Trying to slip one by - Maine lawmakers consider public funding for electric infrastructure

by Long Islander

19 hours ago

All for a ripoff unneeded Aroostook wind project to enrich Wall Street fat cats and the small group that ran First Wind (Just put First Wind into the search box if you are new. Also put in Sun Edison). And although all we hear about is the big potential Aroostook project, if that transmission line is built, it will open up numerous new possibilities for other wind projects along the way. This only happens in a world where the legislature and regulatory bodies are not looking out for ratepayers or taxpayers. Ditto for the media and so called self appointed environmental groups which have been 100% in the tank for wind developers since First Wind and Angus KIngs' wind projects first began desecrating Maine and costing its citizens $$$$$$.
Remember, when the shysters in the legislature tell you transmission is needed or wind is needed, when the point is pressed they often point to Maine's mandates for CO2 as the reason they are required. In other words, one BS law begets more BS and don't think they didn't plan it. These people need to be voted out of office and the sooner this happens, the better. They are soaking us and they take us for fools.
Related, see the earlier post on this: Reagan Paul Fighting the Democrats on Behalf of the Beleaguered Maine Electric Customers
 

Maine lawmakers consider public funding for electric infrastructure

Maine Public | By Peter McGuire
Published January 20, 2026 at 6:16 PM EST

Maine lawmakers are debating a new state agency that would use low-interest government borrowing to help pay for electric grid upgrades.

State Senator Mark Lawrence, D-Eliot, told a panel of lawmakers that the state needs new transmission lines to connect potential new power generation to the New England electric grid.

Electric customers shoulder the costs of expensive transmission projects, and a Maine Transmission Authority could use low-interest state bonds to reduce the price of development, Lawrence told a panel of lawmakers.

Maine has been an electricity consumer for the last century, Lawrence said. But new transmission to areas with the potential to make new power from resources including solar and wind could make the state into a electric generator for the region, he added.

"You've heard me long argue that Maine needs to go from being a consumer of electricity to being an exporter of electricity. That's the way we are going to reduce rates in the state of Maine and that's the way we're going to grow the economy in the state of Maine," Lawrence said.

As written, Lawrence's bill would give the authority extra powers, including the ability to take land through eminent domain and to offer financing for generation projects.

Lawrence told the committee he didn't mean for those provisions to be included and he wants the proposal to solely focus on financing for transmission..........................

Read the rest at https://www.mainepublic.org/climate/2026-01-20/maine-lawmakers-consider-public-funding-for-electric-infrastructure

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  • Dan McKay

    Frump sponsor also said he was agnostic to any generation resource that would flow through these transmission lines proposed with his bill. That is an out and out lie, as he stated further into his testimony that is favorite generation type was offshore wind. 

    He also stated that Maine was an importer of electricity, again a lie. If he had gone to the Maine Department of Energy Resources (an agency he helped to form just last year), he would see two charts. One shows the Electricity Generation in Maine, for 2024 = 14,655,177 megawatt hours. The other shows Retail Sales of Electrify in Maine(consumption) = under 12,000,000 megawatt hours. That is 2,655,177 megawatt hours of electrons defined as exports. Frump sponsor lies again.

    7 hours ago

  • Dan McKay

    Frump sponsor said his bill wasn't about taking over CMP and Versant, but one wonders why Seth Berry of Our Power was there offering opinions of what should be included in this bill. 

    7 hours ago

  • Willem Post

    Captive Legislator Lawrence, who knows nothing about the economics of energy systems, is just a useful, sloganeering, idiot mouthpiece.

    He has been fed the Kool Aid PR crap of self-serving bureaucrats and foreign and domestic wealthy elites with lucrative, Wall-Street-inspired, long-term tax shelters, which will further enrich and empower them, at the expense and impoverishment of all others.

    Traitorous Democrats coddling useless, corrupt, Third World, Islamic, US-culture-destroying Somalis, etc., sucking for generations from all sorts of Democrat-government-program tits, is done by Democrats to PERMANENTLY create a reliable voting block using our own taxpayer money, will further impoverish and subjugate Mainers..

    6 hours ago