Maine is proud to announce that it has joined the ranks of the national Best Place for Working Parents network. Best Place for Working Parents is a growing national network of business leaders proving that family friendly is business friendly, through a first of its kind, three-minute, online self-assessment highlighting only the top 10 research-backed policies that benefit working parents and businesses’ bottom line.

The Maine Work Boots Alliance is a coalition of farmers, landscapers, garden centers, municipal sewer districts, septic haulers, biosolids recyclers and other businesses that oppose the proposed ban on municipal biosolids, the majority report to LD 1911.

On Friday, March 25, Maine State Chamber staff testified before the Government Oversight Committee (GOC) in support of the State’s Research Expense Tax Credit and its overall importance to Maine businesses. The GOC held a public hearing on a report completed by the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability (OPEGA) on the Research Expense Tax Credit. This report is part of OPEGA’s tax expenditure review process.

This week, the Maine House of Representatives and the Maine Senate voted unanimously in support of the enactment of LD 1964, An Act To Update Certain Water Quality Standards and To Reclassify Certain Waters of the State. The vote in the House was 129 Yeas, zero Nays, and 19 absent. While the vote in the Senate was 33 Yeas, zero Nays, and one Excused.

At what was likely to be its last work session of 2022, the Joint Standing Committee on Labor went out the same way it has operated for most of the past two years – divided along party lines on controversial workplace legislation.

Last week, the Legislature’s Energy, Utilities, and Technology (EUT) committee held work sessions and language reviews on what is arguably its biggest piece of legislation this session, LD 1959, An Act To Ensure Transmission and Distribution Utility Accountability. This bill had a daylong public hearing in February, which generated enormous amounts of testimony. The work session to follow was just as lengthy, taking a full day to find an outcome that would garner the support of most of the committee. However, that did not happen, and the EUT committee will now submit three different reports on LD 1959.