Maine

Rooks: School construction in Maine needs a major overhaul

Published

1 year ago

October 13, 2024

Rooks: School construction in Maine needs a major overhaul

Douglas Rooks
| Columnist

Before leaving for Norway last week, Gov. Janet Mills announced a new commission to study the state’s school construction program and report to the Legislature by next April, to which one might respond, “It’s about time.”

The state’s existing construction model simply isn’t working, and has left towns and cities, and Maine’s regional school districts, with crumbling and outdated buildings and no clear path to replacing or renovating them.

Mills noted that in her first six years, there’s been $580 million committed, which sounds impressive until one realizes a single new high school often costs $100 million.

With dozens if not hundreds of inadequate buildings, replacing a handful won’t accomplish much, and the backlog of applications keeps growing.

The new commission, chaired by King Administration Labor Commissioner Valerie Landry, has a tall task, and should start with two major flaws in how school projects are financed.

The first is a peculiar compromise by which the state reimburses the local districts that actually borrow the money. Rather than a separate capital construction budget, funding is carved out from the mammoth General Purpose Aid account that goes mostly for operating expenses.

Construction is constrained by a debt ceiling – rarely increased – that limits new projects to debt retired from previous awards. Maine ends up being generous with operating support and stingy for capital spending.

The second flaw was introduced through adoption of the Essential Programs and Services (EPS) system in the late 1990s.

Previously, construction costs were shared between the state and the local district on a sliding scale. Towns and cities with robust tax bases, as in Cumberland County, would pay more, while those in Aroostook and Washington were mostly state-funded – but all districts paid something.

Under the EPS calculations the state pays 100% for almost every project, meaning it can fund even fewer projects than when local districts contributed.

Now, a few lucky districts effectively win the lottery, while everyone else is left out in the cold.

The infrastructure crisis has become so severe that some districts have tried to do without state funding and asked property taxpayers to pick up the entire tab. Even in Cumberland County, the results have been dismal.

While some local bonds have been approved, most have been turned down – not necessarily because voters don’t support schools but because they rightly see this as a state responsibility.

It makes little sense for Maine to provide 55% of all approved school spending but make construction projects wait a decade or longer. Students will have started school and graduated by then.

What can be done? There are other models.

When voters turned down several state prison bond issues during the McKernan administration, lawmakers created the Maine Governmental Facilities Authority, operating “off budget” and apart from General and Highway Fund bonds more familiar to voters.

Later expanded to courthouses, the authority has replaced or renovated nearly the entire state correctional system, and has built impressive judicial centers in several counties.

That’s all well and good, but most parents and taxpayers would place a higher priority on schools. That’s not the way things are working.

A School Facilities Authority may not be the answer, in part because we have an existing system, however flawed – but mostly because the authority has no real accountability to taxpayers and citizens.

One possibility: a robust General Fund bond that voters could approve to jumpstart the process, along with a real capital budget for the first time in decades.

There are other matters for the Landry commission to take up. Current rules require a perhaps excessive amount of acreage, eliminating sites close to urban and village centers and creating sprawl.

Kids can’t walk to school, and schools are increasingly remote from the communities that support them.

Finally, no amount of tinkering with construction funding can ignore Maine’s hopelessly decentralized school districts, well over 200 for fewer than 200,000 students – less than 1,000 per district.

A Baldacci administration initiative to consolidate failed because it ignored the proven formula for success: the Sinclair Act, passed in 1957 during the administration of Gov. Ed Muskie.

Implemented during the 1960s, Sinclair created 68 regional districts with generous support for mergers, and provided the first adequate rural high schools in Maine. The 2007 consolidation plan, by contrast, penalized districts for not merging while provided no state plan to do so.

The next administration could dust off Sinclair and see what will work in a high-tech era where public schools face unprecedented challenges.

Mainers have shown time and again they value public education and are willing to pay. Now the state must make sure they’re getting their money’s worth.

Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. He is the author of four books, most recently a biography of U.S. Chief Justice Melville Fuller, and welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net.

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Maine

Maine legalized iGaming. Will tribes actually benefit?

Published

7 hours ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

Maine legalized iGaming. Will tribes actually benefit?

Clarissa Sabattis, Chief of the Houlton Band of Maliseets, foreground, and other leaders of Maine’s tribes are welcomed by lawmakers into the House Chamber in March, 2023 in Augusta. (Robert F. Bukaty, /Associated Press)

Maine’s gambling landscape is set to expand after Gov. Janet Mills decided Thursday to let tribes offer online casino games, but numerous questions remain over the launch of the new market and how much it will benefit the Wabanaki Nations.

Namely, there is no concrete timeline for when the new gambling options that make Maine the eighth “iGaming” state will become available. Maine’s current sports betting market that has been dominated by the Passamaquoddy Tribe through its partnership with DraftKings is evidence that not all tribes may reap equal rewards.

A national anti-online gaming group also vowed to ask Maine voters to overturn the law via a people’s veto effort and cited its own poll finding a majority of Mainers oppose online casino gaming.

Here are the big remaining questions around iGaming.

1. When will iGaming go into effect?

The law takes effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns this year. Adjournment is slated for mid-April, but Mills spokesperson Ben Goodman noted it is not yet known when lawmakers will actually finish their work.

2. Where will the iGaming revenue go?

The iGaming law gives the state 18% of the gross receipts, which will translate into millions of dollars annually for gambling addiction and opioid use treatment funds, Maine veterans, school renovation loans and emergency housing relief.

