Maine: John Baldacci

AUGUSTA, Maine — Bills to repeal or modify Maine’s 2007 school consolidation law are set to be aired at a legislative hearing.

The citizen-initiated bill to completely undo the consolidation will be heard Wednesday afternoon before the Education Committee. The proposal will be decided by voters in November unless lawmakers first decide to repeal the law themselves.

The consolidation law that was pushed by Gov. John Baldacci requires Maine’s 290 school administrative units to be reorganized into about 80 regional units. Recent tracking shows roughly 80 percent of Maine students are in school units that have met the requirements of the law, whose savings were pegged at more than $36 million.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. John Baldacci says Irving Oil is serving as the catalyst for a Northeast Energy Corridor connecting Maine and New Brunswick. Baldacci says Irving’s willingness to invest has moved the project closer to reality.

In his weekly radio address, Baldacci reinforced the message of cooperation that he and New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham put forth earlier in the week.

Baldacci says Maine can serve as a hub to markets in southern New England that are hungry for clean, renewable electricity.

A first phase could include more than 1,000 megawatts of electrical transmission capacity with a natural gas-fired co-generation plant in Saint John. That’s more energy than was produced by the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant when it was in operation.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Democratic leaders in the State House are gearing up for a major debate over tax reform next week on their proposal to collect fewer taxes from Maine residents and more from out-of-staters.

Lawmakers are considering a variety of tax-reduction measures this session dealing with everything from levies on new cars and trucks to the amount the state treasury skims from individuals’ paychecks.

At 1 p.m. Thursday, the Legislature’s Taxation Committee will hear public comments on a plan to replace Maine’s four-tier income tax structure, which has a top tax rate of 8.5 percent, with a flat tax of 6.5 percent. The bill’s authors predict that with the numerous tax credits built into the proposed system, most Mainers would pay substantially less than 6.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Lower than projected February tax collections show the negative effects of economic recession in Maine are accelerating, the state’s top tax agency analyst said Friday.

The revenue slowdown, while still relatively modest, is expected to get worse and complicate state officials’ efforts to enact a two-year budget and keep it in balance, said Michael Allen, the director of econometric research at Maine Revenue Services.

“It’s about what we expected and should expect” over the coming months, Allen told legislative budget writers.

Allen said there were significant declines in taxable sales and individual income tax withholding, which analysts regard as key indicators of current economic activity.