Five years after running for Congress, former state Rep. Dale Crafts was back in front of a crowd to propose a major change to his town’s form of government.

“Unfortunately … four people on a seven-person town council can decide a majority vote on our destiny,” he said. “Four people!”

Crafts was describing what he sees as the failures of the Lisbon Town Council that he’s now running to join. But he was also describing a strategy that he and three longtime friends are using to try to take over the town council before potentially dismantling it.

The former Republican lawmaker is the face of one of the hottest property tax revolts in Maine. His Androscoggin County town of nearly 10,000 residents weathered a 20% property tax bump that was crafted to fill a multi-million dollar budget hole caused by a clerical error, years of inflation and high spending.

Town councilors approved that $13.9 million budget in July. Since then, Crafts and other conservatives in the town have focused on opposing the school budget, the only one that residents control. Lisbon has voted the exact same school budget down twice. A slightly slimmed-down version will be on the ballot for a third time alongside the town council race.

This happened in large part due to Crafts. Using his pre-existing political action committee, he purchased mailers arguing for no votes on the school budget. The 66-year-old said he thought he had retired from politics after losing to U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd District in 2020, but the tax revolt brought him back in.

“I’ve worked hard all my life and I wasn’t planning on being up here,” he said at a candidate forum at Lisbon Community School on Tuesday. “I’m here to try to make a difference. I feel compelled by God to do this.”

Crafts’ message that longtime Lisbon residents may be priced out of their homes by rising property taxes has resonated. While most of the nine candidates for council expressed an openness to making cuts and looking for ways to reduce property tax increases, Crafts is campaigning most stridently on austerity and riding a wave of anger at the town budget.

His political group has spent $16,000 this year, with much of that going toward the school and municipal elections. He is promoting a trio of longtime friends, Roger Bickford, Greg Garnett and Eric Metivier, with matching lawn signs. With four open council seats, that slate alone could elect the next council chair and control the flow of business.

Crafts is running against three political newcomers for a two-year term on the council. For the other three open seats, his allies are taking on incumbent Jo-Jean Keller and Charlie Turgeon, another candidate drawn in by the ongoing budget crisis.

Turgeon, a project manager on military projects, is running a more moderate campaign than Crafts, saying he rejected his opponents’ “cut, cut, cut regime.” But he has promised to examine the scope of government and find ways to reduce future budgets by outsourcing and privatizing some services.

Turgeon became involved earlier this year when he organized a petition to require the town to hold referendums on town budgets going forward. That eventually resulted in the town council asking voters whether they want to establish a charter commission, which would be tasked with revising Lisbon’s governing document. In addition to four council seats and the school budget, that question will also be on the November ballot.

If voters approve a charter commission in November, it would kick off a long process of review that could change how Lisbon functions, including possibly reverting to a town meeting form of government in which voters would decide the local budget.

The council would hold no direct power to disband itself, but its members could hold sway with a future commission.

If elected, it would not be Crafts’ first time on the council. He served on the town’s very first council after its creation by the town’s current charter, made in 2006. He says he’s longed to return to town meeting budgeting since then.

“After I served on the first town council form of government, I said to myself, ‘this isn’t good,’” he told residents last week. “And look where we’re at.”

Most Maine homes and small businesses can expect the cost of their electricity supply to go up in January.

Nine out of 10 Maine homes receive their electricity supply through the state-run standard offer program. They’re likely to see an estimated 15% or so jump in rates, according to an analysis done for The Maine Monitor by Competitive Energy Services, a Portland consulting and energy procurement firm.

The projected increase could boost average supply rates for a typical home by roughly $8 a month in 2026. 

The supply rate hike would be separate from whatever happens with a recent, controversial request by Central Maine Power to increase its distribution rates to upgrade its aging network of wires, poles and substations. That proposal, now at the Public Utilities Commission, has been met with strong opposition from inflation-weary customers, triggering a record 617 public comments by early October.

“Affordability is becoming a big issue, a big political issue,” said Andrew Price, Competitive Energy Services’ president and CEO. “There’s definitely outrage out there with CMP’s proposed distribution increases. The supply hike is going to feel like there’s some piling on.”

Rising electric rates are becoming a national issue, too, with the prices consumers pay up 13% since 2022 and projected to rise again next year, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, a non-partisan branch of the Department of Energy. In some regions, the growth is tied to building more power plants to meet demand at new data centers.

But Maine’s expected supply cost increase has nothing to do with artificial intelligence or CMP’s case. Instead, it’s tied largely to wholesale natural gas prices that are on track to keep rising in 2026.

