1. Higher Education Policy - protect the Opportunity Maine legislation while working to continue opening doors to community and four-year colleges.

 2. Tax Reform: Maine needs concrete tax reform that ensures everyone pays their fair share in proportion to what they can afford.

3. Health Care: We need to expand access to affordable health care to ensure our children and most vulnerable are covered, while ensuring

 2. The past few years, Maine Housing Authority has utilized the HOME Fund (Housing Opportunities for Maine) to help finance fundamental programs as loans for first-time homebuyers, housing for people who are homeless, affordable rental housing, home repair, and housing for people with special needs. The Fund also helps finance programs that makes homes safer for children and makes homes accessible for people with disabilities. Over the last two years, the legislature has considered taking money from the HOME Fund in order to balance the budget. If elected, would you support the protection of the HOME fund? If so, what other ways would you suggest balancing the budget?

The HOME fund needs to be constitutionally protected. Period.

3. A major concern among young people is the rising cost of health care. 17,000 more Mainers are now uninsured since HMOs first arrived in Maine. State-funded health care programs like MaineCare is facing consistent cuts, while publicly financed heath insurance like Dirigo, has a current freeze on new applicants. Many First World countries have supported comprehensive health care systems that cover every person with health care. Within the United States, states like Massachusetts and Maine have taken steps towards universal, comprehensive health care coverage. Would you support state legislation for universal single payer health care in Maine?

This presidential race is unique in that for the first time in history, the presidential candidates are talking about some form of universal health care. Personally, I believe that universal single-payer health care makes the most sense, particularly given how much we are already paying out of pocket for our premiums and copays.

I am not happy with the proposals being touted by either of the presidential candidates. The data supports moving to a single-payer heatlh care system for myriad reasons and philosophically speaking, people should be placed above profits. Under the current system, even people who could pay something are shut out from the system that requires them to pay more than they can afford. This prevents people from participating who otherwise could while also encouraging them to get emergency care at a much higher service cost when they could have had preventative care at a significantly more affordable cost.

It seems that every month there is another recall or concern about children's toys or consumer products.

The fact is that Maine families are exposed to hazardous toxic chemicals found in the consumer products that we use everyday. Toxic chemicals in the environment are among the causes of critical health problems that can be prevented. What would you do to help Maine ensure that hazardous chemicals in everyday consumer products are replaced with safer substitutes?

I have always been supportive of reducing our exposure to toxic chemicals through education and, if need be, regulation. I strongly support this year's legislation around lead in our children's toys and I was equally supportive of the DECA bill last year. The BDN hosted a recent OpEd that outlined the problems associated with mercury found in general dental fillings while also noting that safe alternatives are available. This is one area where changes could be made quickly that protect constituents, but most importantly children who are particularly susceptible to mercury. We must protect our children and our people from harmful toxins, especially toxins that can be found in everyday items.

 5. The State of Maine is currently a participant in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an innovative project geared toward cutting global warming emissions by establishing a cap-and-trade system for power plant emissions. Do you support Maine's participation in RGGI? Would you support the establishment of an economy-wide cap-and-trade program in Maine that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors (i.e. transportation, commercial and residential heating, etc.)?

I am supportive of just about anything reasonable that Maine can do to reduce carbon emissions while also setting an example for other states. That said, we must mitigate increases in costs to citizens who cannot afford significant cost increases that can sometimes come with these plans.

6. The Maine Department of Transportation estimates that it faces a shortfall of more than $2 billion to simply maintain the existing transportation infrastructure. What, if any, funding solution do you support:

 
There has been a proposal to increase the tolls during high-traffic seasonal months, mainly Summer and Winter, then reducing them significantly (or even eliminating them) for off-peak times. I think this idea has merit given that our roads need extra maintenance due to the increased traffic. It also shifts the burden largely to out-of-state residents while in-state residents end up spending about the same amount on tolls annually as they do now.

7. With the state facing a $200 million revenue shortfall in the current biennium (a projection that may change when April receipts are tallied), Do you support increasing the sales tax in order to avoid balancing the budget entirely through program cuts? If you do not support a tax increase of any kind – and given that "enhanced government efficiencies" will provide only very modest savings if any at all -- which programs do you propose to cut and by how much?

