Maine’s new public advocate wants to help low-income residents pay electric bills
Heather Sanborn also said she will speak neither for nor against legislation seeking to eliminate a solar subsidy program she supported as a lawmaker.
February 10, 2025
Stephen Singer
Portland Press Herald
In her first week on the job, Maine’s new public advocate said she’s looking for funding to help low-income residents pay their electric bills and will urge caution as lawmakers grapple with a contentious solar subsidy program that’s become a focus of Republicans.
Heather Sanborn, who took over the Office of the Public Advocate this month, said she’s focused on an issue cited frequently by her predecessor, William Harwood, who retired Jan. 31.
“Our priority — as an office I’m carrying forward from Bill — is to urgently work on the low-income assistance program for ratepayers,” she said in an interview.
About 100,000 Maine households pay some of the most expensive electricity bills in the U.S., and costs are set to keep climbing in 2025, according to a state report in December.
Heather Sanborn is Maine’s new Public Advocate. Sanborn said she will speak neither for nor against legislation seeking to eliminate a solar subsidy program she supported when she was a lawmaker. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald
Sanborn said the last of $15 million in the state’s two-year budget will run out at the end of the fiscal year on June 30, and no funding is set to take its place.
“We’re looking for all possible solutions to make sure low-income assistance is robust and we find additional sources,” she said.
Asked where she might find money, Sanborn said Tuesday “We’re working on it. It’s Day Two.”
The public advocate represents Maine’s utility ratepayers before state and federal regulators and leads an agency with 10 staff members and a budget of about $3.7 million.
On a separate matter — legislation seeking to end Maine’s net energy billing program that provides generators with credit for renewable power they produce and send to the electric grid — Sanborn said she’ll speak neither for nor against two proposals when addressing the Legislature’s Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee. Lawmakers have scheduled public hearings on Feb. 25.
Sanborn, a Democratic legislator who represented Portland for six years and voted in favor of net energy billing, said Maine needs to “take the issue seriously,” and would not support “deleting words from statutes” when net energy billing rules have been in force and are “part of the economy.”
“Deleting them is not good policy making,” she said.
Continue at https://www.pressherald.com/2025/02/10/maines-new-public-advocate-w...
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Comment
Penny
She has to get off the government payroll, plus thousands of others
Make Maine Government Small Again
The problem with fence straddlers it that they hurt a lot of people. This woman needs to do her homework and do her job correctly, or get out of the way.
Ditch RGGI, NEB, Long Term Contracts, Efficiency Maine, Renewable Portfolio Standards, the GEO, thr Department of Energy Resources, the PUC Duty Statement that Decides Cases on Greenhouse Gas Reductions, Indoctrination of students to the climate hoax, NRCM, Sierra Club, CLF, Wind Developers, Solar Developers, Battery Storage Developers, EV Goals and Subsidies and LIAP. Problem Solved. Oh, and get rid of the OPA.
She should quit her job, because Mainers do not need a public advocate.
Go home and tend to your knitting, you and thousands more on the bureaucrat payroll sucking from the government tit
You are the ones keeping us in poverty with all your damned expensive programs
U.S. Sen Angus King
Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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