill is named, “An Act to Provide Compensation to Individuals with…

The Maine House and Senate will both have session days on Tuesday with a full dance card of debates and divided reports. The chambers will take up a repeal of the ban on plastic bags, as well as the ban on paramilitary training, and the perennial vote on a state-level Equal Rights Amendment for all Mainers. Representative Will Tuell (D-Machias) will lead things off with a House Order requiring the Legislature to modernize coverage of its proceedings through a more dynamic embrace of media. Rep Tuell’s order reads: “ORDERED, the Senate concurring, that the Office of the Executive Director of…

The Maine Legislature’s Judiciary Committee will hold a public hearing on a bill Monday intended to codify into law the principle that power essentially belongs to state agencies and not the people. If enacted, LD 1408 would mandate that state bureaucrats exercise more power than Maine’s courts when it comes to rule-making. LD 1408, “An Act to Codify Judicial Deference to Agency Interpretations” was submitted by Judiciary Committee members Representative David Sinclair (D-Bath) and Senator Anne Carney (D-Cumberland). They are the only sponsors of the bill and both are lawyers. Sen. Carney is the long time Chair of the Judiciary…

Maine’s Constitutional Officers, including the Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Treasurer, are not elected by the people. Instead, the state has Soviet-style commissars installed by the elite of the political party in power. This is due to a flaw in Maine’s constitution that was written before the rise of Marxist regimes and their deadly abuses of power and government control. To return the important powers these offices hold to real accountability, Constitutional Officers must be elected by the people. [RELATED: Mainers Set to Weigh In on Popular Election of Constitutional Officers at April 7 Public Hearing] As recent experience…

Maine’s Office of New Americans is a state sanctioned cabal of non-governmental organization gate keepers and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion radicals. The Office was created under Hannah Pingree by order of Governor Janet Mills. Gov. Mills appointed its first Director, Tarlan Ahmadov, an Azeri nationalist who had all the trappings of an unregistered foreign agent. That is until yesterday, when Ahmadov was forced to resign. He cited ‘health reasons’, but it’s the sickness of the current regime under Governor Janet Mills that is the real story. The ONA (Office of New Americans) was a created through an Executive Order decreed…

During tomorrow’s House session, legislators will tackle a 40-page calendar. Those pages are largely filled with bill references to committees, legislative sentiments, and ‘In Memorandum’ tributes. The work on the calendar as written should go smoothly and quickly. However, a light calendar can often lead to legislative hijinks. Any bill that has been reported out of committee can come to the floor as a supplement to the original calendar. In the past, this has been a tactic used by the majority to surprise the minority for big and controversial bills. If minority members don’t have a floor speech prepared and…

Secretary of State — and announced gubernatorial candidate — Shenna Bellows has officially notified the House of Representatives that anti-gun activists have now collected enough valid signatures to place the ‘Red Flag’ law on the ballot. The law if enacted by referendum would allow a citizen’s weapons to be seized without any due process. The notification from the Secretary Bellows appears on the House Calendar for April 1st and will be read into the legislative record as a non-joking matter, despite the date. Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO) or Red Flag laws are part of national push by well-funded anti-gun…

A Winterport Republican has introduced a bill that limits the immunity of the state’s education system. The bill’s public hearing on Monday afternoon comes in the middle of a political storm sweeping across Maine schools that includes a recent sexual assault in Buxton and the national fight over trans athletes which has pitted the state’s governor against the country’s president. The bill, LD 1222, is titled “An Act to Limit Sovereign Immunity for Schools and School Superintendents”. Representative Reagan Paul (R-Winterport) introduced the bill, and it will be taken up by the Judiciary Committee on Monday, March 31. Rep. Paul’s…

A Hallowell Democrat has introduced a bill to expand the use of overseas absentee ballots for local elections. In last year’s federal and state elections, absentee ballots swung the Second District congressional race and gave Democrats the majority for the 132nd Maine State Legislature. “An Act to Improve Access to Absentee Ballots for Municipal Elections forUniformed Service and Overseas Voters (UOCAVA),” or LD 1148, will be taken up by the Veterans and Legal Affairs (VLA) Committee in a public hearing at 10 a.m. Monday morning. Sponsored by Representative Daniel Shagoury (D-Hallowell) and cosponsored by several notable Democrats including Majority Leader…

