Not every employer can just demand that workers take a drug test. And those that can need to have a state-approved plan, outlining exactly when and how drug tests can be done. If recreational marijuana becomes legal in Maine, it won’t change any of that. Employers could decide that any positive test for marijuana is grounds […]
The campaigns to legalize marijuana and fund education spending with a new tax on the state’s highest earners came close to doubling their already substantial campaign coffers in September. Campaign disclosures filed Wednesday night show that groups supporting both ballot questions in September raised about 40 percent of what they’d raised prior to that month, both from two large donors. […]
This year’s ballot questions in Maine are a primary attraction for political fundraising, with high-stakes fights on five different policy questions, including marijuana legalization and expanded background checks on gun sales. On Wednesday, groups spending to support or oppose those questions filed detailed financial disclosures through September, revealing where they got their money, though much of it remains hard […]
Mainers continued to pay less for gasoline and other energy last year as spending on health care continued to climb, according to the latest federal figures. The sudden drop in gasoline and energy spending by Maine households follows the global drop in oil prices and is in line with the rest of the country, where spending in that category dropped by about 24 […]
With only six weeks left before voters hit the polls and pick the next president, patterns in campaign donations are making clearer the landscape of big support on each side of the aisle from Maine donors. What’s clear from overall donations is that most itemized donations to the presidential race went to Democrats. (Campaigns are required to list names and ZIP codes […]
Social and cultural changes are making an impact on new business starts in Maine, with female- and minority-owned businesses showing up in greater numbers. But while minority business ownership is on par with Maine’s relatively small non-white population, the share of female business owners remains about half of the state’s 51.1 percent female population. The figures come from a new U.S. Census Bureau […]
Companies selling electricity supply directly to homeowners face a widely varying set of rules in each state. But none have shown quite the appetite for restrictive new rules as New York, where the governor is trying to outlaw them, and Connecticut, which has nearly re-regulated them. And what’s going on in each may hold lessons […]
As we enter election season, political parties will again ready their claims about what’s up and what’s down in the economy and why that should cause voters to fill in Bubble A or Bubble B (or, in certain markets, Bubble C). Those, of course, are arguments dressed as descriptions, based on a whole bunch of funky assumptions. On Monday, the magazine Governing ranked […]
Gov. Paul LePage this week added Maine to a growing number of states that have passed or considered special fees on hybrid and electric vehicles. LePage and officials in other states raised concerns that high-efficiency or electric vehicles are not paying their fair share of road maintenance costs, which are funded largely through state and federal taxes on gasoline. The governor did not […]
The official transfer of land east of Baxter State Park from Roxanne Quimby’s holding company, Elliotsville Plantation, to the federal government on Tuesday morning appears to indicate that a national monument designation is on the way. Opponents of the proposal have long argued that presidential designation of the land as a national monument would make a full park designation inevitable. […]
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