Leaders of the four federally recognized tribes in Maine highlighted the “life-changing revenue” that will come thanks to the decision from Mills, a Democrat who has clashed with the Wabanaki Nations over the years over more sweeping tribal sovereignty measures.

But one chief went so far Thursday as to call her the “greatest ever” governor for “Wabanaki economic progress.”

3. What gaming companies will the tribes work with?

DraftKings has partnered with the Passamaquoddy to dominate Maine’s sports betting market, while the Penobscot Nation, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians and the Mi’kmaq Nation have partnered with Caesars Entertainment to garner a smaller share of the revenue.

Wall Street analysts predicted the two companies will likely remain the major players in Maine’s iGaming market.

The partnership between the Passamaquoddy and DraftKings has brought in more than $100 million in gross revenue since 2024, but the Press Herald reported last month that some members of the tribe’s Sipayik reservation have criticized Chief Amkuwiposohehs “Pos” Bassett, saying they haven’t reaped enough benefits from the gambling money.

4. Has Mills always supported gambling measures?

The iGaming measure from Rep. Ambureen Rana, D-Bangor, factored into a long-running debate in Maine over gambling. In 2022, lawmakers and Mills legalized online sports betting and gave tribes the exclusive rights to offer it beginning in 2023.

But allowing online casino games such as poker and roulette in Maine looked less likely to become reality under Mills. Her administration had previously testified against the bill by arguing the games are addictive.

But Mills, who is in the final year of her tenure and is running in the high-profile U.S. Senate primary for the chance to unseat U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Thursday she would let the iGaming bill become law without her signature. She said she viewed iGaming as a way to “improve the lives and livelihoods of the Wabanaki Nations.”

5. Who is against iGaming?

Maine’s two casinos in Bangor and Oxford opposed the iGaming bill, as did Gambling Control Board Chair Steve Silver and the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, among other opponents.

Silver noted Hollywood Casino Bangor and Oxford Casino employ nearly 1,000 Mainers, and he argued that giving tribes exclusive rights to iGaming will lead to job losses.

He also said in a Friday interview the new law will violate existing statutes by cutting out his board from iGaming oversight.

“I don’t think there’s anything the board can do at this point,” Silver said.

The National Association Against iGaming has pledged to mount an effort to overturn the law via a popular referendum process known as the “people’s veto.” But such attempts have a mixed record of success.

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Maine

Flu, norovirus and other illnesses circulating in Maine

Published

19 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

Flu, norovirus and other illnesses circulating in Maine

While influenza remains the top concern for Maine public health experts, other viruses are also currently circulating, including norovirus and COVID-19.

“Influenza is clearly the main event,” said Dr. Cheryl Liechty, a MaineHealth infectious disease specialist. “The curve in terms of the rise of influenza cases was really steep.”

Maine reported 1,343 flu cases for the week ending Jan. 3, an uptick from the 1,283 cases recorded the previous week, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Hospitalizations increased to 147 from 108 during the same time periods.

“I hope the peak is now,” Liechty said, “but I’m not really sure.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday that all of New England, except for Vermont, is currently experiencing “very high” levels of influenza. Vermont is in the “moderate” category.

“What we are seeing, overwhelmingly, is the flu,” said Andrew Donovan, associate vice president of infection prevention for Northern Light Health. “We are seeing both respiratory and gastrointestinal viruses in our patients.”

Norovirus also appears to be circulating, although due to its short duration and because it’s less severe than the flu, public health data on the illness — which causes gastrointestinal symptoms that typically resolve within a few days — is not as robust.

“Norovirus is the gastrointestinal scourge of New England winters and cruise ships,” Liechty said.

According to surveillance data at wastewater treatment plants in Portland, Bangor and Lewiston, norovirus levels detected in those communities are currently “high.” The treatment plants participate in WastewaterSCAN, which reports virus levels in wastewater through a program run by Stanford University and Emory University.

Dr. Genevieve Whiting, a Westbrook pediatrician and secretary of the Maine chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said viruses are prevalent right now, especially the flu and norovirus.

“For my patients right now, it’s a rare encounter that I hear everyone in a family has been healthy,” Whiting said. “I’ve had families come in and say their entire family has had norovirus. Several of my patients have had ER visits for suspected norovirus, where they needed IV fluids because they were dehydrated.”

Both Liechty and Whiting said they are seeing less respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, likely because there has been good uptake of the new RSV vaccine, which is recommended for older people and those who are pregnant. The vaccine was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2023.

“The RSV vaccine has been a real success, as RSV was a leading cause of hospitalizations for babies,” Whiting said.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases increased to 610 in the final week of 2025, compared to 279 the previous week. Influenza and COVID-19 vaccinations are available at primary care, pharmacies and clinics across the state.

“If you haven’t gotten your flu shot yet,” Liechty said, “you should beat a hasty path to get your shot.”

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Maine

After feds cut key food insecurity survey, Maine lawmaker urges state to fill data void

Published

1 day ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

After feds cut key food insecurity survey, Maine lawmaker urges state to fill data void

With food insecurity on the rise, Maine lawmakers are scrambling to ensure they have a sense of how many people are going hungry after the federal government’s recent cancellation of a key food insecurity survey. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Household Food Security Report, started under former President Bill Clinton, measured rates of food insecurity […]

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