Tomorrow the legislature gavels in for a day of work in the Governor’s new special session. Both the House and Senate have light calendars. The goal is to probably wrap things up in time for committees to start at 1pm. There will be the usual administrative paper shuffle, but there are two big items in the House to pay attention to tomorrow. Rep. Shelley Rudnicki (R-Fairfield) has introduced a House Order to censure Speaker Ryan Fecteau (D-Biddeford) for his alleged misconduct during Thursday night’s final session. It’s clear that Fecteau did not follow the rules that night to call for…

Struck by how quickly Augusta has changed, I look back to when I got my start in the capital. In 2018, I was a freshman member of the 129th Legislature. My first day I found a note on my desk from Terry Hayes. She was a former legislator who had held my seat before me. She wished me well on my legislative journey. Terry was a former Democrat turned Independent, and I really appreciated the non-partisan gesture. I still have that note on the wall in my workshop. A little civility goes a long way. Back then, only seven years,…

You get a censure! and you get a censure! and you get a censure! Action in the House seems to be shaping up like an old episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Tomorrow starts a prefabricated special session called by Gov. Janet Mills to finish the work that 132nd Legislature left on the table after they adjourned early Friday morning. It looks like a busy day with several issues outstanding that need to be addressed. Let’s start with how we got here. Out of the First Regular Session and immediately into the Governor’s special or extra session. Shortly after the…

The Maine state government is Frigged Up Beyond All Recognition (FUBAR, as the military acronym is politely known). It’s obvious to anyone paying attention. There are no checks and balances, rules are ignored or misinterpreted. Waste, fraud and abuse rule the day. The only principle that is respected is power and the only skills that matter are how hard you can beat your opponent into submission. Today’s Maine government operates like a Soviet Politburo where a small cabal of Democrat Party insiders get their orders and are expected to execute them without dissent. For example, early Friday morning the Maine…

The next and perhaps final phase of the budget battle is starting to gear up in Augusta. This week the House and Senate are scheduled for session days on both Tuesday and Thursday. The fact that the legislative calendars for tomorrow appears to be basically boilerplate is an indicator that the majority is setting their battle plan for the day. The Appropriations Committee met on Friday and put parts of the supplemental budget that was defeated last week into a concept draft and parts of baseline spending in the biennial budget. At this point in a legislative session, divided reports…

The Maine House and Senate spent the second half of Tuesday passing different versions of the state’s supplemental budget between the chambers, but again failed to enact the measure by the time the session came to an end that evening. At issue was LD 209, largely a bill to bail out the state’s Medicaid shortfall with an injection of $118 million dollars of spending beyond what the biennial budget appropriated. The legislature could not agree on what ended up being an emergency version of the bill. At the outset of the day, the Senate has a version of LD 209…

The Maine House and Senate will convene for legislative session at 10 am on Tuesday, as uncertainty over the supplemental budget persists, a joint conference of both chambers is scheduled to hear about the state of higher education in Maine, and two largely symbolic but potentially contentious resolutions are on the agenda. LD 209, the bill that is the vehicle for Governor Janet Mills’ $118 million supplemental budget request, remains tabled in the Senate. If the Senate leaves it on the table, they will burn another week until the legislature meets again. Yet timing becomes an issue. The legislature must…

Tuesday’s legislative session is shaping up to be a lively one. Representative Reagan Paul (R-Winterport) has snuck in a Joint Order to defund the Maine Principal’s Association if it continues to allow men to play in women’s sports. The MPA is the governing body of school athletics in the state of Maine. They have stated that they are backing Governor Mills and her push to defy President Trump’s Executive Order, even as the U.S. Department of Education has initiated a probe into whether Maine’s is violating Title IX protections by doing so. Asked about her Joint Order, Rep. Paul told…

After a vacation week that ended with Maine at the middle of a national political firestorm, lawmakers will return to the State House to confront a $120 million problem: the supplemental budget. Gov. Janet Mills’ administration has said the supplemental spending bill is necessary to shore up Medicaid, known in Maine as MaineCare, and avoid having to stop payments to hospitals. MaineCare has been overdrawn to the tune of $118 million. But the Democratic Majority in the legislature didn’t like Gov. Mills’ proposed solution as it was too austere in the welfare-for-noncitizens department. The result was Democrats offering up a…

