A Maine minor was taken into custody and transported to the Long Creek Youth Development Center on Wednesday after two bodies were discovered at a Chelsea residence.

At around 8:37 p.m., Maine State Police troopers arrived at the Windsor Road residence, and found two dead adult men, according to Maine Department of Public Safety spokesperson Shannon Moss.

The bodies were transported to the Maine medical examiners office, where autopsies will be conducted.

The male minor found at the scene was arrested at the Chelsea residence and charged with murder. He is being held at Long Creek Youth Development Center.

Officials do not believe there is a threat to the public at this time. The investigation remains ongoing, and further information was not immediately available Thursday afternoon.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Democrats on the Legislature’s budget committee voted Wednesday to raise the cigarette tax by $1.50 per pack, going further than Gov. Janet Mills’ original proposal and revealing a centerpiece of their upcoming spending bill.

The party-line change would mark the first time Maine has raised that tax in 20 years. It would rise from $2 to $3.50 per pack of cigarettes with a corresponding hike in taxes on other tobacco products. It is expected to generate $111 million over the next two budget years.

That money will be crucial to a planned addition to the $11.3 billion state budget that the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed over Republican opposition in March. After doing that, lawmakers had only $130 million in projected revenue available to spend with $120 million of that earmarked for a budget gap in the Medicaid program.

It sent Democrats scrambling for more money to neutralize cuts to certain programs that Mills made in her January budget proposal and to fund new bills piling up in the State House. They turned to the tobacco tax that Mills proposed raising by $1 per pack in that original plan.

Public health groups pushed for the change by noting that Maine’s tax is the second-lowest in New England despite the state having a higher-than-average cancer rate. Matt Wellington, the associate director of the Maine Public Health Association, called it “a long overdue step that will save lives” and reduce cancer in the state.

Yet critics have noted the tax falls hardest on low-income people. Some Democrats banded with Republicans to kill a flavored tobacco ban last year. Convenience stores have led an aggressive lobbying effort against a tax increase, and conservatives were incensed after the committee vote on Wednesday.

“This is a tax-and-spend budget,” Rep. Ken Fredette, R-Newport, an appropriations committee member, said Wednesday night.

Democrats have taken several party-line votes on the budget in the appropriations committee this week. On Wednesday, they voted against Mills’ proposed cuts to child care subsidies. They have also opposed controversial ambulance and pharmacy tax increases in the governor’s original budget offer.

The budget panel expects to vote on the final budget early Thursday, Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, the committee’s co-chair, said. The full cost of the spending plan won’t be known until then.

The father and daughter who died hiking on Mount Katahdin in Maine earlier this month are being remembered by their loved ones for being “full of life” and “full of joy.”

The bodies of Tim Keiderling, 58, and his daughter, 28-year-old Ester Keiderling, both of Ulster Park, New York, were found near the summit of Mount Katahdin on June 3 and 4, respectively. Park rangers began searching for the father and daughter June 2 after finding their car still in the Baxter State Park day-use parking lot.

Tim Keiderling’s body was found following a massive search on Tuesday, with searchers locating Ester Keiderling’s remains a day later. 

Heinrich Arnold, Tim Keiderling’s brother-in-law, said in a statement on Facebook that the father and daughter encountered “terrible” weather, which they succumbed to overnight.

“They were doing a day hike, a bucket list thing, to climb this amazing mountain,” he said. “Both wonderful people, full of life, full of joy.”

According to the obituary for the father and daughter, both were members of the Bruderhof religious group, an international Christian community focused on communal living. 

In the obituary, loved ones wrote that Tim Keiderling was “an avid outdoorsman” who “loved bee-keeping, camping, and hiking” and worked in his community as an elementary school teacher, financial administrator, and traveling salesman. 

“As a teacher, he will be remembered most for his infectious energy, his patient kindness, and his ability to pull together the most rambunctious groups of children,” the obituary reads. “He was at his best when teaching world history and geography, leading hikes through the fields and woods of the Hudson Valley, and spinning yarns around the campfire.”

Esther Keiderling and her father were close, according to their loved ones. She is being remembered for being “a sensitive, deeply-thinking woman who loved reading and writing, with a particular interest in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

“Her friends remember with great fondness how attentive she was to the needs of those around her, noticing when someone needed a word of encouragement or a small gift of some kind,” the obituary reads. “Such gifts often included her own heartfelt poetry.”

According to their loved ones, what drew both father and daughter to hiking up to great heights was “always the view.”

“The broad expanse of God’s handiwork, laid out below them,” relatives wrote in the obituary. “The unbearable tragedy of their passing aside, it is perhaps fitting that they went Home from a mountain top: a place of danger and solitude, but also, a place close to God.”

Tim Keiderling is survived by his wife of 31 years, Annemarie, three other daughters, two sons, and two granddaughters, according to the obituary. Funeral services were held Sunday for the father and daughter in Rifton, New York.

Dialynn Dwyer is a reporter and editor at Boston.com, covering breaking and local news across Boston and New England.