Prices are up in part because the United States, which has become the world’s largest gas exporter, is projected to double the volume of liquefied natural gas shipped overseas by 2030, according to federal estimates. LNG exports are part of President Donald Trump’s goal of unleashing a “Golden Era of American Energy Dominance,” growing the country’s gross domestic product and adding jobs.

But higher natural gas prices are bad for energy consumers in New England. That’s because half the region’s power is generated by plants that burn natural gas. The cost of gas in turn sets what’s called the marginal price for what other forms of generation are paid for supplying New England’s power grid 24/7.

Wholesale gas prices are being watched closely now because the Maine PUC is planning next month to review the annual bids it receives from generators offering the standard supply service in 2026. There’s no way to know the precise outcome until the days the bids are accepted, but market conditions are pointing to some increase, according to Philip Bartlett, who chairs the PUC.

“It’s fair to say that electricity prices track natural gas prices,” he said. “So if we see changes in natural gas prices, they will be reflected in electricity costs.”

Electricity suppliers study cost projections on energy futures markets, and if they see gas prices rising next year, Bartlett explained, they hedge that risk by charging more for generation contracts.

“Any upward swing in gas prices is bad news for electricity prices,” he said.

Supply rates have been volatile

Mainers have received their electricity supply from an unregulated energy market for 25 years, although some residents still think their utilities are involved because the charges are included in their monthly bills. Due largely to natural gas, supply costs have become the most volatile and largest component of an electric bill.

And they’ve been on a roller coaster in recent years, ranging from roughly 6 cents per kilowatt-hour to 16 cents. They plunged during the pandemic in 2020, soared after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine roiled global energy markets, and have eased over the past two years.

Today, according to the latest figures collected by Maine’s Department of Energy Resources, standard offer supply rates are roughly 11 cents per kWh for CMP and Versant Power’s Bangor Hydro District.

Maine’s total electric rates grew at the third-fastest rate in the country between 2014 and 2024, according to an analysis conducted last April by The Monitor. An overly generous state solar reimbursement policy and the costs of repairing the delivery grid following severe storms were contributors, but natural gas prices were the leading factor, the analysis found.

New England is especially vulnerable to price swings because the region’s constrained gas pipeline system doesn’t have enough capacity on the coldest winter days, requiring injections of more-costly LNG to meet demand.

The role of LNG

But LNG now is playing a role in pushing up electricity prices elsewhere in the country. As aging coal plants have retired, natural gas has become America’s leading fuel for electricity generation, meeting 42% of the need. At the same time, a growing share of American gas is being shipped overseas from new export terminals. 

It’s headed primarily to Europe, for cutting dependence on Russian energy. And it’s going to Asia, to meet growing energy needs and to blunt tariff pressures from the Trump administration. Recent data from the Institute for Energy Economics and Finance Analysis, which promotes sustainable energy, found that, for the first time, the volume of gas being exported was more than half the amount being used at American power plants.

Although gas production and prices are always changing, the overall trend is pushing up the price of gas burned in America. The federal Energy Information Administration’s October outlook projected that a key market price used to forecast costs would rise from $2.20 per million BTU last year to $4.10 in January.

The idea that exports are pushing up gas prices isn’t universally embraced. The American Petroleum Institute, for instance, recently highlighted a report from S&P Global that found LNG exports had no major impact on domestic residential gas prices, although that report didn’t directly address the influence on electricity rates. 

Campaigning last year, Trump said he intended to slash energy and electricity prices in half within 12 to 18 months. And while gasoline prices have eased a bit this year due to lower crude oil costs, electricity generation has gone in the other direction.

“We’re not on track for any Trump policies to cut electric rates for Maine ratepayers,” said Heather Sanborn, Maine’s public advocate for utility customers.

Sanborn said her office hears daily from Mainers concerned about affordable power but that the state has limited tools to address supply costs. One strategy, endorsed by her office and AARP Maine, is to explore different methods for the PUC to procure standard offer contracts. 

A bill passed this year in the Maine Legislature directs the PUC to look into soliciting bids more than once a year and for varying lengths of time, in an effort to smooth the volatility in rates.

Asked about the effort, Bartlett said his agency contracted for a procurement study that recommended minor adjustments but “nothing earthshattering” that would significantly lower supply costs for Mainers. A report to the Legislature is due in January.