The Maine Legislature returns to work on Monday after a week of vacation, and it is expected to have a busy agenda with what may be an especially dramatic Tuesday as both chambers revisit the unfinished question of Governor Janet Mills’ $118 million supplemental spending measure, and the House considers censure motions against two representatives. The entire legislative calendar is available to view, and citizens may submit testimony on bills online on the same state website. Highlighted links lead to Maine Wire coverage on legislation committees are considering. Here’s what you need to know about the week ahead. MONDAY, February…

If Maine Democrats and their left-wing NGO financiers can get you to believe that men can become women, they can get you to believe anything. They can get you to believe that minors can consent to life-altering surgeries when they can’t even legally consent to getting a tattoo. They can get you to believe that young men competing in young women’s sports is fair play and that it’s marching towards social justice, even as it tramples the hopes and dreams of female athletes. They get you to believe all of this through the mastery of word-smithing and narrative crafting. Representative…

Governor Janet Mills’ (D) Office of Policy, Innovation and the Future (GOPIF) announced on Friday thirteen new appointees for the 24-member Office of New Americans Advisory Council, which the Mills administration created by executive order eighteen months ago. At the time it was first introduced, the council came into being without direct legislative approval, and was rolled into the state budget on a party line vote. Its goal, the establishing order stated, is to demonstrate that Maine is a “welcoming and inclusive state that recognizes the value of people of diverse backgrounds to enhance the vibrancy of Maine’s communities, the…

After reaching the next-to-last step in passing a $120 million supplemental spending package, Democratic leaders put off a final vote late Monday night for an additional two weeks. The Maine House of Representatives gaveled in at 7:13 pm on Tuesday and almost immediately adjourned for until 10 a.m. Tuesday, February 25th at 10am. The development is an embarrassing one for Democrats, who have controlled the House, Senate, and governorship in Maine for the past six years and have singularly controlled almost every dime of state taxation and spending during that time. Now, the state is looking at a $118 million…

Maine Gov. Janet Mills and her Democratic allies in the Legislature were poised Monday afternoon to once again invoke an extraordinary parliamentary maneuver to pass a major spending package without Republican votes. By the end of the business day, the Democrat-controlled House and Senate had failed to adopt the same version of the spending measure, and the already unpopular measure lost so much momentum that the leadership retreated from an attempt to push through the spending bill on a majority basis. The drama began Tuesday morning when Maine House Majority Democrats moved forward with a bill with a hefty title…

Speaker of the House Ryan Fecteau (D-Biddeford) and Senate President Mathea Elizabeth Larson Daughtry (D-Cumberland) will name members of special councils and committees as the Maine Legislature proceeds with its 132nd session this week. The most notable of the council appointments is to the Office of New Americans Advisory Council. The first appointments to the ONA Advisory Council were made last week in the House by Speaker Fecteau. These included Inza Ouattara of Lewiston, Lisa Parisio of Pittston and Liam LaFountain of Biddeford. On Tuesday, leadership will name the following Office of New Americans Advisory Council Appointments: For the House-…

10:55am State House, Augusta This morning the Maine Senate took up the nomination of Heather Sanborn to be Maine’s next Public Advocate, and approved her by a four vote margin. One Republican crossed the aisle to support Sanborn and two Democrats voted against their leadership to oppose her nomination. The Public Advocate represents Maine’s utility customers in any matter covered by the authority of the state’s Public Utilities Commission and is generally seen as the representative of the ratepayer, or utility customer. Appointed by Governor Janet Mills last month, Sanborn will now replace William Harwood in this role. Assistant Minority…

The Maine House of Representatives is scheduled to convene Tuesday at 10 a.m. in Augusta. Late January House session days are usually pretty quick, lasting an hour or maybe a little more. The bulk of the calendar is filled with new bills being referred to their respective committees for public hearings, work sessions, and eventual committee vote reports. Also featured are the usual legislative sentiments recognizing the achievements of local communities and individuals. In addition to the usual legislative business, tomorrow’s calendar has several notable appointments and nominations. The most notable of these are the appointments by House Speaker Ryan…

The following is a speech given by Rep. John Andrews (R-Paris) for Maine Taxpayers United. It is republished here with permission. Today is tax day and in a perfect world tomorrow would be election day. Maybe then voters in Maine would stop electing politicians who can’t even make a commitment to return surplus tax money to the people from whom it was confiscated in the first place. In Maine, it seems that every penny of tax money taken must be spent and every unnecessary pet project must be funded when tax and spend liberals control the levers of power in…