We keep being pressured to cut taxes and cut spending, but how far is enough? I do not believe that government should be shrunk enough to drown in a bathtub. Yes, we need to find efficiencies, but those efficiencies are only going to get us so far as costs continue to escalate far out of pace with the standard CPI.

Every year, we import countless tourists for skiing, beaches, weddings, summer vacationing and leaf peeping and yet we continually refuse to tap into those tourists for a funding source. There are a number of options we could pursue.

1. We could (and should) broaden the sales tax. There are ways we can broaden our sales tax without "increasing" the sales tax.

2. We should increase the lodging tax. The argument that hotels are going to go under doesn't float. First, tourists choose Maine because it's Maine, not because our tax percentage is three-five percent lower than other states. Increasing the room tax will not deter tourists. As a former meeting planner, I planned conferences around the country and expected the lodging tax to be about 14%. This idea that people will stop coming stems from an anti-tax frame, something we need to get away from. We're Maine, let our tourists pay for our quality of place.

8. As municipalities continue to provide what are increasingly expensive public goods (like education, police and fire protection), what is your plan for controlling growth in property taxes while maintaining these fundamental government services?

We need to fundamentally transform our tax structure at all levels ensuring everyone pays their fair share while also ensuring our public services are ready to deal with issues as they arise.

9. The Opportunity Maine program will allow students who graduate from any Maine college or University, and continues to live, work and pay taxes here, to be reimbursed for student loan payments through a state income tax credit or an employer tax credit. Projections show that in ten years, this strategy could cost the state as much as $55 million annually, but the return on that investment is conservatively estimated at $75 million in new state and local tax revenues and decreased social expenditures. If elected, will you commit yourself to protecting this long-term economic development strategy, without any reduction in the credit's size or availability?

As a founding board member of Opportunity Maine - the organization - and one of the architects of the Opportunity Maine Program, I would lay myself on the alter of sacrifice to ensure this program continued - at a minimum - in its current form. Once the program has justified its presence by quantifying the economic analysis in practice, I'd like to see it expanded first to out of state students and then to graduate and post-graduate programs.

10. Portland schools are seeing less funding from the state due, in part, to increasing value of residential and commercial property. Although property valuation is a measure of taxable resources, it is not necessarily a good indicator of the ability of taxpayers to meet the funding needs of our schools. What are your thoughts on how to balance local and state contributions to school costs?

I'm not sure anyone really understands the funding formula because it is complex and convoluted. I'd like to examine a more straightforward formula that has the state paying for specified items (e.g. buildings) and local municipalities paying for other specific items (e.g. administration.) Asking municipalities to pay the administrative costs creates significant incentives for school districts to streamline their administration while even encouraging consolidation without forcing it.

12. Given Mainers' struggle to balance work with family care responsibilities would you support:

 
Yes - Paid family and medical leave

Yes - Legislation that allows workers to request flexible work schedules without employer retaliation

13. Do you support current Maine law (22 M.R.S.A. § 1502), which allows minors to consent on their own behalf for health care including contraceptive counseling, mental health care and substance abuse treatment?

14. Currently seventeen states fund abortion care for poor women on the same or similar terms as other pregnancy-related and general health services in their state-run Medicaid program. Maine's Medicaid program only covers abortion care when the life of the pregnant woman is at risk or she is the victim of rape or incest. Would you support funding abortion care for women covered by Medicaid in Maine?

 
15. There is a significant move in Europe, Alaska, and Southeast Asia toward the independent certification of fisheries as sustainably-harvested. In effect, consumer demand for sustainable fisheries is moving faster than regulatory bodies to save fisheries from overfishing. New England is behind the rest of the world in this regard; Maine has no independently certified fishery. Would you support a similar move toward independent certification in Maine?

16. What do you see as the biggest challenge for Maine fisheries over the next five years? Biggest opportunity?

In addition, we must preserve the working waterfronts so that Maine can continue to enjoy the vibrant fishing industry we have for generations. As properties get sold for vacation homes and as those homes raise the property values of waterfront land around them, we're watching our workable waterfront property diminish quickly. This pattern must stop and we must preserve the lands for future generations of fishermen.