One strategy that could help over time, both Sanborn and Bartlett noted, is to build more cost-effective renewable energy capacity in the region. Solar, wind and battery storage deployed at certain hours can help dampen the volatility of natural gas, they said. Solar, for instance, can reduce the time gas plants need to run when demand is high, such as on a summer afternoon when air conditioners are cranking.

But federal support for clean energy has largely evaporated, especially for solar and wind, with the Trump administration doing what it can to hamstring renewable projects in favor of fossil fuel generation.

“To the extent we’re not building grid-scale storage or offshore wind, we are allowing natural gas to be the marginal cost setter in our region,” Sanborn said.

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.

A trio of Maine Monitor journalists were heralded with notable awards Saturday night at the Maine Press Association’s annual fall conference and awards banquet. 

Rose Lundy, a senior public health reporter at The Monitor, was announced as Maine’s Journalist of the Year for her in-depth reporting over the years on Maine’s aging population. This marks the second time in the past four years that a Maine Monitor reporter was named the state’s journalist of the year.

As part of her COVID-19 coverage, Lundy began identifying gaps in Maine’s health care infrastructure, particularly for Maine’s aging population. In the years since, Lundy has carved out a niche reporting on the lack of quality aging care available in a state that is home to the oldest population in the country. 

She devoted 18 months as a ProPublica Local Reporting Fellow to investigate Maine’s residential care facilities, carefully combing through hundreds of pages of monitoring and investigation reports, being dogged in her pursuit of the story and exceedingly careful in her analysis. She knocked on doors, visited facilities and spoke to neighbors.

The investigation uncovered that Maine rarely sanctions residential care facilities even after severe abuse or neglect incidents, and Maine’s health department rarely investigates when residents wander away from their care facilities.

Following the investigation’s publication, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services announced plans to provide its first major update to assisted living and residential care regulations in more than 15 years. (Lawmakers later replaced the proposed measure instead with reporting requirements and a stakeholder study group.) 

Maine Monitor editor Kate Cough was named the inaugural recipient of the MPA’s Mentor of the Year award for how she, as The Monitor’s editor, has amplified opportunities for emerging journalists, including six who have completed internships or fellowships directly under her guidance.

As part of The Monitor’s mission, the newsroom takes seriously its role in training and mentoring early career investigative journalists. As Cough put it in a letter to members earlier this year: “One of the pleasures of being editor of The Monitor is being able to offer intrepid young reporters a way into the field. The Monitor has always created these kinds of opportunities, but we’re doing even more now, once again bucking a trend.”

In addition to her duties as The Monitor’s editor, Cough has generously carved out time to mentor high school students in Mount Desert Island and has spent two semesters advising a Wabanaki history and culture class at the University of New England on its journalism projects.

Kristian Moravec, an education and workforce development reporter for The Monitor, was recognized with the Bob Drake Young Writer’s Award, an accolade presented to a journalist with fewer than three years of full-time experience.

Moravec, while at the Times Record, broke the news about the malfunction of a fire suppression system that discharged 1,600 gallons of firefighting foam concentrate containing forever chemicals at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station. The incident spurred dozens of follow-up stories. 

For The Monitor, at the time of her nomination in early July, Moravec had covered stories such as the implications of Maine’s fight with the Trump administration over Title IX, rural communities exploring withdrawals from their school district and what the future holds for Maine’s heat pump workforce.

The Monitor also received first place recognitions for Digital General Excellence and for usage of Maine’s Freedom of Access Act for Rose Lundy’s investigation into residential care facility residents wandering away from their facilities and Alexa Foust’s reporting on safety violations at child care facilities and reimbursement delays by DHHS to child care providers who accept children in foster care.

In addition to these accolades, 11 newsroom contributors collectively received 15 accolades for work produced between April 2024 and March 2025. The Monitor competed alongside daily news outlets including the Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald, Sun Journal, Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel and Times Record. 

The newsroom has now earned 221 accolades from the Maine Press Association since it began participating in the MPA competition in 2015. 

First Place

Education Story: Child care providers cited for safety violations by Alexa Foust and Kate Hapgood

Environmental Story: How one Maine town is prepping for its next disaster by Emmett Gartner

News Story: Child care providers cited for safety violations by Alexa Foust and Kate Hapgood

Coverage of Minority Community Issues: ‘Historically left out,’ a Wabanaki organization forges its own approach to addiction treatment by Emily Bader

News Video: The eclipse chasers by Roger McCord

Features/Lifestyle Video: A backstage look at a thriving Biddeford community theater by Roger McCord

News Story Headline: Gulf of Maine lobsters are experiencing a housing crisis by Kate Cough

Second Place