With apologies to the Bard, there’s something rotten in Augusta. This is my fifth legislative session in the start of my third term. I have seen things get progressively worse and more partisan over the last five years. What I saw this week was a complete breakdown of trust and a small flame of growing bipartisanship stamped out by the jackboot of one-party rule. If that wasn’t enough, the week ended with a Proclamation from the Governor that spirals Maine in a constitutional crisis. Democrats have complete and total control of the House and Senate in Augusta. They control Blaine…

Recently the SAD 17 school district in western Maine, my kid’s school district, tried to enact a policy based on transgender ideology. The bulk of this policy involved five pages of authoritarian mandates using the imperative command of ‘Shall’ thirty-three times in 5 pages. If that wasn’t bad enough, the real reason for this policy was only a few lines that you would have missed if you weren’t looking. The actual objective of this unnecessary policy was to take away a parent’s right to know what is going on with their child during school hours. The goal of this policy…

Yesterday, the first legislative day of the second session of the 130th Legislature, majority Democrats moved to return to remote work, at least through January and most likely longer than that. It’s important to note that Maine is no longer under a state of civil emergency declared by the chief executive, Governor Janet Mills. Before yesterday’s action, there was no active statute or resolution in place allowing all public proceedings of the second session to be conducted remotely, despite Democrat leaders saying last month that’s the way it would be this session. The statute that previously allowed for remote legislative…

This week, my legislative colleagues on the Taxation Committee held a public hearing on my bill to reform Maine’s income tax code; LD 1369, “An Act To Provide Stimulus for Economic Recovery by Enacting a Flat 5 Percent Flat Income Tax.” The bill does exactly what the title suggests: It would eliminate the three income tax brackets that currently exist in Maine and replace them with a single, flat 5% rate. To be clear, times are tough for Maine businesses and workers, and many are struggling to make ends meet. Maine’s tax brackets currently go from 5.8% to 6.75%, to…

“Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.” – George Orwell, “1984” My colleagues on the Maine Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee held a public hearing Monday on LD 1278, a bill that I am co-sponsoring with Republicans, Democrats and Independents to end the Maine Information Analysis Center Program. The year may be 2021, but we continue to find ourselves moving towards a perpetual Orwellian 1984. The Maine Information and Analysis Center is evidence of that. Americans…

On Saturday evening, the Republican leaders in the House and Senate, with the backing of their caucus, sent a letter to the presiding officers of the Maine House and Senate urging them to bring the legislature back for a special session. Only these officers, Senate President Troy Jackson and House Speaker Sara Gideon (or the governor) can call the legislature into a special session. For the good of the state and future generations, they must. Before adjourning in March, the legislature granted Governor Mills limited emergency powers with the passage of LD 2167. These included executive authority over election and…

This piece was first published in the Sun Journal. “We will develop a world-class workforce. Fewer than half of Maine adults now hold a postsecondary credential – either a college degree or a professional certification. Yet two out of three jobs require such credentials. This imbalance is why we have — at the same time — employers saying they can’t find workers, and workers saying that they are stuck in dead-end jobs…Attracting talented young people to move here and make Maine their home will be a top priority of my Administration.” -Governor Mills’ Inaugural Address Maine is the oldest state…

I have sponsored LD 665, “An Act to Enact the Campus Free Expression Act” this session to codify into state law protections of our natural right to free speech for all current and future students on public college and university campuses in Maine. Natural rights are those most basic rights which are innate to humankind and do not need government to exist. Man created government to secure and protect these rights. They are the foundation of our civilization and representative democracy. As Thomas Paine explained in “The Rights of Man”, “Man did not enter into society to become worse than…

Our founders established a system of checks and balances designed to protect everyone, especially minorities, from the tyranny of the majority. It is a result of comprise that brings people together for the good of the whole. The Legislature’s Committee on Veterans and Legal Affairs, of which I am a member, recently held a public hearing on two bills designed to subvert the Electoral College in electing the President of the United States. Rather than amend the Constitution, which requires overwhelming agreement, supporters of this approach are seeking to get around the Constitution by committing Maine into entering an interstate…